Thanks, it's not always about refuting just posting. I was trying to point out there is a context for all Greek words in the list. I trust the original message to that church was understood. The Greek text aren't quite that old.
Absolutely not, unless you base your entire faith on a book. I specifically argued against your claim that biblical architects were faithful to the "original". I have no comment on your status as a "believer" except to state that your belief cannot be justified via biblical consistency because said consistency simply does not exist. No, they don't - there are proven and simple examples for everything I claimed. I don't know what rationale you're thinking of, but simply saying this does not make it so. As it pertained to gnostics, the problem is that this demands an explanation of what exactly was to be believed in. For gnostics, the idea was to seek and explore whereas the orthodoxy demanded adherence to their version of books and associated interpretations. While a gnostic would say "I believe in Jesus" and search for the best path to attain that in his/her own way (i.e., to find gnosis), the Christian demanded "I believe in the bible". More globally, one might argue that this prepositional additive reinforces a monotheistic outlook that is not necessarily as dogmatic as the current flavors of christianity profess. The gospel of St. Thomas states that "the kingdom of god is within you and outside you" - a more Spinozan outlook than Augustinian - and precisely the point a gnostic would make in lieu of adherence to a mantra of biblical purity. Sorry for the derail. EDIT - I tried to stay out of this and failed. If I don't respond again danny, I seriously am not trying to "disprove" your faith or whatever - such an attitude is totally boring and counterproductive I think. Rather, I'm just trying to show some other aspects that I think should be pivotal in any discussion of this type - things that should be common knowledge but often are not.
not a member of this or any other church. a lesbian friend organizes the choreography for the pageant and the kiddos have been participating for the last three years. i don't hate church, just not a christian.
Not sexual. "Exceeded"? My translation says, "but David wept the most." I agree the story is about a great love between David and Jonathan. But, here I see kissing and not necessarily making out, giving possessions but not necessarily nakedness, and nothing at all about hard-ons. I really wish you'd show me the particular words that suggest hard-on to you, because I really can't see it anywhere. But, yeah, there's a great love between these two men. This love seems to objectify the women as secondary creatures useful for sex and child-rearing and domestic life, but not for greatness like a man like Jonathan can achieve. We can construe that as a portrait of the idealized modern homosexual relationship based on a long-term and deep love. But, I wouldn't call a modern-day relationship based on deep love 'homosexual' (or 'heterosexual') if it didn't actually involve sex. That's a fraternal love, not an erotic love. In our modern context, we tend to put this erotic love up as the ultimate sort of love. I read the story of David as a potrait of a fraternal love, which had more respect then than it does now. Maybe it was erotic or had erotic aspects, but I really can't tell. There's not enough material there to make a conclusion without applying my modern cultural understandings to the story and making some guesses. Obviously, repetition won't help. I have to call BS on the claim that homosexuality didn't exist in the ancient world, especially if you are to claim that homosexuality is naturally occuring. I know the spiel about the term being invented in the 19th century but I find it highly suspect. Perhaps the modern western world didn't think about gay sex as homosexuality until the late 19th century, but I don't think it's very informative about the attitudes of all the other cultures in time and space. We didn't invent homosexuality. Besides, in the context of the use of term in the Bible and references to homosexuality that don't use that particular word, and the construction of the Greek word itself, I don't get the impression that the part the authors' were objecting to was the exploitation of youths, but the male-on-male sex part. You're pulling conclusions not from the text, but what you know of ancient Greek culture. And, I have to wonder if Paul was talking about pederasty and writing in Greek, why didn't he use the obvious Greek word 'pederasty'? Sure. I get the impression that you -- like me -- are arguing from a familiarity with the Bible but without being a Believer. Is this so? Because I think there's some suspension of disbelief required for an approach like that. I'm arguing knowing the Christians take the Bible as the Word of God and arbiter of morality. I don't agree that it is, but I don't see any point in discussing it at all unless you're going to accept its Truth as a premise for the argument. I think the question here is should I Christian understand the Bible to be saying that homosexuality is a sin? Equivocating by saying it's really old and irrelevant, or not really inspired by God, or that Paul was a bigot, or did Jesus say it, or it was mistranslated, or it was doctored -- all that completely misses the point of the argument. If you are a Christian who accepts the Bible as the Word of God, you can probably trust that God won't let you be lead astray by these issues. If you aren't, you should not be consulting the Bible for your moral evaluations anyway. I'm only talking about it because of the angle I know Osteen is approaching the question from. I'm not going to get into the translation argument for the reason I just discussed. But, I will say I'm going to put my faith in the translation work of the scholars who devote their professional lives to rendering the meaning to me, instead of in some guy on the internet. No offense. If all these translators think 'homosexual' is a better translation than 'someone who exploits another man,' I'm going to go with that. Likewise on the conspiracy to change the original meaning of the books of the Bible. If it is the Word of God, I'm betting God won't let us be misled. If it's not the Word of God, pay no attention at all. Getting to the 'real original' is a red herring because it will be as much bull**** as the one we've got now.
the short answer is: yes. (I'm saying all of this as a longtime fan of yours) The bible is full of metaphors? GET OUT! You are aware that Paul was notoriously sexist towards women amirite? It's not exactly a stretch to say that he used deragotory metaphors degrading women to get a point across. I'm not sure he is the best source of credibility either. You do know that a large portion of his 'letters' are considered pseudepigrapha? JeopardE, I actually didnt have my mind made up on this until earlier this year. Like you, I thought and felt that the bible was explicitly clear on its rules and definitions of 'homosexuality'. There is a ton of record of that right here on this bbs. I actually decided to take a different approach to bolster my debating arsenal on here because, honestly, I felt like I was getting run over with knowledge by a few posters(namely Lscoladominates and drexlerfan). I thought that if I read up on their side of the argument, I'd be better served as to how they were thinking. I started out reading a bunch of theological and historical criticsm literature, with the same 'faith' and beliefs that you have. It didnt take long to realize that history, common sense and facts go against a lot of what is written in the bible. Don't take that as a personal insult, it's not intended that way, I could go into that a little bit more where it doesn't seem offensive, but thats not the point I'm trying to get to. My point is...my mind was made up and I looked at the bible from a (pun, perhaps intended) devil's advocate position. This isn't something that was pleasant. I could literally feel my 30 years of faith being systematically destroyed with every turn of the page. I had a really difficult time dealing with it. My wife was none to pleased to hear about it. My father and siblings are not exactly pleased with my decisions, and I'm pretty sure when my 73 year old Grandmother found out(who I ****ing idolize) that I turned agnostic, had a few heart palpations. I didnt even log into this site for 3-4 months because I was so confused and generally uncomfortable facing those who I had debated previously. but in the end, I felt it was best for myself to be real about what I was finding out. so don't sit here and tell me I'm subjected to calling a spade a pair of sunglasses because of how I feel. I think it's great that you have your faith and are confident enough to come here and defend it. But I also think you owe yourself the benefit of doing a little bit of homework, objectively, to better understand how you are defending it.
small world. I feel the same way. they just seem like a friendly group. I wonder if your friend is Emily... the last pageant I attended there was in '06, however. edit on topic: the current UMC church I attend has an openly gay ordained Deacon of Music, his partner is in the choir. this is in a congregation of mostly older, conservative folks who seem to subscribe to the "open hearts, open minds" mentality that attracts me to the UMC.
I'll point out, for the sake of the theological record, that the church doesn't generally teach that sinners can fix themselves, even if that is the impression they tend to give to nonbelievers.
I agree with your understanding that the word does not unequivocally indicate homosexual behavior. I don't believe you are unequivocally correct in your analysis of what Paul meant. As far as homosexuality there are better ways to get God's understanding than debate word definitions. Knowledge is so valuable to most people, Paul once said that knowledge just fills people with pride but God's love makes people more like Jesus (my paraphrase).
my problem with this is....why not just hand down the books as intended from the beginning? with clear and abundant resources of evidence to suggest it's authorship. I don't think a book that began to take shape some 5 decades after the death of Jesus, and changed its overall complexion for the next 1300 years via wars, councils, debates and votes should be declared as the 'inspired word of god'. Unless God has been spamming trollface.jpgs for the last 2000 years....it doesn't really compute.
I wasn't making attempt to say that my interpretation of the translation is unequivocally correct, but rather, there is evidence to suggest that my interpretation is more correct than....'it is what it is, and the bible says it's homosexuality'.
Understand, it's a hot topic I guess, not so much for me, anyways I didn't read all your posts just ones we were posting. Good posts, good poster. thanks
thx for the response, jv. i'd like to add the impression they tend to give to everybody. believers and nonbelievers alike. beat la's response isn't an unique/isolated interpretation among believers.
This is very different from my understanding of the difference between gnostics christians and others in the Church. As I know you're aware, what most of us call the Bible today wasn't compiled in one book for quite some time after the life of Jesus. I see nothing to indicate that the early Church was pledging faith in the Bible as opposed to Jesus. I think they were spending a ton of time trying to figure Jesus out, though. By the time Gnosticism starts really developing, the Churches have an "unofficial" canon they call "the scriptures" that are being shared regularly. The Gospel of John says some of the same stuff that the Gospel of Thomas does...particularly the stuff about the Kingdom of God already being here and living in you...and of course John is included. Both are ultimately apocalyptic, looking towards a measure to derive salvation through. There are even some scholars who read Thomas and think that the only reason its remotely related to Gnosticism, is because it was found next to some other Gnostic texts; but that the substance of Thomas isn't truly Gnostic. I think there is a thought that Thomas' exclusion from the Church's accepted canon is some sort of sinister plot...but I think it's more likely left out because: 1. its style and form is entirely different...the rest of the Gospels read as narratives (different "takes" on the life of Jesus)...while Thomas is nothing but a group of sayings from him. 2. my guess is it's written well after the others...I've read discussions talking about how some verses read like someone who had Luke and Matthew out in front of them and were trying to blend the two. 3. that it took us forever to find lends some credence to the idea that it wasn't widely circulated (thus, not important) amongst the early Church. 4. the Church, even amongst those who did not share their beliefs, was widely recognized as caring for the poor and the sick....the Gospel of Thomas has Jesus saying not to give alms to take care of the poor. But the notion that Thomas reduces his divinity is perplexing to me. In Thomas, Jesus calls himself "the light that shines over everything..." and creates a notion of himself as God through a kinda pantheistic concept.
Fine, but that's an argument about the credibility of the Bible and Christianity. It doesn't say much about Osteen's interpretation of Scripture. You can say that Osteen is a hateful homophobe because he believes this false religion that tells him that homosexuality is sinful. That's just not where this thread was originally going. We were mostly talking about whether he understood his false religion correctly. In either case, do we have to go back to first principles again and prove/disprove the legitimacy of Scripture? Can't you just say it's BS so Osteen and Christians are doomed to be wrong from the start?
you should know that the trend to interpret it in literal fashion (aside from the parts where someone is saying, "i'm gonna try to get all this down so there will be an account of it..") is a relatively new phenomenon in Church history. or at least it is new in its sense of dominance in the Church.
interesting take without a doubt. have you read Velvet Elvis, by chance?? the author is a pastor from Michigan...he talks about how the Church too often creates "brick wall" theology...remove a brick (like a theological tenet)and allllllll the faith comes tumbling down. he asserts that isn't real faith. he talks about the Virgin Birth...and says, "what if tomorrow it was demonstrated WITH ABSOLUTELY CERTAINTY that event never happened...that it was not true...would your faith survive that?" faith, at some point, has to be experential. something you "feel." something that is confirmed for you not in reading of 2,000 year old texts.. but in living of life today. otherwise it's just "bible study." - which sadly is what a lot of the Church focuses solely on. Having said that...I find the Bible to be a ridiculously powerful narrative from start to finish...with all sorts of broken, messed up people experiencing love they don't deserve. And I find tons of application from that for actually living. But it absolutely needs to be read relative to its historical context...and, honestly, the trend of reading it like an Owners Manual for Life empties it of a lot of its beauty and authority. Also recommend you read N.T. Wright who writes a lot on that topic, specifically.
