GAY TRUTH

It is God’s settled and perfectly righteous antagonism to evil. It is directed against people who have some knowledge of God’s truth through the created order, but deliberately suppress it in order to pursue their own self-centred path.  And it is already being revealed, in a preliminary way, in the moral and social corruption which Paul saw in much of the Greco-Roman world of his day, and which we can see in the permissive societies of ours. The Bible says nothing specifically about the homosexual condition (despite the rather misleading RSV translation of 1 Cor. 6:9), but its condemnations of homosexual conduct are explicit. The scope of these strictures must, however, be carefully determined. Too often they have been used as tools of a homophobic polemic which has claimed too much. The exegesis of the Sodom and Gibeah stories (Gn. 19:1–25; Jdg. 19:13–20:48) is a good case in point. We must resist D. S. Bailey’s widely-quoted claim that the sin God punished on these...

Scars of a whipped slave (April 2, 1863, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. Original caption: "Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping. My master come after I was whipped; he discharged the overseer. The very words of poor Peter, taken as he sat for his picture." (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Does the Bible condone slavery and sexism? Of course not! The suggestion is ridiculous, but we live in a world where absurd conclusions seem as rational as the truth is preposterous. The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tried this form of argument on a Christian pastor on ABC's Q& A.  All sorts of wicked ideas advance on the power of subtle insinuation and grow strong by the sneaking suggestion. Often this argument is used by homosexual activist to deny Bible statements on the prohibition of homosexuality. If the Bible is wrong on sexism and slavery then it is also wrong on homosexuality...so the argument goes. If there is a surface-level ...

Image via Wikipedia In her recent CNN Belief Blog post  “The Bible’s surprisingly mixed messages on sexuality,”  Jennifer Wright Knust claims that Christians can’t appeal to the Bible to justify opposition to homosexual practice because the Bible provides no clear witness on the subject and is too flawed to serve as a moral guide. As a scholar who has written books and articles on the Bible and homosexual practice, I can say that the reality is the opposite of her claim. It’s shocking that in her editorial and even her book, " Unprotected Texts ," Knust ignores a mountain of evidence against her positions. It raises a serious question: does the Left read significant works that disagree with pro-gay interpretations of Scripture and choose to simply ignore them? Owing to space limitations I will focus on her two key arguments: the ideal of gender-neutral humanity and slavery arguments. Knust's lead argument is that sexual differentiation in Genesis , Jesus and Paul is...