GAY TRUTH

The starting point must be the possible meanings of physis in Romans 1:26–27. Greek Usage Physis occurs in profuse quantity throughout secular Greek writings, especially philosophy. We can study only a representative selection. The LSJ lexicon, including its supplement, cites eight broad categories of use for physis:22 1. origin, including birth and growth;23 2. natural form or constitution of a person, animal, or thing, including nature or character;24 3. regular order of nature; 4. philosophical order, referring to nature as an originating, creative power25 or “Nature” personified or as an elemental substance (as fire, water, air, earth26) or in the idea of the creation, nature; 5. concrete term, as in the case of “creature” or “humanity”; 6. kind, sort, or species; 7. gender distinction;27 and 8. legal distinction, a term roughly synonymous with “law” (nomos). There is no suggestion here that physis means “what is natural to me” or “orie...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Colossians 1:24–29 “I became a minister…to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (vv. 25–26). The liberal theology that emerged from the nineteenth century and still plagues the church even today was not only influenced by the radical immanentism of Hegel and the radical subjectivism of Schleiermacher . Naturalism , a view that holds nothing exists except the physical universe, also had a profound impact on liberalism. The result was a crop of liberal theologians who did not believe in the miraculous. Some of them even denied the existence of the personal God altogether. These men tried to explain away the many supernatural references in the Gospels , viewing the miracles purely in materialistic terms. The feeding of the five thousand, for example, was not a supernatural multiplication of a few loaves and fishes. Instea...

Same-sex attraction and gender confusion is a wounding of the human heart by the Fall. It may be physiological, it may be developed; it may manifest itself early on or later, after exposure and/or abuse. If it is physiological and manifests early, this is not validation for homosexual behavior according to the Bible . - God can heal any wound, but that doesn't mean He will. It is possible for a devout Christian to struggle with same-sex attraction . If a church-goer consistently gives in to that attraction, it is likely he is either not a believer or is an immature believer in need of love and support. - Homosexual behavior (to include indulging in same-sex attraction fantasies) is a sin, like many other sexual sins, and is to be avoided by those who wish to follow Christ. But it is not any worse of a sin than any other. - Homosexuality is more difficult than many other sins because of the identity factor. We do not believe one's sexuality is the truest part of an individual....

Image via Wikipedia By Elodie Ballantine Emig The most natural place to turn, after an examination of Paul’s vice list in I Corinthians , is to his vice list in I Timothy .  Since the early 19th century, it has been alleged that Paul couldn’t possibly have written the Pastorals. The most common objections are: The writing style and word choices are different from Paul’s earlier letters. The Pastorals don’t fit with what we know of Paul from Acts . The heresy combated is second-century Gnosticism . The church is too developed for the first century. The theology of the Pastorals lacks Paul’s distinctives. The Pastorals are not contained in the oldest (mid-third-century) codex we have of the Pauline epistles . Before briefly answering these objections, I must state my conviction that the burden of proof is on the scholar who denies Pauline authorship to books regarded as genuine for eighteen centuries. I Timothy claims to have been written by Paul, and it was preserved and ca...