Slaves, Women and Homosexuals
This article will show that an acceptance of an egalitarian view does not logically move one toward acceptance of a homosexual lifestyle. Six biblical and theological reasons will serve to illustrate the point: the core value of gender boundaries, the direction of redemptive movement, the vice/virtue and penal-code lists, the lack of canonical variance, biblical purpose statements, and pragmatic clues. A seventh, nontheological reason will highlight egalitarians who are producing major scholarly works against accepting homosexuality. Besides the transcultural core value of gender boundaries, there are a number of other reasons that acceptance of egalitarianism does not logically lead to accepting homosexuality. One of the clearest hermeneutical reasons for rejecting this logical-acceptance thesis is the dramatic difference in “movement” within biblical homosexuality texts compared to women texts. At this point we need to return to the idea that “movement provide...