posted
It depends upon questions of interpretation and translation. There is no way to settle that bet cleanly.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
That was an interesting article, but I felt he was reaching on the last example. It was probably the closest to an actual statement about it as you could get. It pretty much defined it as an unnatural act.
Not that I care, of course.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
In terms of legalistic wrangling mixed with suddenly jumping to one's own opinion as the only valid conclusion, that article was on par with many I've read written by religious scholars. What it illustrated to me was that the article's author is no better at providing a definitive, objective interpretation of Biblical passages than anyone else.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. 18:23 because it does not even work, there is not a vagina there. 18:4 Fortunately thou hast some ways to work around this.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
In the broader context of the Romans 1:26-27 quote, it should be noted that Paul is summarizing the many sins of mankind. He's not passing judgement on a specific group of people, but he actually segues into a very anti-judgement conclusion: "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things." (Romans 2:1)
Later in the letter, Paul talks about how everyone, Jew and Gentile, without exception, has sinned. Romans 3:23-24 states "... all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."
Nowhere in the Bible, to my knowledge, does it say anything about homosexual desires themselves being sinful, unless you transpose Jesus' equivalence of lust for a woman who is not your wife to adultery in the Sermon on the Mount. It is my personal belief, based on these passages, that even if you choose to interpret the scripture as a blanket condemnation of homosexual acts, no one is in a position to pass judgement on the sinner.
Christians get a bad rep for self-righteous condemnation of various "sins" that are, for whatever reason, more socially acceptable outside the faith, such as drinking, gambling, and extra-marital sex. What people, both Christians and non-Christians, often fail to realize is that a central tenet of Christianity is that nobody is without sin, and therefore nobody has the right to pass God's judgement on another.
There is more to it than that, of course. A strict literal interpretation of the Leviticus passage would infer that man-on-man sex is ritually unclean, just like bacon, but the epistles in the New Testament make it clear that a Christian need not be bound by Mosaic law (see the entire book of Galatians). One can argue ad infinitum about scriptural morality shaping public policy (a government based on the Sermon on the Mount would be VERY different from any society in the history of the world), but the Bible does very explicitly warn against judging your fellow man (or woman), so every Christian who persecutes a homosexual because they are a sinner is a hypocrite.
Posts: 1029 | Registered: Apr 2007
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quote:"specifically states that homosexuality is a sin or not."
Since the concept of 'homosexuality' didn't exist exactly as such back then, then no it doesn't 'specifically' say that as there's no single word that specifically denotes the modern concept of 'homosexuality'. It might however say that a "man lying with man" is an abomination that should get you put to death.
So I guess it depends on whether you equate male homosexuality with "lying with mankind". And whether you equate punishable "abominations" with "sin", I guess.
As for female homosexuality, it isn't specifically stated as a sin in either the old or the New Testament, as far as I know.
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: As for female homosexuality, it isn't specifically stated as a sin in either the old or the New Testament, as far as I know.
The smartass majority of my brain is dying to make jokes about this.
But since the thread is working so well so far, I will risk aneurysm by fighting back the compelling need Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
The only real instance I can think of off the top of my head is in Genesis. When the angels visited Lot, people from the city gathered around Lot's house and demanded he hand the angels over so that they may "know" them.
I know that wouldn't exactly mean they wanted to have homosexual sex with the angels on its own. But after this Lot offers his own two daughters, and makes it a point to let the mob know that they are virgins and that they have never "known" a man.
I suppose that that the wickedness was that the mob wanted to essentially rape the angels though, and not the actual act.
Some scholars think the relationship between David and Jonathan was suspect as well.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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