Full Text
CHAPTER 30. Eating Together: Friendship and Homosexuality
Joel James Shuman
Subject
Philosophy
»
Ethics
Religion
»
Christianity
Key-Topics
homosexuality
DOI: 10.1111/b.9781405150514.2006.00031.x
Extract
… I think that youforget the very issue whichinduced the Christ to take on flesh.… Yes,if you'll recall your Hebrew wordjust long enough to glimpse in itsdense figure power to produceyou'll see as well the damage Greekhas wrought upon your tongue, stolenfrom your sense of what is holy,wholly good, fully animal –the body which he now prepares.Scott Cairns, “Loves: Magdalen's Epistle”Christians who care to talk about “homosexuality” as a moral matter tend, with a few notable exceptions, to fall neatly into two groups, both of which are pretty sure they have the right answer to the question of whether Christians can “be homosexual.” On the one hand, are those who read the Bible, note (in passages such as Leviticus 18, Romans 1, or 1 Corinthians 6) what they take to be those Scriptures' univocal condemnation of homosexual behavior as a voluntary and deliberate violation of the natural moral order, and pronounce without reservation that God and nature have spoken clearly and the matter is settled. Every instance of homosexual behavior is unequivocally wrong, and all those who engage in it are committing sin of the worst sort; they should stop what they are doing or risk eternal separation from God.On the other hand, are those who for a variety of reasons see things quite differently, insisting that the kinds of same-sex relationship we call “homosexual” are fully compatible with Christian ... log in or subscribe to read full text
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