Take another run at it, Jim. I can quote you many verses(more than you think) that forbid homosexual activity. But you can't quote me any verse anywhere in the Bible where anyone is commanded to own a slave. Then and only then will that comparison be valid.

Christopher, I am not following your argument. Are you making a distinction between what the Bible permits and what it forbids? If so, I don't see what difference that makes in this instance. If we determine that the Bible is in moral error on slavery, and therefore disregard it, we can determine that the Bible is in moral error on other subjects as well.

Or are you saying something else?

Not commanded to own slaves though there were certainly commanded as a nation to enslave captives (those not ordered to be slain). Also returning runaway slaves to their owners (at least if the owners were fellow Jews or fellow Christians).

I should point out that many of the abolitionists including some of the early ones were not standard Christians and some were deists or atheists (though given that the overwhelming number of people were standard Christians, both sides used religious arguments that would appeal to them).

I appreciate what Emma's written, because I think it gets at a truth: there isn't a simple correlation between "Christian" and "morally correct." Christians agree on positions with one another, with members of other faiths, and with atheists. On the other hand, Christians disagree with one another on things that they find central to their faith. We might do well to remember that European cities fought wars with one another during the Reformation over the nuances of the nature of the Eucharist.

Even more complicated is that, being imperfect in and of ourselves, when we DO disagree with one another even within our narrow group (Christians? Anglicans? Episcopalians? ACNA?), we don't have an easy way to determine who is "right."

Surely all Christians would agree that moral rightness involves seeking to follow the will of God, but we use the same tools to discern that, and we come up with different perspectives.

While we might make jokes now about how authoritative Leviticus 19:19 is (Do not wear clothing woven of different kinds of material), we'd do well to remember that in its time, this was an offense that would have removed someone from moral rightness. A little bit closer in our history is the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15, an interesting example of how divided practice has been since the first followers of Jesus. In our less-Judaic, more-Greek Western Christianity, we're much more followers of the innovative and non-textually-literal Paul than the law-focused folks from Judea and Antioch.

The trick lies in how we stay in relationship with one another. Do we dare to claim our humility and listen to other parts of Christ's Body the Church, rather than declaring that we have no need of them? This is a challenge that falls on each of us, and not on any single perspective, given that all of our perspectives are human and limited.

A hope I have for Anglicanism is that we have that ability to continue to be a big tent and a via media. A favorite example of mine is the General Convention after the Civil War, in which a resolution praising God for Union victory was altered to declare thankfulness for a cessation of hostilities, which allowed for a coming back together of the still-divided church.

There are several biblical mandates to enslave. This is sometimes obscured in modern translations. The law also forbids the liberation of slaves. See Reasonable and Holy page 111ff.

Where in the Bible are individuals commanded to own slaves? Nowhere that I know. But you and I both know several passages in Scripture where individuals are commanded not to engage in homosexual activity.

When asked, what did Jesus say about divorce? After all, his questioners pointed out, provisions about divorce are in the Law. They're there, replied Our Lord, "because of the hardness of your hearts." I think the same rule applies to slavery. I don't command you to own a slave, says God, but if you're going to anyway, here's how I want it to be done.

CJ:See Lev 25:44ff, and note in particular the contrast with how Jewish slaves are treated in the previous verses. (Read it in the KJV, as later versions make it sound merely permissive by inserting a spurious "may"). One can also point to the "curse" of Canaan (misdirected to Ham, and a proof-text for slavery in the antebellum period in the US, Genesis 9:25-27). Then there is the enslavement of the Hivites in Joshua 9.

See also Exodus 21:20-21 for an example of the extent to which non-Jewish slaves were property. Finally, in Isaiah 14:1-2, God says that those who hold Jacob captive "shall" be enslaved by Jacob in return. This is a sign of salvation and liberation, and divine justice.

Set this against the single Levitical prohibition (and penalty) for a particular form of male homesexual behavior, which according to the best Jewish commentator (Jacob Milgrom) only applies to Jews in the land of Israel, and you see why I find Jim's comment to be relevant to the discussion.

assuming that the texts of terror do speak uniformly against such relationships--which is a whole 'nother debate.

Ya got that right. I think there's a much better case to be made that the Bible forbids *female autonomy* in marriage, than that it bans same-sex marriage! [Needless to say, re this, the Bible is WRONG]

JC Fisher

@C Johnson, re "several passages in Scripture where individuals are commanded not to engage in homosexual activity".

Nope. Ain't no such thing. The Bible knows NOTHING about homosexual orientation and ergo, says NOTHING about any "activities" of persons with the orientation.

Chris, I'm not sure you're trying to hear the voices of those who are responding to you, but in an effort to respond to what you're repeating, I'd note that people are not commanded to refrain from homosexual activity; but rather men lying with men is called abomination as part of a morality code of purity taboos that will distinguish the specific people from those around them.

Many people feel that great swaths of those purity taboos are not actually true; the point I made earlier about cloth woven of multiple kinds of fiber, or the proper rites of sacrifice (indeed, Deuteronomy 12 comes to mind as a rejection of the notion that God wants sacrifice as prescribed in the Holiness Code).

The trouble with what you're saying, Chris, is that there's no principle being offered for what parts of scripture are taken and what are left. What I hear from the theology of the Episcopal Church in the United States, however, is an acceptance that when we choose to let go of part of scripture, it's because we find God's reconciling love to be a greater truth, the goodness and dignity of God's creation to be a greater truth, the broadening of the people of God through the diverse pentecosts in the book of Acts to be a greater truth.

The parables of Jesus point us back to the experience of our lives and communities, and it is those who try to stand on rigid points of the law who are shamed for failing to accept God's presence in the world. We can apologize on their behalf to a certain degree; they had a lot of fear that the life they understood, where the power of Rome worked a certain way and rocking the boat meant consequences.

But Jesus still challenged them to listen for a more loving world. I'd challenge you to do the same, Chris.

I don't see why the Huffington Post argument, that the Bible is "wrong" on slavery, could not also be used to nullify every single moral prohibition in both Testaments, so that biblical opposition to murder, bearing false witness, stealing, and adultery would be struck down also. That is where Naughton's logic leads, and, with all due respect, I think it is irrelevant.

The discussion in the Episcopal Church concerns the definition of marriage, and it is abundantly clear from the New Testament, from what Jesus says, quoting Genesis 2 (... 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one' [Matthew 19:5]) and from what Paul writes ("... each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband ..." [1 Corinthians 7:2]), that marriage (for Christians) means the consecrated monogamy of a man and a woman. What the BCP and the (printed) Canons of the Church teach, is consistent with that understanding of marriage, and to maintain that the New Testament definition is not good enough, *because the law has changed,* simply makes the Church subordinate to the political whims of the society. Are Jesus and Paul to be nullified as well, thanks to the slavery argument? Are they really inadequate guides to truth?

@ Craig Abernathy, the requirement is not to throw out all of moral teaching from the testaments, but to use discernment that goes beyond them (the often-maligned "three-legged stool" comes to mind).

Part of that discernment must include reading more of the scriptures than one verse at a time. For example, your reading of Paul in 1 Cor 7 is focused only on part of verse 2. But even expanding our vision to the entire chapter reminds us that Paul is 1) writing in response to a specific question by that church, which we don't have and 2) that Paul recommends not marriage, but celibacy for Christian life, but 3) that it is better to marry than to "burn with passion."

How many closeted gay Christians have found themselves burning with passion outside of a marriage? This may not have been what Paul thought of when he wrote that, but does the same principle call us to the same questions about his solution?

And dare we remember that the marriage that Paul understood in 1 Cor 7 is of older land-owning men to young girls? The verses he wrote later in chapter 13, about the patience and kindness of love, he was offering it as a principle to guide us in understanding prophecy even though we as fallen humans only "see as in a reflection in a mirror," even though this is the chapter so often quoted at marriages. Paul didn't mean anything about romance from it.

As for Matthew, it's worth remembering that here the pharisees are trying to trip Jesus up to shame him and silence his new teaching. It's also worth remembering that Satan in the desert tries to persuade Jesus with verses from scripture, taken out of their context.

The point, of course, is that we're already and always interpreting scripture from our own context. Confessing that we are doing so reminds us that every generation's interpretation of scripture has been limited, and that God is pointed to by it and also beyond it. As Martin Luther famously imagined it, scripture is not the Word, but the cradle of it (dare we say one of its cradles?).

Thank you, Benedict, for a very good statement. I would also only add that with many moral issues we do not rely solely on Scripture for our understanding. For instance, we would think, I hope, that murder is wrong even if Scripture did not speak against it.

The facts are these: that there are many things that Scripture commands, commends or allows that the church no longer finds morally acceptable or prudent. There are a few things that Scripture condemns or forbids that we now permit or even encourage. And it is necessary for us to use the gifts of reason God gave us, and the permission Jesus granted ("what you allow on earth is allowed in heaven...") to make such judgments. Jesus gave us a "key" to make moral judgments: the Golden Rule and the Summary of the Law. The question before us is, does same-sex marriage open to that key? I think it does; others clearly do not -- but that, it seems to me, is where the discussion ought to be focused.

Thank you so much, Benedict, for misspelling my name and comparing me to the devil. I appreciate that. If I have made a mistake in interpreting what the New Testament teaches about Christian marriage, then so have the authors of the BCP and the Canons. At least, in agreeing with Paul, Jesus and the Prayer Book, I am in good company.

It is remarkable how nothing in the Bible that would challenge homosexuals, ever seems to apply. Liberals always find a reason why what the Bible clearly, repeatedly says, can be ignored, and this discussion is no exception.

Where does anyone in the New Testament or in Christian antiquity ever state that Christian marriage means two men or two women together? Please cite the reference for that. As far as I know, it never happens, for the simple reason that such an idea is foreign to Christianity; as Earl Brill wrote in the Church's Teaching Series volume on "The Christian Moral Vision" (1979), "The Church cannot go so far as to sanction homosexual marriage, because marriage is by definition the union of man and woman."

Thank you for the response Craig, and I AM sorry that I misspelled your name; I certainly understand that names are an important part of ourselves, and it's something I try to be careful about.

I also didn't mean to compare you to the devil; rather, the point is that scripture uninterpreted can be put to any use -- EVEN by the devil.

I want to note that you're making two appeals to authority: one to "the New Testament and Christian antiquity," and the other to a theologian in 1979. There's an interesting interplay between the old and the new there.

What I find to be in common between ancient and modern Christianity is that it is lived out by people in community with God and one another, continuing to interpret their experiences in light of that relationship and their tradition, which includes the scriptures.

But the appeal can't simply be to "Earl Brill who has been a Christian writer," because he is human and thus limited and fallen. So we have to deal with the content, and not simply the authority you want to assign him; to put it most precisely, you cannot simply claim that the sources of authority you raise must be taken in the same way by everyone else.

One interesting thought about the New Testament and Christian antiquity is that Christian antiquity was spent in part trying to figure out what would go into the collection that we've come to call the New Testament. We forget sometimes that Jesus did not scribe the Bible in a single collection and hand it on to us; rather there were (heated) debates at councils of the church called on to make (human) judgments about how we would be church together. Given your perspective here, Craig, I'd venture to say you disagree with some of the recent General Convention decisions made in council . . . but do you really imagine that the bishops of bygone ages were less human than those today? Will you insist on the authority of the proclamations they made 1650 years later? What will you make of, say, ACNA, which has violated that old principle that two bishops will not compete for primacy in the same geography . . . even though that principle was effected at a time when churches wielded more political and indeed martial authority, in part to prevent political intrigue and bloodshed . . . perhaps that geographical concern reflects the way society was ordered back then, and not today?

It is fine -- and indeed, I'd argue necessary -- to hold to the traditions of our councils . . . as long as we're willing to remember that they are human events and subject to mistakes and the need to be received anew.

In sum, Christianity involves thought and work; we cannot simply worship Jesus at a distance and from a single received perspective; we have to follow Jesus within that worship, which will require that we hold our perspective open to change. I feel that the way you're presenting your principles suggests that they can only be seen in on way, and it is a way you are simply insisting on, rather than trying to explain in love.

In response to Benedict: If it is not possible to come up with even two verses of scripture or a couple of patristic quotations stating that Christian marriage is other than the union of a man and a woman, then that makes my point: there is no basis from authority for abandoning the BCP definition of marriage.

But, undoubtedly, the majority in the House of Bishops will soon cave in to liberal pressure and embrace same-sex marriage. I would bet a Social Security check on that. It will happen by 2018, at the latest, and that will be a major step in
de-christianizing our Church, cutting it loose from scripture and tradition, making it merely a tasteful variant of largely non-theistic Unitarianism, which has no problem with same-sex unions.

Wouldn't it be kinder to Christians in the Episcopal Church simply to direct same-sex couples to the nearest Unitarian parish, instead of destroying the connection between Christianity and our Church?

Hi Craig - sorry to leave this through the weekend.

The clearest thing to note to you is that one might as easily suggest that it would be kinder to direct you to the nearest ACNA parish, rather than overturning the traditions and authority of our church's historical process, used as our tool to discern how best to be Christ's Body the Church together today.

(And I do understand that at present you find yourself disagreeing with the authority of the bishops and laity of the church, but I suspect you'll find infinitely more in the patristics about obedience to authority than you will about homosexuality.)

The issue that you're not addressing is the same one that was raised in the original article; when you say "there is no basis from authority" (emphasis mine), you're right back in the sights of the original point of the article, which is that those traditional bases from authority can be mis-used. I argued above that this calls us to use discernment in how we follow the authority of scripture (I don't believe you have spoken to this yet).

If the examples already given aren't persuasive, Jeremiah 28 (the less-known Hebrew Bible reading from last Sunday) offers another example of a prophet mis-interpreting God's will, adding to the Biblically-attested collection of prophets and pharisees that blindly follow an incorrect interpretation of the Law rather than God's actual will.

Why is this theme so prevalent in scripture, if not to call us to use the gifts of our reason and compassion? Why does Jesus, confronted by those who want to trap him in the paradoxes of the law, give examples that shame them, or parables about everyday life? Surely God incarnate could have provided the perfect interpretation from the law.

Instead we're invited by the nature of the parables to bring our selves and the experiences of our lives into the conversation. When this occurs with slavery, lived experience eventually over-ruled the Biblical contexts accepting slavery.

When it occurred with fabrics woven of two separate cloths, we over-ruled the Levitical prohibition against such garments.

I find in this not a faithless church nor a rebellious people, but a people liberated by Jesus to follow the greatest commandments and to deepen in relationship to God, self, and one another. The growth of the church through the Book of Acts to encompass not only the Jews following the law, but the gentiles and others "outside the law" attests further to me that God can raise children of the covenant with Abraham and Sarah from anyone in God's creation.

From the Book of Acts, Jesus does not insist on or explain the law after the resurrection, but rather speaks about the kingdom of God. When he ascends, he does not send down the KJV, or instructions for the council at Nicaea about which books to include in the canon for the Bible, but the Holy Spirit. The interpretations of the desert fathers and patristic scholars over the next 300 years are a profound contribution to early Christian literature, as they struggled to figure out the issues of their day, but they do not free us from struggling to figure out our own.

The argument from authority must always be to follow Christ. This is not only a passive activity of copying someone else's life or hopes, and I'd say especially not from 1700 years ago. Following requires moving, and changing our positions. We do this in faithfulness and prayer.