What exactly does the Bible say about homosexuality?

[beansmum]

And why do some Christians make such a big deal out of it when Jesus didn't mention it at all?

It is kind of on my mind at the moment because of a comment the woman preaching on Sunday made about 'truth not tolerance', standing up for the 'truth' and not just trying to 'hug everyone and tell them they are ok'.

Well, Astrophe, I have to quote your own words back at you. In a long post earlier in the thread, you quoted that passage from Matthew, and then promptly started trying to undermine it. "The New Testament is to be read 'differently'," you said. "This is a right, historical reading of the text, not a clever way for Christians to find loopholes." And reading it 'differently' enables you to look at a law such as that from Leviticus condemning homosexual behaviour, and claim that the law still holds good, but the punishments are obsolete. But where do you get the authority for that interpretation, since in many cases the law and punishment are pretty well inseparable, often co-existing in the same statement. And Leviticus is a case in point: " If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them."

I'm certainly not against a more generous and humanist reading of scripture, but I'm wondering why you seem to have abandoned it now in favour a more literal-minded approach, made more militant by the way you word your challenge to me - "I'm still interested to now how you wriggle out of Jesus' words". Wriggle out? Yikes! You've become quite the inquisitor!

Well, to rise to the challenge, I think I would read that speech in the same spirit as his "Give unto Caesar" speech, which I never took to be a statement of support for Roman rule. Jesus tended to answer people based on the intent of the questioner. If people were trying to trap him, he had legitimate ways of extricating himself, including ambiguity.

There is also the question of supporting evidence. When Jesus speaks of turning the other cheek, that's something I can take seriously, since it gets plentiful support from his words and deeds elsewhere in the NT. It has collateral. If the statement that you quote from Matt 15 is to be taken seriously, I'd expect the same for that. If Jesus was a supporter of OT law, it was odd that he didn't spend much time talking about it or urging people to follow it, at least as far as I remember. But you're much more familiar with the texts than I am, so you tell me. Where else, either by word or deed, did Jesus recommend adherence to OT law? Where is the collateral?

Well, there is the sermon on the mount, in which Jesus takes salient points from the law and systematically makes them even harder to keep. Like adultery now being looking on a woman with lust (I am seriously cocking this one up atm), or murder being hate in the heart and so on.

I mean, he tells the disciples that their righteousness should exceed that of the Pharisees.

(still chuckling about that scholarly thing, )

Although, I do know the answer to the law/punishment thing in your latest post - Astrophe means that much of the OT law was specifically for national Israel. The church isn't a national theocracy, so we've no business trying to get biblical passages enacted as punishments which were intended as civic law for a nation to which we don't belong.

I'm afraid it doesn't make sense to claim that punishments can be disregarded, but not the laws to which they are attached. If a law is only a secular law for a nation-state, then the law itself, not just the punishment, can be disregarded when considering religious questions.

And if there are both religious and civil laws in the Old Testament, do you know in each case which is which? Specifically, what kind of law is the Leviticus law against homosexuality? If it's a civil law then we can forget it. If it's a religious law, then we can't forget it - either the law itself or the punishment.

You can't have it both ways.

I'm not trying to. I couldn't give a stuff about Leviticus, tbh, and it's never given me any trouble to be told that Leviticus says something is an abomination, given that a lot of the laws were essentially to mark out a difference between the Israelites and the pagan nations around them.

But it's not unreasonable to look at those laws, knowing that they certainly will not be applied in a civic sense, and deduce what God told His people was acceptable and what wasn't. That's the usefulness of the law, and that's how it tended to be applied in the NT.

I know you're not big on Paul, but he used a civic injunction about not muzzling oxen to illustrate that the early church should make sure that those who served in it were also provided for and treated well.

Anyway, veering off topic here, and I'm discussing theology again when I'm trying to recast myself as a skeptic. So now I'm sodding off.

Twicer - to say the OT should be read differently (as I said earlier), and to say "The whole purpose of the New Testament was to replace the Old Testament. If you're a Christian, the NT is the one to follow. You can forget everything else." (as you said earlier), are two completely different things.

Jesus' death and resurrection fulfilled the need for justice in The Law (OT), so the OT punishments do not apply. We could never perfectly keep The Law (neither could Israel way back in the OT), but Jesus kept it perfectly, and the gave his life as a ransom for humankind. So the (earthly) punishments for transgressions of The Law no longer apply.

However, as Gos is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and as Jesus says himself; "I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." - the 'spirit' of law remains for Christians.

Kay - don't go - it won't be as much fun without you!

twicer - to augment what Astrophe posted about Jesus upholding the OT, he also anticipated the authority of the NT:
John 16:12-13 I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

"Jesus' death and resurrection fulfilled the need for justice in The Law (OT), so the OT punishments do not apply."

You said that before, Astrophe, and I asked where you got the authority to make that claim. It differs radically from the (Catholic) interpretation I was given as a child, which is that the crucifixion was expiation for original sin. And I don't believe that one either.

cornflakegirl - Jesus could not anticipate the authority of the NT, except through the medium of earlier scriptures - or not if "anticipate" means what my dictionary says it means. The quotation you produce in support is not from earlier scriptures, but from the NT itself.

It's a fairly standard mainstream Christian teaching that the cross is the expiation for sin period, not just the supposed stain of original sin. Catholic believe it's applied in an ongoing sense through the sacraments, Protestants believe it's a much more cerebral thing. The Orthodox have a slightly different understanding to either, not involving original sin, which is a rather subtle thing to go into here.

But basically, the idea that the cross removes the punishment, or eternal consequences for the sin of those who believe, (an expiation) is a mainstream Christian belief and always has been.

cornflakegirl, lol - fun or not, I think it's probably going to be more helpful to me if I carry on my little struggles elsewhere. Very selfish of me, I know, but despite twicer's assumptions, I'm no scholar, I don't pretend to be an expert, and I've got a lot of working through to do with this if I'm to hold on to my faith, which I'd like to.

twicer - he anticipated it in the sense that none of it, not even his words, were written down at that point...

Kay - yeah, I wouldn't choose to work out my issues on a mumsnet thread either.

Twicer - I will have to look for specific quotations when I have more time. As KH says, it is a mainstream, long held understanding of scripture that Jesus death dealt with punishment for transgressions of the law (well, for all sin).

If you read the gospels you will read how Jesus himself 'broke' the law (eg, he picked grains for himself and his disciples to eat on the sabath), but remained in keeping with the spirit of the law (ie, that the sABATH WAS TO BE A DAY OF REST, PEAce, trust in God for provision, a time to reflect on God etc) - Again, Jesus 'broke' the Sabath by healing people, but again, he was perfectly in keeping with the 'spirit' of the law, although he broke the letter of it.

And then Jesus says as I quoted below - that the law has not passed away.

From just those examples I think it is quite reasonable to conclude that the OT punishment system (and also sacrificial system - as Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice) has passed away, but the law has not.

Astrophe - I think that when Jesus picked grains and healed on the Sabbath, he wasn't breaking actual laws detailed in the OT, but laws that the Pharisees and others had constructed around the original law.

So, the commandment says "don't work on the Sabbath", but the extra laws say "work includes: blah, blah...".

It's probably nit-picking, but I don't think that Jesus actually contravened any OT laws.

Although I'm willing to be corrected on that!

No, I think you're right, the OT was the broad 'rest on the sabbath', and the Pharisees added the extras - Jesus certainly kept the spirit of the law and fulfilled its intentions.

i agree - Jesus (the whole reason we call ourselves Christians and not Jews in the first place) clearly didn't have an issue with homosexuality as he didn't mention it at all.

I really don't agree with these so called christians who ignore everything Jesus stood for (tolerance, compassion, empathy, love and generosity of spirit) and go straight to the old testament for their morality. He shouldn't have bothered, really, because so many 'Christians' everywhere only pretend to listen to his words of wisdom. Fire and Brimstone, sodom and bloody gomorrah etc just has more pizazz, I suppose.

Anyway i'm proud to call myself a Christian who follows the teachings of Christ or at least attempts to.

Cornflake, maybe a better example would be the woman caught in adultery that people wanted to stone? - Jesus obviously didn't say "It's fine, she is not sinning", but he did challenge the would be stoners on their own guilt, and on their desire to punish her - from which we can surmise that the OT punishment system was changed since Jesus? Do you think?

And didn't he tell her to "go and sin no more"?

Jesus accepts us (all of us) while we are still sinners, but he doesn't want us to stay in sin.

How is that?

totalmisfit - as Astrophe has pointed out several times on this thread, Jesus placed great weight on upholding the OT laws. From which I would surmise that a christian who dismisses the OT is only pretending to listen to his words of wisdom...

I'm not sure who the "Christians" are that you are dismissing, but I don't believe that the appropriate response to intolerance is to bin the OT.

Astrophe - that's a really good example. I'm actually not sure what I think we should surmise from that. Will have to do some research.

I'm coming back to this thread after a couple of weeks, haven't yet caught up on all the posts.

Last week I was filled with an immense sense of sadness, thinking about all the sad and painful things that have happened to my family. Those members of my family have now died, some of them quite young, and so nobody can do anything about the incredible sadness they experienced on earth.

I then started thinking about the other incredibly distressing and sad things that happen around the world, every single day. The pain is all around us, isn't it? Close to home, far from home - it's everywhere. And yet, so many Christians are spending their time and energy banging on about sexuality? What a blardy waste of time and energy. Doesn't it make more sense to focus first on the things that really, really, REALLY matter - we all know what those things are; I don't have to spell them out.

Once we've finished dealing with those major issues, then we can say 'right, now we have the time and space to look at secondary things. Let's now look at this issue of sexuality'.

There's a hidden point here, can you see it?

Mrs TH, with respect, you have missed the point. The issue is not really sexuality, but whether or not we accept the Bible as true, or only 'partly true' (ie, totally unreliable really).

Its whether we believe God has revealed himself to us through the Prophets, and then through Jesus, as detailed in the Bible (and this is what the Bible claims about itself), or whether we believe that we ourselves are a higher authority than the Bible, and can decide which bits are true and which aren't.

Evangelical Christians are being pressured into saying the Bible is not the authority, but that our reason and experiences are. Thats what the issue is in The Anglican Church at the moment, and the issue sexuality is just a 'symptom' of the Biblical Authority debate.

I'm really, really, really not coming back to this thread to repeat myself any more!

MrsTH - whilst agreeing with Astrophe, I also don't think that there are that many christians spending very much time and energy banging on about sexuality.

As an evangelical, I believe in the primacy of scripture. If I come across another evangelical who interprets the same scriptures to say that gay sex is okay (and I have done), I actually don't have that huge an issue with it. I'm not 100% certain of my interpretation, and I don't believe the issue is of primary importance, so I'm willing to agree to disagree.

Similarly with women as church leaders. I believe that the bible probably proscribes them. My church recently voted to allow them. Given the immense amount of stuff my church does that I do agree with, it wasn't a big enough deal for me to look for another church.

But christian development organisations making a real difference in the very poorest countries, or individual churches working with young people or old people or prisoners in their area doesn't make good news. Squabbling over sexuality does. And that's a real shame.

I find this argument surprising. Christianity does not have a revelatory tradition, with very few exceptions, primarily the Ten Commandments. Islam is based on the concept of dictation directly from God, but the Bible, both New and Old Testament, is a historical document. It as been translated into forms that are very different, even thinking about quite mainstream versions, and there is a whole school of theological history, where you can read about how the four Gospels we know today were selected. I am sure that the early church spent much time, discussion and prayer deciding what to include and what not to include, but it is not without the realms of possibility that those making the decisions were influenced by their own prejudices, the society they were a part of, and the mission they were on. However as Christianity also has a tradition of continual interpretation, through ministers, popes and other figures, and the concept of the Holy Spirit speaking directly to people I don't see the need to have a literal interpretation of the Bible as intrinsic to faith.

If I were still a Christian (which I am not) and I had a crisis I would look to go on retreat, meditate and pray for guidance, rather than worry away at a piece of text which may or may not be what was originally written or indeed what God meant. Surely if God is living then he is the best source of guidance available? Personally, and this is the reason I am an aetheist without the live connection it all becomes a bit pointless really, as this is what I consider to be faith.

Astrophe, I think you've missed my point ! In any case I did say I'd missed most of the thread! As I acknowledged earlier, the conversation has clearly moved on since I first got involved.

Cornflake girl, IME you're wrong about how many Christians spend time and energy banging on about sexuality. Perhaps your church and friendship circle is the exception, but I assure you that there are lots of people for whom this specifically is a major issue - not, as Astrophe says, the issue of how we interpret the Bible, but specifically, gender and sexuality. You and I may agree that it's superficial and misguided to make this a focus. But for many people in the church, this sadly is a focus.

As for the question of interpretation of the Bible, I'm not qualified to discuss this from an academic perspective, however the one thing that seems clear is that since there are different styles of writing in the Bible - i.e. poetry, history, and an in-betweeny style (which I'm sure has a name but I don't know it!) we do ourselves a disservice by interpreting all those different styles in the same way. I know, I know, this subject has been discussed for centuries and we'll never reach a consensus this side of heaven.

Since we're name calling, I'm somewhere along the continuum between an evangelical and a liberal, couldn't possibly say where along the line I stand and after a while it does start to sound rather unhelpful to try to affix labels.

Nooka - well said. I agree with most of what you've said. Except that, firstly, I think we do best when we incorporate prayer, meditation and interpretation of the Bible into our lives. I also believe that there are parts of the Bible that should be interpreted literally, but we should be circumspect about this rather than applying a blanket literal approach from beginning to end of the book.