Yes, the issues are certainly not easy to navigate ethically. This is one of the emerging situations that I thank goodness I am not a parent.
I have a feeling my belief that reasonable people can disagree about the Bible will not go the other way… I prefer that America has a mass religious awakening… which is not entirely off the books 
If your original claim were true, there would be no need for insistence, so you accidentally revealed that there are publishing scientists who do not differentiate as you described (or only so differentiate on threat of not being published).
Hmm…I still don’t see any letter from a journal editor from you.
(and may I remind you that attributing motives to others is against forum guidelines)
This is an interesting topic. I’m new to this forum and new to BioLogos, so please forgive me if my response has already been regurgitated several times in other replies to this thread. I read some of the replies, but not all of them (unfortunately, while time may not be a constraint for God, it is for me).
I just want to share my own beliefs as they stand today regarding this. My spiritual beliefs tend to be quite fluid, but one area they won’t change is the belief that science is God’s language, offered simply as a method by which we don’t become even more insane than we already are. Where would we be if water didn’t always boil at the same temperature? We’d be nuttier than a tiger in a cage. This is what attracted me to BioLogos — that and the whole DNA thing, which is far beyond my understanding in many ways. But there was this fabulous insert in an issue in Science Magazine years ago. A huge poster of the human genome. Maybe some of you remember it. And my first thought was, as a struggling, almost anti-Christian was, “No way that’s random.”
That one poster has had a lot to do with my reintegration into the world of Christianity, but a more sane version than we are accustomed to.
My personal beliefs (this means I don’t ask or expect any of you to subscribe to them) on gender and sex are not based so much on scientific principles as they are on that still calm voice within:
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God is genderless. The choice of the word “Father” in scripture is interesting, but likely promulgated by male scribes. They could have said “Mother” and accomplished the same thing. In fact, I’d argue that Mother is more appropriate if we really want to consider a virgin birth. I use “him/his” out of habit, but it’s probably a more accurate guess (and that’s all it can be) to call any divinity who promotes this idea of being part of a holy trinity as “they/their”.
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Jesus visited us as a man because he had to choose a gender. If he had visited as a woman, nobody would have taken her seriously, and she probably would have been stoned to death faster than you can say, “preach.” It was a very patriarchal society. The story of Mary Magdalene, in my opinion, was crushed by male scribes, and the earliest church tradition of women leading prayer services in homes was torn asunder by male priests demanding a more organized, patriarchal approach. This, in turn, begat many of the issues that people who want to consider Christianity simply can’t look past, so they rage against it instead.
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Sex was used by God as a construct of science for procreation and a way to physically express our love to another person (although I’ll argue that being nice is a more loving act than the most affectionate sex). It’s that simple. This, to me, means that sex was not designed to preclude people from enjoying it for reasons beyond procreation, and Jesus, based on my reading of the scripture (I’ve read the Bible three times fully in the last three years, but I’m still no expert), didn’t seem particularly hung up on it, and doesn’t want us to be. He certainly doesn’t want us attacking one another over sexual preference. He had better things to do with his time, and so do we. I think some of the biblical references to Baal have more to do with idolatry than sex, but I didn’t live in that era, and it’s silly for me to pretend I know God’s intent in allowing certain views to seep into the body politic (aside from his firm position on the allowance of free will).
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As I understand the science (and I may not — I’m not a scientist), the biology of trans folks is such that they really do need options beyond what the norms of society present. I’ve seen some arguments in the replies to this post that mention biblical references to eunuchs. I think we, as biologically simple forms compared to God, make too much hay out of this. God doesn’t consider this question important, and neither should we. But it’s very important to trans folks, who are under attack and deserve our support.
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Overall, our human obsession over sex and gender is quite primitive (albeit quite human). Sex is a powerful biological impulse. It’s one of the few biological traits that merges into the spiritual realm, which is probably why the Old Testament is filled with societies that worshipped a god whose main identity was as a sexual being. Considering all that, my guess, and again, it can be no more than a guess, is that God would like us to enjoy consensual sex without making such a big deal of it. No judgment, no pointing fingers, and certainly no yelling.
These beliefs can’t be argued with because they are only beliefs. Every single one of these points could conceivably be wrong. I am not biologically or spiritually equipped to know what the truth is because the full truth, beyond my understanding until I transition out of this mortal life, was created by a being that created the Pleiades and billions of galaxies as big as our own. This being created intelligent life beyond ours, of that I’m quite sure. I am equally certain that he represents himself differently to us than he does life forms on other planets (see Perelandra) and dolphins. Perhaps dolphins worship the great orca, JesusOrca. A female orca, I’ll add.
So at the very end of the day, there is only one message for me that does seem to ring true in the Bible, both testaments (yes, even the Old, “crazy” one): Forgiveness is the one rule God insists on. So even if someone, for some reason, has a negative opinion about human gender choices, God would say, “forgive this person for their mistake, and move on.”
I suspect this message transcends the universe. That, and love. Everything else must be subservient to that message, and, at the end of the day, is just noise.
My apologies for such a long debut comment. I promise to be more concise in the future!
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Thank you for your post, @Charles_W and welcome to the forum. We look forward to getting to know you better and hearing your voice.
This is indeed a subject full of emotional overtones. I have trouble separating it out myself. It seems we often mistake the way the Bible talks about marriage and sex, and this conversation has helped me sort that out a bit.
I was reading an AARP article about sex and older people, and among people 65 to 80 who were in relationships, only 54% of them included sex. (Hum, old people and sex, that is a great way to turn away forum participants…) Point being, marriage is not only a lot more than sex, it is ultimately independent from sex, that being the reality of many marriages, by choice or by circumstances. I would agree with you when you spoke of it as being an obsession in our society.
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Thanks for the warm welcome @jpm.I don’t read AARP material, but I should, since I’m in their demographic! I’m not surprised by a poll like that. It makes sense for a lot of reasons. I look forward to reading more posts here. I’m surprised by how heated some of the exchanges are. That’s not really my style anymore, but it’s great to see so much intelligent discourse.
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I picked up a pdf. From Longman
First the positives! I appreciate his honesty and how he will not straw man or caricature the other side. He fully admits when Christians make bad arguments. I appreciated his comments on S&G as well and how it was not about homosexuality, the problem was gang rape–a point I made at a recent bible study when pointing out there really isn’t a ton of scripture on homosexuality. There are a few passages that are definitely against it but not enough to justify the vehemence or special significant it seems to be given in Christendom. A few passages in the OT are easily dismissible for me since we don’t follow countless other commands (I found his comments on this point worth merit but unpersuasive). His argument was that just because we don’t follow some of the OT commands doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow all of them. While that is logically true, there is too much in there for me to consider parts of it binding that don’t make sense anymore.
His overall argument --to me-- just amounts to just blindly accepting the Bible on this issue. I think as Christians we can certainly give the Bible the benefit of the doubt but since I think we have reasons to think the Bible reflects an outdated view on sexuality–that is not the case here. The listing of women as property in one of the commandments and the misogyny in the pastorals being tied into the creative order pushes me away from his view (plus some other scripture). In fact, this type of thinking cause people to be young earth creationists and a proponents of a global flood. They are clearly the most sensible, obvious and dominant reading in the Church for thousands of years, unless your hermeneutic is designed and geared towards modern, college educated literary critics capable of getting behind the Bible to tell scripture what it thinks it means. In the end I can’t think of a good reason why I should consider monogamous homosexual unions sinful and I have several reasons to think scripture was accommodated through an ancient worldview.
Am I really to take adopt the view of scripture–a book that condones slavery and misogyny, has God as the proponent of mass genocide, murder, advocating rape and so on, and lobby against and try to deny two same sex individuals the comfort of love in a broken world? It seems to be the exact opposite of loving your neighbor as yourself.
His arguments on why we should listen to Leviticus on homosexuality seem to boil down to the idea that the NT has no redemptive trajectory on it. It actually doubles down on them. I get it. That is true. He even quotes the Webb book @Christy referenced a while back that I have. But truth be told there is not a consistent redemptive trajectory on these topics. It is hit or miss. This is easily evidenced by the millions if not billions of pious and prayerful Christians–for thousands of years-- who have found these things clearly articulated in there. The ammunition for them is gracious. Now we culturally abhor these things so we find something else being taught in there as we try to dig behind the scenes or read between the lines of scripture. The real problem here is we all just make scripture say what we want and try to pretend its what God was teaching all along. Maybe it is our view of scripture that needs to evolve, instead of pretending it teaches what we now believe all along.
Theologians like Longman who accept evolution but still want to adhere to what I see as a concordist view of sexuality are walking a razor thin line. The scholarship is too liberal for YECs and literalists, but simply not critical enough for everyone else. IMHO, this is the “no man’s land” of Biblical interpretation.
For me the issue, like all others, breaks down to three questions: :
Is scripture accommodated or not?
Did God choose the very words or just put ideas on the authors minds and urge them to write?
Does Jesus speak from the perspective of a 1st century man in a specific context and culture, or when he refers to things like “in the beginning” is he commenting from a divine, omniscient perspective?
If we simply adopted Longman’s approach then I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t still think slavery–something that was so popular and prevalent in almost every ancient society of significance-is still okay. Clearly it’s okay to go beyond what the Bible condones and regulates. Sure, Paul can issue the hollow spiritual platitude that we are all one in Christ Jesus, but socially we are not all one. Slaves were told to obey their masters as if they were Jesus in Ephesians. The only redemptive portion in there, if it actually is such, is telling slave owners to treat their slaves (their property) properly. That is only redemptive if we imagine all slave owners as not having any decency whatsoever towards their slaves in the time period.
Vinnie
I read the first half of your comment, and as I have said for a long time before I came to this forum, reasonable people are free to disagree about the inerrancy and authority of the Bible.
Now, I must run, but shall come back to your comment as I am able to later.
The Bible assumes incorrect, ancient cosmology from cover to cover. There is nothing reasonable about inerrancy unless you are okay qualifying it with 5,000 caveats and moving the goalposts to another galaxy. Some people find those mental gymnastics acceptable, others do not. There is nothing reasonable about inerrancy though I will agree with your that reasonable people do hold to unreasonable views. So reasonable people do subscribe to inerrancy. Likewise, I don’t think typical YECs are idiots. The Bible is the word of God, something their social circle reaffirms and they don’t have scientific expertise. They believe they have to trust the word of God or the findings of man-made science. For them the reasonable choice is God. You can be a reasonable person and get things wrong. It doesn’t make your views reasonable though. We all have to start somewhere and our intellectual constraints are what may ultimately be unreasonable.
Call it what you may. As long as there is as strict a view with sexual immorality in it’s multitudess forms that are casually accepted by the world today, then at least you can call him consistent.
Consider a view that has captured my attention recently:
Many traditional approaches fail to do justice to Scripture’s own witness—for example, they read Scripture as if it were merely designed to satisfy our historical interest about past salvation history (the approach of some conservative interpreters) or past ideas (the approach of some liberal ones), or just teaches us doctrine about God without inviting a relationship with him, or exemplifies moral virtues without attesting the Spirit’s power to implement them.
Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost by Craig S. Keener
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