Josh Butler’s article had no business being brought up here if sexual issues are being discouraged
Kind of convenient in that they are so closely related… it’s worked progressively in one direction, while the ability to contrast it with what the Bible says about sexual immorality in the opposite direction is not allowed.
The point of the OP was to discuss anthropology and cognition and how it affects hermeneutics. You guys are easily distracted.
Again I brought it up in the context of intelligent design which is a relevant topic here, you all just can’t stay on topic.
Not particularly; it strikes me as a sort of dignified solipsism.
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I’ve re-read this six times and I can’t figure out what your response has to do with what I said.
That’s how I read the Fathers as well: the Gospel governs all, the Gospels are the essential foundation of the Gospel, and anything unclear has to be measured by the Gospel, preferably with material from the Gospels.
In fact I think that it was when the church forgot this that things started to get messed up.
I once got to hear a debate between a die-hard Calvinist and an ex-Episcopalian about the sacrificial system: the Calvinist maintained that the form of the Atonement was based on the sacrificial system, the ex-Episcopalian insisted it was the other way around. I restrained the urge to butt in and say that the entire sacrificial system was nothing but a metaphor for the foundational truth of the Atonement… just to throw a wrench in the dispute’s gears.
I was wondering if he’d ever heard of the idea of cultural and locational context. It was a literature professor who insisted to a class I was in that if you don’t know where something was written and the circumstances of the author, you know nothing about the work in question (specifically this was about Don Quixote).
Well, so long as you don’t go peeking at DNA. 
Totally off-topic, but this is something that struck and impressed me in the Wheel of Time series, how well a couple of different cultures were presented in terms of female roles. So much fantasy assumes a patriarchal society; Jordan did a superb job of presenting several that were quite different.
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I can appreciate how it could seem that way from some POVs. I still appreciate your stance in this thread.
In college I had a psychology professor, who was religiously minded, and he talked a good game and treated everyone respectfully. But his love was evident in how he related to the truth and got angry at the truth.
He tried to explain that sin was simply missing the mark in archery, I responded in class, as was permitted, that sin is when you intentionally miss the mark. He tried to make a joke about it.
While he meditated, and wrote the book on the psychology of personal achievement, he didn’t have the Holy Spirit.
Yes, I am aware a text without a context is a pretext and reading the epistles is like listening to one side of a phone call. Yet critical scholarship finds broad agreement the four gospels are anonymous and while arguments are marshaled for specific provenances, there is disagreement and they remain uncertain. Even their dating is probability based. A best guess based on internal comments of a book we don’t know who wrote or where. Despite this, I would tell your rhetorically flourishing and over-exaggerating professor that we can know quite a bit about the works in question. The more we know of their context the better. That is why we study 1st century Palestine, Judaism and the Greco-Roman world.
Of course context is important. But inventing one to deny the plain force of what “Paul” wrote isn’t an appropriate form of exegesis to me. Not when those same comments are just what we see expressed in the wider Mediterranean culture by almost everyone. Rather, the work in question contradicts Paul since the Pastorals are not actually Pauline. They are a part of scripture but they have sentiments that contradict what Paul actually wrote in his genuine letters.
The LTJ snippets (for me) was more interested in his hermeneutics and justification of saying “no” to scripture in parts than anything about LGBTQ. He just spent a good deal of time discussing gender, sexuality and slavery.
But with that being said, if gender is “cultural” I don’t see how we aren’t saying the same of sexuality as well. I’d be interested in your personal views and if you think your comments on gender in here equally apply to issues of sexuality in the Bible? I’m not looking to debate LGTBQ. It might be a hang up for some. I’m open to it. I just want to see where you think the buck stops in terms of what’s “cultural” and what’s truth in the Bible? Even the conceptions of what sex and marriage are both change from culture to culture. The whole concept of what constitutes porneia and what doesn’t is very much concerned with culture. In our culture sex before or outside marriage is not viewed by most as a sin anymore. At least very few act like it for consenting adults. Nor do we consider ourselves married when it happens. I am also reminded of reading about the Etoro tribe in my college anthropology course and how the boys had to drink semen from the elder men because it was considered their life force.
And just for clarification, I know LGBTQ is off limits but is it that or all sexuality in general?
Vinnie
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The use of ‘involve’ has me puzzled, it would be helpful for me, and would quickly put an end to this side issue, if you clarify whether the love for God is measured solely by how we relate to each other.
That’s good to know. I wonder what Robert Bly would have done with that one.
In answer to my question about whether sexual immorality is open to debate:
Thanks. I was wondering because checked the official rules and found nothing at all said about sexuality. It only has “politics” being prohibited.
Vinnie
I was overly broad in my statement, and should have clarified that those aspects of sexuality debated in our current social wars are discouraged due to their disruptive nature. And politics. Which is pretty much the same.
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In recognition of the fact that Christians of all identities and orientations read posts here, and the fact that BioLogos isn’t going to take a position on the issue, we mostly would just like people to avoid making statements about what “real Christians” think, believe, do, or vote on when it comes to sexual ethics. We also don’t want TMI about certain people’s personal problems. It’s not off-limits to discuss human sexuality in the context of science and faith.
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Then discussing what the Bible says about gender roles, however you want to phrase it, should be excluded as well.
I’m sorry you have a hard time understanding the difference between discussing hermeneutics and cultural constructs and how people get meaning from Scripture, a hugely relevant topic in the whole science/faith debate, and telling people what real Christians think, do, believe, or vote on.
Guilty as charged for not being able to plant my feet on the slippery slope between the relativism of gender roles and condoning of sexual immorality.
That Genesis does not have one bit of information for understanding the relationship between a woman and man in marriage… I mean, call me dumb, and feel sorry for me… but that’s not what I signed up for in accepting evolutionary providence.
Also not what anyone actually said, Mike.