Ethical arguments against tweeting

Here are some (satirical) ethical arguments against twittering by James Anderson.

Follow me on twitter @stevebishopuk

Homosexuality and the Bible by Sander Chan

Sander Chan, a gay Christian, has a useful series on homosexuality and the Bible on his blog The Joyful Anticipation.

Part  1: Sodom and Gomorra
Part  2: Leviticus I
Part  3: Leviticus II
Part  4: Leviticus III
Part  5: Romans I
Part  6: Romans II
Part  7: Romans III
Part  8: Corinthians and Timothy
Part  9: Creation Order
Part 10: Wrapping up the series

Homosexuality and the Bible – a for and against presentation

Homosexuality and the Bible – a for and against presentation.

We have here two presentations by Biblical scholars who can help us think about the question question of homosexuality in relation to the Bible. Many people think of Bible scholars as obsessed with small sections of scripture and uninterested in contemporary social issues. Ulrich Mauser and Dr Wink do not fit this stereotype.

Ulrich Mauser, educated in Germany and Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary, has taught at three theological schools during his career, serving as academic dean at one of them. All along he has focused on the meaning of the scriptures for what we actually believe and do as a people of faith. His books and articles focus not on texts by themselves but on their theological meaning, often in relation to real world issues. His most recent book, for instance, is The Gospel of Peace: A Scriptural Message For Today’s World. During the last two years, Professor Mauser has joined some of his colleagues at Princeton to issue public statements on burning issues in the church: one of these focused on the ordination of homosexuals. He is not the sort of Bible scholar who hides in the library.

Read Dr. Ulrich Mauser on The Bible and Homosexuality

Dr. Wink is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Seminary, an assignment that takes him to several dozen different cities each year to teach. Formerly he taught at Union Seminary and before that was pastor of a Methodist Church in Texas. He is well known for pioneering a method of Bible study for use in churches and for a three volume series of books on the principalities and powers. He not only writes about principalities and powers but mixes it up with them as well. He has been involved in movements for non-violent social change in this country, South Africa and other parts of the world, and written and spoken widely about non-violence, disabilities, homosexuality and other contemporary topics.

Dr. Walter Wink on The Bible and Homosexuality

Via and Gagnon on homosexuality

I’ve just come across this book by Dan O. Via and Robert A. J. Gagnon: Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress, 2003).

It’s a great read. Via presents the case for an open and accepting position that homosexual acts are not in themselves immoral or sinful.

Gagnon takes the traditional position that homosexual acts are sinful and that the scripture only permits monogamous heterosexual marriage or celibacy.

Each author presents their case in about 15,000 words and then each respond to each other.

Gagnon is the author of the monumental The Bible and Homosexual Practice and this essay can be seen as a revised synthesis of that book.

Key chapters that both authors examine include the usual suspects: Gen 19, Leviticus 18,20, Judges 19  Romans 1 and 1 Cor 6.

Gagnon has provided extra material on his website here.

Do religion and politics mix?

Flew on Dawkins

There is no a god – Flew speaks out: Professor Anthony Flew reviews the God Delusion

New book by Oliver O’Donovan

Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion by Oliver O’Donovan:

What if the challenge gay men and women present the church with is not emancipatory but hermeneutic? Suppose that at the heart of the problem there is the magna quaestio, the question about the gay experience, its
sources and its character, that gays must answer for themselves: how this form of sensibility and feeling is shaped by its social context and how it can be clothed in an appropriate pattern of life for the service of God and discipleship of Christ? But suppose, too, that there is another question corresponding to it, which non-gay Christians need to answer: how and to what extent this form of sensibility and feeling has emerged in speci¹c historical conditions, and how the conditions may require, as an aspect of the pastoral accommodation that changing historical conditions require, a form of public presence and acknowledgment not hitherto known? These two questions come together as a single question: how are we to understand together the particularity of the age in which we are given to attest God’s works?

The ethics of climate change

James Garvey, the author of The Ethics of Climate Change is interviewed by Nigel Warburton.

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Christianity and politics

“He should be concentrating on winning souls into the Church of England rather than getting involved in politics.”
Mark Pritchard Tory MP on Rowan Williams

Some useful advice when reading a book …

… but make sure it’s your own book: ‘How to mark a book‘ by Mortimer J. Adler:

There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here’s the way I do it:

• Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful statements.
• Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
• Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It won’t hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
• Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
• Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
• Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases.
• Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author’s points in the order of their appearance.

The front end-papers are to me the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (I’ve already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.

I tend to use lines in the margin to mark something important – the more the more interesting/ important I feel it is. I also use an exclamation mark if it is some thing surprising and a question mark if I’m not sure about what is written. I sometimes put an x if I think it is wrong.

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