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.

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?

Elizabeth Humphrey

Elizabeth Humphrey, from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, has some useful resources here on same-sex erotic relations.

Robert A J Gagnon

Robert Gagnon, an Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, has some useful rersources on his website here. These include Material for Christian Sexuality.

Assignment 6

1. Review of Leal’s Debating Homosexuality

2. Homosexuality article

• There are a number of useful resources here
• Gay Christian resources can be found here
• Bridges across the divide
• Walter Wink Homosexuality and the Bible
• Christian resources about homosexuality and AIDS
• Exodus international
• Evangelical Fellowship for Gay and Lesbian Christians
• Courage
• Integrity UK
• True Freedom Trust
• Roy Clements Homophobia in the Church
• RS Web resources and links
• On-line book Christianity and Homosexuality Reconciled by Joseph Adam Pearson
• George Hopper The Reluctant Journey