Hi David

I agree with you that, where a traditional (or otherwise) focus on extra-biblical things might be critiqued by biblical teaching, we should allow it to be so.

I don't think you've yet argued your point that Jesus's 'welcome of the excluded' directly flows from the 'nepotism that was rife in his own society' - but I may have misunderstood what you were saying in your first paragraph. Apologies if so.

You say that there are times when Jesus's hyperbole 'does have literal force'. But is this one of those times? How then would the comment on the family that you quote fit in with other teaching on the place of the family?

It's a fair point that terms like 'liberal' and 'evangelical' are often unhelpful and unnecessary. All I can say by way of defence is that I was picking up terms that had already been introduced on this thread. But I'll try to avoid them in future, for the reason you suggest (and with which I agree).

'Polyvalence' is originally a chemist's term, I think, but it's sometimes used to describe the idea that Scripture contains plural and diverse 'voices' (which I'm happy to go along with to some extent - another discussion for another time).

Sorry if I come across as irritated. I prefer to think of it as a desire for brevity, combined with a desire to watch tv. As for impatience, it's a personality thing - but at least I'm aware of the problem.

Toby

Hi Jeremy

You ask in what way the 'Nazi analogy' (which you say isn't a Nazi analogy) is unfair.

I never said it was. My criticism is different: that it's too emotive, it's too often used to close down discussion (step forwards, L Roberts, and receive your crown) and it's hard to pin down where the analogy  actually lies. On this last note, in your latest post you do explain a bit more about what you meant - which implies that it wasn't so obvious first time round after all.

If, as you say, the point of the analogy was merely to illustrate 'the inability of people... to recognise and critique what [is] going on in front of their faces', then all I can reply is that, yes, this is a risk and we always need to be on the look out for it in ourselves. But I think you were getting at something more that I'm missing?

I agree, of course, that the history of anti-semitism has been long and terrible. I agree that this has been mirrored, to some extent, in a history of homophobia (by which I mean 'irrational hatred of gay people'). Both clearly need to be condemned and combatted. But we're told, in effect, to hate the sin and love the sinner. Some sins are rightly outlawed - the present discussion is over what the state's (and the church's) response should be to a particular sin.

So, if I were convinced that Peter A. were demonstrating an 'irrational hatred of gay people', and if he were sitting next to me now, I'd tell him so. But he's not here and I'm not familiar enough with African (or, rather, Nigerian Yoruba) English idiom to be able to 'read' his words with that degree of fluency. I certainly *don't* think that his lobbying of his government for a law change - which is where this discussion began - constitutes homophobia in itself. But we may have to agree to differ on this.

You said, 'I don't think I accused you of being controversial, did I?'. Well, er, yes you did. It's in the opening line of the post you addressed to me on Monday.

You say, 'how do you know if I am living openly "in sin" if I am living with another man, unless you ask me the bedroom questions?'. I've come across lots of gay people, Christians included, who've been happy to share what they do in bed without being asked...

You say, 'Do I have to wear a t shirt saying "I heart Lambeth 1:10"?. No, but I think it would look nice ;-)

I agree with your comment that 'our inherited moral frame of reference has told us the answer to most things without having to engage with what may lead us astray'. I think this could be applied to many people in many ways and it's a shame.

Toby

Jeremy - you say it is "simply silly" to state the truth that the bible calls certain activiites sinful..... really?   I guess it is "simply silly" to say that telling lies and theft are both sins too..... using your logic

Dear Toby and Nick Jones -

Toby -

Thanks for yours and for staying involved. The Nazi analogy is not a political analogy. It is not a Nazi analogy. Throwing the N word around is not usually helpful - but I wasn't - so I invite you to look at it again.

In fact it is an analogy not between anyone now and Nazis then - but between ordinary people then and ordinary people now. It was a suggested analogy between the inability of people then to recognise and critique what was going on in front of their faces, which oppressed and persecuted others. What I would like to know is in what way is that analogy not a fair one? 

In the analogy I offer there was a whole great big history of anti-semitism stretching, well, hundreds of years, but which had got ramped up from the late 19C onwards, which disinclined ordinary folk to see themselves and the people who were about to have dreadful things done to them - all quite legally - as being one and the same human family, and therefore not to howl with protest. I think the same has been true with homosexual people probably the world over, until in recent years in some parts of the world (like here) we have started to see homosexual people as part of us. Oh, and it is the same problem with Roma as well, and formerly with black people and so forth. Any group you can make 'other' are a group who stand in danger of not being protected by you when the chips are down - they can be threatened by 'legal' or illegal means - but we fail in our moral and Christian duty when we do not protest as we should over their oppression.

I don't think I accused you of being controversial, did I ? Carry on controverting, say I.

How do you know if I am living openly 'in sin' if I am living with another man, unless you ask me the bedroom questions? Do I have to wear a t shirt saying "I Lambeth 1:10"? And as for the closeness of your listening, my point was that posting answers and engaging in debate here is one thing - meeting and listening and indeed, yes, debating as well, is better done face to face, and there are too many evangelicals I know who have never  really done that, because, I suspect, our inherited moral frame of reference has told us the answer to most things without having to engage with what may lead us astray. So two generations ago we didn't go to the cinema or drink alcohol or go in pubs - and it was obvious that we shouldn't - and then suddently it wasn't obvious and we did. Nothing had changed but our subcultural moral frame of reference - which saved most of us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves or encountering things or people that we might find uncomfortable.

Nick  -

I know one bit of the continent of Africa very well indeed. And have close friends from there. I lived there during a very uncomfortable time for the people of that land - though in truth, there haven't been any times that have been anything other than uncomfortable for then for as long as I have been alive. Interestingly, though I know they take a conservative stance - I have had better (by which I mean I think we have listened to each other better) exchanges with some of them than with many evangelicals here on this topic.

So don't think I am hostile to the recent writings of Peter Akinola out of ignorance. I am hostile to them, one, because they encourage the irrational hatred of homosexuals, which he has signed up to say that he doesn't think we should do!, and two, because they support the introduction of further oppressive laws which make the lives of a minority who are not in truth threatening the whole moral fabric of the nation (despite his daft rhetoric) even more unliveable. Both of which are wrong. Full stop.

Moreover, I don't subscribe to post-colonial guilt. We are forty years or more on from the end of colonial rule. I have no brief for defending colonialism. If fully-fledged nations like Nigeria - that should, with all their resource advantages, be powerhouses for an continental economic advance by Africa -  want to be treated as the powers they say they are, then they must also expect that they, like us, can be criticised at the bar of international opinion. One of the things that brought an end to colonialism was a rising tide of human rights thinking (notably enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948) that made some people ruling and running other people's countries and keeping their peoples in a subjugated state feel all wrong.

I have yet to be convinced that for any state anywhere to identify by some arbitrary characteristic some portion of their population and then legislate to penalise and do all they can to eradicate that group is other than a gross violation of those rights. Nersen's analogy between homosexuality and theft is simply silly - homosexuals do not want to engage in crime - they want to be allowed to love who they naturally are drawn to - and to get on with doing all the rest of the business of life in peace. So let me be clear about this -  it is nothing at all, as far as I am concerned, to do with racist attitudes to Africa.

Toby,

Thanks for your response clarifying your previous post comments.

Trying to keep this on the thread topic. My comment was that the very strong Nigerian cultural (not just church) focus on family, for all its good intent and virtue, might well be something that the teaching of Jesus critiques if it leads to the kind of neopitism that was rife in his own society. That leads to a fragmented and excluding society that easily oppresses those who do not fit in. It is hard for Western society to begin to understand the effect of such a culture within any society.

I do not think you have recognised the force of this point, or the significance of its background to some of Jesus's teaching. His welcome of the excluded directly flows from this. Jesus is using hyperbole to make an important principle about the kingdom. There are times it does have literal force actually Toby. Pray that it never will for you my brother. And yes, this radical inclusiveness of Jesus is very messy. Is it clear where he would draw the line today? I suspect that you, like me, want it to be radical but are trying to keep control of the guest list.

It is so unhelpful and unneccessary at this point to introduce  'liberals' and 'evangelicals' - us and them - serious bible and pic n mix.  This wretched fault line only leads to defensiveness on these threads so often - 'oh no I'm not', 'oh yes you are' ... and you don't actually know me or my theological position. Can't we just discuss this as fellow Christians with open bibles?

Toby I respect anyone who, like you, clearly takes the bible and its interpretation seriously. It would just be nice to have a sense that you dredit others with the same intent and perhaps learning and know what polyvalent means. Your posts leaves me feeling like an underprepared student at a tutorial being firmly taught and corrected by an informed but mildly irritated and impatient tutor.

Thanks for engaging with me.

(only) 'some gentiles welcome'  -  I'd feared as much.

What a 'gospel' !

All together now : --

'We have a gospel to proclaim

Good news to some at least to a few who fit in

with middle class 21st century Western prejudice .... '

' .. We are asked to listen to the voice of homosexual experience.  Does the same not apply to African experience?  It seems not.  Contributors weigh in freely to condemn.  I wonder how well they know the continent, its people and its cultures?  I wonder if they know anything of the Church of Nigeria first hand.  Are they aware of the systematic oppression and persecution Christians there endure? .. '

Well --  some of us here have been taking 'the African experience' of facing the threatened draconian laws, that will remove their human rights. And also those who threaten to impose this dehumanising regime.

Nick Jones  (you) 'weigh in freely to condemn. I wonder how well you know the gay continent, its people and its cultures' ? Are you 'aware of the systematic oppression and persecution lesbian and gay people endure ? '

But I try not to be selective about whom I listen to or whose oppression I oppose in my own miniscule way.  I try...

Hi David

If you think that Jesus's teaching on the family consists *solely* of 'hate your parents for my sake' then you'd be right to consider this more than a 'partial redefining' of the fifth commandment. If this *is* your understanding, then I hope you've followed this dominical command to the letter. How are your family relationships these days?

But in fact I think you may be doing several things that liberals sometimes accuse evangelicals of (occasionally fairly):

1. You're abstracting a phrase from specific teaching and then treating this phrase as if it stood alone as a piece of ethical teaching for all time, without reference to the wider teaching of which it's part and which gives it meaning.

2. You're flattening polyvalent accounts into one 'pure' gospel.

3. You're not reading and interpreting these words in the light of the other teachings of Jesus.

4. You're not reading and interpreting them in the light of the other teachings contained in the NT.

5. You're not reading and interpreting them in the light of the other teachings contained in the whole Bible.

Very briefly, a version of the words of Jesus that you cite is recorded in two gospels. But Matthew's version (Mt 10.37) makes no mention of 'hate'. Only Luke's version (Lk 14.26) does this and the teaching is given there in the context of people using their natural families as an excuse for ignoring Jesus's call. Luke is also, I think, faithfully recording in Greek a Hebraism/Aramaism which means something less than 'hate' as we understand it - but I don't have a commentary with me, at present, in which I can find out more.

I'm not going into all the other occasions when Jesus speaks of family, still less those on which other biblical witnesses do so. Suffice it to say that, if you place this Lukan verse alongside another one - 8.19 - then it starts to become obvious that there's something both less offensive and more interesting going on than you seem to suppose. It is in the light of this more interesting thing that Jesus can teach the Pharisees about honouring the family (Mt 15.4ff) and can speak tenderly of his own mother as he dies on the cross (Jn 19.26f).

On another tangent, you seem to assume that the call to create a 'radically new community' is a call to create it on terms which seem good to you. Actually I think that Jesus is more challenging than this: yes, gentiles are welcome (some of them at least) - the new community isn't just for ethnic Israel. But through participation in Christ they are expected to change in the process. It's not simply a throwing open of the doors for all individuals, although it is a throwing open of the doors to all peoples. This, I think, is partly what the parable of the sheep and the goats is about (Mt 25.31ff) - as we walk through the doors we're expected to change.

This last parable, by the way, is part of the 'less cosy' teaching I was hinting at in my last post. For modern liberals, I think Jesus's '"scandalous welcoming" of social outsiders' is easy to accept. Aren't 'tolerance' and 'inclusivity' things to be trumpeted? Less cosy are the biblical teachings which collide with, rather than collude with, modern liberal sensitivities.

Apologies if some of this seems unhelpfully compressed. It's been a long day!

Regards from Toby

'Regarding your paragraph on Nazism, I'm afraid it's my policy never to engage with political rhetoric.' Toby

The Nazis disqulaified from civil life, and dismissed from their work, people on the basis of their being Jewish or gay.  They also imprisoned, tortured and killed Jews and gays in extermination camps.

All around the world governments still behave in this way towards lesbian and gay people (that's people - persons).  This seems pretty Nazi to me. And if my words ever get heated, its because the UK has only recently rescinded laws which it used to prosecute and persecute gay men. This has only happedned in my lifetime, and  there is a way to go yet.

In fact it is not long since gay men were executed by the  UK government

'...You ask, 'is the issue of gay sex a core issue?'. It's a fair question. I don't think it should be. But I think it's become so for two reasons. First, various parties have decided to make it so. Second, rightly or wrongly it's become a cipher for other things (the Buddhist bishop being a good example of this sometimes unacknowledged back story).'  Toby.

I must ask what does the following mean ?

'it's become a cipher for other things (the Buddhist bishop being a good example of this sometimes unacknowledged back story).'  Toby.'

I don't understand it but it makes me feel concerned.

'.. (ie. you'll get no same-sex blessings from me).' Toby

I wouldnt dream of asking you for one speaking personally. But then love is its own Blessing 

and hardly needs an external add on from those who set themselves up to confer blessing on those whome G-d has already Blessed. . But some people do find it meaning ful and moving when their life and their religion come together in prayer andf celebration.

No wonder so many people find church and do church beyond the narrow confines of 'the offical church' - there's a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.

I have read as much as I can of the comments on this thread and I have to say many of them make me very uneasy.

We are asked to listen to the voice of homosexual experience.  Does the same not apply to African experience?  It seems not.  Contributors weigh in freely to condemn.  I wonder how well they know the continent, its people and its cultures?  I wonder if they know anything of the Church of Nigeria first hand.  Are they aware of the systematic oppression and persecution Christians there endure?  Do they know the bigger picture of Gospel work in word and deed done by the Church of Nigeria as well as many other Christian denominations?  Are they aware of the feelings of resentment that are still rife towards those responsible for the exploitation of the continent through the slave trade, colonisation and the oppressive strictures of the World Bank and IMF on hard-pressed economies, all of which are mentioned in Peter Akinola's statement but not referred to in anyone's posts as far as I can see?  I thought this was one of the (few) achievements of last year's Lambeth Conference in that there was listening and, at least in some measure, some of the damage caused through insult felt by African bishops because of disparaging comments at the 1998 conference was repaired.