“can it be impossible for evangelicals (and others) to do something similar with the universal prohibition on same-sex sex?”

Good question Blair! And as we are seeing, some evangelicals are moving on this issue but are afraid to “come-out” and say so publicly. Others are probably concerned not just with the interest their bank balances accrue but with the actual income that will rapidly diminish if they change their mind. As indeed Jeremy Marks of Courage found out when his evangelical donors jumped ship after he announced his U-turn.

I think though that it is just old-fashioned prejudice that is holding up the progress towards equality and justice. People like Dr Goddard will bend over backwards, so to speak, to insist that he isn't homophobic and will rightly insist on Christ-like pastoral approaches towards LGBT people. Unfortunately from him and his bed-fellows we're not interested in being patronised by well-meaning religious folk, we want to be recognised as equals and be able to work out the gospel along with the rest of Christ's body without any prejudice being outworked against us.

St Luke 6:35  Gentlemen: Please note that, in comparison with the OT passages cited below, the word of the Lord does follow the usual pattern of simplifying and intensifying a moral obligation as it passes from the Old Covenant to the New. A few posts ago, Nersen perceptively posed this pattern as a test for a Christian obligation derived from the OT, and he might be right about that. If he is, that is a very helpful gloss on Article VII.

Similarly, it may be important that the universal NT form of the prohibition is not the form for trading with Gentiles but the one for assisting fellow Jews. That too, is consistent with the gospel.

The last several posts all pose fascinating points, but before engaging them as is their due, it seems useful to point out that, traditionally, the prohibition on sodomy appears to be derived from the prohibition on usury. That is, both were seen in medieval tradition as sins contra naturam, but the moral theology of the category was built on the condemnations of usury found both in the scriptures and in Aristotle. This is why Dante places blasphemers, sodomites and usurers together in the Seventh Circle of his Inferno. So, generally, theologians before Calvin (including Luther) regarded speech about God, money, and sex as human practices to be practiced in accord with the evident order of nature.

When that is in the mix, some of the points made in recent posts will find new applications and raise new questions. Finding their contemporary application is not a trivial task. Thanks to all for insightful comments.

Hello nersen, Dave, Bowman and all,

I'm aware I've raised this question before and am not sure that it's the most helpful one, but would like to clarify a thing or two. I'm not trying to argue that two wrongs make a right, but press the question about usury because (a) virtually all of us, self included, are usurers, simply by dint of having a bank account, and yet (b) nowhere in the Bible is it commended or blessed. I don't think that a Scriptural text commending usury can be found - any more than one commending same-sex sex can be found. My implied argument is doubtless pretty obvious... 

I had thought of making a comment on lending at interest myself. It seems to me a good example of something which is clearly "incompatible with scripture" - the OT verses quoted make that clear, and the extensive teaching in the NT about the dangers and deceitfulness of money and wealth only reinforces the conclusion. It is therefore not the least surprising that any lending at interest was forbidden by the church from early on, not just the mediaeval period.* It was the subject of pronouncements by ecumenical councils. So, for perhaps 1300 years any lending at interest was banned for Christians, as being "incompatible with scripture".

The interesting question is, why did this change? We can see some effect of the change in saying that 'usuary' is not just lending at interest but lending at "excessive interest". There is, of course, the question of what is "excessive" (Nehemiah condemned "the hundreth part" - 5.11 - which equates to about 12% PA if that was a monthly interest. That means that most credit cards are usurous in the sense of excessive interest). But more interesting is what the process might have been that led to the change of definition which caused the reinterepretation of the parts of Scripture referring to lending at interest.

I suspect that it was pragmatic considerations of the utility of lending at interest, rather than any change forced by a re-examination of the scriptures concerned. I note that the change was happening really before the Reformation.

However, whatever the mechanism, it is a very good example of how the church changed its mind about an activity. Before the change, the understanding of the Scriptures in condemning the activity was broad ("lending at interest"), and after the change it was narrow ("lending at excessive interest"). Such changes occur for an activity with a much greater weight of Scripture against it than any form of homosexual activity.

In summary, for many centuries the church condemned an activity in all forms. Then it changed, and permitted some kinds of the activity, while condeming others. Might not the same happen for other activities?

On a lighter note, it amused me to thing of an interview for a prospective bishop: "Have you at any time had a deposit account paying interest?"

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuary seems to be a balanced article on this, and this makes clear that 'usuary' being defined as excessive interest only happened after legal permission was given to lend at interest. So, one must not apply this understanding backwards into the interpretation of the verses. In the context of the time was there any distinction between permitted and forbidden rates of interest?

I find this revisionism by Nersen very worrying.... Where specifically in Scripture are the passages that tell us that God will bless usury under the sort of terms that Nersen describes?....If it is never commended in Scripture it is, surely,  dangerous of Nersen to try and tell us that his kind of usury might be acceptable, or heaven forfend, even blessed.....Surely he must see that in any circumstances it is dangerously revisionist of him to support charging interest where it is not so commanded....If this behaviour is incompatible with Scripture, which it clearly is unless you engage in a huge exercise in revisionism (which is not likely to convince those of us who take seriously the plain meaning of Scripture), then I hope soon that the Communion will soon come to a mind about it, so that its incompatibility is made clear to all....This is surely the kind of case where Section 4 of the Covenant with its useful provisions about relational consequences would be used in relation to provinces that act in a revisionist way by accepting this unScriptural behaviour.

Or, to put it another way, Nersen, you are prepared to reinterpret the Scriptures about usury, because that's what you do - but Scriptures about other things are not to be so reinterpreted.

Blair and Bowman,

Usury carries with it an implication that the interest is unconscionable or excessive. The verses Bowman list restrict the condemnation to lending to the poor or other Jews or excessive interest. The story in Nehemiah  5 is instructive. In Roman and Greek society loans to finance trade were widespread. Evangelicals should not be surprised that the Medieval church got some things wrong. These verses do not relate in a straight forward way to business loans, mortgages and car finance. There are many aspects of current financial practice which deserve criticism which involve charging high rates of interest to the poor and those poor records. Interest of say 40% on specialist credit cards is one thing but 4214% on 30 day loans from Wonga is quite another.

The question for us is are we prepared to take the risk of small loans to other Christians without interest?

Dave 

hi Blair and Bowman - two wrongs do not make a right, I am sure you would agree, the church has oftren sinned in its history but because we have in the past and today gone against scripture cannot mean we must make ignoring scripture a habit when it is inconvenient (especially if we are evangelicals).... but I certainly avoid charging my bretheren interest because scripture does ban that. But does it ban companies making commercial loans to other companies who take loans to make a profit?  This is not the same as lending to a brother in need, is it?  This article by Dr Goddard may be helpful. Semper Reformanda in a Changing World: Calvin, Usury and Evangelical Moral Theology PermaLink: http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=84

It is by its very nature unlawful to take payment for the use of money lent, which payment is known as usury: and just as man is bound to restore ill-gotten gains, so is he bound to restore the money which he has taken in usury.

--Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, circa 1270

you'd struggle to build a case solely from Scriptural texts that usury is permissible...

Indeed, St John Chysostom, among others, made a scriptural case that usury is forbidden to Christians.

[Exodus 22:25] If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.

[Leviticus 25:36] Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.

[Leviticus 25:37] Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

[Deuteronomy 23:19] Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury:

[Deuteronomy 23:20] Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

[Ezekiel 18:17] He withholds his hand from sin and takes no usury or excessive interest.

"But when the NT, inspired by the Holy Spirit, agrees with, builds upon OT morality laws and never blesses an act in any circumstances, on what authority can we say the same act is blessed in any circumstances?"

Um, nersen, couldn't something similar be said of the lending of money at interest? I don't think anywhere in the NT 'overturns' the OT proscriptions (and I don't think the parable of the talents counts as I don't think it was read this way - but open to correction on that point). I suggest that, without a possibly strained use of that parable, you'd struggle to build a case solely from Scriptural texts that usury is permissible...

in friendship, Blair 

Hi Nersen. Thanks for a good reply!

But, say a man used to sleeping around becomes a Christian, I'm sure we'd all agree that he'd do well to look at what the bible says re sexual behaviour and repent. The same applies to others equally...

Is that in dispute? The point of Church recognition of the monogamous relationships of homosexuals is precisely to discourage promiscuity and encourage stability and virtue. How effective that is remains to be seen.

...acts banned in the OT and the NT...

I don't mean to split hairs, but this way of phrasing things is confusing to me. You probably are not equating homosexuality to, say, leprosy or eating ham or menstruation, but those are each, in different senses, banned in the OT. Apart from the Ethopian Orthodox, Christians generally see the NT as starting from a different moral ground,differently understood in different traditions. One can sometimes argue for continuity, but a case must be made for that, and a Christian who rejects the Third Use as contrary to the evangelical gospel is unlikely to accept it even then.

Anyway, a pure "acts morality" lands one in paradoxes. Earlier Lambeth conferences solemnly pronounced against birth control in all its forms. What happened to that? The bishops at Lambeth XIII did agree to condemn some sexual acts, but not the ones obliquely discussed here. One or two of those they do condemn are not mentioned in scripture. And finally, if a few sexual acts are really the concern, then homosexuals are no more the direct concern than those married heterosexual couples who also perform them.

The question is really: what does the NT generally teach about life in Christ, and how that is applied to persons who are involuntarily outside the orders of creation recognized in tradition? (That you may recognize as the final thought in I.10.) A difficulty is that NT morality is scarcely ever an "act morality" and is usually a wisdom-based "virtue morality" with a special attention to motivation. Some, as you suggest, pay so much mind to the scarcity of prohibitions that they miss the difficulty of the cultivated life in Christ. Others miss the point completely and mine the NT for rules that were intentionally omitted.

A related difficulty is that a Christian life is not an earthly life perfected on its own terms but a life transfigured in Christ by grace. In all ages before the Reformation, this was understood to require and enable an asceticism at the heart of Christian life (compare e.g. the Great Fast of Orthodox Lent). With our suspicion of works righteousness, we have little sense left of what that sort of life in Christ would be like. That leaves us practicing worldliness to the best of our God-given ability until we stumble across some alien precept that is nearly unassimilable to the rest of our world-shaped lives. I suspect that this is very much the predicament of a sane, gay, evangelical.

The truth is that it is hard to make sense of the NT without more maturity than we usually have when we are most in need of it! This is why the actual pastoral care of the church is so important. Have you suggestions for that? You may recall that one of the four positions listed in Lambeth I.10 was that monogamous committed relationships for homosexuals, although not marriages, nonetheless deserved the Church's support as a discipline favorable to virtue and unfavorable to vice. That seems to me to be a serious attempt to deal with the whole problem. But like the other three, it failed to attract even a majority, never mind the consensus one would want to see on such matters.

With all this talk about grace, virtue, life transfigured in Christ, etc, I hope that you and all of the villagers are remembering to have a blessed Lent!