Thursday, June 01, 2006

"But the Bible says ..."

A Lutheran scholar offers Isaiah 56 as a case study for inclusion grounded in the prophetic tradition. "... here we speak of a more radical move—not an ethical argument, say, for the civil rights of gay and lesbian people ... but a prophetic word welcoming practicing homosexuals into full participation in the community of God’s people despite the knowledge that the biblical texts speak differently." Well worth reading!

A New Word on Homosexuality?
Isaiah 56:1-8 as Case Study
by Frederick J. Gaiser, Luther Seminary
St. Paul, Minnesota

The Christian Church no longer lives in the first century. It need to find ways to speak in a world of which the authors of the church’s scriptures knew nothing. Yet, if the church is to be faithful to its own self-understanding, it must do this while confessing the scriptures to be word of God, speaking authoritatively in the church’s faith and life. While the scriptures may not know about particular developments of the late twentieth century, they certainly know things about God and humans and creation and redemption—things the twentieth century may no longer know—that Christians must bring to bear on twentieth-century issues.

Read it all here

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting and substantive study, although I wonder why, on pg. 2, he says, "There is no equivalent to Gal 3:28 with regard to gays and straights..." If in Christ there is no male and female, why all the fuss about same-gender or opposite-gender relationships? Thank you for posting this.

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

King Solomon was known as the wisest man who ever lived, and he said in Ecclesiastes: "There is nothing new under the sun."

Anonymous said...

Thanks, fanboy, but most of us already have the Bible in our homes and hands.