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A comment on 4a and 4b of Chart 1: I think we generally under appreciate how different the ancient world's view of sexuality is with ours. Our emphasis on mutuality or "Sex as a beautiful gift from God" while being deeply set in our culture is also quite different from the Roman understanding, often mediated through the structure of power. We forget how revolutionary Christian teaching was. Related to this is the brief mention of William Loader (I think as quote from Sprinkle): he wrote five volumes on sexuality in the First Century, and is not nearly as fringy as he sometimes get cited. The hermeneutical two horizons is a real thing here; to provide the best case for the affirmative use of the texts, their analysis points to the cultural specificity of the key NT texts, but that would be a different conversation.

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Hi Bill,

I think your emphasis on the stark contrast between the ancient world's view of sexuality and the Christian teaching on sexuality is entirely apt and helpful. But I would offer that you don't go far enough. It's not simply that the *ancient* world had formulations and philosophies of sex that were foreign to Christian teaching, it's that the world (no modifier needed) has understandings of sexuality that are foreign to Christian teaching. There is nothing new under the sun, you could say.

In that light I would change a word in a sentence you offered: We forget how revolutionary Christian teaching *is* (not was). And I would further offer that in pointing this out you strengthen the historically orthodox position and weaken the affirmative position. One of these positions is counter-cultural, the other is being swept by a wave of modern hyper-autonomy in both anthropology and sexuality. One is revolutionary, one is bordering on passe.

One last point, if I may: I would offer that the "cultural specificity" that you offer the affirmative position wants to forward is both in error as to the culture at the time and in error as to its forced imposition of culture on the text where the text gives no nod to the culture. First, it has been shown over and over that it simply is not true that ancient homosexual practice was only exploitive. To assert that (as affirmative advocates do) is to be ahistorical, not culturally sensitive. Second, despite Paul's knowledge (and the knowledge of other Biblical authors) of exploitive sexual practices, Paul gives no indication in the text that he is speaking about such practices. To say otherwise is to import meaning into the text that the author does not even give a nod to, much less explicitly reference.

Thanks for engaging.

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Eric-- you offer some interesting points to consider.

You are of course, right that Christian teaching offers a counter or critique to each age's or culture's understanding of sexuality. I could imagine that you took my comments on the ancient culture as a way of excusing the present (this, btw, is the sort of presentism that afflicts Brownson and other apologists from the affirming side).

My basic point was to call out how different the ancient world is from ours, how it made assumptions that we do not, how we make assumptions that the ancient world would find no less strange. There's a gap here. This transformation of the ancient world's understanding of sexuality for the better is very much a product, an impact of the Christian church, thus my use of *was* (this is the territory that Tom Holland explores, or see Harper's From Shame to Sin).

For instance we can consider the teaching on mutuality in 1 Corinthian that is so very different from sexuality as mediated through patriarchal power; this is sexuality mediated through Christ. From our perspective seems a common place, of course, we say, it's part of our culture's take on companionate marriage (a Victorian product btw). To the extent we find this as normative testifies to the impact of the early church on its society.

As to the matter of cultural specificity, I was thinking how the texts are anchored or understood through the lens of their culture, a culture as noted, that is quite different from ours. This specificity, this cultural anchoring then brings a challenge for interpretation, our hermeneutics: how do we bring this forward, what do we learn? My desire is to listen.

Last, I would return to that ancient world noting that in the first century the intersection of power and sexuality, particularly through a patriarchal frame, meant that slaves and even the poor, let alone virtually all women, had little protection or control over their bodies. They could be used as the high status or powerful man desired. This sexual vulnerability based on class can be found as an assumed state as late as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. Again the Christian truth about men and women fundamentally reforms such a viewpoint.

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Thanks for keeping the conversation going, Bill. We're probably doing a bit of echoing and also a bit of talking past, as can easily happen in digital conversations if not also face-to-face.

I do think that there are times when we can postulate a lot of things and propose this or that cultural outlook (none of which are as uniform as we anachronistically like to make them) in a way that confuses ourselves and others into making God's Word (perhaps we could say God's divine culture) more confusing than it is. I think the affirming camp has done this to a degree. I'm not saying that you are doing this, but I'll note that I do tend to have a bit of discomfort around a lot of guessing, psychologizing, culture-gazing, etc., without returning regularly to the stability of the Word. I don't mind wandering and wondering, as it were, but I need conversations to be based back on the Word regularly or I find they wander off into unhelpful territories.

There is a specific phrase from your last comment that I'll make a general observation about. It's this phrase: "sexuality as mediated through patriarchal power". I sense today that "patriarchy" has become somewhat of a bogeyman. Denunciations of "the patriarch" are everywhere and all manner of evil is tied to various understandings of patriarchy. I don't intend to parse complementarity versus patriarchy or defend either thought here - that's beyond my point. You seem to contrast the love and mutuality of a Christian ethos of sexuality with "sexuality as mediated through patriarchal power" in such a way that it is implied that sex in patriarchal societies or relationships was not loving or mutual. I think that is an unhelpful and unnecessary insinuation or conclusion. It seems odd, if not humanly impossible, that people in general (and in particular God's people) would have no notions of mutuality in sex in ancient times, patriarchal or not. Human nature has not changed so much with culture that we are the first to discover or value mutuality. It seems odd that Song of Solomon could have been written among a people steeped in patriarchy but not familiar with mutuality. That power *could* be the deciding factor in a patriarchal relationship does not necessitate that it *would* be the deciding or defining factor/feature.

I guess the point of the preceding is to cast a pall of healthy suspicion on any notion that as cultures have changed over time the essence of human character or the base emotions and desires of humanity have changed significantly with the culture. I would tend to reject that and again appeal to the Preacher - nothing new under the sun. (And yes, I do realize there are limits to that observation, and it cannot be wielded properly to flatten all differences. Nonetheless, it is prescient.)

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Eric

I’ve been thinking about your response quite a bit and this business of “patriarchal power” and I am wondering if I am a bit insensitive to the complementarian side of marriage. I know that for those like yourself who are complementarians, you get regularly docked with “patriarchy”, and with it the assumption that you are somehow unloving and all that.

In the ancient world, no less than ours, married couples have testified to a love for each other—if nothing else it is there on the epitaphs. It is not this subjective aspect that Christianity changed but the larger social understanding of what marriage is, how its goods are distributed and all that. When I read about the husbands authority in the ancient world (or the father’s) and the general subordinate relationship of women in philosophy (so Plato, Aristotle), Paul’s counsel that our bodies are our partners, or that we are to serve one another — all this seems to be in such sharp contrast to what we know. And consider this that even in our complementarian marriages we freely speak of servant leadership, that seems to be a change from this ancient way of thinking, a change brought by the Gospel.

And to return back to my original note: I think for our biblical work we need to be mindful of the differences between the world of First Century Rome and our day. To hear God well, we need to hear how God spoke then, and then as you point to, to hear how God also challenges us and draws us into His Life.

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Bill,

Yes, you are picking up on something.

It's interesting that you bring up "servant leadership". During my Tuesday morning Bible study my pastor was relaying a story about 2008 when Mike Huckabee was campaigning in NW Iowa and was emphasizing servant leadership. My pastor recalls a report from a CNN reporter that was filled with beffudlement over the concept. Yes, what Christ has taught us is indeed counter-cultural in all ages.

For sure and yes to your last paragraph about being mindful of the context in which Scripture was written. I hope my replies have not communicated that I don't think this is important. What I do think we need to caution against in that mindfulness of culture would be several things: We can misread culture. We can make too much of culture. We can overstate the culture. We can use culture to pervert the Scripture in ways suitable to our liking.

Pondering "servant leadership" a bit more, I wonder if we can really say that the gospel introduced servant leadership (if by gospel we mean NT gospel - explicit and realized as opposed to prophetic and unrealized). I think that OT Israel had quite a bit of servant leadership, perhaps expressed in different ways and words. Consider, for example, who went out to war. Men did not send their wives off to war. They went. And died. They were leading, and they were leading as servants, as those willing to lay down their very lives for their family and nation. Sounds pretty servant-y. Examples can be multiplied and inferred across that ancient time. Did they verbalize and express that as we do? Not consistently. But God's people in ancient times were not without guidance, and servanthood as virtue did not just spring up in the NT church, nor did mutuality.

In the end we find that God's design and instructions for human sexuality run counter to the age-old natural inclination of mankind: What's in it for me? The tendency to place self on the throne is as old as the garden and does not change in its core rebellion against God.

As always, you help me think, and I appreciate that.

Eric

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Mar 22
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Thanks Lora, and thanks for your work on the charts. Bill is a gracious and engaging conversation partner, I have found, and I am glad to see him offer thoughts here.

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Here is an essay that gives a good sense of Loader's approach. While it would be classified in our polarized day as "affirming" it is important to note how he doesn't back away from the text, nor from Scripture as God's Word. Nonetheless he feels the weight of current understanding of same-sex attraction as something structural or innate and so wants to affirm that as well. To me this comes across from more of an intellectually honest position than as putting the thumb on the scale, as it were ( a problem in Brownson, and recently, Cunnington's Open Wide the Gate). Others may see him as surrendering the authority of Scripture.

https://billloader.com/LoaderGender.pdf

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Mar 25
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Mar 25
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As this was taken from his personal website, the date might be found in the metadata. I'm not a techie, though, so this won't work for me. However if one looks at the citation dates we can see that most of the works cited come from the 00s, not surprisingly, since this also overlaps his own academic output with his five-volume series on sexuality in the first century. There is also a citation of Brownson (2013) and of a Dutch monograph (2015), so that gives the later date as to when it was finalized.

The understanding that homosexuality is structured or otherwise innate is an older understanding, ably articulated in the 73 Synod report, but more recently underlying affirmative arguments (Brownson, Cunnington, and generally, the Reformed Journal group); it also seems to be in the background of the HSR. This structured understanding builds on a notion of Creation where sex is a created thing and so good; and by extension, what is good has a sort of pre-existent moral validity. This also conveniently ties in with a certain Western sense of materiality. What has happened post-Covid as been the ascension of the idea of fluidity, that it is not sex but gender that matters--this is a social understanding driven by Judith Butler and her acolytes. (For an interesting if somewhat technical take, you can look up Felipe do Vale's Gender as Love, Baker 2024. He teaches at TEDS. )

I would only note that the role of gender is not well addressed in the current controversy in the CRC, not least because the idea has emerged so powerfully after the writing of the HSR.

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