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.
Dear brothers, I grew from both your comments and I’m grateful to see this mini-conversation. (William, your insight also reminds me of Tom Holland’s point in “Dominion”. I’m thinking I’ll need to pick up Loader someday, he is quoted all over! Do you have a recommendation?) From Lora 🙂
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.
Dear brothers, I grew from both your comments and I’m grateful to see this mini-conversation. (William, your insight also reminds me of Tom Holland’s point in “Dominion”. I’m thinking I’ll need to pick up Loader someday, he is quoted all over! Do you have a recommendation?) From Lora 🙂