[Vision2020] Homosexuality

[Michael]

Melynda Writes:

Although the argument may have moved on, I'd like to return to Michael's
assertion that a unitary God creates by means of masturbation--or its divine
equivalent--while a triune God provides a perfect model for earthly marriage
(presumably heterosexual marriage only).

 

Me:

Well, we will see what happens in what follows, but I want to issue a
warning at the front end.  The context of some of my particular claims were
very specific; I was either furthering arguments or providing further
explanation or analysis of points previously made.  For example, the way God
creates was not the context of masturbation.  

 

Melynda Writes: 

Surely God creates out of infinite plenitude and sufficiency?  In point of
fact, throughout the Old Testament, God is particularly unitary:  a
trinitarian conception of God would have been dismissed by the ancient Jews
as heretical polytheism (as it still is by modern Jews).  For Abraham,
David, and Isaiah, God is one, and He is symbolically married to the nation
of Israel.

 

Me:

The evidence for a non-unitary conception of God in the Old Testament is
significant.  For me the angels of the Lord do the trick, of particular note
is the lord who visited Abraham before God destroyed Sodom. God creating
male and female 'Like Us' is another example of something that scratches my
itch, and for more reason than there mere Hebrew grammar. The plural form of
Elohim is another.  But I just did a quick search and glanced at the first
page that popped up.  This looks like a good start (although, of course, I
can't ultimately vouch for its scholarly credentials):

 

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/triunity.html

 

Apparently, the word for the oneness of unity, echad, is used to describe
God, whereas the word for absolute oneness, yachid, is not. E.g. "Behold,
they are one [echad] people" or  "a man will leave his father and mother and
be united to his wife, and they will become one [echad] flesh." (Genesis
2:24)  Perhaps the mere insistence on the echad of God assumes some form of
plurality.  For example, why would I go around holding an apple in my hand
shouting this is one apple, one I tell you.  My apple is one. 

 

I'm not sure that a Trinitarian conception of God would have been dismissed,
but it is true that progressive revelation might not go over very well if
shoved back into time in full form.  This would not be keeping with the
progressive nature of redemptive history.  Not only does the Lord reveal
more and new things about himself over time, he shapes His people and even
the world in order to properly receive it.  Many of the Jews, for example,
did accept Jesus as their Messiah and as the Son of God.  Paul was one such
Jew. Jesus' brother was another. Etc.  

 

As for symbolic marriage between the Lord and his people, I'm not sure why
this suggests a unitary God.  It would be in keeping with a biblical
theology to understand the Lord's relationship to us as an expression of who
He is from eternity.  But if he is unitary, he has no communion, friendship,
or love.  His marriage to us would be something entirely new to Him; a
virgin on his honeymoon:  Wow, who would have thought that having a
relationship with another person would be like this?

 

Melynda Writes: 

The Christian Trinity is a peculiarly bad image of marriage, in fact.
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is the traditional formula; 3 persons, not 2; a
father and a son (both implicitly male) and a non-gendered (although
arguably male) spirit don't map particularly well onto a male and a female
joined legally, economically, and sexually.  LDS theology posits a husband
and wife god-partnership, which is much tidier.

 

Me:

Yes, the point is not to make some sort of one to one correlation.  In many
respects (and this is part of the mystery Paul speaks of) it is God's
relationship to His people or perhaps his role as Creator that is expressed
through marriage.  Creation or His people are in the feminine role; Christ
is Husband of the Church, which is the first fruits of the new creation.
Regarding the Trinity, the point is more general: How do you even get
anything remotely like marital sex with God; How can God 'be love' if he
just dwells alone from eternity?

 

Melynda Writes:

What does the Trinity make a good model for, if not marriage?  Well, a
patriarchal society, for one thing--from the tents of Abraham to Rugby
School under Dr. Arnold, the Trinity offers a model of father in lovely and
tutelary relation to son united by a shared spirit.  Marriage is perhaps
best understood in such a worldview as an exchange of property among men:
fathers barter daughters to cement treaties, secure relationships, or buy
favors (Saul's daughter Michal is a fine example).  Interestingly, the same
model of marriage prevails in the pre-Trinitarian world of the Old
Testament, suggesting that the number of persons in the Godhead is of less
importance than regional and cultural tradition in determining marital
structure.  That is, we make the Trinity serve as an excuse for a model of
society and relations between the sexes that we already embrace, which is
surely a kind of sacrilege.

 

Me:

First, just because we understand the Trinity as Father, Son, and Spirit,
doesn't mean that we import everything we know about creaturely fatherhood
into the eternal Trinity.  In one sense, God is not 'gendered' as we are.
So your claim about a Patriarchal God seems to break down a bit;
interestingly, a Patriarchal kind of theology was precisely what you did not
get in the early Church, and this was when everyone was so riveted to this
particular doctrine.  

 

I'm not very clear on your second point here.  But I'll take a stab and make
a few points:  The Lord comes down to a fallen world and begins redeeming
it.  Scripture assumes the sinfulness of its characters and the condition of
the people of God.  If women were treated as property during that time, then
certainly you will see women treated like property in the scripture;
scripture is one of the most important history texts of the ancient we even
have after all.  The question is rather how God redeems man by liberating
them, which includes liberating women from non-Trinitarian slavery, from
seen as vassal under the hand of a Berith Treaty Lord.  What I think
feminists who are focused on deconstructing only the last 100 years of
culture usually miss entirely is the fact that the ministry of Jesus and
apostles, and even the Reformation of the 16th century, has done more for
liberating, freeing, and glorifying women than their own movement will ever
do (I'd argue that their movement largely enslaves women, but that is beside
the point here). 

 

Melynda Writes:

Jesus overturned this model through His teaching.  For example, He taught
that there would be no marriage in Heaven, that the woman required by
Levirate marriage law to marry brother after brother would be no one's
wife/property in the next world, but could be herself, a person, in the
presence of God.  His prohibition of divorce was directed at men who were
entitled to put aside a wife, leaving her destitute and unprotected, for a
host of reasons, while wives had no similar recourse.  Moreover, in His
ministry, he touched, taught, healed, ate with, and just plain palled around
with women, both Jewish and Gentile, in flagrant violation of the Levitical
purity codes and the customs of his time.  When Christ proclaimed freedom to
the captive, it is no stretch to say that freedom included a host of women
in the captivity of patriarchal marriage.  

 

Me:

Well, I don't know how to further answer this without being too long winded;
but some of my past posts regarding the nature of the history of redemption
and my explanation of the role 'law' played in the Old Testament speak to
this.  I think we agree about Jesus' and Paul's message for the most part; I
think we disagree as to whether or not this was total discontinuity with the
history of redemption up until that point in time.  Your mention of the
Levitical purity codes is interesting, since many such codes were fulfilled
in the brutal murder of Jesus himself. 

 

Melynda Writes:

I think, in fact, that we've come full circle to an earlier argument:  what
is good?  Michael seems to be asserting that whatever God wants is good, by
definition.  So if God tells us to, we should smile as we slaughter every
last Amalekite baby, laugh as we walk past the desolate Egyptian homes
mourning firstborn children, cheer as we stone gay people. witches, and
disobedient children, and praise a God who creates millions of people
condemned pre-emptively to Hell, without any hope of salvation, just because
He wants to.

 

Me:

Only God is God, as Jesus said.  The idea of God telling us to do X and us
becoming good because we did X is not biblical morality.  Communion,
indwelling, participation, union, remade into the image of God and his Son;
these are the sort of concepts that ultimately deal with holiness. So the
point is not ultimately what God "wants," since this is something that flows
from "who He is."   When we become like God through his mercy and grace we
are found to be 'good.'  I also do not think that an Old Testament or New
Testament conception of the necessity of obedience to God ever implies
laughing, smiling, or cheering at capital punishment or the horrors of war.

 

Melynda Writes:

These are not precisely self-evident propositions.  In fact, for a great
many people, they constitute an insuperable barrier to faith:  what is the
difference between worshipping God and worshipping Satan, if God conducts
Himself in a manner so depraved?  In the life and person of Christ we see
God's true character, the infinite love and patience which heals and
forgives everyone who asks, the Kingdom ethic which brings us together to
serve and care for one another as God cares for us.  In our sexual
relations, as in all our relations, we are called to treat one another with
respect, with gentleness, with Godly love.  Frankly, the gender of the
parties involved is of no particular importance.  We are as wounded in our
heterosexuality as we are in our homosexuality.

 

Me:

We may be as wounded in our heterosexuality as we are in our homosexuality,
but it is incoherent and unfaithful to Jesus not to accept his own words
about the kingdom of Heaven.  He claimed to be God.  He claimed to be the
Messiah.  He loved the Old Testament Law of God.  He loved Jerusalem.  He
honored his Father in Heaven and saw all goodness springing from Him; He
never speculated or went along with the politically correct, easy relativism
of his own time or the traditionalism of his elders.  He spoke truth in
love, never abrogating or taking issue with the Hebraic Christian
understanding of sexual morality.  He rather upheld it.  

 

Thanks

Michael Metzler

 

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