What The Bible Says and Doesn’t Say
Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, NRSV
1 Corinthians 6:9-10, NRSV
Romans 1:26-27, NRSV
Reflections
for the foreseeable future we must find ways to live within the church in a situation of serious moral disagreement while still respecting one another as brother and sisters in Christ. If the church is going to start practicing the discipline of exclusion from the community, there are other issues far more important than homosexuality where we should begin to draw a line in the dirt: violence and materialism, for example
— Richard Hays
from A Moral Vision of the New Testament
- Principles, Texts, Objections
- Theological — Hierarchy of Beliefs:
- Dogma (esse): Trinity, Incarnation, Resurrection
- Doctrine (bene esse): Scriptural infallibility, Election, Providence
- Opinion (diaphora): Mega v. Parish, Sabbath Observance, Church Architecture
- Biblical — Reformed Hermeneutics:
- Hermeneutics – tools of interpretation, principles
- Exegesis – act of interpretation, practice
- Principles of Interpretation: Grammatical, Literary, Historical, Theological, Holy Spirit
- Example: from Mark Noll’s “The Civil War as a Theological Crisis”, pro-slavery side like Thornwell defended slavery simply by asserting “that the relation between the slave and his master” is in the Bible
- Pastoral — Threshold for Certainty
- Enormity of Requirement (e.g. celibacy, divorce) would require High Threshold of certainty
- Jonathan Edwards: The design of the Scripture is to teach us divinity, and not physic and anatomy
- Venn Diagram with Theological, Biblical, Pastoral
