Bishops at Uppsala to Declare What Cannot Be?

"Uppsala/Geneva, 20 October (ENI)--The 251 members of the general synod of the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden have started a four-day meeting in Uppsala at which they are to decide whether to allow same-sex church weddings, a decision that could affect its relations with other churches."

Will they discuss how it might affect their relationship with, umm, You Know Who? (Or do they even believe He's around, watching?) What's the cash value of a blessing from an institution that does not believe in the Gospels? Maybe a lot for the bank account. I don't know the customary payment in Euros for such proceedings. But paying for it and blessing something doesn't make it so.

Comments

[William Tighe]

Just rec'd from Dr. Christian Barnekov:

As expected, the Church of Sweden's Churchwide Assembly (Kyrkomötet) voted this morning to accept "gender free marriage" and to conduct "gender free weddings." The vote was 176 to 62.

For the moment, there is a 'conscience clause' that no pastor should be required to perform such a wedding (however, a gay couple has the right to be married in their home congregation -- the senior pastor of a congregation must find a pastor who is willing, and the congregation must pay to bring in a pastor if no pastor of the congregation is willing). A similar conscience clause when women's 'ordination' was first introduced was revoked a few years later, and from 1993 ordination was denied to any man who did not accept female 'pastors.'

More analysis to follow ...

Please pray for the believing remnant in Sweden, and for those who are not hearing the Gospel in this apostate church.

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

My newspaper column today on the issue of same-sex marriage and Christianity (it's coming up for a vote Nov. 3 in Maine) is available at

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=291253&ac=PHedi

Sorry I don't know how to do links.

[John FB]

"Will they discuss how it might affect their relationship with, umm, You Know Who?"

Most of the figures of the Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives, including Jacob (the father of the twelve patriarchs of Israel) who had four: Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah.

Yet, "As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." Romans 9:13

There is no record of any of these patriarchs repenting of this practice.

Apparently, one can still earn God's clear favor despite violating the apparent standard of "one man, one woman for life". If God can bestow His blessings on unrepentant adulterers and declare them the bearers of His Word, why is it impossible to believe He would tolerate gay men and women within His church?

[Geoff Willour]

"Most of the figures of the Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives, including Jacob (the father of the twelve patriarchs of Israel) who had four: Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah."

Response: You are comparing apples to oranges. True, polygamy is a departure from the creation ideal of one man, one woman for life. However, it was tolerated by God in the Old Testament as a concession to human weakness. Polygamous marriages were not ideal, but they were nonetheless legitimate marriages. But "same sex marriage" is not legitimate marriage from the biblical or historic-Christian point of view. God's Word defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. Period. Thus "same sex marriage" is an oxymoron.

"Apparently, one can still earn God's clear favor despite violating the apparent standard of "one man, one woman for life". If God can bestow His blessings on unrepentant adulterers and declare them the bearers of His Word, why is it impossible to believe He would tolerate gay men and women within His church?"

Response: First, no one can "earn" God favor. Salvation is by God's grace alone, not by human merit or works. "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Eph. 2:8-9, ESV) Second, polygamous marriages were not "unrepentant adultery," but rather were legitimate (though less-than-ideal) marriages. Third, the Bible is clear that unrepentant adulterers, fornicators, and homosexuals will not be saved unless they repent and turn to Christ (see, for example, Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:3-7; Heb. 13:4; Rom. 1:26-27, 32; etc.) The testimony of God's Word is clear: Unrepentant homosexuals, like unrepentant fornicators and adulterers, will not enter the kingdom of God, and thus will be eternally damned.

In the service of Christ,
Rev. G.L. Willour

[John FB]

"However, [polygamy] was tolerated by God in the Old Testament as a concession to human weakness."

Is having multiple wives a sin or not? This is a boolean (yes/no, on/off) value.

Let's take another example: Solomon didn't just have multiple wives. One of the authors of the Old Testament also had several hundred mistresses (a polite term for "concubines"). Solomon was later punished for idolatry, not because he kept a harem. Solomon is credited with no less than three books of the Bible: Ecclesiastes, Songs and Proverbs.

My point is that if you can consider the writings of a notorious philanderer to be the inspired and inerrant word of God, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense
to automatically discount the notion that gay couples can be blessed by God and utilized for much more mundane and trivial purposes.

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

Polygamy may have been in a few cases permitted by God, and for reasons we can only see dimly. The standard established in Genesis and endorsed by Jesus was one man and one woman, however.

Nowhere is homosexual sex endorsed or even permitted, and it is condemned in the stongest terms in both Old and New Testaments.

So, it is more than unlikely that "gay" couples can be blessed by God, it is impossible.

[Kamilla]

The difference of course, is that two persons of the same sex can never become one flesh, therefore they can never form a marriage. Even sex with a prostitute formes a one-flesh relationship but the same is *never* said of arsenokoitai (men who bed men).

Kamilla

[John FB]

"So, it is more than unlikely that "gay" couples can be blessed by God, it is impossible."

Rape: "any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person."

Deuteronomy 20:10-14: "As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."

Rape? AOK! Consensual homosexuality? Horrible!

An interesting set of ethics you have!

[Paul Borg]

By definition a bolt is made up of a nut and a screw. Nothing absolutely nothing and no authority whatsoever either in heaven or on earth can ever declare either two nuts alone or two screws alone to be a bolt nor can they ever under the laws of physics and engineering and nature ever be capable of performing the function of a bolt. Same things with same sex relationships.!! God does not contradict Himself!!! He does not bless any action or activity which which is outside the purpose and cannot fulfil the functions of his creation. Simple really, under all the rules of nature, science, biology and of God.

@JOHN FB: "But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you." You are reading rape into that. It is neither specified or implied. Maybe servitude and plunder, but not necessarily rape.

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

For John FB: Consensual homosexuality lacks the most important consent: God's. Your worldview appears not to recognize that "we are not our own, we are bought with a price." We do not define the circumstances of our relationships, for our primary relationship is to Him and all others are subordinate. Anything can be "consensual" and still be contrary to God's will. That word is no magic incantation to set His will at naught.

[Kamilla]

Deacon Harmon,

Thank you for you able defense of the Faith. One wonders what the homosexualists, like the religious feminists, think the Holy Spirit has been doing these past two millennia to be so utterly negligent as to wait until now to tell the faithful that, "Oh well, yes, as long as both of you want to do it, it's all ok by me!"

Kamilla
John 16:13

[Tony Esolen]

Here's where the anti-fundamentalist fundamentalist goes astray: no theological sense whatsoever. It is clear from the texts, though the authors do not wish to harp on it, that it was no good thing for Abraham to have a concubine; that Jacob's being tricked into marriage with Leah caused dissent in that family for years; that David's philandering was to be punished by the disobedience and betrayal of his sons; and that Solomon's many wives led him into idolatry and his realm into permanent division. For all that the polygamy was permitted (as was divorce) due to the hardness of men's hearts, it was, as Jesus says, "not so from the beginning." Indeed, unless I am mistaken, the first polygamist in the Bible is the murderer Lamech.

But let's be clear: polygamy is at least natural, biologically. Two men, or two women, can not have sexual intercourse. They can do things that mimic sexual intercourse (as can heterosexuals). That is all they can do. The Church's teachings regarding these matters rest upon plain biological fact.

[John FB]

Kamilla writes: "One wonders what the homosexualists, like the religious feminists, think the Holy Spirit has been doing these past two millennia to be so utterly negligent as to wait until now to tell the faithful that, "Oh well, yes, as long as both of you want to do it, it's all ok by me!"

The problem, Kamilla, is that various claims have been put forth as to what the Holy Spirit is saying. Read your history. There have been many passionate (and Scriptural) defenses for slavery (http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/string/string.html). We no longer consider it ethical to forcefully take people from their homes and buy and sell them like cattle.

For hundreds of years, it was considered ethical (and even imperative) to root out fellow Christians who were perhaps not up to par theologically, to punish them via civil means and to even torture them. This wasn't peculiar to the Catholic Church. Calvin in Geneva was just as bad (http://www.biblestudying.net/johncalvin.html). While many Christians bend over backwards to defend the man, most today would consider it an exercise in pride and vice to do the exact same things that Calvin did. All this activity was done (supposedly) at the urging of the Holy Spirit.

The fact that there are so many variants and flavors of Christianity also gives lie to the fact that there's one "true" arbiter over what the Spirit is saying. You have some cessationist Calvinists insisting that the "gifts of the Spirit" have ceased, while other Protestants insist that, no, the Spirit is speaking to the Church today, and they'll start babbling in tongues to prove it. There are more than a few Protestants who will assert that the Catholic and Orthodox churches are wayward and heretical at best, soul-damning at worst (http://www.biblebelievers.net/Romanism/kjcisrom.htm).

So when it comes to any claim about what the Holy Spirit is saying, you'll have to forgive me if I remain a bit skeptical.

[David Gray.]

>you'll have to forgive me if I remain a bit skeptical

Our forgiveness really isn't the point.

[Rob G]

"So when it comes to any claim about what the Holy Spirit is saying, you'll have to forgive me if I remain a bit skeptical."

Re: slavery, John FB, you are making the same error that the Southern defenders of negro chattel slavery did -- equating their version of it with what appears in Scripture. "Biblical" slavery, at least in the NT, was quite different, and was more like indentured servitude. That we have moved beyond even beyond that is no doubt a good thing, yet even so I'd find it difficult to condemn it outright as inherently evil.

But note that the NT nowhere commands slavery -- it merely tolerates it as a sort of cultural given. Likewise, Scripture nowhere commands the torture and/or execution of heretics, and the medieval Church's acceptance of this was a huge error.

When it comes to homosexuality, however, you have clear and direct witness in both testaments and in subsequent Church teaching that the thing per se, like adultery for instance, is evil and not to be tolerated.

Kamilla is correct; the notion that the Holy Spirit would suddenly do a 180 on a moral issue and sanction practices that have been universally condemned by Judaism and Christianity for 3000+ years beggars belief.

And isn't it fascinating that the Spirit seems to have changed his mind around the very same time that the American Psychiatric Association did! And that He's following the lead of the Sexual Revolution...

[YaknYeti]

Good comments, Rob.

John FB: God does use and bless gay men and women, in the same way that He blesses and uses other sinful men and women. All of us have been blessed with the opportunity to repent of our sins and drawn on His grace to become more like Christ and more fully the people that God created us to be. So people with homosexual inclinations are welcome in Christ's church, but not to indulge in passions that are contrary to God's commands. And God will work His will through anyone He chooses, repentant or unrepentant. You imply that God using gay men and women involves God approving of their sinful behavior, however, and that does not follow.

[John FB]

Rob G writes: "But note that the NT nowhere commands slavery -- it merely tolerates it as a sort of cultural given"

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

So let me get this straight: God winks at polygamy and slavery cuz hey, people are people and ya know, no one's perfect. Homosexuality on the other hand, well, God's standards are eternal and unchanging and there's no wiggle-room whatsoever.

Makes sense to me.

[Rob G]

Sorry, dude. He's God. He decides the standards, not you or me. If you don't like that aspect of Christianity you can always choose another religion.