In the videos posted below Ben Witherington III of Asbury Theological Seminary addresses how the church should respond to the question of gender roles and homosexuality:
What are your thoughts on one or both of these videos?
Related:
Neil de Koning of Think Christian asks, “How should Christians respond to April 20’s Day of Silence, a student-led national event that brings attention to the bullying and harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students in schools?” Join the discussion on that blog here.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove writes about the proposed amendment in North Carolina to make marriage between a man and a woman. He provides his perspective as a Christian who does not support the amendment in “Should This Family Be Ilegal?”
Ed Stetzer lists some “biblical principles” regarding human sexuality here.
April 18, 2012 at 2:42 pm
For the most part I’m in agreement. If someone asked me I would have added that God is able to deliver one from even same sex attraction. But if one doesn’t desire deliverance then chastity/abstanaince, as BW3 notes, is the only way to go.
April 18, 2012 at 4:55 pm
If I may make some comments on the Women video. He uses these two arguments I’ve seen before, but appear to beg the question and so leave me feeling like someone’s trying to abuse my mind and mislead me into believing whatever it is that they want me to believe, instead of the truth.
Firstly, he says, 1 Cor 15 is about wives disrupting worship services with basic questions. But where does the text say this? What on earth is v 36 meant to mean in such an interpretation?
So like everyone presenting this view, the only support ever given is 1 Cor 11, where Paul instructs women to cover their head whilst praying and prophesying, as though this means they can speak publicly. Now perhaps it is a difference of tradition, but if one person is speaking in prayer in a group, then I’ve always understood that everyone in that group is praying along with them. So it’s entirely possible for a woman to pray in a group while utterly silent, and no particular reason not extend that to prophesying.
I don’t mean this to try and present the opposite view at all; rather, I want to know what the truth is. I’ve heard a rather more convincing argument that vv 34 and 35 are actually a quotation (they sound different from the surrounding text, Paul has used quotations elsewhere in the letter, and these two verses float). In that interpretation, the text from v 26 to the end of the chapter then says, “let people speak but do it orderly; quote; you’re completely wrong about women; listen to me: let anyone speak but do it orderly”. But everyone who wants to advocate for women in ministry uses the other argument (which seems fraudulent), and I’ve only seen this one once, so I wonder if there’s something wrong with it. But compared to the one Witherington presents, it does seem to pass muster at least.
I ask my question as I do (and as a new Christian) because apart from this section, which is rarely given a convincing interpretation, “we have all the evidence we could possibly need to show that in … Christianity, women and men c[an] indeed serve a variety of roles … in the ministry”.
So I ask, is there any actual real evidence that 1 Cor 15 was a criticism of wives disrupting worship services? and/or is there any actual real evidence that 1 Cor 11 permits women publicly vocalise during worship as long as their head is covered? Is there something wrong with the “1 Cor 15:34-35 are quotations” argument, that it’s never used?
April 18, 2012 at 7:07 pm
i guess for the conversation i would identify as being homosexual. i went to bible college and during those years struggled in prayer and in fasting, in supplication, in grief, in hiding, in every possible way that i knew to be ‘clean’, until one day underneath a pew i could hear God tell me, ‘take a leap of faith. trust me. come out as you are.’ from my understanding words have great power and so i never spoke out those words ‘i’m gay’ because i believed that would create something until that experience. i’ve done my own studies, trying to understand, read, deconstruct and seek the truth, talk to ministers on both sides of the argument and after much exhaustion ive come to the conclusion that one’s experiences ultimately will dictate one’s actions. i can no more free myself from those words than from every and any other word spoken to me by God. i would become an athiest. i try to keep my heart and my mind open, act and behave as authentic and as true as possible. in the end God will fulfill his word in all of us, without measurements of golden standards. the greatest of us will still be the lowest to him.
April 19, 2012 at 3:56 am
Really good thoughts from Ben… as usual.
April 19, 2012 at 7:27 am
Alexander
I assume Witherington’s exegesis of 14.34-36 is influenced by his exegesis of 11.1-16. I can understand why. While 11.1-16 can be quite hard to read at times it does seem that there is an allowance for women to pray and prophecy in public as long as they retain the traditional head covering of their culture. That head covering seems to have been a sign of modesty, likely as we see in many places in the Middle East today. If this is so, Paul didn’t want them to be prevented from using their gifting. I doubt that the prayer was silent and I don’t see much room for silent prophecy since it appears that prophecy was closest to what we might call a homily today. In other words, it was Spirit-inspired speech. If women were allowed to do Spirit-inspired speech in 11.1-16, even if there is a patriarchal element retained, this makes it problematic to suggest that 14.34-36 is an outright ban of women speaking in the church at all for the mere reason being that they are women. Some have suggested your “quotation” hypothesis. Others have suggested that it breaks the flow of the text and that it was likely added later, i.e. not original with Paul as Gordon D. Fee argued. I don’t know that there is an easy answer to this, but I can understand the motivation.
Juven
I imagine that the challenge of wrestling with this as a Christian is a difficult one. I sympathize since it could seem overly simplistic for someone to suggest that this is something you should simply overcome. I do wonder if you’ve had the opportunity to wrestle with what it might mean to be Christian and homosexual (I imagine you have given this serious and intentional thought as you say) and whether or not (if it possible) Christians who are homosexual who decide not to live a life a celibacy should still seek monogamy and fidelity. In other words, if one were to determine that homosexual relationships are permissible for Christians do you sense that there is still a calling to chose one partner and to avoid sexual promiscuity? While the question of homosexuality is a difficult one it seems a bit easier to see that sex with multiple partners outside some sort of covenant if foreign to Christian sexual ethics.
If such a question is too personal I understand completely.
April 23, 2012 at 12:40 pm
i would encourage all folk to choose fidelity and monogamy if they can.