Saturday, July 21, 2007

Meaning and Structure

I don't want to enter this debate but I already am in it.

My first post references a (long pdf) from the Diocesan Post (April 2007) which is awkward to reach. You may have to go here first. Or read the rambling original.

I have been in it for years out of fear and love - and not without the error of holding others in my thought as condemned, or the sin of angry response. In this I have known God's wrath and rebuke. Why else would the Psalmist pray psalm 6? (When the poet asks for his enemies to turn and be ashamed suddenly - is he asking for their salvation and does he know the cost? To know God's rebuke is to know that inscrutable covenant love and loyalty that is ours.)

Two points only: the rhetorical structure of Romans should prevent a reader from reading chapter 1 as moral condemnation of homosexuality. In other words, if you read Romans 1 as a moral statement, you are reading it wrong. It is a moral trap for those who judge others.

Is it possible to be wrong?

Second - this paragraph:


If indeed I have known God, whom to know is eternal life; if indeed I am in him who was crucified for me and he in me who lives for him, then I will know that my limited judgment of my own body is not the basis on which I could have judged myself let alone the consecration of brothers and sisters who do not conform to my purity scruples. If God has shown me the fire by which he accepts even a water-logged offering, I will know that no one who thinks differently from me about sexuality in Christ will have taken this stand out of lasciviousness.

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