Hallelujah!
When will the religious lobby admit that they have no privileged access to morality (or history), but are a lot unthinking zealots following their own particular prejudices?

I think it's probably time that Christians (followers of Christ) ditched the Old Testament and just focussed on the Gospels (Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)within the New Testament. Even St Paul was a bit of a worry, especially regarding women, though, as my dear late father (a man of the cloth) pointed out, his views were a great improvement on the attitudes of those in the Old Testament. It would be nice if Jesus did return at this point and offer his views on same sex marriage. Given his compassion for the woman caught in adultery and his generally loving attitude to all, I'm sure he would take a progressive stance. He did, of course, separate church and state ("render under Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God those that are God's") so maybe he would advocate civil unions for gays (with all the attendant rights) but differentiate between that and a marriage between a man and a woman. I don't know really, but I do know that Jesus would have taken a compassionate stance, whatever that was.

Selectively quoting from the Old Testament, and attributing everything that prophets and Jewish people did and said about marriage as coming directly from God is unscholarly.

The clearest indication about marriage comes directly from Jesus Christ himself. For example what about Matthew 19 amongest many others? A clear specification from Jesus Christ (i.e. God himself) about marriage. The authors argument is simply unsustainable.

"Moses by reason of hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives": but from the beginning it was not so" (Matthew 19:8); "He who made man from the beginning, made them male and female. And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder" (Matthew 19:4-6). The indissolubility of all marriage is here affirmed as between one male and female. The permanence of marriage for the whole human race according to natural law is confirmed by Divine positive ordinance.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05054c.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09707a.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09693a.htm

Here is another longer Matthew translation. Please read more so it is not taken out of context. I suggest the same for OT quotes in authors article. "3 Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? 4 Who answering, said to them: Have you not read, that he who made man from the beginning, made them male and female? And he said: 5 For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. 6 Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder. 7 They say to him: Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away? 8 He says to them: Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

This is certainly a strong case against biblical support for monogamy. But it seems to reinforce the requirement for opposite sexes doesn't it?

Frankly, now that marriage is largely a state matter, I think it's best if heterosexuals reject it. Let the gays have it.

Now I better understand so many people's preference for civil partnerships - much easier to understand.

In case I change my mind, I just want to be clear that I've got this idea of a Biblical way of married-life thing correct… Wouldn't want to upset Dr Jensen, etc. without good reason.

Can I do a two-for-one offer? Can I buy the daughter off some bloke to simultaneously be my slave and/or a wife? Because the idea of having to refund the money - if I am unsatisfied - seems significantly more straightforward than a divorce.

In the unlikely event I need to deal with 'my own clan' how close to my father's family can I negotiate before the question of incest becomes an issue (is it less of an inadvertent pun to say problem)?

The Bible seems unclear as to how many generations from Adam and Eve and/or Noah and his sons there were before God didn't have an incest concern.

If I'm going to do this I want to do it correctly.

And by the way, there isn't much said about love - is this necessary, or an optional extra?

I am surprised that Alan has not quoted a Scripture that presents sodomy as a natural or good thing. He certainly draws warped conclusions from other Scriptures he has quoted. I think he deliberatley ignores that Judaism was far from perfect as the Perfect One who made God's original intension clear about marriage was yet to visit earth. I am surprised Alan is not a lawyer with the twisting, omissions and deceitful interpretation of Scripture.

I think all of the above shows just how close the social practices of Judaism and Islam were and still are. And yet there they go over there in the 'Holy' land today, fussing and fighting and and carrying on like pork chops. Looks more and more like a family spat every day.

Halduell
Love that analogy 'Carrying on like pork chops' i.e. the porkphobic Israelis and Muslims. Thanks for the laugh!

It is irrelevant what the bible says about marriage unless you're a Christian, and considering at least 50% of Christians support marriage equality it is still irrelevant anyway.

i.e. 60% of Australians identify as Christian.
70% of Australians support gay marriage.

You do the maths.

Greetings all. Interesting discussion. Thank you.

A few brief responses:

@ Aga, whether the Bible is the Word of God, contains the Word of God or is simply a collection of inspiring human writings is a matter of wide opinion within the Judeo-Christian faiths. For this piece, I have assumed a high view of the authority of Scripture because that is the theological position of those who claim Biblical teaching on marriage is relevant to society today.

“Selectively quoting from the Old Testament”? No, I don’t think so, Aga. This piece has tried to be as comprehensive as possible. Perhaps the reverse is true: those who claim the Bible teaches M1W1 are quoting selectively. I believe this to be the case.

Not sure Jesus taught anything new about marriage, Aga. Matthew 19 affirmed Genesis 2:24 and other OT teachings about divorce. The same critique of the misinterpretations of Genesis 2:24 apply to the misinterpretations of Matthew 19.

If Jesus adds anything at all, it is to the absolute prohibition of divorce. But He leaves the matters of gender and number of spouses open – as does Genesis 2.

@ WmTrevor: Two-for-one offers are definitely possible. That was effectively the deal Jacob bought. Or was sold.

You are quite correct (I keep saying that to you, WmTrevor; Grrrr ...) about the Bible being unclear about the number of generations from Adam and Eve and/or Noah until God didn't have an incest concern.

And finally, WmTrevor, no, love is not necessary at all. But not prohibited either, you will be pleased to hear. Sort of a bonus if it happens along. A bit like marrying a woman who already has an attractive young slave.

@ Runner, no sodomy is always a bad thing. A very bad thing. The sin of Sodom was attempted gang rape. The Bible consistently condemns any coercive, abusive or idolatrous same-sex acts.

Committed, consensual unions, however, are certainly Biblical.

Alan, with due respect, I have no idea what your "high view of the authority of scripture" actually means? You just stated differences of interpretion. Private personal interpretations are precisely why your piece is unsustainable. It leaves out Sacred Tradition, it leaves out Magisterial Authority and its epistemologically defunct. 2000 years of study have proceeded you! One also intreprets OT in light of NT and vice versa. This is why the Canon was composed accordingly. Sola Scriptura is simply useless. Atheists for example make such ridiculous OT fundamentalist claims without understanding Hebrew, Greek or whatever. Take for example I am a jealous God. In Hebrew there are two words for jealous, one for God and one for man. The one for God is not a negative or evil word. English translations corrupt it. It denotes an almost loving exclusivness. There are loads of such fine differences. Look at Jeremiah. He condemns prophets falsely speaking in the name of God, who say God says this and God says that. Look at Nathan, he initally supports David in building the Temple. Subsequently God corrects him. As for selective quoting of NT, I only have 350 words. The fact is Jesus says "one male and one female". How does that leave gender and numbers open. Did you read Matthew 19? The fact is you article has been nailed on the head. Try reading the Diache and see how far you get, or any other proven archeological document. You do not have a case. It is simple as that.

Alan, thanks for that… regardless of Scripture I prefer the idea that love is at the core of a relationship – especially one that, all concerned hope, lasts a lifetime.

Aga directs our attention to what I think he meant as the Didache… But given the topic of your article, I find myself confused as to why, since I find no mention of husbands, wives or marriages? On the plus side I could find no mention of slaves either. Maybe I have misinterpreted?

It also seems a pity that religious scholars devoted entire lifetimes – from Aldred in the 10th century, through Whittingham, Wesley and hundreds of others in the last centuries especially – only to have aga fault their work.

I can't include your good self in this cohort yet as your religious studies and journey is still ongoing. Not yet a lifetime – but still with the opportunity for the time of your life.

Thanks, Aga.

My background holds Scripture as central but not sola scriptura. Tradition, contemporary church authority, guidance from a local worshipping community and personal conscience are also vital.

No, don’t support private personal interpretations. Which is why the piece references Professor Bill Loader. With a bit more space I would have quoted Professor Keith Dyer and others whose Hebrew, Greek, OT and NT research is applicable.

Sacred tradition is an area of rapidly expanding rediscovery, it seems, Aga. Here in France, Allan Tulchin researched mediaeval brother-making rituals. He wrote in the September 2007 Journal of Modern History that Christian ceremonies joined unrelated same-gender couples in lifelong unions which raised family, held property jointly, and were virtually equivalent to marriages.

Tulchin claims "considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships ... I suspect some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way ..."

So it is no longer universally accepted that tradition has always opposed same-sex unions, is it?

Magisterial authority also shifts from time to time. Influential cardinal Carlo Martini publicly split with the Vatican in March by expressing support for same-sex unions. More than 260 Catholic theologians last year signed the document 'Church 2011' supporting unions for gay couples among other reforms.

The recent John Jay Reports prepared for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops brought into the open the reality of overrepresentation of active homosexuals in the priesthood.

So shifts are afoot.

Yes, Jesus says "one male and one female". But he is quoting Genesis 2. He is not adding “one and only one”, is He? As the article suggests, singulars often imply plurals in both the OT and NT – and vice versa.

As the other OT passages quoted confirm pretty overwhelmingly, there is no sense anywhere from any OT or NT writer that they understood Genesis 2 to mean M1W1 only, is there?

The three problems with insisting Genesis 2 instructs M1W1, outlined in the piece, seem to apply also to Matthew 19. No?

Cheers, AA

Alan,

I'm not sure you understand Sacred Tradition?
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15006b.htm

Reimagining Church History for Gay Marriage has been debunked.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/03/in-the-case-of-john-boswell-4
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gay-marriage-reimagining-church-history-50

As for a Bishop who splits from the Pope and 2000 years of Church Teaching
in regards homosexuality and marriage, the answer is self-explanatory.
That is NOT Sacred Tradition. Read above. Sacred Tradition
does not change, but develops in understanding, without changing its roots.

If you are looking for solid material, try sites like these.
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/index.html
http://www.ewtn.com
http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm
http://socrates58.blogspot.com.au/2009/06/catalogue-index-catholic-apologetics.html

Yes I mispelt Didache, but I do not condemn all the work
of Protestant Biblical scholars, only that not in accordance
with Sacred Tradition and Magisteral Authority; which is a lot.
The Church Fathers are the ones who aid understanding and clarity
on Sacred Tradition and Magisterial Authority.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/

If you really want to engage with Church thinking and correctly understand
the Truth of its position on Homosexuality, start with its epistemology.
Then you will understand how to interpret the Bible correctly.

As for the Catholic Church ever accepting Marriage as something
other than one man and one women, it is simply not going to happen.
You would have to deny Jesus Christ as God, and that is not going to happen. I have spent enough time here. I wish you well.
There are others with better knowledge on these subjects.

Try these sites for useful information
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/homosexuality
http://couragerc.net/
http://narth.com/
http://narth.com/2012/06/2532/
http://www.thepinkswastika.com/

Alan, Actually, as one extra very last aside, read these document links below. The first provides more explicit NT biblical condemnations of homosexual acts. St Paul does this comprehensively in his various letters. So trying to legitimise homosexual acts as normative moral behaviour is simply farcical from a biblical perspective, and is certainly so from the perspective of Sacred Tradition and Magisterial Authority. We are all tempted to sin.
No-one has a mortgage on errant sexual temptation. One can sympathise with those tempted, but not approve of the sin.
http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df86ho.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df75se.htm

Thanks for these resources, Aga.

Pretty sure I am across most of these ideas. But I shall check.

This issue has challenged all Judeo-Christian communities for decades now and will to do so for some decades yet.

Many of us believe this is the most profound challenge the Church has faced since the Reformation. It will indeed shift long-standing and firmly-held beliefs.

But the shift is underway, Aga, including in the Roman Catholic Church. This is the course of our history.

The OT prophets continually called God’s people back to obedience. The Scribes and Pharisees knew Scripture off by heart but were woefully astray in understanding God’s heart. Saints Paul and Peter got important things seriously wrong and were forced into painful repentance.

Every generation has had to re-examine its teaching to locate its errors. All churches - Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox - persecuted for blasphemy astronomers who taught that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

For centuries the Church failed to teach the essentials of salvation by faith in Christ alone.

Thousands of unfortunates with mental illnesses were tortured or killed for demon possession.

Scholars have only recently accepted that Moses did not personally write the Pentateuch and that other books attributed to particular prophets had different authorship.

All denominations have failed in the past with regard to slavery, the subjugation of the black races, accepting the infinite universe, equality of women, inter-racial marriage and issues of economic justice.

Tragically, the Body of Christ throughout history has been slow to hear the Holy Spirit’s correctives to erroneous theology and praxis brought via Biblical and other scholars.

On same-sex unions, many churches are now discovering that texts traditionally used to condemn all homosexual behaviour really address only abusive acts - rape, paedophilia, adultery, prostitution and pagan ritual worship.

It seems there is a challenge to each generation to rediscover Biblical truth. Accepting that gay orientation is in fact a normal, natural, God-given variation in human sexuality seems to be ours.

Happy to explore any particular aspect of this with you further, Aga.

Cheers, AA.

Hello again Aga,

I have accessed your links and found some excellent info. So thank you.

But ultimately the future beliefs within all strands of Christendom will be shaped by Scriptural revelation.

Increasingly, scholars within all denominations are showing us that the old interpretations relating to homosexuality are just not sound. A bit like earlier interpretations of cosmology, the authorship of Scripture and other passages the Churches have recently revised.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:18 condemn ritual prostitution worshipping the Canaanite god Molech. If these referred to faithful same-sex unions, they would have covered other homoerotic acts, and included women. It is probably reasonable to extend this prohibition to all prostitution.

Romans 1:26-27 relates to naturally straight men having unnatural gay sex for thrills, usually with young boys. It is reasonable to extend this as a prohibition also against gay men or women seeking pleasure through casual opposite-sex liaisons.

Corinthians 6:9. Different English versions translate this differently. NRSV translates as “male prostitutes and sodomites”. The RSV second edition has “sexual perverts”. The best translation is probably the New International Version UK: “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders …”

Here the two key words refer to prostitution and abusive behaviour, not life-long, monogamous faithful unions.

And 1 Tim 1:9-10 also condemns perverted sex, not monogamous, loving relationships.

The understanding among an ever-growing number of Biblical scholars and Church leaders is that Scripture condemns abusive, coercive and idolatrous homosexual behaviours.

There are no teachings anywhere prohibiting faithful, loving, permanent same-sex unions, are there?

In other words, homosexuality is now being seen as an equivalent concept to heterosexuality.

There are six warnings against abuses of homosexuality in Scripture. And 300 warnings against heterosexual abuses in Scripture. We don't prohibit all opposite-sex unions, do we?

Nor can we, on Biblical grounds, continue any longer to prohibit all same-sex unions.

Alan,

You're on the wrong side of history, and as for the Catholic Church accepting homosexual acts as valid, you must be smoking something whilst at the keyboard. As for issues with cosmology and Sun centred verses Earth centred, Galileo et al. your so way behind in promoting the secular propaganda of the past 40-50 years. The Catholic Church happened to be scientifically correct in its judgement on Galileo.

Try the following just for example. All that stuff has been debunked.
http://www.rcta.com.au/RCTAApologetics-Mar2008-Galileo.html

You seem to have a sixties secular education? Its been bypassed.
http://www.rcta.com.au/RCTAApologetics-Apr2008-GospelDating.html

When your generation passes, and its sexual deviations wane, as they will, we'll get back to the Truth of the matter.

Hi gain Aga,

Thanks for these links. Have had a quick check. But the official pronouncements from the Vatican on the matter of the persecution of Galileo carry more weight, don't you think?

In 1992, the then Pope said:

"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture."

In 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for mistakes made in the last 2,000 years of the Catholic Church's history, including the trial of Galileo.

On the matter of "the Catholic Church accepting homosexual acts as valid", there are several responses:

The official teaching of the Church still regards them as "disordered". But there are different interpretations among theologians, bishops and others as to what this means.

Some claim "disordered" means "morally wrong"; others "complicated and difficult to understand"; others "different from the majority experience, but morally acceptable". There are yet other definitions of this vague term.

Certainly, the Church accepts privately that a majority of priests in most countries are practising homosexuals without whose ministry the Church could not operate.

The John Jay reports in the US seem to indicate that this private understanding is now coming into the open.

More importantly, Biblical scholars across the world in Catholic and Protestant traditions are confirming that Scripture does not in fact condemn all same-sex unions.

Awareness is gradually increasing that Scripture condemns abusive or offensive same-sex behaviour. But not faithful, monogamous unions.

For the biblical view of marriage, the clearest evidencel is from Christ’s teaching on marriage in Matt. 19:3–6. In this passage, he cited the Genesis creation account, in particular Gen. 1:27 and 2:24, saying ‘the two will become one flesh’, not more than two.

Another important biblical teaching is the parallel of husband and wife with Christ and the Church in Eph. 5:22–33, which makes sense only with monogamy—Jesus will not have multiple brides.

Polygamy is expressly forbidden for church elders (1 Tim. 3:2). And this is not just for elders, because Paul also wrote: ‘each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.’ Paul goes on to explain marital duties in terms that make sense only with one husband to one wife.

The example of godly people is also important. Isaac and Rebekah were monogamous—they are often used as a model in Jewish weddings today. Other examples were Joseph and Asenath, and Moses and Zipporah. And the only survivors of the Flood were four monogamous couples.

An important point to remember is that not everything recorded in the Bible is approved in the Bible. Consider where polygamy originated—first in the line of the murderer Cain, not the line of Seth. The first recorded polygamist was the murderer Lamech (Gen. 4:23–24). Then Esau, who despised his birthright, also caused much grief to his parents by marrying two pagan wives (Gen. 26:34).

Abraham and Sarah would have been monogamous apart from a low point in their faith when Hagar became a second wife. We note how much strife this caused later.

The clear teaching is that marriage was a created ordinance of one man and one woman.
JS