Dr. Mark Achtemeier: "The Hidden Error in 'Biblical' Arguments Against Gay Marriage"

In a Church History class I am teaching for the St. Benedict School for Ministry, we just finished studying about the second-century St. Irenaeus and his defense of the Gospel.   I always try to demonstrate why the figures we study in Church History matter; and a shining example came up today when Christopher Johnson, of the Midwest Conservative Journal, pointed his readers to an article in the Huffington Post by Presbyterian theologian, Dr. Mark Achtemeier, entitled "The Hidden Error in 'Biblical' Arguments Against Gay Marriage."  The article is Dr. Achtemeier's attempt to air his views and to score some points with a favorable audience (Huffington Post readers) as well as to promote his latest book, The Bible's Yes to Same-Sex Marriage: An Evangelical's Change of Heart.

In his article, Dr. Achtemeier cites Irenaeus as one who helped him find a methodology for getting past the way traditional Christians have used the Bible to condemn homosexual behavior.  Here is what Dr. Achtemeier has to say:

In the early 2000s, I was working hard to keep lesbian and gay persons out of the ministry of my denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA). I did this in part because I thought the biblical case against gay relationships was straightforward.  The standard arguments cited eight fragmentary quotes scattered throughout the Bible.  I thought that was enough to settle the matter.

I was wrong.  As I recount in my recent book, my settled convictions were shaken when I started to see how the results of those traditional condemnations produced blatant contradictions with the Bible's teaching about the fruits of righteousness and the nature of God.  These contradictions convinced me that something about the exclusionary teaching didn't add up.  What I couldn't understand was how this traditional teaching could be mistaken when it was grounded in quotes from the Bible.

I found help with this puzzle in the teaching of a second-century church leader, named Irenaeus of Lyons.  Irenaeus in his day was struggling to keep his flock from being led astray by false teachers who were proclaiming their own fabricated versions of "Christianity."  These counterfeit faiths bore little resemblance to anything that Jesus and his disciples had taught, but in spite of that the false teachers were still able to back up most of what they said with Scripture quotes.  This was very confusing to Irenaeus' flock, and I discovered that these second-century Christians were asking the same question I was: How could a teaching be mistaken or unfaithful when its proponents could back it up with quotes from the Bible?

Irenaeus explains how this can happen.  Imagine, he says, that a skilled artist has created a mosaic picture made out of colored stones.  All these multicolored fragments together form a beautiful portrait of a king.  But now suppose that another artist comes along and disassembles the original mosaic, sorting all the stones into little colored piles.  This second artist re-assembles the stones into a new mosaic, and he travels around showing off the picture, saying "Behold the King."  Only this time, in place of the original portrait, the new arrangement of stones forms a crudely-drawn picture of a dog.  Every single stone in that new mosaic comes from the original portrait. But that does not make it a true picture of the King!

This, says Irenaeus, is what the false teachers have done with Scripture.  Like the individual stones making up a mosaic, they have taken individual quotes from all over the Bible.  But the quotes have been pulled out of their original contexts and rearranged in such a way that they no longer form a true picture of the Bible's message.  Individual scripture quotes can lose their connection to the "true portrait" of God's love in Christ that is the Bible's overarching focus.

I myself had learned to support the categorical condemnation of same-sex relationships by appealing to scattered fragments of Scripture.  But Irenaeus helped me understand that being able to cite Bible passages in support of a particular teaching is no guarantee that the teaching is either true or faithful. Where does that leave us?  (Read the rest here.)

The problem with Dr. Achtemeier quoting Irenaeus to say that the Bible’s “big picture” is something other than the sum of its parts when it comes to homosexuality is that Ireneaeus, in his work, “Against the Heresies,” condemns the libertine practices of the Gnostics, including homosexual practice, by quoting the very same passages from the Apostle Paul that are still cited by orthodox Christians today.  Now read Irenaeus, in his own words, and notice the way in which he quotes Scripture:

[The apostle], foreseeing the wicked speeches of unbelievers, has particularized the works which he terms carnal; and he explains himself, lest any room for doubt be left to those who do dishonestly pervert his meaning, thus saying in the Epistle to the Galatians: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are adulteries, fornications, uncleanness, luxuriousness, idolatries, witchcrafts, hatreds, contentions, jealousies, wraths, emulations, animosities, irritable speeches, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and such like; of which I warn you, as also I have warned you, that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”  Thus does he point out to his hearers in a more explicit manner what it is [he means when he declares], “Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”  For they who do these things, since they do indeed walk after the flesh, have not the power of living unto God.

[...]

As, again, the same apostle testifies, saying to the Corinthians, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not err,” he says: “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,* nor thieves, nor covetous, nor revilers, nor rapacious persons, shall inherit the kingdom of God.  And these ye indeed have been; but ye have been washed, but ye have been sanctified, but ye have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.”  He shows in the clearest manner through what things it is that man goes to destruction, if he has continued to live after the flesh; and then, on the other hand, [he points out] through what things he is saved.  Now he says that the things which save are the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God.

* For those who are unfamiliar, "abusers of themselves with mankind" is one of the ways the ancient Greeks referred to those who committed homosexual acts.

So, actually, if we look at Irenaeus’ own application of these “time-tested principles of biblical interpretation” it shows: (1) that Irenaeus quoted Scripture to condemn immorality in precisely the same way that traditional Christians do today; (2) that he used the same Scriptures from Paul to say that homosexual behavior is among a whole list of acts that are wrong, and (3) that Dr. Achtemeier is twisting both the Scriptures and Church History with regard to Irenaeus in order to support same-sex marriage.

Irenaeus wrote his best-known surviving work, Againtst the Heresies, primarily to combat the challenge of the Gnostics to orthodox Christianity.  In that work (to which Achtemeier alludes in the quotation from his article) Irenaeus accuses the Gnostics of taking isolated passages of Scripture out of their original context in order to fabricate false doctrines that are not supported by Scripture as a whole.  There is a great deal of difference between this Gnostic misuse of Scripture and the simple practice of ordinary Christians in assembling a list of Bible verses that address a particular subject or question.  

But the central premise of Dr. Achtemeier's argument comes when, he says:  "Fortunately, the church across the centuries has developed guidelines for interpreting Scripture that help keep our use of particular passages in touch with the true portrait of God's love in Christ."  Where does one find "the true portrait of God's love in Christ" if not in Scripture?

When we look at Scripture—for instance, when Jesus deals with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11)—we see that Jesus stands against the hypocritical Pharisees' attempt to stone the woman.  He demonstrates the love of God; but he does not overthrow the Mosaic law against adultery or condone the woman's sin.  In fact, he tells her, "go, and from now on sin no more.”  Calling sin what it really is and admonishing those who are engaged in it to sin no more is often the most loving thing we can do.

Whenever we start painting a portrait of Christ that is the product of our own sense of "fairness, love, kindness, compassion, etc." rather than the actual biblical portrait of Jesus, who is loving as well as completely holy and righteous, then we run into the danger of idolatry—forming an image of God according to our own needs, ideas, and purposes. 

Sadly, Dr. Achtemeier's "portrait of God's love in Christ" is merely the subjective creation of contemporary culture and liberal Christianity—an unbiblical image of Christ (derived from an extra-biblical gnosis) precisely like the one created by the ancient Gnostics to serve their libertine purposes so long ago.  In selling this portrait, Dr. Achtemeier is not being faithful to the biblical principles articulated by Irenaeus, but rather using the method of the very enemies of Christianity against whom Irenaeus wrote.
  

Slouching toward Capernaum

And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens?  No, you will go down to Hades.  For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.  But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you (Matthew 11:23-24).

Writing in the July/August issue of Liberty magazine, author Kevin Paulson says that the decline of Christianity in the increasingly secular West, even if true, is not likely to be permanent.

Predictions of the decline and fall of so-called “Christian America” have proliferated in the public media—both secular and otherwise—for the past several years.  In the spring of 2009 Newsweek’s cover article “The Decline and Fall of Christian America” was paralleled by a Christian commentator’s dour prediction of “the coming evangelical collapse.”  The latter article was both particularly insightful and dramatic in its forecast of diminishing biblical faith, the demise of thousands of ministries, millions leaving the evangelical fold, and denominations vanishing.

Paulson says that (though it may get worse before it gets better) the trend away from religion, like many societal trends, will see a pendulum-like reversal.

People with strong convictions of any kind often function best when believing themselves under siege.  So long as it is believed that contemporary trends and prevailing forces are inflicting notable harm on one’s cherished values, justification for one’s persistence in proffering and practicing an alternative is easily found.

This is even truer in the religious realm than in the secular.  During the great persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Decius in the third century A.D., the great Christian scholar Tertullian coined the memorable line that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church." Christendom has often flourished best in times of adversity, ostracism, and revilement.  Even the late U.S. senator Eugene McCarthy, running for his party’s presidential nomination in 1968, noted publicly—during the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of that year—that Christians frequently found a more vibrant faith when confronted with official hostility and perilous circumstances.  (Not perhaps the wisest statement for an aspiring U.S. president at that time, to be sure, but one difficult to gainsay from a historical perspective.)

One reason why this matters is that, increasingly, conservative Christians are being told that our pro-marriage ("anti-gay," anti-promiscuity), and pro-life ("anti-abortion") stands are unpopular, especially with the millennial generation, and that to survive in this climate we need to "moderate" our positions—that is, to compromise or abandon traditional, biblical moral teaching.

I believe a key consideration is that we are, right now, on the cusp of a societal change in which Western society is throwing off the sexual morality under which it has lived for 1700 years.  With surprising uniformity, when young people who have rejected Christianity are asked to give a reason, their answers all have to do with rejecting some aspect of traditional Christian sexual morality.

Liberal religionists, especially in the old-line Christian denominations, have cited this trend in their attempts to revise the moral teaching of their churches to be more accommodating to contemporary secular sensibilities.

The key, as I said, is that we are on the cusp of this trend.  Right now, throwing off traditional morality looks like the way to greater freedom.  I believe that this trend, as with so many others, is subject to pendulum-like swings—and a look at history reinforces my conclusion.

Remember that Christianity came into ascendancy in the Graeco-Roman world whose immorality resembles the post-Christian secular mores of our own day:  Promiscuity, homosexuality, and abortion were all very common in those days.

Parenthetically, let me point out Acts 15, where the Council of Jerusalem had to decide the manner of admitting Gentile converts to the Church.  The Council issued a letter to the new Gentile Christians which concluded with the following admonition:

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:  You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.  You will do well to avoid these things. (Acts 15:28-29)

Christians reading this passage today often find it odd that the Council had to admonish the new Gentile Christians to abstain from sexual immorality.  They were becoming Christians, of course they had to abstain from sexual immorality!  But we need to remember that the Church, heretofore consisting of Jewish followers of Jesus, had the background of the Law given to the Jewish people through Moses.  They and their forebears for two millennia had been taught that life was sacred.  Thus, for instance, abortion was unknown among the ancient Jews, while it was common among the Greeks and Romans of the same period.  Sexual relations outside of marriage and with members of the same sex were condemned unequivocally.

So the Jews who became the first followers of Jesus had already been instructed in the Torah and its moral teaching.  But for Greeks and Romans who became Christians, the cultural assumptions in which they had been brought up were entirely different.  Sexual immorality in Gentile society was almost as common as the air they breathed.  Hence the need for the Council of Jerusalem's admonition.

The new Christians would find themselves to be oddities in the Roman Empire.  They were hounded for their faith, persecuted and killed, often in the most gruesome of ways.  Yet, Christianity did not cease to exist because it was so out of step with the society of its day.  It did not die as a result of the persecution that was intended to exterminate it—it flourished!

For many in the Graeco-Roman world, the message of the Gospel was Good News indeed.  It was an escape from the mindless sensuality and depravity of the culture.  It was a worldview that brought order in the midst of chaos, dignity in place of degradation.  Far from seeing Christianity as bondage to a repressive morality, the Romans who accepted Christ saw his Way as the only true liberation.

So it will be again.  But this is a cycle that will take time to run its course.  We are only seeing the beginning of Western society's efforts to throw off Christianity.  It may take painful decades or even centuries for society to see that the radical autonomy, lawlessness, and sexual license they are experiencing is not the way of freedom but enslavement.  When that finally happens, they will, like the ancient Romans, turn to Christ.

The necessity of persevering while this cycle runs its course is a hard message to hear for comfortable, Western Christians who expect instant answers to prayer and victory in every conflict with evil—usually in the 60-minute space of a television drama.  We don't know what it is like to suffer the persecution that the early Christians faced, but we may find out.  Just as the Gnostics escaped persecution by accommodating themselves to Roman morality, some of our persecution may come from our nominal co-religionists who have, in fact, accepted the gospel of this age instead of the Gospel of Christ.

As the old country preacher said, "I've read the end of the Book, and I know who wins."  This much is true.  Jesus Christ himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  And, in the end, only those who enter through him will come to the Father (John 14:6).

In the meantime, for those Christians who may be called to face these tough times, I am reminded of the attitude of Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to death in the Coliseum, who wrote:

I am writing to all the Churches and I enjoin all, that I am dying willingly for God's sake, if only you do not prevent it.  I beg you, do not do me an untimely kindness.  Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching to God.  I am God's wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ. — Ignatius, Letter to the Romans

If that is to be us, are we willing?  Are we ready?
 

Why Israel's Attack on Gaza is Necessary

From the Wall Street Journal:

Gaza's newly acquired rockets put about 2/3 of Israel's people into the range of fire. 

From Wikipedia:

Since 2001 Palestinian militants have launched thousands of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.  As of November 2012, the attacks have killed 64 people, mostly civilians, and injured thousands, but their main effect is their creation of widespread psychological trauma and disruption of daily life among the Israeli populace.  Medical studies in Sderot, the Israeli city closest to the Gaza Strip, have documented a post-traumatic stress disorder incidence among young children of almost 50%, as well as high rates of depression and miscarriage.

We would not expect any other nation to live under the threat of daily terrorism for so long, and we shouldn't expect Israel to do so either.

Teddy Roosevelt On Immigrants In America

In response to this news.

Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on immigrants and being an American, June 26, 1907.

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.  But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...  There can be no divided allegiance here.  Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all.  We have room for but one flag, the American flag...  We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

~ Theodore Roosevelt 1907

And for those who say this doesn't sound compassionate, let me say that the most compassionate thing we can do for immigrants is to help them assimilate, rather than remaining in gangs and ghettos, unable to speak the language their newfound home, only to become wards of society rather than becoming meaningful contributors and participants in it.
 

What I wrote my Congressman about the humanitarian crisis on our border

Dear Representative,

As much as my heart goes out to the children who are pawns in this whole ordeal on our southern border, I believe we need a Congressional investigation into how this humanitarian disaster came about.  I have seen it reported in credible news sources that a federal government website was advertizing for transportation contractors as far back as January to handle the coming influx of these children.  I have also seen examples of the information flyer it is reported that many of the children had with them to tell them what to say to immigration authorities to maximize their chances of being allowed to stay in the US.

These children didn’t suddenly wake up one morning and tell their parents, “Adios, Mama and Papa, I am going walk across part of Central America (crossing multiple borders) and the whole of Mexico in the heat of summer to go to the United States.”

One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that this involved coordination—a coordinated effort to bring these children here and flood our border in an effort to destabilize our whole immigration process.  The American people deserve to know how and why this happened, and who is responsible, so this does not continue—for the sake of the children who are being exploited, as much as for us.

Casting all your cares on him, for He cares for you

The challenge each of us continually faces is “Who is in control in my life?”  Is it God or do I have to rely on my own efforts?

If the Lord really is #1 in my life, then I must resist my natural tendency to be afraid.  I can do this by drawing aside from the situation and bringing it to God in prayer.

In Philippians 4:6-7, the Apostle Paul tells us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

When I quote this passage from memory, I often tend to leave out the words "with thanksgiving."  But those two words are the key.  If we are truly giving thanks for what God has done, it is nearly impossible to doubt what he can and will do in the future.  So those two words, "with thanksgiving" are essential in not being anxious, but in letting our requests be made known to God, or in the words of 1 Peter 5:7, "casting all your anxiety upon him, because he cares for you."

Prayer is our way of saying, “Heavenly Father, I know you love me and I know you want to guide me in the situations where I need your help.”

Jesus didn’t worry.  Instead he used to regularly draw aside to pray—to spend time with his Father.

We, as Jesus' disciples, would do well to follow his example and learn to bring our fears to our loving Heavenly Father.
 

Burger King introduces gay Whopper

(But only in San Francisco)

WPXI reports: 

"The Proud Whopper" comes in a rainbow colored wrapper and goes on sale Wednesday morning.

The burger chain’s Senior Vice President of Global Brand Management Fernando Machado says it "showcases who we are as a brand." (emphasis added)

Machado says the unusual burger also helps efforts to support the chains newest slogan "Be Your Way."

["Be your way!" ???  Are you kidding me???!!!]

Proceeds from the sale of the Proud Whopper will be donated to scholarships for LGBT high school seniors graduating in 2015 through its own Burger King McLamore Foundation.

The only real difference is the wrapper itself and the Proud Whopper costs the same as any other whopper.

Read more on the story at USA Today.