THE LATEST ON THE GREAT SCHISM …
Chalk up another legal victory for South Carolina’s conservative breakaway Episcopalian church – and another defeat for the national Episcopalian Church (TEC) and its South Carolina affiliate (TECSC).
According to the website Anglican Ink, the S.C. Court of Appeals rejected an appeal filed by the national church aimed at delaying the case – which involves the right of conservative South Carolina congregations to “secede” from the increasingly liberal national Episcopalian Church.
Last month a Lowcountry circuit court judge rejected another legal maneuver attempted by the national church aimed an unnecessarily broadening the case.
“We are grateful that the court recognized that TEC and TECSC are misusing the judicial system to delay resolution of this case,” the Rev. Jim Lewis, Canon to the Ordinary of the Diocese told Anglican Ink. “Their strategy of using legal motions to delay court decisions caused eight months to be wasted when they asked the federal court to override the state court injunction. As in that matter, the courts sided with the Diocese of South Carolina.”
According to Anglican Ink, the national church “has a long history of dragging out legal battles, apparently in hopes of draining the resources of parishes and dioceses it seeks to punish for leaving the denomination.”
In fact the website estimates the national church has spent “more than $40 million on litigation in the past few years” in what it refers to as an effort to wear down and “intimidate parishes and dioceses that wish to leave the denomination.”
Good to see South Carolina’s court system is having none of that …
In late 2012, FITS broke the story of “rogue Bishop” Mark Lawrence of Charleston, S.C. – the Episcopal priest who was booted from the national church for refusing to adopt its views on gay marriage and the ordination of gay and female clergy.
As a result of the church’s action against him, Lawrence announced his intention to disassociate South Carolina’s Lower Diocese from the national church – a threat he made good on.
The schism has prompted a protracted legal battle – with Lawrence and other leaders of the breakaway diocese being accused of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, trademark infringement and civil conspiracy, among other things. According to the national church the result of these alleged actions has been to “deprive Episcopalians loyal to the Episcopal Church of their property rights.”
The South Carolina suit is ground zero in the battle taking place all across the country between socially liberal and socially conservative congregations in multiple protestant denominations.
As we have stated from the beginning of this process, we believe individual congregations should be allowed to worship as they see fit – associating or disassociating with national denominations as they wish. If a simple majority of a church’s members determines it wishes to enter or leave a specific denomination – then it should be permitted to do so.
As for the underlying social issues, click HERE to read our thoughts on those …
65 comments
If the Episcopal church pays for the building, let em have it. Meet somewhere else.
Except they don’t. The parishes pay their own way, and the fools in the national church leach off the parishes. like the mafia, money is kicked up. Not down.
They sue us with our own money.
Predatory Capitalism for Jesus.
Ah, but it’s voluntarily paid, wisely or not.
I don’t have a problem with how much he makes any more than Jesus cared about the money changers in the Temple.
I suspect that if Jesus was asked by the Episcopalians he would tell them to forgive and forget and not spend $40 million on lawyers.
Jesus said ‘Go and Sin No More’…He did not say willy-nilly incorporate sin into your faith practices because an immoral World demands it…
Christianity does not prevail by relenting to the will of the evil and decadent. The false gods (like Obama) do that..and they are eventually put asunder, as God says they will be…
You know Hitler and Obama are P!$$#D about this development…
You didn’t break the story. Keep telling you that.
And your description of what happened isn’t quite right. he quit the national church, it says. he was barred from acting, but not booted out.
It’s not enough for the bigots to leave, they want to take the money and the property.
You are clearly misinformed. The property involved belonged to our churches long before TEC ever existed. And I am not a bigot.
Agreed! Just want to add that it breaks my heart to see how ignorant TEC is about its own traditions, history, and morals. One can be gay without committing sodomy. One can be married without participating in Holy Matrimony. It’s not about sex. It’s about commitment to Christ. Humans cannot be perfected. Neither can human society. It is the Great Mistake of Liberals and Progressives to think so.
Gotta love the bigotry of anti-bigots, the intolerance of the tolerant, and racism of the anti-racists.
Glad to see something Southern has the courage to part ways with something national.
This harkens back to the “Southern Baptist” (aka…slavery is cool with Jesus) movement in the antebellum South. So we come full circle where the Southern Baptists have dropped the “Southern” in an increasingly desperate effort to get butts in pews.
Now these rouge anglican churches are substituting slaves for gays. Well done guys. Well done. WWJD?
WWJD?
I imagine he would tell you to read what he said – marriage is a union of one man and one women. He might also tell you to turn towards him and away from sin, and point you to what his apostle Paul wrote in Romans about the manifold sins of mankind:
“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”
Homosexuality is a sin in the same way that lying, adultery, and envy are sins. We are all sinners in need of God’s grace to have any hope of eternity. I promise not to ask you to approve of my sins, I’d just ask the same courtesy in return.
The bible also says a man was trapped in a whale’s body and lived or that a woman was turned to a pillar of salt, or that you can’t eat shellfish?
It actually says big fish, not whale. If there is a God, wouldn’t you agree he could perform that miracle or turn a woman into a pillar of salt? If you are using these examples to deny God, you are question begging.
Leviticus says you can’t eat shellfish, the New Testament says we are relieved from the dietary restrictions because salvation comes through Christ, not seeking fruitless perfection under the law.
Also, the Hebrew version (I just remembered) says in the Book of Jonah, “as if” he were swallowed by a great fish, leaving one to speculate whether or not the story got out of whack and away from the metaphor for depression somewhere along the way. This understanding has been understood and published by some Jewish scholars for over 400 years. And in any case, it’s a whale of a story!
Ahhh….but once you start to tinker with interpretation of the good book, no matter how big or small, you might as well throw the whole thing out.
Agreed, it is a fanciful story.
There are no facts, only interpretations.Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.Why does man not see these things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things from himself.
What are man’s truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors
I agree it does not have to be taken literally. I was just pointing out that even at face value it is not inconsistent with an omnipotent God.
And note you make no actual argument for why homosexuality is not a sin under the Bible, you just take potshots at those who believe. That is an understandable, if lamentable, strategy, because it is pretty hard to find any credible Biblical scholar who would argue such a thing. I actually wish that were a way to square that circle. This issue was one of the major stumbling blocks to my faith when I was younger.
So, if Jesus basically blows away everything in the OT, as you indicated in a previous post…which is weird b/c it’s his father…which is also weird because Jesus is god. Anyhoo, If Jesus undoes everything written in the OT, where does Jesus specifically say homosexuality is wrong?
I did not say everything. But he specifically told Peter in a vision re the dietary laws. But to your bigger point, the law was intended t show us how pointless it is to think you can be redeemed by your acts. We can never be good enough. We need Jesus’ atoning sacrifice to open up the possibility of redeption through God’s grace.
Jesus said marriage is a man and a woman united as one. The Pharisees never tried to trick him about homosexuality (probably because it was pretty clearly a sin). But Paul specifically said it, which I quoted above.
So Jesus contradicted god (i.e. himself) by saying one thing in the OT, remembering that the bible is the “inspired word of god”, and then another in the NT.
How about this, how old do you think earth is? Did Noah manage collect all the current animals on earth across all 7 continents including all known insects, reptiles, bird species and mammals (just two of each) and keep them alive, fed, in good health with fresh water for 40 days and nights to then repopulate to current levels after somehow migrating back to their home continents in less 6000 years?
He did not contradict anything. He said he came to fulfill the law, not to replace it.
I believe the Earth is millions of years old. Your implication that every person of faith is a young earth creationist is a secularist slander. Genesis has been interpreted as having poetic and figurative language as far back as Augustine and Origen. And the debates about God and the Bible have been waged by people far smarter than anyone on this board for millenia.
But I have a question for you – do you believe that the Universe began to exist?
It was not a whale, the Koine Greek (Septuagint) says it was “a great fish.” I’m guessing it was a Holy Mackerel. But seriously, you are equating an OT tale about a prophet with actual sayings of Jesus, which are recorded not only in the Bible, but also in important apochryphal writings such as the Gospel of Thomas, which many scholars believe predates Mark or the Letters of John and Paul. (George and Ringo wrote much later.)
I imagine he would tell you to read what he said – marriage is a union of one man and one women.
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I call bullshit. Jesus never said that. You have no idea who Jesus was or what he said.
You can call bs, but you are just (again) revealing your ignorance. From Matthew:
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”
“He” being Jesus.
Usually I agree with much of what you have said. But Jesus actually did say that. (See CL’s comment, below.) Even Libertarians eventually have to admit that there are SOME rules. I know that you are bitter when it comes to authority, often with good cause, but you are wrong on your facts, in this instance.
see my reply. I don’t think I’m wrong in my facts. I believe that the taboo I feel about homosexuality is not of God, but something else. I do understand that homosexuality does not contribute to reproduction, and does not stem directly from the reproductive organs themselves in any “natural” way, but just like hermaphrodites that are clearly created from parts of both sexes, there is no convenient explanation that doesn’t sound like fitting the facts to the belief.
I firmly believe from the studies I’ve seen (I won’t mention anecdotal evidence, because that’s just so much bullshit anyway) that homosexuality – the actual attraction for the same sex – is not a “choice.”
I don’t see how condemnation can come from something you have no choice over, because, again, I believe that God is a merciful God, and does not reap where He does not sew. This is authority I am *not* bitter about.
I do not encourage homosexuality by saying this, either.
“I imagine he would tell you to read what he said – marriage is a union of one man and one women”
Where did He say that?
See above. In Matthew Jesus says that he made man and woman and that they join together to become one flesh.
(1) he said – marriage is a union of one man and one women
(2) Jesus says he made man and woman and that they join together to become one flesh.
Not the same thing at all, and the implication you are making he did not make.
(3)”Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”
(3) is what he *actually* said, but not what you said he said(1). He didn’t mention marriage, neither did he rule out other unions that may not follow that pattern. He neither condemned nor approved.
“He Didn’t mention marriage”
This claim is just bizarre. If you are going to argue that he was not referring to marriage, you’ll have to offer an alternate meaning for the word “wife” there.
You’ll also have to come up with an alternate meaning for “divorce,” since he was answering a question from the Pharisees about whether a “man” could divorce his “wife.”
The only time Jesus was asked to comment on marriage*, he affirmed and quoted what Genesis said – that it is a uniting of a man and a woman into one flesh. And Paul could not have been any clearer about whether homosexual sex (not being homosexual) is a sin. I guess Jesus could have spent a few hours explaining to the crowd various things that do not constitute a marriage, but it would be an odd way to win over an audience.
“Not the same thing at all, and the implication you are making he did not make.”
He said marriage involved two people – a man and his wife – uniting in one flesh. He said they will “be united,” I said they form a “union.” Again, you’ll have to offer a valid textual argument for why what I said is in any way unfaithful to what to his statement.
* there is the question about when a widow who remarries and who she is married to in Heaven, but that really does not help your argument since it gets to what Heaven is like more than what is a marriage. But even then, it is consistent with what he said above since the gender roles still conformed to Genesis (and to what every culture throughout history has understood marriage to be).
“He Didn’t mention marriage”
This claim is just bizarre. If you are going to argue that he was not referring to marriage, you’ll have to offer an alternate meaning for the word “wife” there.
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Look, if you’re going to get all technical and shit – then why don’t you quote the bible, instead of making shit up and pretending it’s what Jesus said. He made no reference to marriage being exclusive, nor to a ceremony.
He said marriage involved two people – a man and his wife – uniting in one flesh.
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You are adding that he said that it ONLY involved a man and his wife. I hate to be the first to tell you this, but you aren’t Jesus.
Now, since you’re obviously not aware of what the law is, what it’s purpose is, who it applies to, and what Jesus’ relationship to the law is, I’ll tell you. Since you don’t believe in quoting scripture, I hope you’re not offended if I do.
First of all, the law does not bind the Gentiles. The purpose of the law is to bring death to those who are bound by it – i.e. the descendants of Abraham.
Romans 2:14 the Gentiles, which have not the law
Romans 4:15 Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.
Romans 5:13 sin is not imputed when there is no law.
2 Corinthians 3:6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
Galatians 2:14 why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?15 We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles. 16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
So Gentiles and Jews are killed by the law. Gentiles don’t need you to bind them to the law, and Jews don’t need you to hold them to it… or need you to stand in the road to heaven, forbidding those on their way in, to go in, while you pick through it, figuring out if they have to be circumcised or stay away from pork to get into heaven. All must die – Gentiles and Jews.
There is what the law is, who is bound by it, and what it’s purpose is… to bring death. Gentiles without the law, are not bound by it, and you can’t bind them to it, since they are not parties to that contract, you didn’t write it, and you are not a legal spiritual entity with the power to bind anyone to anything. If you really knew what it meant to be a Christian, you would have the power to bind on Earth, and to release on Earth… but that power is based on the Gospel, which you also don’t understand.
Now the relationship of Jesus to the law, the Jews, the Gentiles and his message. Jesus completed the law. His death was the payment for the law. It is no longer in effect, despite what officious, legalist sociopaths would have you believe. No behavior can get you into heaven – it never could. No behavior can keep you out, either. It’s not about behavior but about the spirit. As Paul said, why recreate the law when it’s complete? It would simply make us transgressors again… that is, if we were Jews to begin with.
Romans 2:12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
Galatians 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
17 But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.18 For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
So, who do Christians submit to? You? I don’t think so. They are not bound by the law, and they certainly aren’t bound by sociopaths who translate their own internal taboo into a new law to bind them with. Christians don’t need the law explained to them by politicians, and they don’t need masters who force them to obey it. Gentiles without the law aren’t bound by it in any case, and in America, supposedly the “land of the free” they need not submit to Republican scum to get to heaven either. If those who are not Christians want to get to heaven, it’s between them and God, not between them and you. You don’t belong on the road to heaven, unless you’re on your way there yourself. You aren’t the toll taker. Look neither right nor left at the sinners beside you – because if you see their sin, your sin will be greater.
Matthew 7:3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
No longer bound by law or sin, Christians have new life – and Christians are not dependent on you for validation. The new life of Christians is ruled by Mercy, not the Law. Your job is to forgive, not to condemn.
” Since you don’t believe in quoting scripture, I hope you’re not offended if I do.”
Why would you make up something that is so obviously false? 3/4 of my original post that you responded to was a quote from Romans. Then when you “called bs” I directly quoted the language from Matthew.
I guess if I had quoted Matthew in my original post it would have saved you the embarrassment of revealing your ignorance of the subject. I can see why in hindsight you might have preferred that. But there is nothing wrong with accurately paraphrasing a statement, which is what I did.
And where did I mention anything about “a ceremony”? This is a disturbing habit you have of inventing things to suit your needs. It would have been odd for Jesus to give a lengthy discourse on marriage rites when asked a question about divorce, but, now that you bring it up, Jesus did in fact make an oblique reference to ceremony in the part about leaving your parents’ home.
“Now, since you’re obviously not aware of what the law is, what it’s purpose is, who it applies to, and what Jesus’ relationship to the law is, I’ll tell you.”
LOL. You were obviously ignorant of Jesus’ statement in your original response, and all your subsequent posts have been sad attempts to backtrack and save face when I quoted the relevant scripture. Now you are posing as a Biblical scholar.
You could have saved yourself the trouble of C&P the overlong stuff about the meaning of the law and Jesus’ role in fulfilling the law by just quoting me when I said the exact same thing in response to another poster below.
I have not “condemned” or judged anyone. As I posted, everyone sins. I could not pass judgment on anyone else without it coming back on me. But that is a very different thing than being asked to affirmatively approve of someone else’s sin.
God’s grace is the most wonderful gift imaginable. But we have to make ourselves open to receiving his grace. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1). You want to jump to the second part without dealing with the first. You cannot confess your sins if you are too busy deluding yourself that you have done nothing wrong.
3/4 of my original post that you responded to was a quote from Romans.
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so If I say “go thou and do likewise” it’s 3/4 of a quote? Bullshit.
God’s grace is the most wonderful gift imaginable.
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how would you know? Did you read it somewhere? You obviously have only the most passing acquaintance with scripture, and have no idea what it means…. yet you want to yoke unbelievers and Christians alike to your personal bullshit of 3/4 scripture, so you can sleep at night.
You can keep flailing around for a graceful exit, but I am the only poster I have seen in this thread trying to actually grapple with what the Bible says on the subject. Maybe I should be encouraged that such a noted Biblical scholar as yourself is unable to refute anything I said.
You can keep flailing around for a graceful exit
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checkmate, patzer! LOL!
Hopefully you know more about chess than you do about the Bible.
Hopefully you know more about chess than you do about the Bible
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Is this a backhanded way for you to say you hope I’m damned? The Bible isn’t a difficult book to know. The hard part is hearing the voice of Jesus and following it. Something Republicans are bent on prohibiting.
It’s all a big scam – like Benny Hinn, so they can have jets and take pages back to their apartment, and still make millions on the idiots who think they are Christians.
Hate gays, the poor, the sick, the elderly, the unarmed – it was good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for Republicans.
You would like that to be my meaning, since it would confirm to your prejudices of those who disagree with you.
I hope you do spend time getting as familiar with the Bible as you pretended to be in this thread. It can do nothing but help improve your hateful outlook.
Your hyper-secret fear is that one day a married gay guy will knock on your door and release the girls you abducted.
I decided long ago that “debating” politics with a Republican is a square one endeavor. You’ll have to start at square one with each one of them, as though they’ve never considered the subject you’re talking about before… they’ll repeat the same old discredited talking points you’ve already heard hundreds of times and debunked personally tens of times… and they’ll do it energetically, with the determination of a wolf chewing off his own foot to get free of a trap.. each new point making them more and more frustrated, more and more delusional and irrational.. until, finally they collapse into some kind of little kid mustard whose responses sound more and more like “your momma!” and “loser” and “that’s what you are, but what am I?” Some start out that way, and stay that way… some have to morph into it by degrees.
When you find some moron at the poker table, you figure out his tell, and you take his money. It makes up for any irritation you might feel for being exposed to his tragic flaws. Sometimes you laugh at him, sometimes you feel a little something for him, but you came to play poker, not run a mental health clinic. When you come to the table to discuss politics, you don’t even get his money. :)
When you own someone as completely I do CL, I mean, it’s been done. The ether is pregnant with stories of people trying to get their mojo back – that they never had to begin with. The kid that keeps following someone around saying “I won that king of the hill game… you missed me! You cheated”
The first time you take someone out snipe hunting, it might be fun, but after that, it becomes cruel and sophomoric, don’t you think? Did you know that turtle followed Bez around for TEN YEARS? That almost exhausted the replies in that genre, let me tell you. :) He’s happy to have finally scraped THAT little piece of toilet paper off his shoe, I’d say.
I doubt if these civil war re-enacters stuck in the antebellum South have that kind of tenacity.
Thanks for the laugh about you owning anything in this thread. I have called you out for serially misrepresenting what I have said and what the Bible says. I am still waiting for the evidence to support your novel theory that Jesus was not referring to marriage in Matthew 19. While I have been citing and quoting scripture, you respond with such insightful nuggets as “I call bull****.”
The only thing you are effective at “owning” is the straw man you have erected in your mind. Much easier to knock down the contrived, hollow talking points you attribute to your opponents than to marshal evidence and engage with actual arguments. Then you can just declare victory and hope someone out there is buying that this thread did anything but reveal your profound ignorance of the subject matter.
The rest of this post is pure projection – you are the one who continually turns to insults and ad hominems when asked to support some nonsense in one of your posts.
Really, no offense.
I know it stings… but there you are. You got your ass whipped. It’s not a big deal, don’t worry, no one’s watching this thread… you won’t have to hang your head.. no one thinks anything about you anyway.
You’re just a conservative shill – nothing to say.. just saying it anyway. Just another dumbass Bushie, pretending to be an independent, toeing the “conservative” line for the 1%… who knows why…
Maybe your father was a wimp – or beat you. Maybe your mother left home before you were old enough to … nah.. You’re just a sociopath, hanging with the home boys.
Nothing will change…. you’ll just keep doing what you’re doing. I hope it brings you some kind of enjoyment.
See you in another topic after your wounds heal.
Still not ready to share your scholarly work on what Jesus was referring to other than marriage in that passage? The only time you even made anything approaching an argument was to borrow something I said in another post and then claim to be educating me on the subject. Feel free to crib from my posts, but just spare me the odd victory dance when you regurgitate them back to me. I know you like to ascribe your own meaning to words, but that is a bizarre definition of an “ass whipping.”
While I understand the desire to just declare victory and go home, that typically requires you to win a skirmish or two to be remotely convincing.
Are you are still trying to bind unbelievers to the law using secular law? Your persistence in ignoring the fact that neither non-Jewish unbelievers nor Christians are bound by the Mosaic law shows your ignorance, and your intent.
You have no intention whatsoever of spreading the Gospel, but rather to spread persecution and intolerance in the name of the Gospel – which you do not understand..
No amount of school yard rhetoric can change the fact you are using the Gospel as a political carrot, to draw people away from tolerance, and into a new law. Your intention is to bind them yet again to the letter, whose purpose is to bring death.
You don’t understand what it means that Jesus fulfilled the law. You don’t understand that means the law is completed and no longer binds us.
Your venal interpretation has only one intention at base, to spread hate and division.
I will leave you with one final chapter for your edification – Matthew 23. It is intended for you.
I believe the only time I even cited the OT was when I pointed out where Jesus was referring back to Genesis. I make a point in these types of discussions to focus on the NT to cut off precisely this type of silly talking point. But I find that most stick to the script regardless of the actual arguments being made because they have nothing else to draw upon.
You are the one who sadly misunderstands the offer of salvation. It necessarily involves repentance, a change in our mindset about sin. You cannot repent if you keep telling yourself you are great and have no need for forgiveness. We are all equally fallen and undeserving of salvation on our own merits. It is only by repenting and believing in Christ that this can be achieved. This point is made in every gospel, in Acts, in the epistles, etc. Here are Jesus’ words from Luke on that point:
“Do you think that these Galileans [persecuted by Pilate] were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
You’re trying to define marriage, for the Christians and unbelievers, dumbass. Don’t you get it yet? You’re trying to make law for people instead of freeing them from it, and pretending that you have a Christian motive to do it.
Either get on the path to salvation, or get out of the way.
More insults from the Bible scholar. There is nothing I am missing here. You either do not grasp the difference between the ceremonial and moral aspects of the law of the OT or are deliberately advocating an extreme form of moral relativism. Either way, it is you who are misstating Christian doctrine. The notion that Jesus’ sacrifice means that anything goes as long as you just say you believe in him is childish and unserious.
God’s moral laws are universal and apply to all people at all times. The ceremonial laws, which were only binding on the chosen people and from which Christians were explicitly relieved in the NT.* I doubt you really believe Jesus freed us from God’s moral laws unless you want to argue that murder is okay since the “law no longer binds us.” Jesus did not abolish sin. He provided us the way to free ourselves from it (repent of your sins and believe in him).
* You could have argued that the prohibition on homosexuality is not moral in nature and was more akin to the civil and ceremonial laws, but again you would have to read Paul out of the Bible to do so.
There is nothing I am missing here.
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lalalalal I’m not missing anything lalalala….
Probably best if you stick to this type of childish response. Whenever you try to engage on the substance it turns out badly. But these last few exchanged have been useful in one sense – we can add “repent” to the list of words your ground breaking Biblical research will redefine for the world.
Childish response is more than you deserve. You are too low-wattage to understand the relationship between the Mosaic law, secular law, and Jesus’ relationship to law.
Your only purpose is to yoke unbelievers and Christians to your personal world view without any interest in the gospel itself. If you knew what I meant you would understand why I referred you to Matthew 23.
So unkind of you to withhold from the world your claimed but never actually displayed Biblical expertise. I am anxiously awaiting your explanation for how Matthew 19 is not about marriage. Or why the word “repent” does not actually mean repent as used in, well just about every book of the New Testament. Or how the Ten Commandments are no longer operative since the “law no longer binds us.”
It is not my worldview. It is the objective, universal moral law that has been revealed to man for thousands of years. And you still cannot point out to any error in my analysis of what the Bible says about the subject.
You’re an idiot.
Does that count as school yard rhetoric? And does “idiot” there mean what a dictionary would say or is it part of the English According to Max reference book that you seem to draw upon?
Does that count as school yard rhetoric?
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Why yes, as a matter of fact I does. You’re smarter than I gave you credit for.
“Why yes, as a matter of fact I does.”
From the man who prattles on about hypocrisy, no less. I guess there is a reason that Matthew 23 is the only verse you are familiar with. You must hear it a lot.
“You’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”
So another subject on which your judgment was wrong. Dog bites man.
“Why yes, as a matter of fact I does.”
From the man who prattles on about hypocrisy, no less.
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perhaps some day, you also, will prattle on about hypocrisy…
oops, too late!
Your attempt to pivot to the supposed unfairness to unbelievers is not much better than your Biblical scholarship. It is the left that is trying to redefine a word that has had a common, understood meaning throughout human history. I would be fine with the libertarian position Folks has advocated of getting the government out of the marriage business, and, as far as the secular law goes, allowing people to enter into whatever contractual and legal relationships they want (inheritance rights, power of attorney, etc.). Call it civil union or tiddlywinks, for all I care. But as long as the government is claiming the right and power to define marriage, my response to efforts to force people to accept a redefinition of that term that is contrary to human history, biology, and, yes, my faith will be an emphatic no.
I’m not pivoting anything. It’s the gospel.
Bigots! First they don’t want to ordinate practicing gays, next they they will refuse to ordinate Jews and Muslims then it be Catholics next. Shame.
“As we have stated from the beginning of this process, we believe individual congregations should be allowed to worship as they see fit – associating or disassociating with national denominations as they wish. If a simple majority of a church’s members determines it wishes to enter or leave a specific denomination – then it should be permitted to do so.”
If that’s the case then you should join a Baptist church. In the meantime quit claiming to be a Presbyterian turned Lutheran. You clearly haven’t taken much time to educate yourself on theology or matters of church polity.