1. Aren’t you confusing duties/obligations with “ownership”? Most
folks today would say parents have certain responsibilities to their
children associated with rasing and educating them, and that children
owe a corresponding duty of obedience to their parents. Would you
describe parents as “owning” their children? Why or why not?
Owning property often conveys a sense of responsibility; not all sorts of obligations are related to ownership. The sets often overlap.
Parents do, in some sense "own" their children and act as if they did. At some point, a child "owns" his/herself. I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps such a historian or even an anthropologist can answer this more precisely.
2.
Your approach to human sexuality would apparently require Christianity
to abandon 2,000 years of teaching on the subject. If the Church has
been so wrong for such a long time, why remain a Christian? Wouldn’t it
be more intellectually honest to denounce Christianity and walk away?
What is the continuing attraction for you?
Christianity teaches that we are required to respect the sexuality of ourselves and others; that we engage in relationships that promote joy and abundance; that we do not humiliate others; that our lives, generally, are marked by certain fruits of the spirit. If I were to abandon mutual respect, joy, mutual submission, and social responsibility, then I would have to walk away from Christianity.
The church is wrong insofar as it considers homosexuals defective Christians, or even, defective heterosexuals. The church has abandoned several teachings along the way, and added others, and done quite well.
3. What model of
Christian evangelization do you propose? Do you think many people will
want to join a Church that has no creed, no scripture, no moral system
not open to radical reinterpretation every generation? For argument’s
sake, assume I will oppose any basic principles you propose using your
own exegetical and interpretive methods.
I share my own Christian evanglization through prayer, the breaking of the bread, and the sharing of scripture. I do not suggest, for example, radically reinterpreting scripture so that, for example, the sermon or the Lord's prayer gets replaced. That's a worry conservatives have about liberals, not one liberals have about themselves.
I note that, in my area, the Unitarian church is the fastest growing church. I suppose that they do have a set of absolutist rules.
My hermeneutical rules start with looking at how Jesus and Paul interpreted scripture.
4. What does the OT
understanding of blood have to do with anything? Keep in mind that I
don’t really care what Muslims think about it.
A rupture between the practial understanding, plaintext understanding of blood of the Levites and our modern generation open up various hermeneutical problems in the importance of bodily fluids - a central reason we condemn homosexuality. One liberal argument is the relationship between blood and sin has been ruptured as a form of practice. Thus, certain categories of "sin" have been rendered irrelevant.
6. On behalf of Pontificator’s loyal readers I must ask
the following: What is your position on Absolute Simplicity? Your
answer cannot exceed 1000 lines of text.
Some times God is simple; some times he is absolute. Othertimes God is mystery; and God is particular. It is human sin to reduce God to our own needs; yet God blesses us anyway.
7. Who was more
absolutely brilliant and super-cool, Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud? I
understand this may be a hard question for you, so take your time.
Marx had some interesting ideas about the power of capitalism to organize human society and about social relations [On the Jewish Question], and relationship of workers to their work [e.g. the concept of alienation] - his early essays. Freud's understanding of melancholia and more generally, the unconscious were equally fruitful. But like all thinkers, some of their ideas were accurate, but others of their ideas needed modification.
Pontificator asks:
From what I have read of your writings, John, you have adopted a
hermeneutical stance that makes it impossible for God ever to speak a
historical word of moral instruction or judgment that you cannot
reinterpret away according to your own lights. Assume, for the moment,
if you will, that God actually does disapprove of homoerotic relations
and that the biblical proscriptions do actually express his divine
will. Is should God have said or done to persuade you that this
proscription originates with him? Is it ever possible for your God to
ever speak a moral command in the past that binds you in the present?
I agree, actually, that most people tend to reinterpret away things that they don't like. And to be honest, Pontificator, I'm not sure if I'm much different. People are naturally pleasure seeking and justify it; restraint and repentance are in remarkably short supply. No disagreement there.
God does not want ME to have homosexual relations with others - in part because I'm straight; that I'd probably be doing it simply to get play; because I wouldn't really want to do it anyway; or it would be involuntary.
How do I know if I'm following God or not? Well... how about faith in God's grace? If I think God's grace would ask me to become more holy by giving up a certain form of being, then I'd make that change. But in my life, sometimes rules interfere with one another and you make do. That's life. I hope I just don't have to face those times often, because sometimes all our decisions are evil.
I'm not a situationist in part because I need some rules. But I don't think that God needs rules; God's rules are for my sake.
Granted, I think a God that opposes homosexual relations just because he doesn't like them, raises several practical problems. So, are gay people, as a class, willfully evil [after all, gay people are not born gay - they choose it]? Then, doesn't that justify an active, coherent, planned out way to eliminate them on our part? Because, then, gay people are interinsically dangerous - for people's eternal souls. If we do NOT do everything we can to eliminate them [for they are deliberately choosing evil] then we, ourselves, are collaborators, with the devil. Pastoral care won't do - it doesn't work with Satan. Our responsibility is clear.
I suppose that this sort of God exists. It is possible, although I don't recognize this sort of God in scripture, or on Jesus, or in my own life.
I am willing to read Gagnon, but again, I suggest James Alison. Alision is more firmly in the Catholic camp. Granted, I think that Countryman is correct, but I don't have the technical expertise to judge vs. Gagnon. From what I've read, I think Gagnon might be a bit stronger on the biblical end, but Countryman is the the more expansive theologian.
Other Questions from Albertus Parvus