comments:
> Yes I am aware that the Bible wasn't written in English for a 21st-century audience: it would have been hard to obtain a masters degree in theology without knowing that very basic fact about the Bible! Great! > I stand by my view that the Bible never speaks positively of same sex sexual activity, Agreed! It in fact, only talks about same sex practices of the time that were all very terrible, and definitely should still be condemned. They had no concept that loving committed same sex relationships between equals could exist, so nothing in the bible talks about that. > that Jesus affirms that God's design for marriage is between a man and a woman, Jesus does not say anything of the sort. Matthew 19 is about divorce, and you are trying to make Jesus have answered a question no one was asking. > and that the bible's prohibition is not rendered irrelevant by the context in which such activity occurs. In which case, the bible condemns opposite sex sex MANY times. Or do you, actually understand the difference between sexual exploitation and loving relationships? > I did ask my questions genuinely as I was interested to hear how you approach the text as an evangelical, By doing actual deep study on passages, good exegesis. Like you do. > but I'm not up for discussing with people who think that anyone who doesn't agree with them must be ill-informed. Unfortunately, on this particular topic, there is a massive amount of misinformation going around in many Christian circles that really never existed until 50 years ago. > You, of course, are aware that many scholars don't agree with your interpretations, and not for lack of "actually studying what scripture says". Sure. That’s why we must go with the consensus of scholarship, and considering our understanding of sexual orientation is 150 years old at most, and good understanding is MUCH more recent than that, and ANY scholarship of the nature of same sex practices of the Greco Romans is after the late 1970s, there isn’t particularly any reason to go to scholarship before that. If you want to go deeper into that, I recommend reading this book, that just came out this month: https://www.amazon.ca/Forging-Sacred-Weapon-Mistranslation-Anti-Gay/dp/1951136195 An extremely well researched book about how the Bible was turned into a weapon against gay people. > I find discussions with people who can't acknowledge that there are smart, educated people on both sides of issues to be fruitless and not worth my time. There are that yes. But we must acknowledge the best of current scholarship. These are good summaries as well: https://reformationproject.org/case/ https://geekyjustin.com/great-debate/