If only God had known. . .

On another Lutheran forum the argument continues.  The passages in Scripture that speak of a man not having sex with another man as with a woman were descriptive of forced sex, rape.  The Scriptures did not know anything like what we know of today -- a committed, caring, loving, and married relationship between two men or two women.  So Scripture is really therefore silent on the matter of a committed, caring, loving, and married relationship between two people of the same sex.  Yeah.  Right.

Quite apart from the arguments over the texts themselves is the presumption that God did not know and could not have known of what today we know -- committed, caring, loving, and married same sex couples.  What kind of God do you end up with if His Word, which claims to be eternal, is conditioned by and therefore limited to circumstances even God could not foresee?  What kind omniscience can be attributed to a God who could not foresee and address committed, caring, loving, and married relationships between same sex couples?  Such a God is far less than the holy and almighty God of the Scriptures and ends up being a very different God than we claim Him to be because of His Word.

The only possible way you can come to the conclusion that Scripture did not know of such relationships and therefore the admonitions against homosexual relations do not apply to the situation today is if you also claim that Scripture is a human book with some divine words in it but not the Word of God.  That is the only caveat that saves portions of that Word while dismissing other parts of that Word.  So this is not simply an argument over what the words say in the Scriptures (themselves being rather unambiguous) but over what Scripture is.  This is the crux of the argument between orthodox and conservative Christianity and progressive and liberal Christianity.  It always goes back to the Word of God.

What we are left with is a God who speaks relative words, mixed up with human words that cannot be claimed as His own, and an audience which must decide which words are His and which words are just the authors and what those words mean.  This is not simply a problem, this is a crisis of authority and one which makes the Reformation question pale in comparison.  It signals the dawn of a day in which there is no truth that can ever be claimed as God's own -- even the words applying to salvation must be scrutinized and conditioned by the context in which they were spoken and the context in which they are now heard.  Such is the legacy of modern Biblical hermeneutics in which the Jesus of history and the Christ of Scripture do not meet and the words of God and man are likewise a complex and twisted mess of invention, legend, myth, and truth.  In the modern era it all fits.  After all, the individual is the supreme arbiter of what real as well as what is true -- even though that judgment is never more than one person wide or one moment deep.  Such is the logic behind those who find accommodation between what Scripture clearly condemns and modern cultural values and judgments.  God seems to be the loser in this but, the sad reality is, we are the poorer for it.  We are the losers -- all of us and the cause of the Gospel itself.  Mess with the Word of God and you mess with salvation.  Period.