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Re: Wheeler, Loudon (Dec. 8/15, 2008), Capetz, Edwards (Jan. 26/Feb. 2, 2009), Quotable quote (Feb. 16, 2009), and Barron series (Nov. 10, 17, 24, 2008)
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Letters to the Editor
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Written by The Presbyterian Outlook
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Wednesday, 01 April 2009 20:51 |
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Presbyterian missionaries to Iran began language study with the Gospel of John so those long-ago-chronicled verses come naturally to mind.
In those verses Jesus gives eminently meaningful guidance about many things, including human sexuality. John 1:1-3, 10, and 14, ( KJV) tell us, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. … He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.
C. H. Dodd writes in The Parables of the Kingdom (Scribner's Sons 1935) p 22, "The Kingdom of God is intrinsically like the processes of nature and the daily life of men. …" There is an "inward affinity between the natural order and the spiritual order." Jesus' parables, including Matthew 13:47-56 (dragnet), 18:12-14 (lost sheep), and 25:31-46 (judgment at Christ's return), (all KJV) reflect a creation (that) is whole and complete, without incongruity or dissonance; a natural order (that) accords harmoniously with the spiritual order. Matthew 7:29 (KJV) reports, For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. He taught as the Creator, the Master of the House, knowing perfectly the landscape and his listeners.
Luke 24:13-35 (KJV) describes Cleopas and his companion where Jesus was known to them in the breaking of bread. According to 1 Corinthians 10:16 (KJV) participation in Holy Communion gathers us at the table of Jesus' last supper with his disciples. The "Song of Solomon" was understood by Origen, Jerome, and Augustine as an allegory in which Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride of Christ, as John the Baptist, John 3:29 (KJV) infers. Ephesians 5:22-33 (KJV), and Revelation 19:9, 21:2 and 9, and 22:17 (KJV) speak of that "inward affinity" encompassing the human sexuality of the "Song of Solomon" and the spirituality of the Bride of Christ; reflecting a bountifully fruitful condition common to both the natural and the spiritual orders.
Lehman Strauss, Galatians and Ephesians (Loizeaux Brothers, 1957) p. 207, referring to Ephesians 5:22-33 (KJV), writes, "So sacred is the marriage union between a husband and wife that Paul uses it as a fit symbol of the blessed relation between Christ and His Church."
In this Creation, whole and complete, without incongruity or dissonance, each sex, isolated from the other in a homosexual relationship, cannot complement the other sex, cannot make one flesh, cannot be fruitful in either the natural or the spiritual order; thus construing homosexuality a misperception of the created order as given by Jesus in Matthew 19:4 (KJV): Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female…
Although assured that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39 (KJV)), full credence and obedience to our Lord's Word should give pause to those who support ordained leadership (who favor) a lifestyle (that) is incongruous and dissonant with the created order as that order is declared by the Master of the House.
J. Richard Irvine, elder
Pine, Ariz.
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