Just realized that I did an unintentional slam… “For Christians (and nobody else would … debate the issue)” was intended to get into a discussion of New Testament revelation, but I never overtly said that, although it was implicit in the contents of my post. Obviously, any Jew would have opinions on the inspiration of his Bible (our O.T.) and presumably anyone else with a Book (Koran, Granth, etc.) would likely do so as well with reference to their own.
**
True. However, considering the fact that my parents are within the population of humans as a whole (whom I’m commanded to love as myself anyway) and they are singled out for honor, does that not mean that I have an obligation to them greater than I do to any other person? After all, if honoring my father and mother simply falls under “love your neighbor…” then why the seperate commandment. That being so, since the commandment to honor your parents is not among the six you mentioned, does that mean that I owe my parents no more honor than I owe anyone else?
**
Thank you for the compliment. 
In what way am I nitpicking? You stated that there were hard and fast rules as to which commandments Christians still keep. I simply asked if the few examples I gave then no longer apply to Christians since they are not among the six you mentioned. That’s a legitimate question.
Zev Steinhardt
Zev,
You seem to be getting a little too detail-oriented in this discussion. The point seems to be that if you love God, then you want to do what pleases God. Obviously it pleases God for you to honor your parents, so I do so. It obviously would displease God for me to worship babylonian gods or to practice witchcraft, so I do not.
It seems to me (if I’m wrong, it’s from ignorance, not desire to offend) that the Torah is comprised of two types of laws: Moral, and Ceremonial. The Moral law is for everybody, and the Ceremonial is specifically and explicitly for the Jews, in order to make them unique and distinct from the other cultures in the world.
I feel that I, along with all Christians, am bound by the Moral law. If I love MY God, then I will not worship another god because it would be offensive and detestable to Him. If I love my fellow man as myself, then I will not murder him, because I would not murder myself.
I do not feel bound by the Ceremonial law for two reasons: 1. It is specifically for the Jews, and I am not a Jew; and 2. the passage JerseyDiamond quoted specifically states that as a Gentile believer, I should not be burdened with the Mosaic law (beyond the four requirements above) when even the Jews have not been able to bear it.
And if that’s not enough, Jesus himself superseded some of the ceremonial laws:
“Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man” [Matthew 15:11]
“And [Jesus] said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” [Mark 2:27]
Anyway, I’ve gotten more than sidetracked enough. The point is that if you love God, you will do what pleases him, and if you love your neighbor as yourself, you will do good to him and not do him harm. Use common sense.
[/quote]
And, regarding the OP, Who, exactly, “goes after” homosexuals? Believing something is wrong does not mean hunting down people who do it with pitchforks and torches.
If you want the official reason why fundamentalist Christians think Levitical law still applies to homosexuality but not to shaving or wearing polyester blend clothes, then I think what Polycarp said is correct: a distinction is drawn between “ritual” laws and “moral” laws. Christ’s New Covenant abrogates the ritual law, but not the moral law. (And no, I don’t know how you reconcile that with Christ’s words that he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it). For reasons not very clear to me, the homosexuality ban is considered part of the moral law, while shaving & stuff is part of the ritual law. Maybe it has something to do with Paul’s warning against “sexual immorality.”
But I don’t think the official reason is the whole story. Nor do I think the real reason is just sadistic joy in persecuting people different from oneself; for example, in contrast to the caricatured image of the racist fundamentalist that constantly appears here, many fundamentalists (like that rabid Bible-pounder William Lloyd Garrison, or today’s Promise Keepers) are very accepting of black people. Many are black people, like Martin Luther King, Jr. I think there is a deeper reason why fundamentalists who are tolerant and accepting of many people different from themselves are still prejudiced against gays.
I hypothesize that the real reason Christians see homosexuality as a threat is the same reason they see heterosexuality as a threat. Maximum devotion to God can only be achieved if there is no other person in your life to rival God in your affections. The strongest attraction of Christianity to the unconverted is that it tells the friendless and lonely, “There is a man named Jesus who cares about you, who loves you so much that He died for you. And He is God, and He will lift you up out of your misery and let you live with Him forever, if you only believe in Him.” A lonely person will do great things for a church that offers him or her something like this: withstand the tortures of the martyrs, crusade to far lands, build magnificent cathedrals. But if you are not friendless and lonely, if you find that feeling of caring and comfort with another human being, the whole spiel loses its attractiveness. So you can see why, for well over 1,500 years, it was considered the pinnacle of Christian piety to renounce sex and live apart from the opposite sex in full devotion to God, and for a very large part of the Christian world, it still is. A person whose earthly life is void of romance, sex, and carnal love has good reason to pray for the afterlife.
But the Church could not absolutely forbid heterosexual relations, because then the Church would cease to exist. (Some early denominations did outlaw all sex, and did vanish). So it tried as far as possible to restrict heterosexual sex to procreation, by limiting it to marriage, requiring marriage to remain within the faith, and making marriage a sacrament of the Church. Sex between them could only be procreational; fellatio, cunnilingus, and other non-procreational sex acts were forbidden. The term “sodomy” once referred to all these things, not just to anal intercourse.
To the Christians, homosexuality offers all the dangers of heterosexuality, with none of the benefits. Homosexuality has no procreational value; it offers only love, romance, and erotic pleasure. By forcing homosexuals to repress themselves, the Christian church creates the lovelessness and emptiness that Christ then rescues them from. First you create the demand, then you create the supply to meet it.
Now at this point umpteen Christians are probably surrounding me, shouting, “Our religion doesn’t work like that! We’re cool with sex! God wants husband and wife to have passionate, romantic, erotic relationships, not just procreational contracts!” Good for you; this is one atheist who’s delighted for you. But you have to realize that this is a recent development. By recognizing the legitimacy of romance, your churches are bucking a 1,900-year trend. I’m sure you can all cite chapter and verse in the Bible to prove that your newest interpretation is what God always intended. That’s one of the lovely things about the Bible, that you can find support in it for just about any interpretation you want. But even if you’re sure that today’s more permissive view of sex is what God has always intended, you have to recognize that it’s certainly not what Christians have always intended - quite the contrary! And the fundamentalists are not with you. Because, in the end, that’s what fundamentalism is all about: the desire to live as the Christians of Jerome and Augustine’s time did, or at least believe as they believed. And those early Christians, like today’s fundamentalists, had no use whatever for relationships that competed with the Church’s business of offering physical and spiritual comfort without also perpetuating the Church.
Flymaster wrote:
… which explains the current war on second-hand smoke, too.
Ummm… last time I checked, two gay people having sex didn’t increase the chance for disease of people hanging out around them in a restaurant. But ok…
Danimal- I would like to see some cites that show that ALL of the Christian Churches were anti-homosexual for the past 1500 years. Since I know that MINE has not been, and we have been around since AD400 or so, if not earlier. Nice theory- but not backed up by the facts.
I am SOOOOOO freaking tired of folks who know very little about ALL the myriad Churches & Sects in Christianity say “All Christains beleive “XXX””. When; about the only thing ALL Christians beleive in is Jesus- and that is by definition.
I didn’t mean to have so much of this thread devoted to my comment; after each of my posts I hoped that it would be the last, just as I hope this post will put the matter to rest. Seven (hopefully) last points:
Point number one: My comment was not about fundamentalists’ beliefs, but about what the implicitations **as I see them ** of their beliefs are.
Point number two: When I said that they basically believe that Paul is God, that meant that their beliefs about Paul come close to (but do not reach) my criteria for being God.
Point number three: By saying that the claim in point number two is false, you are implying that my criteria for being God are incorrect.
Point number four: How any times have I, in reference to your beliefs as to what is God, said you “have no clue as to where you’re wrong” are “quite wrong on this”, and that I find you “inciteful”?
Point number five: You say that you find my posts to not make sense, but is that really surprising? Can you explain your feelings about God without sounding a bit silly, without ever not quite being able to say what you mean? Do you really believe that without the paradigms that the Western world shares, your beliefs would not sound as silly to the non-Christian as mine do to you? It is very easy in these sorts of situations to forget that what one is hearing is not the other person’s thoughts, but the mangled remains of those thoughts after they have been shoe-horned into constraints of the English language. Do I believe that if Paul repeated God’s words, he must have been God? No, definitely not. Can I explain the difference between that and what I do believe? From the reception of my previous posts, obviously not.
Point number six: There is nooooooo point number six.
Point number seven: I don’t believe that I am immune from the illusion that another’s words are truly their thoughts. If you believe that I am making this mistake, please (politely) try to explain how my perception of your thoughts differs from your actual thoughts. I hope that you have learned something from this discussion. I hope that I have learned something from this discussion.
There’s an OP? 
Well, there’s always the stalwart Fred Phelps - not exactly pitchforks, but it would surprise me to see him have a torch in hand (and let’s face it, picketing Matthew Shepard’s funeral was not a Christian thing to do). And there are a lot of preachers out there who preach fire and brimstone specifically at the “evils” of homosexuality being the downfall of American society. But let’s not fool ourselves - there are plenty of “good Christians” who have gone out and harassed, beat up, and/or killed gay men and lesbians simply because that’s what they were taught. They might not be Fundamentalist, but they still consider themselves right with Jesus. So although there may not be a Fundamentalist Christian Militia, there are plenty of people influenced by their teachings.
And let’s not even get into our friends in the KKK… <shudder>
Esprix
I’m not Zev, but I can try. You’re right, the point is, if you love G-d, you want to do what pleases G-d. But, how do you know what pleases G-d? It’s not obvious that He would be displeased by you worshiping Babylonian gods or practicing witchcraft…there have been religions that have believed that that was ok. The reason we know it’s wrong is because we’ve been told it was.
I don’t know if moral and ceremonial law is the best way to divide Torah. Any time you do a mitzvot, that’s a moral act. What makes Jews distinct from other cultures in the world is that they were given the Torah at Sinai, and are obligated to follow it. Everyone has to follow the Noachide laws (The laws given to Noah after the flood).
I did not say anywhere in my essay that “all” Christians believed anything. Where I used the term “Christians” you may take me as meaning the overwhelming majority of Christians. Between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, one accounts for well over 90% of Christians that lived between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Reformation. If you want evidence that the Eastern Orthodox Church was anti-homosexual, you may look up the Code of Justinian in Will and Ariel Durant’s The Age of Faith. Evidence as to the Roman Catholic Church’s anti-homosexual stance may be found at religioustolerance.org., or you may also consult the Durants’ The Renaissance and observe the Inquisition’s investigation of Leonardo da Vinci and some male friends of his on charges of homosexuality.
I myself would like to see some cites from you to back up the statement that the Celtic Church has not been anti-homosexual (unless I misunderstood your post to Polycarp, that is the denomination to which you belong). In the first place, my understanding was that the Celtic Church of c. 400 A.D. was formally dissolved and integrated into the Roman Catholic Church at the Synod of Whitby (see C. Warren Hollister, The Making of England), so any claim to continuity between the modern Celtic Church you belong to and the early medieval Celtic Church is not clear to me. In the second place, both the [http://www.celtchristian.net/acc/acc_faq.htm"]](
[url) Anamchara Celtic Church and the [Holy Celtic Church](http://celticsynod.org/article8.htm) today declare homosexuality to be a sin. I have not been able to locate information from any other chapter or subdivision of the Celtic Church that takes a contrary view, nor could I find any information on the early medieval Celtic Church’s position. Hollister mentions that the chief points of controversy between the medieval Celtic Christians and their Catholic counterparts were the shape of the monk’s tonsure and the calculation of the date of Easter; he does not mention any doctrinal difference over homosexuality or indeed any aspect of Christianity’s strict sexual moral code.
I recognize your statement that your church is not anti-homosexual may have only referred to most of your church, just as my statement about Christians only applied to most Christians, but right now the only evidence I have about the Celtic Church is that it is officially anti-gay.
These cites, except the websites, are from memory; my apologies for not including page numbers.
super_head wrote:
It does if they have really really messy sex.
Ok, well, you do not seem to really want a reaction to this post, but I think I know where there ended up being a conflict, and a misunderstanding of sorts. I think, in general, those reacting to your posts did not think that you were presenting you’re personal interpretation of the meaning of Paul’s divine inspiration and its implications for Christian faith. So this seems to be where we went wrong in terms of building tension in this discussion.
Having said this, I would like to address what you are saying, and how, while I recognize what it is - and therefore is not truly disputable - what you are saying about Paul is disrepecting Christian faith, the same way someone this board telling you your understanding of God is wrong is disrespecting you. Before doing this, I would like to say that I am NOT Christian, I have no religious education, never go to Church, and consider myself agnostic. I have no personal invovlement in proving that Paul is divinely inspired and not divine. My point lies in a different direction.
The truth is that while your interpretation of God is valid for you, it is incorrect to use your personal interpretation of the divine in trying to discuss the nature of Christian faith and belief. Basically what I’m arguing for is a simple kind of cultural relativism wherein it is acknowledged, that in terms of understanding Christian belief, we essentially must privilege the experience of those beliefs for the believers themselves. To use your understanding of the divine is to bring in a system of classification that does not correspond to the Christian experience. An anthropologist would call this a category fallacy. In order to understand the nature of the divine for Christians and discuss their beliefs respectfully, we must enter their system of classification. You could compare it to your beliefs and say that it seems retarded to make this distinction between divine and divine inspiration, but to reject that distinction because you do not make it, assumes that your particular understanding of God has more validity than those who actually believe in this stuff. This is not something we should want to do. Perhaps their beliefs are different, but such beliefs act to order and structure their experiences in the same that ours do, and there is no real answer to what the distinction between divine and divine inspiration is. Since the discussion here is of how Christians interpret their existence, it makes sense only to use their frame of reference for the divine. To incorporate your personal understanding of this into the discussion only implies that Christians don’t understand what God is as well as you (the implicit stance that I think is what people reacted to). I’m not accusing you of doing any of these things or purpose, I am merely trying to point out how the type of argument of constructing unintentionally has these type of implications. I hope this helps.
You Sir, obviously never ate a roast beef sandwich at Reubens.
;j
Those 2 branches are fairly minor sects- I am sure that their beleifs are sincere, however. It is true that the Celtic church is by no means monolithic. My personal branch is sometimes called the Mystical Celtic Church. One of the biggest differences between the Celtic & The RC Church has been the acceptance of other faiths & ways. The Celtic Church found no sin in the following of the traditional "old ways’, such as leaving "gifts’ for the “wee folk”. The Celtic Church even canonized a Celtic Goddess- St. Bridget. In general, the church has followed the precepts of Jesus, himself- and not Paul- however, that varies by sect. Jesus never condemmed homosexuality- in fact he preached tolerance.
Altho the Celtic Church was “officially” absorbed into the RC chuch- many branches & sects, especially in Ireland & the Highlands- did not follow along. Robert the Bruce, after he was excommunicated by the RC Church- was Crowned by 2 of the Dewars of St. Fillan- one of those leftover sects.
Again- “Christianity” is such a large & very varied religion, that attributing any such beleif to it as a whole is rather specious. It is not hard to be precise- if you wanted to say that the RC & EO churches- which comprised a large % of early Christianity, beleived such & such, then you won’t get called on it.
How is it not obvious? Have you read the Bible?
Exo 20:1 And God spake all these words, saying,
Exo 20:2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Exo 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Exo 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
Exo 20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
Looks pretty clear cut to me!!
Exodus is Torah, dude.
uhmmm, it’s still part of the Bible!
What’s your point?
To JerseyDiamond:
The “point” is that Exodus is part of the law given to Jews only, so it’s not obvious that it applies to non-Jews.
But even in the NT many of the same rules stand!