I believe true homosexuality is an inherited trait. In other words, God's creation. I have a real hard time believing God would create something to be damned. Not because I question the sovereignty of God, but because of the character of God as I know it.

And before I get the "Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated", Esau ended up being blessed by God also. God just picked Jacob to lead Israel.

fat girlfriend said:

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Kids are born with all kinds of inherited traits that are part of fallen creation. Some are born who are physiologically impotent. Some are born with cerebral palsy, or blind, or deaf, or with autism.

The person who is born with a immutable sexual preference for someone of the same gender isn't born to be damned. We aren'rt defined by our sexuality, or our physical limitations.

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As the parent of a special needs kid, I agree. I have always thought that my daughter should be a means of glorifying God despite her supposed handicaps. Never drove and got her Masters walking to class.

Same way with homosexuals. My only problem is that some seem to base their identity completely on their sexual orientation which is sad and leads to an unfulfilling life imho.

Dogma is not faith, and it's not mental gymnastics. There is a very simple difference between what one believes and has experienced and what one is able to express in words. They are not the same, any more than a picture of you is you.

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I'll say the same thing in a different way. It is a principle that earlier saints are not judged by later conflicts. Otherwise Cyprian, for instance, would be judged a few hundred years later as a Donatist instead of a saint. Similar examples abound. So at some point, the faith went from accepting and celebrating someone like Cyprian to condemning him. And yet you would claim that nothing at all had changed about the faith during that time. That makes no sense to me.

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It makes no sense because you're basing this off of what I see as a flawed premise. If you say that dogma is faith, then of course this is your conclusion. But dogma is not faith. It represents a reality, its an icon of it.

We celebrate St Cyprian as a saint, we read his writings, precisely because he experienced this reality. We know he experienced the reality as witnessed by his words and life. How can you say he is condemned?

If the ability to give an exact exposition of our beliefs, error-free, is the same thing as having faith, we are all of us very much in trouble.

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The most tangible expressions of the Hebrew worship (aside from the Temple) have been always been circumcision, the dietary laws, the Sabbath, and the Feast days. the Orthodox keep none of these, so I really don't see how you can argue that the worship is the same as it was at Pentecost. I'm not making a value judgement on the change, but there was clearly a change.

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Forgive, but circumcision, dietary laws, and the Sabbath aren't worship. They're praxis, I'd say. But we have both scriptural and historical witness that these were never extended to the gentile converts, so this praxis is not part of the teaching of the Apostles as I outlined above. St Paul told his spiritual children to not associate with those who were not living in accordance with the tradition he passed on to them. So clearly the praxis, the tradition of the Apostles, was never a 1:1 relationship with the praxis of the Hebrews.

And, on the contrary, the Orthodox keep all the feasts - specifically, we keep the calendar with the spiritual fulfillment of the feasts, which like everything else in the OT were shadows and pointers to the realities which are fulfilled in Christ Jesus. And this is the way to understand the rest.

If you want to say there was a change from the practice of the Jews to the practice of the Christians, I agree. And this change was brought about and embodied by the Lord Himself. But if you say there was a change from the teaching of the Apostles to the life and practice of the Church today, I do not agree. To say that makes the promises of scripture lies, and denies the active role of the Spirit.

Sarcastiquotes aren't really beneficial here.

I was pretty clear from the get-go what I meant by innovation - departing from the teaching of the Apostles. I said there is no innovation in the faith, because we hold the same beliefs they did, and we hold to the same teachings and traditions they deposited with us.

Explaining something is not innovation. You can explain something over and over again without saying anything new. You want to say that because new / innovative ways of talking about the faith happened, that there's change. That's simply not true, and it's moving the goalposts.

Faith is not dogma. This seems to be fairly straightforward. A person can believe something and be wholly incapable of expressing that belief. The explanation of a thing is not the thing itself.

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Synagogue worship only started during the first Diaspora. Prior to that all, all Jewish worship was Temple worship or the "praxis" of following the Torah laws. Not eating pork is as much worship as singing a hymn or reading a psalm. This is a consistent Jewish opinion from the oldest commentaries we have all the way until now. So if you don't believe that, then something changed and is new. Yes, Christianity changed from Judaism. But that didn't happen wholesale on Pentecost. Things continued to gradually change over a very long amount of time. We can easily see this by comparing places that changed more quickly with places that changed more slowly. But there was continued change in worship and dogma and praxis and liturgy and faith from the day of Pentecost and continuing for at least many decades. I'd argue it never stopped, but I'm not married to that point.

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Worship and praxis are not the same thing. In scriptural terms, worship is fundamentally linked to sacrifice as well as bowing down and prostrating oneself. Praxis is the mode of living, and includes how, when, where you worship. Praxis is how you carry out what you believe. People worshipped God before circumcision. People worshipped God outside of Hebrew custom, practice, and the Law. Therefore worship of God is not the same thing as the entirety of the way the Hebrews lived. Their worship is not the same as their entire way of life, and customs. I am not really interested in how some unspecified Jewish people would say they worship. How does the Holy Scripture speak of these things? How has the Church taught these things?

If not eating pork is worship, then you can worship anywhere. But that's not how the Lord sees it (John 4:21) and thats not how the scriptures see it (2 Chron 32:12, or 2 Kings 18:22 - "you shall worship in Jerusalem" for example). The Law and Scriptures make a distinction between serving and worshipping (Deuteronomy 5:9, 8:19, Joshua 23:7, Judges 2:19 etc).

The world changed. You cannot be a Jew, today, the way the Jews in the first century were. I don't think it is too bold to say that Judaism as practiced by the Lord in His life here is fundamentally lost and gone, destroyed. It no longer exists, and no one practices that religion. It is impossible. What is practiced today is that synagogue worship you describe.

Now, I agree that details of practice or praxis, worship, and so on, these change. We use different languages, and therefore words, the specifics of the Liturgy evolved over time - multiple liturgies were edited and combined, new liturgies were written. Obviously our daily lives today are vastly different than even people a hundred years ago. But this is an empty kind of argument. The faith was passed down once. The truth was passed down once. Therefore the teaching of Christ, through the Apostles, abides. Either that or scripture is a lie.

I'm not arguing against a static ideal. That would be silly. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm arguing that we hold the same beliefs as the Apostles, and we hold to the same teachings and traditions they deposited with us.

dermdoc said:

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I believe true homosexuality is an inherited trait. In other words, God's creation. I have a real hard time believing God would create something to be damned. Not because I question the sovereignty of God, but because of the character of God as I know it.

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This. Why would God create people a certain way and expect them to ignore that trait? People commit suicide because they live a lie and it torments them because they are led to believe being homosexual is morally wrong. God isn't cruel enough to do this to people.

I am not advocating for furthering of homosexuality in the church and am extremely socially conservative.

I just think sometimes we do not extend mercy as we should.

dermdoc said:

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I am not advocating for furthering of homosexuality in the church and am extremely socially conservative.

I just think sometimes we do not extend mercy as we should.

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Agreed, we are called to love no matter what.

It's tough when it comes to this subject because when identity is so wrapped up in it you are left with a giant elephant in the room and nobody knows what to do.

Praxis to me would be something like the celibate priesthood or fish on Fridays. Good ideas done for practical reasons, but whose primary purpose is not to please God

This is not correct. Both are making a sacrifice to offer to God. They are not offered to self.

You can't divorce dogma from faith. But they aren't the same thing. Dogmas are assertions, they are either false or they are not.

Dogmas are not formed on a vacuum and while St Luke perhaps does not use the formula of Chalcedon (which itself is a series of negations vs positive affirmations) he clearly shows Jesus as God and Man, human and divine.

By your reckoning it would be fine to be Arian asserting there was a time when He was not. Or to disbelieve the divinity of the Spirit. Or any other heresies - you can't have two mutually exclusive dogmas being taught and both be true and both be from the same source of Truth.

Has this been handled poorly in history? Yes, humans suck sometimes. But at the same time we are instructed - commanded! - to break communion and interaction with those who follow a different gospel or teaching, or who do not live in the life we were instructed to follow by the Apostles. You can't get around that. It is explicit in the scriptures.

Your last two paragraphs are your opinions. That's not what worship means in the scriptures, it isn't how the word is used, and it isn't how the terms have been understood in the Church. If you want to use them that way, by all means, but you're not going to fix any confusion those personal definitions cause. And it won't get fixed if clarity about how words are used exasperates you.

Also regarding heresies and persecution. God will judge between, and show approval - St Paul teaches this. The response to persecution for belief is to praise God as we see in Acts 4:24. I excuse or condone no violence or mistreating of anyone. But God will use all things for good, and for the continuation and spread of the Gospel, and for the teaching of truth, and for the protection of the Church, His people. The Faithful will be known by their fruit. Other than that all we can do is witness to what we have seen and heard ourselves.

jrico2727 said:

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Praxis to me would be something like the celibate priesthood or fish on Fridays. Good ideas done for practical reasons, but whose primary purpose is not to please God

This is not correct. Both are making a sacrifice to offer to God. They are not offered to self.

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Well priest celibacy was enacted to stop inheritance claims regarding church property. I had it in my head from somewhere that Rome allowed fish on fast days to help struggling fishermen, but I can't find where I ran across that now. The idea being that these are practical issues of church administration and not of worship. Similar to Pauls exhortations for women to be silent in church or to avoid jewelry. It probably made a lot of practical sense in that congregation, but that doesn't mean it is an act of worship.

Jesus was Celibate, St. Paul was celibate, Bishops have always been celibate the practice of all priests being celibate is a later discipline but celibacy has always been part of Christianity. It is giving everything for the Kingdom. Fish is not considered meat by the Church and is certainly less filling than other proteins. Currently all Catholics should make a sacrifice of self on Friday to honor the sacrifice on the day that Christ died for us. Meat has been the traditional sacrifice to forgo eating flesh to honor the flesh that was shed for us. Nowhere in that practice was it said that you have to eat fish, but most people do. These are acts of devotion of the Lord and the sacrifice he made for us. I am not saying the worldly benefits don't exist, but they are not the reason for the devotions.

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Your last two paragraphs are your opinions. That's not what worship means in the scriptures, it isn't how the word is used, and it isn't how the terms have been understood in the Church.

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Not really sure what you're talking about in regards to the definition of worship. The Hebrew idea of worship came first, and it is action-oriented. The entire language and culture is action-oriented, and it was revolutionary when Jesus explained that thoughts and desires could also be sinful. It was a completely foreign concept. Torah observance is the fundamental worship of Judaism. Such that Gentiles who follow Torah were called God-fearers, even though they were never allowed to formally participate in Temple sacrifices. In Israel people spent all year on their family and tribal land and only assembled on the High Holy days. The Scriptures were sometimes only read every 7 years. But they were defnitely worshipping God all the time. Like I said, you can go all the way back to the Mishnah (the oldest Old Testament commentary in existence) and see that clearly.

I'll go back to the original point, because I'm not trying to argue over heresies. The simple fact that the Donatists, Arians, Nestorians, Orthodox, Copts, Monotheletists, Monophysites, and Catholics can all claim to be the true faith handled down faithfully in an unbroken chain from the Apostles while all being different and disagreeing with the other tells me either one of two things. Either one is right and all the rest are wrong. Or something changed later on that caused these groups to split and divide from the root of the faith. I'd go with option B, especially when we see evidence of a wide variety of views in the early church that later would have been grouped into these separate boxes.

jrico2727 said:

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Jesus was Celibate, St. Paul was celibate, Bishops have always been celibate the practice of all priests being celibate is a later discipline but celibacy has always been part of Christianity. It is giving everything for the Kingdom. Fish is not considered meat by the Church and is certainly less filling than other proteins. Currently all Catholics should make a sacrifice of self on Friday to honor the sacrifice on the day that Christ died for us. Meat has been the traditional sacrifice to forgo eating flesh to honor the flesh that was shed for us. Nowhere in that practice was it said that you have to eat fish, but most people do. These are acts of devotion of the Lord and the sacrifice he made for us. I am not saying the worldly benefits don't exist, but they are not the reason for the devotions.

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Celibacy has a long and storied history in Christianity. Not trying to argue that. Priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church was 100% enacted due to political and practical considerations. There was a huge issue with monarchs appointing clergy and then those clergy trying to pass church property to their children. It's not exactly secret

If it has always been a practice it is incorrect to say it's 100% because of property. Is that the reason for some of it sure, but far from 100%.

So let's clarify that the top-down church-wide requirement for celibacy enacted in the Middle Ages was done for those reasons. It was optional prior

So if this is the case why do we not hear of the Eastern Rites having property right issues with their married clergy?

jrico2727 said:

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So if this is the case why do we not hear of the Eastern Rites having property right issues with their married clergy?

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Half joking answer - there are few property rights to begin with in predominantly Eastern Rite countries.

Short version: in the West the Roman Empire fractured into dozens of smaller kingdoms. These kingdoms eventually started ordaining their own clergy and giving out Church land when Rome was either too weak or too divided to do anything about it. These clergy were nearly pure political appointments similar to other lords who enjoyed the titles and revenue from those lands. They had family and children and those children sued in the kingdom to get some or all of their father's church lands or revenue. This was often solved by appointing the children to the same clergy position as their parents, but sometimes kingdoms would carve off a piece of church land for the deceased's family and give the rest to the new clergy appointee. It didn't take long before church lands were being slowly taken away and reabsorbed by kings by doing this, whether that was their true intention or not. So the Church had to do something, and at the time they didn't have the political or military power to openly fight a lot of these kinds. So they changed to rule to prevent children of clergy from inheriting and later made clergy celibacy mandatory. This gave them more power to confirm or remove clergy appointed by kings, and it made the offices a lot less desirable to secular politicians.

In the East, the Churches were either under Byzantine control or Muslim control. Obviously the Churches under Muslim control did not own vast amounts of resources and wealth. So there wasn't really any monetary motivation to become clergy. In Byzantium you had the opposite situation of that in the West. Byzantium was the quintessential Christian Empire, and the Church was privileged about pretty much everyone. Church lands, holdings, and wealth constantly grew. Churches owned whole villages and nearly whole provinces and had major stakes in many industries. It got so bad the the tax exemption of the Church nearly bankrupted the Empire. In this situation there was plenty to go around. Children of clergy found jobs working in secular industries controlled by the church or became clergy themselves. The Byzantine Emperors also rarely ever treated Church offices like any other feudal office. So it just never became an issue

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This. Why would God create people a certain way and expect them to ignore that trait? People commit suicide because they live a lie and it torments them because they are led to believe being homosexual is morally wrong. God isn't cruel enough to do this to people.

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God gave Adam and Eve paradise yet planted a single tree in the middle of the Garden and said, if you eat, you will surely die. The fruit was pleasant to the eye, the desire was a good God given desire, and the man had freedom to make a choice. Use this good God given desire to honor God or rebel. God giving man freedom and paradise is not the definition of evil.

As a heterosexual married male, if I applied the logic in your statement to my opposite sex attraction I could justify infidelity with my spouse (why would God create me to be attracted to so many females and expect me to ignore that trait?) I could apply selfishness and indulge in my desires or make a sacrifice to honor God and my spouse and prevent from breaking up my family. Sin, no matter what the justification or desire has consequences.

No matter how strong the desire for homosexual attraction or heterosexual attraction, when we make the choice to have sex in a manner contrary to the boundaries God placed around sex, then it is sin. It sucks to repress strong desires but that is the choice in front of us, "do what's right in our own eyes or do what's right in God's eyes"

I appreciate the response. And I am not trying to say there is not any truth to your assertion, but to say the celibate priesthood, especially all priests being celibate all due to a materialistic modern approach is false. There had been a discussion and suggestions of a all celibate priesthood before it was made discipline. Certainly inheritance issues could have tipped the scale but it wasn't the only deciding factor.

Yeah, I am of the opinion that Ephesus and Chalcedon were more or less linguistic misunderstandings. But my opinion doesn't really matter much. I *do* think that is borne out a bit by the comparative similarities between those mentioned. Rome is the standout exception, in my eyes.

Zobel said:

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Yeah, I am of the opinion that Ephesus and Chalcedon were more or less linguistic misunderstandings. But my opinion doesn't really matter much. I *do* think that is borne out a bit by the comparative similarities between those mentioned. Rome is the standout exception, in my eyes.

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With you on Chalcedon. Why do you say that about Ephesus?

The Church of the East refused to condemn Nestorius. Not really sure why, and it isn't clear that they even necessarily agreed with him. The council is fine, the resulting schism was confusing. The fact that the Roman Empire was at war with Persia didn't help.

If it helps, I finding most the big schisms confusing

May the Lord be with you, Zobel.
Good stuff.

dermdoc said:

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I believe true homosexuality is an inherited trait.

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This is impossible because "true" homosexuals cannot procreate.

I've been told that meth is a big contributor to creating homosexuals.