In a recent interview with The Huffington Post, the 87-year-old Carter, who has taught Sunday School for decades, discussed marriage for gay couples.
When asked what the Bible says about homosexuality, the former president answered: “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things – he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.”
“I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I'm a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn't require them to.”
Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission responded to Carter's comments in statements made to LifeSiteNews.com.
“I'm not surprised that he holds that view,” Land said. “He is hopelessly confused as a theologian.”
Barber said gay sex “is listed [in the Bible] over and over again in black-and-white as sin.”
“There's a word for what Jimmy Carter is doing. That's apostasy. That's a strong word to use, but Jimmy Carter is an apostate in that he is leading the least these to sin against what Scripture clearly condemns in terms of homosexual conduct.”
“He is not just fooling himself with this,” Barber added. “Unfortunately he's using the goodwill he has developed over the years and his history as the leader of the free world to push heretical notions.”
And you Matt Barber are a liar. What Carter said is absolutely correct, Jesus never once condemned homosexuality, one could even argue quite the opposite.
I quote:
Matthew 8:5-13
2 comments:
Can I, as a mainstream, and conservative, theologian, add a comment?
It is true that Jesus never mentions homosexuality once in the Gospels, and it is inconceivable that if had expressed strong negative views that would't have been recorded.
Neither do any of the NT writers directly linked to Christ - John, Peter, James, Jude - ever touch on the subject. Nor do the writers of Acts, Hebrews and Revelation.
The only writer who does is Paul, who never met Christ.
In Romans 1 he describes people who are actually straight but who act as if they're gay as being in the wrong. Not really problematical, I'd think.
Then in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy he writes identical phrases for people who will not get into heaven: the "malakoi" and the "arsenokoites". "Malakoi" means "the soft" and is slang both for cowards who won't stand up for a belief, and for men who are grossly effeminate in manner - but not necessarily homosexual. We don't know which he meant - but Christ was critical of moral cowardice, but otherwise accepted all sorts of people.
The other word, "arsenokoites", is a problem: no-one knows for certain what it means, but it's chiefly in Anglo-Saxon countries where it's thought to mean sodomite. In German theology and in the opinion of scholars of the Greek language (notably Richmond Lattimore) it means a paedophile. Again, Jesus had strong views about them.
There is not one definite reference in the NT to homosexual people as such.
Having said that, the argument about the Centurion based on the word "pais" is, I'm sorry to say, dubious. Slaves were often used as agents or business managers or personal secretaries, and "pais" can be cover all those - it means the slave was treated as one of the family. But given that the NT plainly simply isn't interested in homosexuality, it hardly matters that the Centurion argument is somewhat weak .
If people actually do care about fidelity to Christ's gospel and the scriptures, then they need to accept that Christ and the disciples never thought the subject needed mentioning.
Even the OT references are more limited than people claim: but that would require an even longer comment.
Sorry to be so long-winded, but I hope this is some help.
I certainly welcome your comments Angus.
But I respectfully disagree with your assertion that the argument is weak, given the time period and Roman law governing it's military.
As for Paul, I think it was rather clear that God stated he changed the nature of those men and women, who were having ritualistic sexual relations with each other in the temple and were made to switch from heterosexual sex to homosexual sex.
This was meant as a punishment for their wicked behavior.
Not an indictment against homosexuality...it could have just as easily been the other way around if he was seeking to punish a homosexual.
I do agree with you however, that Jesus and the Apostles weren't concerned with sexuality, period.
Again Angus, I welcome your comments.
Perhaps we can discuss homosexual marriage in the OT sometime.
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