In Reply to: Re: Simplicity isn't easy posted by Farmer on April 29, 2010 at 03:23:32:
OT abomination verses
the very often usage of the word makes it highly...highly uncertain to me...that it talks in
Leviticus 18:22 KJV
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
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Leviticus 20:13 KJV
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death ; their blood shall be upon them.
about the pagan influences and pagan cult practices at all!!!...if the interpretation serves there: as a p r o b e of right usage (like in math for a set variable)...then it should make sense at least in the same book Leviticus....it doesn't to me!!! ....could you explain CB??????
some NT abomination verses:
Luke 16:15 KJV
And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
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Revelation 21:27 KJV
And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth , neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.
Some Christians believe that marriage is the union of two people[63] and that homosexual behavior is not inherently sinful.[64]
In the 20th century, theologians like Karl Barth, Jürgen Moltmann, Hans Küng, John Robinson, Bishop David Jenkins, Don Cupitt and Bishop Jack Spong challenged traditional theological positions and understandings of the Bible; following these developments some have suggested that passages have been mistranslated or that they do not refer to what we understand as "homosexuality."[70] Clay Witt, a minister in the Metropolitan Community Church, explains how theologians and commentators like John Shelby Spong, George Edwards and Michael England interpret injunctions against certain sexual acts as being originally intended as a means of distinguishing religious worship between Abrahamic and the surrounding pagan faiths, within which homosexual acts featured as part of idolatrous religious practices: "England argues that these prohibitions should be seen as being directed against sexual practices of fertility cult worship. As with the earlier reference from Strong’s, he notes that the word 'abomination' used here is directly related to idolatry and idolatrous practices throughout the Hebrew Testament. Edwards makes a similar suggestion, observing that 'the context of the two prohibition in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 suggest that what is opposed is not same-sex activity outside the cult, as in the modern secular sense, but within the cult identified as Canaanite'".[71]
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Relative to sex, Gnosticism took two forms. One strand emphasized total sexual license, endless sexual experimentation. Claiming the freedom of the Gospel, these Gnostics indulged in adultery, homosexuality, and ritualistic fornication. The Church Father Clement described abuse of the eucharist by the Gnostics in the church of Alexandria:
There are some who call Aphrodite Pandemos [physical love] a mystical communion….[T]hey have impiously called by the name of communion any common sexual intercourse….These thrice-wretched men treat carnal and sexual intercourse as a sacred religious mystery, and think that it will bring them to the Kingdom of God.[5]
Other Gnostics of this sort taught that “marrying and bearing [children] are from Satan”; that sexual intercourse by “spiritual men,” in and of itself, would hasten the coming of the Pleroma, or the fullness of the divine hierarchy of the eons; and that the true believer should have every possible sexual experience.
In marked contrast to this polymorphous perversity, the other Gnostic strand totally rejected sexuality. Tatian, for example, led a faction called the Encratites, or “the self-controlled.” They saw marriage as corruption and fornication, and demanded lifelong abstinence. In the heretical Gospel According to the Egyptians, Salome asks: “How long shall men die?” Jesus is said to answer: “As long as you women bear children.” From this, these Gnostics concluded that they could defeat death by ceasing procreation. They also celebrated androgyny, since a being without sexual identity could obviously not be procreative. The heretical Gospel of Thomas has Jesus saying: “Every woman who makes herself male enters the Kingdom of Heaven.” The evil of the world denied the bearing of children; the celibate alone would enjoy the Kingdom of God.
Considering these two Gnostic forms, historian John Noonan summarizes:
The whole thrust of the antinomian [Gnostic] current was to devalue marriage, to deprive marital relations of any particular purpose, and to value sexual intercourse as experience [alone].[6]
Within the broad context of a Roman Civilization sliding into family breakdown and sexual hedonism, the young Christian church faced as well this infiltration of life-denying, socially destructive ideas into its own ranks. For Christian leaders, the great question became: Just what is marriage for?
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