Is God saying something different?

Challenging the critics who believe God did not really say what the Church believes he said

The Critical Task: Engaging in Dialogue
* Elements of this either implicit or explicit in some of the constructive account
* Discern wider and deeper theological, moral and pastoral implications of alternative approach to the issue
* Suggest two frameworks/paradigms
* Highlight and explain 9 different questions

Two Paradigms
‘Traditionalist'
* Sexual beings: Male and Female is key
* Sexual relationships: Created institution of marriage is key
* Sexual activity: Procreation an important good
* Sexual ethic: Marriage or abstinent singleness/celibacy

‘Revisionist'
*Sexual beings: Personal sexuality is key
*Sexual relationships: Qualities of personal relationship is key
*Sexual activity: Privileges intimacy, bonding and pleasure
*Sexual ethic: Commend other form(s) of sexual relationship than marriage

Challenge 1: How to explain biblical teaching?
* Robert Gagnon - "The Bible and Homosexual Practice"
* "At the moment, the traditional understanding of these passages remains the most convincing one in the minds of most biblical scholars" (CofE House of Bishops)

Challenge 2: Is Scripture or experience ultimate authority?
‘There is a common view among us that we and the Church need to trust and work from our current human experience in the sexual field, in the light of our understanding of the Christian tradition...This inclusive approach to current manifestations of new patterns of intimacy and visible sexual lifestyles in the West implies a belief in the continuing revelation of sexual truth by the Holy Spirit' (Changing Attitude)

Challenge 3: How much do we know about orientation?
"Much of the argument of this book suggests that we are not better off in terms of justifying our metaphysical and scientific views about sexual orientation and sexual desires than the Zomnians are in justifying their views about sleep positions and the dispositions that underlie them. Our confidence that we have advanced a great deal in our understanding of sexual orientation compared to Aristophanes and his fellow celebrants in The Symposium is premature..." (Edward Stein)

Challenge 4: What is alternative to marriage and singleness?
* Blessing whatever Christians do?
* Agreed structure and moral framework?
* Friendship? (Vasey, Stuart)
* Covenant? (Jeffrey John)
* Marriage? (Eugene Rogers)

Challenge 5: What follows if accept same-sex marriage?
* Biblical witness is to male and female
* Removes union of those created as other
* Makes procreation an incidental rather than essential feature of marriage
* Bodily sexual differentiation of humankind is considered to be a matter that has no moral significance.
* Effect on marital and nuptial imagery in Scripture and the significance of this in revealing the character of God and His purpose in relation to humanity.

Challenge 6: What is understanding of sex and sexual ethic?
‘All friendships probably use erotic energy. Whether or not they include sexual expression is a matter for the discretion of those concerned, based on the complex of considerations we outline below - particularly balancing the destructiveness of sexual jealousy against the enriching potential of variety' (Changing Attitude)

Challenge 7: What is being said about desire and sin?
* Are strong existing desires a sign of goodness? What about sin and the Fall? (Zahl)
* What effect for those who continue to see same-sex desire as sign of human fallenness and a temptation to resist if church sanctifies/blesses same-sex relationships?

Challenge 8: What other exceptions/revisions to norms?
* "People who in so far as they know themselves, their loves, their sexual desires and their intimate relationships, believe that they are not fitted for marriage to someone of the opposite sex"
* What about permanence (those insecure and unable to commit) and exclusivity (those with strong sexual appetites)?
* Varieties of patterns of desire and life that make marriage or singleness difficult to fulfil.

Challenge 9: How different are we if we experience homosexual attraction?
* Should the church recognise some humans are, in a deep ontological sense, homosexual?
* Are some people, by God's intention, inherently fitted not for marriage but for another form of intimate exclusive relationship?
* Can we offer marriage in the same way to anyone and everyone as a good gift of God?
* Are we not really married if it transpires we are really homosexual?

Summary
* Real power - personally, pastorally, socially, politically - of challenges that church must change
* BUT what about theologically and biblically?
* Traditional stance has strong roots in Scripture which alternative lacks
* Alteration of stance raises major theological and ethical questions which rarely addressed by ‘revisionists'