“A DEVOUT UNCERTAINTY”: WHAT IS THE WILL OF GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST TODAY? I would not present this section of my discussion of homosexuality to a workshop at the Annual Gathering of CBF, because a panel discussion would occur with different Baptist voices representing all four of these broad viewpoints. However, I am not in [...]

Option 4. Variation in God’s Design for Creation:  “Welcoming and Celebrating!” The union of a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage constitutes the normative purpose of God for humanity in the goodness of creation.  The goal in the relationship of male and female is the intensifying oneness of marriage.  Children are the [...]

Option 3.  Homosexuality ‘In the Shadow of Human Fallenness’:  “Accommodation” It has become increasingly clear that the homosexual orientation is not essentially a choice or an environmental production: It is more than an orientation because it roots in the personhood of the homosexual male or female. Human “genetics” not only accounts for the sexual distinction [...]

Option 2. Deviation from God’s Intention in Creation: “Welcoming but Not Affirming” The second option shifts the argument by distinguishing between homosexual behavior and homosexual persons. The advocates of this viewpoint generally accept the biblical warrants against homosexual activity characteristic of church tradition, but it does not reject homosexual persons as “perverts.” “Welcoming but not [...]

Option 1. The Rejection of God’s Design for Creation: Homosexuality as a “Perversion’- The proponents of this historic but fundamentally negative understanding of homosexuality demonstrate the complete rejection of homosexual activity as well as the homosexual person, because a person is bound together with and cannot be distinguished from his or her behavior. Since God’s [...]

Fifteen or sixteen months ago I sent a workshop proposal on “Homosexuality and the Church” to Bo Prosser and Dan Vestal, and I attempted to explain the rationale behind the proposal. Homosexuality is the single most significant, emotional, and divisive issues in the United States today, and Baptists are talking about it along with everyone [...]