Hi Bowman -  I am no ascetic.... just seriously tempted to upgrade to a 5ltr V8 Aston.......  but I am taking seriously my greed, which is why I have not done it. Some excuse greed while at the same time condemning the sins of others but I hate that hypocrisy.....there is a general point from scripture which is that God is not tolerant of sin.... any sin in any of us  - someone once said 'Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect' -  but we fail,  that is why, mercifully, we have the cross .......... and as recipients of grace, Romans 6 teaches us how to respond to the grace of God - which cannot be to excuse our sin.   So, we come back to what is sin and what is not  -  if Lambeth 1.10 is wrong re what it says is  'incompatible with scripture',  then the same is not sin  -   but evangelicals might need to see clear evidence from scripture to change the mind of the Communion  

Origen....agreed, the spirit and letter of scripture do preclude my very real, natural and deep desire to buy Aston Martins.....and there are much better uses for money than buying such a car......I agree......  in the same way, we should not condone any other sin which is 'incompatible with scripture'  (the letter or the Spirit of it)

How come people feel wounded that same sex relations are error? How come no one else seems to feel wounded by the fact that lying is a sin, selfishness, greed, theft, adultery etc? In Christ, according to the Spirit one no longer lives by these things, one lives for Christ.

DavidW-- sorry to have missed this before today. The blunt answer is that we're not Buddhists, we're Christians,or at least Westerners. We don't think that the self is an illusion, even if people can indeed be self-deceived about it. When St Paul writes "I live in Christ, yet not I, but Christ lives in me," he is not suggesting that all difference between himself and, say, St Peter is annihilated, nor that he is no longer personally responsible for his actions, which are now robotically controlled from heaven. And like the Lord, speaking to the Pharisees, we see that much error has its root in precisely the failure to recognize and live an identity that is true. Consequently, we, like St Paul, are aware of the difference between the unifying principles of personal identities, resilient or flimsy, and the personal choices that people make, virtuous or vicious. This is, for example, Phil Almond's grand theme on several threads. It's scriptural, Christian, and Western.

The difficulty is that, even allowing that the self may be self-deceived, and that certain lesions in the brain can result in some odd self-effects, we cannot imagine an integral self without self-awareness, and as readers of St Paul, we cannnot imagine that the discernment of gifts and life roles can proceed without that self-awareness. So we cannot pursue goodness by ignoring all subjective self-knowledge.

So then we cannot ignore sexual subjective self-knowledge anymore than we would ignore any other subjective self-knowledge that would have a large effect on our actions. When, a few centuries ago, Michael Wigglesworth, a Puritan best known for The Day of Doom discovered in his journal that his enthusiasm for his students was springing from more than the shared pleasure of ideas, he wisely refused the presidency of Harvard College and built a new life out of the way of acute temptation. So even a thoroughly traditional Christian, who is not in any way a revisionist, could consider self-knowledge to be urgently important. Though it is often masked by unhelpful rights talk, a person attracted to the same sex really does have a moral imperative to make sense of this that Christians must respect and that cannot be dismissed by appeals to conformity, etc. The modern conversation begins there.

And as it turns out, people are more upset by assertions about their identity principles, whatever they are, than about the fallout of their actions. That seems to be the common human nature.

@Nersen Re: Aston Martin
"Some say to me that grace means I can  (some very strong evangelicals)"

However, Jesus might tell the rich man to sell all he has and give to the poor thus buying treasure in heaven.

When some talk about wounding how come people feel wounded that same sex relations are error? How come no one else seems to feel wounded by the fact that lying is a sin, selfishness, greed, theft, adultery etc? In Christ, according to the Spirit one no longer lives by these things, one lives for Christ. Our lives in Christ are dead to sin, it is only when we turn to ourselves and our lives in the flesh could we feel wounded by sin. So if one is feeling wounded by something that in Christ one is dead to, it implies one is not dead to it afterall, and thus not in Christ. And I often find some are even more wounded by that, than the sin.   

The arguments for same sex relations are rooted in the assumption they aren’t wrong. The arguments are sound in themselves, but founded on a false premise. It’s a house built on sand.  So a man with a man in a faithful stable loving relationship would indeed be admirable if a man with a man was, but it isn’t. Nor is it loving God.

As Christians in the Anglican Communion we should be enocouraging each other to live for Christ, and not to encourage each other in their own ideas.  Love one another as He has loved us.  

Blessings Nersen, your "stream of consciousness" post on concupiscence and the Aston Martin is still funny-- and deadly serious-- on the nth reading. It could really have worked as a Shrove Tuesday meditation, eh?

In its widest form, the serious question you pose as a subtext is-- must Christians be ascetics? Yes-- 1 Corinthians 9:25. In fact, it is much easier to find texts on this than on a certain other topic of interest. What is so deadly about your seriousness is that, (a) I am presently drinking the third delicious cup of a coffee that is even less innocent than a Bond car, and (b) you have identified the chief flaw in our, not quite to say my, Christianity.

In an overreaction to the medieval penitential theology, we have progressively neutralized all these scriptural texts to such an extent that even books on Christian spirituality or ethics usually say little or nothing about cultivated self-control and its resultant spiritual freedom. (Notice, for example, the high ratio of references to meditation to references to fasting. But scripture, other religions, brain physiology, and much life experience all point to a somatic foundation for self-control, with spirituality being the fruit.) Nor, as certain deformations in the Roman church show, has the old penitential theology been altogether successful.

When Krister Stendahl launched the new perspective on St Paul, he effectively kicked the rationale for this neglect out from under it. However, generally speaking, we are still partying like it's1517, although Tom Wright has seen the problem. So of course, when we discuss homosexuality, the priority of winning spiritual freedom to any sexual choices whatever (St Matthew xix 12) has become an unthinkable thought because we have largely lost the Christian culture that could make such a position intelligible or tractable for ordinary Christians, whether gay or straight. Unsurprisingly, an ambitious young person in Harvard Square can choose from any of several rival yoga studios, but would never suspect that a church might be the place to find people who live lives energized by the discipline of their faith. Rules they would very much expect, and perhaps exquisitely wrought sensitivity to the problems of the world; disciplined energy, not at all.

Evangelicals still have enough of a scriptural conscience to grapple with this problem, and it is encouraging that a few do. The older centers of Orthodoxy still have much of the old culture intact, but they seldom have the evangelical genius for replication in new or modern cultural settings. Clinical and experimental psychologists have finally discovered the emotions, but most research ex hypothesi excludes the somatic dimension of them. I'm working on this.

Just seen as very interesting interview with George Galloway on BBC’s Daily Politics program.

I thought with all except one remark, George Galloway put his views very well indeed and they were challenging and sound.

But it seemed the interviewer was leading him to a certain question. She ended up asking him how much morals and religion figured in his election win in Bradford. In my opinion Galloway answered that whilst morals were crucial, particularly the Afganistan situation and poverty and wealth (and I agree with him) the election win was about an overall alternative to the 3 main parties.

The interviewer then asked him about the gay marriage vote coming up. It struck me as somewhat out of the blue, I was expecting a question on sharia law. George Galloway said that he believed in equality, that all men and women were equal as children of God, and so he would vote for it. He believed we all give an account to God one day.

Of course according to God’s word God created woman for man and detests same sex relations, so which god is George Galloway referring to? Even Allah whom the majority of his constituents follow won’t agree with him there.

but what use scripture?

"a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"

Bowman,  thanks as ever for your engagement here. As to the wounding that too easily happens when trying to speak across deeply held differences I recognise I am much quicker to discern when the words of others hurt me than when my own words are hurting others.  'The last thing we realise about ourselves if our effect', the saying goes.

Roger is right to point you to the other thread on this topic. I personally found it the most helpful thread so far for exploring the reading and interpreting of scripture in this context - to the extent that I have extracted pieces from it and made up my own file for use in discussions elsewhere.

Hi Bowman,  I think the issue is broader ....ie how do we deal with temptation of any kind. How would you counsel me with my great temptation.....which happens to be greed and particularly related to cars...... yesterday, I stopped and lusted after my neighbour's Aston Martin....... I then searched the web for similar cars...... and found a gorgeous black V8.......so much more athletic than the Bentley Continental V8 I looked at last month.....  modern sculpture, both.   I am tempted to justify getting the AM as it is not necessarily that greedy in my context....... and one can feel that as long as one is doing one's duty in other financial areas, then why not......British jobs depend on people buying these cars!  And if a 5.0l V8 is wasteful of resources, I don't do a lot of miles (most long journeys are for work and chauffered in a diesel Merc....very fuel efficient!)......    now, I know what the bible says re greed and stewardship and that is the only reason I don't buy an Aston.......  but if we are not constrained when scripture only condemns and never blesses and attitude (eg greed) or action, I guess I can enjoy the sounds of  a V8 and the wind in my hair this summer?  Some say to me that grace means I can  (some very strong evangelicals)  - but I can't quite square that with biblical teaching and Christ who became poor so that we might be rich......   I think we have to keep to the words and the Spirit of scripture on my greed issue.... and my other temptations.  I suspect you'd gntly encourage me not to buy my Bond car but would graciously not be prescriptive!

But we can only take direct references, if we take the assumption of the centurion that Jesus must have condoned same sex sex if he healed the centurion's servant, then he must have been condoning kiling becuase we do know all centurion's were employed to kill as part of their job.

You cannot show people whose hearts are so hard that they do not want to accept. (Romans 11)

We cant force people to believe, we can only reach out with the gospel and pray for people.

But there are atheists who, though they dont believe what the Bible says about this, at least acknowledge what it says.    

I am all for middle and evangelical centre ground as long as it is from two credible sides, but this isnt, its one truth and one lie.

Hi Nersen-- Thanks for your kind words. It does not surprise me that persons get angry when their identities are brought into question,or when they are roused against injustice. That happens every day with all sorts of identity claims and injustices. It is a disappointment when Christians do not recognize that charitably searching the scriptures for God's will is not an occasion for that anger.

When we have a complete list of direct references then I will indeed review them all. However, to be clear to others who have missed our earlier comments, even if I do find that some stray verse or pericope in the NT approves some disputed practice, that still leaves me without what I am actually looking for in the scriptures, which is-- either a strong relation between the disputed practice and God's ultimate intentions, or else guidance toward a provisional modus vivendi that God wills.

Roger-- Thanks for the lead. I went through the whole thread index, but as you point out, I missed that one. I'll take a look.