Category Archives: Sin

And save us when we fall

Posted by on March 10, 2011 Comments Off

Thanks to Jason for posting this confession, which I utilized last night in our Ash Wednesday service (which went very well, I believe). A worth confession for many of us indeed.

Vision and mirage

Lord Jesus, you have faced temptation;
you know how difficult it can be
to distinguish between vision and mirage,
between truth and falsehood.

Lord, help us when we are tempted:
And save us when we fall.

Help us in the church:
when we confuse absence of conflict with the peace of God;
when we equate the shaping of ecclesiastical structures with serving you in the world;
when we imagine that our task is to preserve rather than to put at risk;
when we behave as though your presence in life were a past event rather than a contemporary encounter.

Lord, help us when we are tempted:
And save us when we fall.

Help us in the world:
when we use meaningless chatter to avoid real dialogue;
when we allow the image presented by the media to blind us to the substance that lies behind it;
when we confuse privilege with responsibility, and claim rights when we should acknowledge duties;
when we allow high-sounding reasons to cover evil actions.

Lord, help us when we are tempted:
And save us when we fall.

We pray for all who have been brought to the edge of their endurance;
for those whose pain is unending;
for those for whom the earth is a cruel desert and existence a constant struggle against overwhelming odds;
for those who suffer through their own folly or through the malice or folly of others.

Lord, help us when we are tempted:
And save us when we fall.

Lord Jesus, you have passed through the test of suffering,
and are able to help those who are meeting their test now.

Lord, help us when we are tempted:
And be with us to the end.

– Terry C. Falla, ed., Be Our Freedom Lord: Responsive Prayers and Readings for Contemporary Worship (Adelaide: OpenBook Publishers, 1994), 306–7.

Sin and love

Posted by on March 3, 2011 3 comments

What makes us humans is, of course, being more loving. And sin is a defect in this love. To say that Jesus was without sin just means that he was wholly loving, that he did not put up barriers against people, that he was not afraid of being at the disposal of others, that he was warm and free and spontaneous. That is what really lies behind the portentous sentence: ‘He spoke as one with authority.’ It makes him sound so magisterial and solemn. In fact it just means that what he said came straight from him warmly and immediately. He was never looking over his shoulder at the textbooks and traditions.

~ Herbert McCabe, God Still Matters, 96.

On taking sin seriously

Posted by on May 6, 2010 24 comments

In my recent, and utterly long sermon I quoted from Robert Jenson about the nature of the Gospel’s morality, a quote that I find vital and illuminating in many ways:

The gospel’s specific morality is a matter of opened opportunities, of what we may reasonably do because Jesus lives, that otherwise would have been foolish. The normal morality is a matter of imposed constraints, of what we must do, that otherwise we would have liked not to. [. . .] the gospel’s specific morality is a morality of freedom. Insofar as the gospel moves us, we do what we do because we may, not because we ought. And a good act is one which finds the way to love, to the affirmation of the brother’s freedom.

We hear the from the gospel what we may do, when the gospel affirmatively interprets the hopes and fears that move our lives. The gospel makes our hopes possibilities by making them hopes for the love that is indeed coming. When the gospel is spoken to a [person] or a community, it speaks to the particular inhibitions that keep that [person] or community from [. . .] their own humanity. The gospel dismisses those inhibitions. It’s pattern is: “You may . . . because, if Jesus is risen, there is no need to fear . . .” [. . .]

Thus the specific morality of the gospel is not a mater of “laws.” The gospel’s moral discourse does not say “Do this and do that because you ought/must/would be best advised/will be rewarded.” It does not have the “if . . . then . . .” form. It imposes no conditions whatever, on anything at all. It does not say “Do . . . , because otherwise you won’t get into heaven.” It does not say—with a bit more religious sophistication: “Do . . . , because, although of course God will accept you anyway, that is what good Christians do.” It does not even say: “Do . . . , because virtue is its own reward.” The moral discourse of the gospel says only: “You may do . . . , because Jesus lives” (Robert Jenson, Story and Promise, 81, 82).

Obviously this approach to ethics is extremely liberating. The divine word does not impose constraints, make demands, and level requirements. Rather it simply frees. The Gospel forbids nothing, it merely liberates us for lives of true fullness.

Of course to many this will seem woefully inadequate. Is this not simply a cover for moral libertinism? Does not all this fanciful talk of “opened opportunities” merely mask a maneuver that seeks to use “freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence” (Gal 5:13)?

Actually, no not all. In fact this resurrection-centered understanding of the nature of the Gospel’s morality is the only way I can possibly imagine to take sin seriously. This notion insists that all sin is never a matter of some “thing” I can do that I ought not to do. Rather sin is always and everywhere a falling into slavery. The Gospel does not, therefore “forbid” us to sin — what real sense would it make to say that we are “forbidden” to enslave ourselves, mutilate ourselves, denigrate ourselves? — rather the Gospel frees us from sin.

The problem with the traditionally “serious” way of talking about sin and ethics is that it ends up simultaneously not taking sin seriously and making it far too interesting. If we view sin simply as bad, but nearly always seductive and at least fleetingly pleasurable things we ought not to do, we at once make sin interesting and rather unserious. If however we take the logic of the Gospel seriously we must understand sin always and only as slavery, as domination, denigration, and futility. We are not “forbidden” to be enslaved, we are freed from our slavery. We are not “commanded” to no longer dominate and denigrate ourselves and one another, we are freed from that infantile and dreadful compulsion.

This, it seems to me is the only way to really take sin seriously and to recognize how uninteresting it is. Sin is simply the slaveries we subject ourselves and one anther to. It is a world of striving, suffering, and death. God doesn’t come to us with commands not to do such things, God in Christ breaks the power of these forces and frees us from them. The Gospel closes down no true opportunity for anything interesting, rather it always on only opens opportunities and creates new possibilities. It is always and only a liberation. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything else simply doesn’t take sin seriously.

Is evil privation?

Posted by on March 11, 2010 75 comments

It has become an almost undisputed datum in contemporary theology that evil is to be understood in the Augustinian manner as a privation of goodness. Evil has no reality or being as such. Rather it is simply a lack, a minus within the plenitude of goodness (See for example Confessions VII 13[19]).

This sounds absolutely lovely and certainly gives theologians a great way to posses answers.

However lately I’ve been thinking through some problems with Augustine’s account. Three things:

  1. Its unclear why a lack of goodness necessarily makes something evil. My biceps are probably not as strong as the could be. They lack strength, which is good for biceps to have. Doesn’t seem evil. Or to use a specifically moral example, it would be good if I gave $100 to every needy beggar I ever came across. But instead I’m more likely to give a couple bucks if I have it on me. Is there any evil going on here? I doubt it. At the very least there is no necessary evil going on here, but there is a certainly “lack” of goodness.
  2. There’s absolutely nothing in the Bible I can find that remotely describes evil this way. If it is in there, show it to me. I can’t find anything that gives even a hint that we should understand evil as a lack of goodness in Scripture.
  3. Not only does the Bible not describe evil in this way, it actually describes it in ways that seem to outrightly contradict it. All throughout the NT Paul and the other apostolic authors speak of evil as involving cosmic forces, powers, demonic agents, Satan, etc. Evil is not talked about as a lack of goodness, but an utterly real group of forces of darkness. Obviously we need to work hard at interpreting this language, but I don’t see a way to make it square up with the Augustinian notion without very intentionally bringing a pre-determined axe to bear on the Bible.

Now, of course this will bring about the oft-thrown down gauntlet that “you’re ontologizing evil!” (here’s looking at you, Horstkoetter). In response to that I find myself inclined to say “So?” Saying that evil exists or has some sort of being is not, prima facie problematic as far as I can see. Now, to be sure it would be problematic to claim that evil and God are both equally ontologically ultimate; that would be to end up Manichean. But that is decidedly something different than recognizing that evil has (contingent) being in some sense. Obviously that one needs to be unpacked more, but at the very least I’m hoping to forestall the facile accusations of Manicheanism that are so readily made these days.

Holiness and Moral Agency

Posted by on September 16, 2009 5 comments

Jack Bernard’s How to Become a Saint has many great qualities, but perhaps the most exemplary thing about the book is the way it makes the topic of holiness something bearable to talk about. For far too long talk of holiness has been hijacked by moralistic pietism, especially in protestant circles. Bernard cuts through all that fog in his lively and trenchant treatment of the meaning of holiness.

Against all notions of holiness as some sort of personal moral achievement, Bernard puts the matter exactly right: “The struggle for holiness is perhaps not so much about you as it is a struggle over you” (p. 83). Here Bernard strikes precisely the right note in regard to the nature of moral agency. Most Christians are apt to think of ourselves as moral agents who have the responsibility to rightly choose between bad and good. Like Israel at the boarders of the promised land each one of us must “choose for yourselves whom you will serve.” In this construal what is crucial is our own process of decision-making, which way we choose to move ourselves is determinative of whether we become holy or perverse.

This vision, however, is entirely wrong. The struggle for holiness is not something we choose as capable moral agents who can direct ourselves either way. Rather we are the very site of a cosmic conflict between opposing powers who vie to either enslave us or make us free. The human self is not a neutral site from which one might choose God’s way or the Devil’s. It is the locus of the conflict between the principalities and powers and the lordship of Christ.

As such, growth in holiness only occurs by placing our trust in the victory of Christ over the powers, which alone determines our destiny. We cannot make any sort of moral struggle to achieve holiness. We can only be caught up in Christ’s holy victory over the powers of sin and death which liberate us, not only from our sin, but from our compulsion to be able to lift ourselves out of it. Christ makes us holy precisely by freeing us from the self-grasping instinct towards morally improving and managing ourselves.

Aquinas on Acedia

Posted by on May 1, 2009 2 comments

Sloth, according to Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii, 14) is an oppressive sorrow, which, to wit, so weighs upon man’s mind, that he wants to do nothing; thus acid things are also cold. Hence sloth implies a certain weariness of work, as appears from a gloss on Psalm 106:18, “Their soul abhorred all manner of meat,” and from the definition of some who say that sloth is a “sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin good.”

Now this sorrow is always evil, sometimes in itself, sometimes in its effect. For sorrow is evil in itself when it is about that which is apparently evil but good in reality, even as, on the other hand, pleasure is evil if it is about that which seems to be good but is, in truth, evil. Since, then, spiritual good is a good in very truth, sorrow about spiritual good is evil in itself. And yet that sorrow also which is about a real evil, is evil in its effect, if it so oppresses man as to draw him away entirely from good deeds. Hence the Apostle (2 Corinthians 2:7) did not wish those who repented to be “swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.”

Accordingly, since sloth, as we understand it here, denotes sorrow for spiritual good, it is evil on two counts, both in itself and in point of its effect. Consequently it is a sin, for by sin we mean an evil movement of the appetite, as appears from what has been said above (10, 2; I-II, 74, 4).

(Summa Theologica, II.2.Q35.1)

The Worst Sin

Posted by on March 28, 2009 8 comments

“The worst sin is prayerlessness. Overt sin, or crime, or the glaring inconsistencies which often surprise us in Christian people are the effect of this or its punishment. We are left by God for lack of seeking Him. The history of the saints shows often that their lapses were the fruit and nemesis of slackness or neglect in prayer. Their life, at seasons, also tended to become inhuman by their spiritual solitude. . . . Only living prayer keeps loneliness humane.”

~ P.T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer, 9.

Against Ambiguity–In Praise of Binary Oppositions

Posted by on September 25, 2008 1 comment

The Johannine writings are distinctive among the writings of the New Testament in that they are so radically polarized in how the present the conflict between the church and the world. John’s whole thought world is one of binaries: life and death, love and hate, truth and lies, above and below, heaven and earth. This has been one of the reasons that the Johannine corpus has been subject to quite a bit of disdain. Clearly, it seems, John’s pure world of clear opposition between good and evil, church and world, must be an oversimplification, reflecting a sort of paleofundamentalism that must be qualified by other, more nuanced segments of the New Testament.

I would question this way of evaluating the Johannine writings. By contrast, I suggest that the very disambiguity of the Johnannine thought world is precisely what it has to offer the church. The problem with the church is generally not that it is too stark in how it views its life vis a vis the world, but that it is too nuanced. We are far more apt to strive for ambiguity, pluriformity, measure, and moderation in how we understand ourselves in relation to the pressing issues of our world. We crave ironic, tragic, and ambiguous ways of reading our world because it allows us to moderate any sort of ethical rigor that we might detect the gospel imposing on us. All too often our declarations about the ambiguities of being a disciple in a “complex” world are ways of simply making disobedience palatable and normal.

Bonhoeffer saw this perfectly in his book, Discipleship, which argued in no uncertain terms that we strive for ambiguity precisely to avoid questions of obedience. This is a message that continues to need to be heard. The Johannine word is always and ever relevant to a church that strives to have the demands of the Word against it eased into a sort of ambiguous tension–which is simply an elaborate way of dissolving any such tensions. We need to be told, not that there are countless “options” for our lives in Christ which may have their pros and cons, but that more often than not, our choices are between truth and lies, life and death. Our cravings for the comforts of ambiguity and complexity mask a perverse dodge that seeks to avoid asking the hard questions, presented so vividly in John’s gospel. What would it mean for us if we were willing to view the decisions we make about where to live, how to live, and who to live with as decisions either for life or for death? What if we permitted ourselves to embrace that kind of Johannine seriousness in attempting to morally navigate our Christian lives?

Nature, Grace, and the Prevenience of the Apocalypse

Posted by on July 15, 2008 37 comments

The whole issue of nature and grace continues to come up in conversations of late. This is, of course, derivative of other long-standing conversations largely between the churches of the Reformation and the Roman Catholic communion regarding the severity of the effect of fallenness on creation.  The conflict between Barth and Pryzwara over the analogia entis remains a paradigmatic case of this sort of discussion and the deep-rooted divergence within Christianity over the extent of sin and the nature of the continuity and discontinuity between creation and redemption.

I tend to fall instinctively on the Barthian-Protestant side of this whole issue on the basis of the descriptions of redemption in the New Testament, particularly its apocalyptic texts in which the picture painted is one of total inversion, radical disruption, and climactic new creation in which the old creation dies and is resurrected as a new reality. I am very resistant to notions of nature which posit some sort of potentiality pregnant within nature for redemption. There is no more inherent propensity in nature for redemption than there is in the dead, cold body of Jesus for resurrection.  The redemption of nature comes, not from any inherent being-toward-redemption that lies within, but entirely from outside itself, being manifested in the apocalyptic intrusion of God into the world in Christ.

However, the radical apocalypticism of the New Testament, the radical novum of resurrection life should not lead us to some sort of Žižekian ontology of the void in which the concept of rupture simply becomes the reigning philosophical category.  We must posit, as Alan Lewis does in his theology of Holy Saturday, a “resumption beyond rupture” in which the radical inversion of the crooked cosmos rent by sin is not merely torn further asunder by grace. The violent rending of the Temple veil in the hour of the cross did not occur merely as an iconoclastic event of condemnation, though it was not less than that.  Rather it was the event of redemption.  The rending of the veil of alienation occurred so that all alienation might end.  The veil is not merely torn, we are reconciled in one body through cross.  The apocalyptic rupture that Christ brings to the world is the intrusion of freedom.  The freedom in which all things to be reconstituted in the future of the resurrected Jesus, and thus through him reconciled to the Father in the Spirit.

We must find a way to properly articulate the prevenience of God’s apocalyptic grace that neither imbues nature as such with a potentiality for redemption nor leaves us stumbling about in a dizzying fog of rupture without resumption, of apocalypse without new creation. Marcionism is not an option for faithful Christian theology.  The radical apocalypticism of the New Testament must never be tamed, but neither must we interpret redemption as some sort of alien abduction.  What is needed is neither a Žižekian sort of philosophy of rupture nor a seamless nature-redemption unity which skirts away from the radicality of the apocalypse of God in Christ.  Still less needed is some sort of middle ground. Rather, what is needed is deeper penetration into the nature of Christ’s apocalypse on the basis of the messianic theology of the Old and New Testaments.

What I suggest is that a canonical reading of the Christian Scriptures will reveal a prevenience of the apocalypse that is witnessed to in the messianic speech and ministry of the patriarchs and prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. The radical inversion of the cosmos that is culminated in Christ’s resurrection, while a complete novum is what it is within the framework of God’s whole economy of recapitulation. The coming of Christ in newness of life is truly new, truly unprecedented, truly irreducible, and radically singular in its significance.  And it is such precisely in that it recapitulates, enfolds, purges, and enlivens all created history.  Christ is the concrete universal who, in his resurrection, disrupts creation-under-sin in a way so radical as to annihilate all forms of death and sin even as he consummate, redeems, transfigures, recreates creation in a way unanticipated, even by any primal natural harmony.  What we have in redemption is neither the obliteration of the first creation, nor merely its restoration, but an apocalyptic transcendence of the first creation which fulfills it precisely in superseding it.

What we need to bear in mind in understanding the radicality of the nature of apocalyptic grace is the whole eschatological economy of recapitulation that it consummates, as Douglas Knight has admirably shown in his recent book.  The apocalypse is an utter novum, but it is not without any antecedent in the Trinitarian history of God and God’s people.  Rather the apocalypse is prevenient in all movements of divine generosity and love as seen in the whole history of Israel and the nations.  In short, the radical inversion of Christ’s apocalypse is the culmination of God’s eschatological economy of recapitulation, transfiguration, and new creation.  We remain ever and again disrupted by the sheer novum of Christ’s apocalypse precisely as we continue to venture down the path of the holy pilgrims of Israel and the church, remaining on the way towards the New Jerusalem within which all things find their coherence, fulfillment, and transformation.

Moral Certitude, Martyrdom, and Hope

Posted by on May 13, 2008 15 comments

I sometimes wonder about the statements of conviction we make.  I’m firm believer in making very few commitments quickly while making damn sure you always keep the ones you do make.  But absolute statements, declarations, and manifestos are some of the most easy things to say.  They role right off the tongue and theological books are full of them.  For example, I offer this statement:

I would rather die than end up unfaithful to my wife; I would rather die than deny by a profligate life what I have taught in my books; I would rather die than deny or disown the gospel. (D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990], 120).

Based on this, I think only two conclusions about D.A. Carson are possible.  Either he is far more mature as a Christian and a person than I shall likely ever be (which is certainly possible) or he is just making sentimental statements that make for well-selling evangelical devotional books (which, I think may also be possible, but I hope, less likely).

Now I’ll just be honest here, I would damn well rather cheat on my wife and deal with the horror that would unfold from that than get killed.  Certainly I know that wouldn’t be a moral act in any sense, but I know good and well that if someone put a gun to my head and presented me with that alternative that I’d most likely cave.  Maybe I’m underestimating the power of my own affections here, but I don’t think so.  I’d certainly rather live at variance from my writings than cease to live.  Disown the gospel?  I think on something that stark I might have a chance, but for all I know I’d end up going through a series of denials and recantations not unlike the Anabaptist martyr Balthasar Hubmaier.

Now certainly I agree that in all of the examples that Carson offers I agree that we should rather die than give in to such forms of sin and compromise.  And maybe Carson has had experiences in which these convictions have been tested.  I have not and as such I feel very uncomfortable making statements about myself with such boldness.  I fear such statements tends very quickly towards bravado and reflect a sort of fanciful self-construction.  Or at least I know that that’s what I’d be doing if I made those statements.

Do we not end up conjuring up notions of our own indefectability with statements like this?  We seem to implicitly claim to have come to some sort of indubitable self-knowledge and are certain that we are the kind of persons who above all would never do this.  Is not the message of the gospel often that we will indeed do exactly this?  Does not the message of gospel constantly remind us that we are the betrayers of the truth?  Statements of the sort that Carson makes seem to bear within themselves a grammar that is inappropriate to the whole discourse of Christian discipleship.  To say something like “I would rather die than deny the gospel” is often really saying “I am a person who cannot be shaken and I know it.”  Such statements sound far too bold for me.  “Even if everyone else deserts you, I will never desert you!”

I for one am terrified of death and can’t stand acute pain in the least. (People, if the persecution starts you all need to go into hiding immediately.  I am going to break fast if the torture starts.)  I have no confidence in my ability to become a faithful martyr of the Christian confession.  I cannot imagine writing down in a book that I would rather die than disown the gospel.  I do not find the resources of moral certainty in myself that Carson seems to find within (Let me emphasize, I hesitate to impute duplicity to him; I just know what those lines would mean if I were to write them).  If I were to make statements about my own moral resolve on the basis of the gospel I don’t know any other way to state them than in the interrogative:  “Can these dry bones live?”

I wonder if a truly biblical spirituality should perhaps avoid the indicative mood altogether?  The indicative makes statements about the reality of the present, but the faith of the resurrection is premised on the horror of the past and the promise of the future fracturing the givenness of the present and suffusing it with apocalyptic hope.  A faith that lives between promise and hope exists in the linguistic mode of supplication, of trembling, of desperate hope in the future of the one who has promised that his Life will be the end of all things.  We are called, not into moral certitude and self-confidence in our development as Christians, but rather to the wild patience of those who follow one who always remains beyond our grasp.

We must begin, not with an assertion of our own indefectability, however well-founded our confidence might be.  The mystery of salvation includes the claim that those closest to Jesus often refuse to be found alongside him in his sufferings.  We must begin, rather in the assertion of our radical defectability.  Only then can we embrace the hope that lies precisely outside of ourselves in Christ and the promise of his apocalypse.  “If we are faithless he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.”

The Theology of Changing

Posted by on March 28, 2008 6 comments

One of the seemingly essential elements of the theology of the Christian life is the claim that, in Christ people are able to be transformed in their existential existence in the world.  While most Christians would deny any sort of crude notion of perfectionism, most Christians, even the most strongly reformed ones, would surely maintain that in the Christian life growth and change is in fact a possibility that can be realized.

Now, on one level it is easy to observe certain kinds of changes that do take place in the Christian life.  The now-converted promiscuous college student will probably not have insurmountable problems cutting frivolous sexual exploits out of his life and the now-converted lawyer can certainly find a morally acceptable occupation without much existential crisis.  However, examples like this are simply examples of behavior modification, not of a true existential experience of personal change.  What I’ve noticed is that, for the most part, the things people struggle with in life are pretty much the same things they struggled with all of their lives.  So and so may not sleep around anymore, but she still finds a way to idolize romance. 

The question that I have then, is simply this:  How do people really change?  What sorts of events, relationships, practices, encounters, and decisions actually contribute to an existential transformation of people’s mode of existence in the world?  What kind of change is actually possible in the Christian life?  In short, what kind of transformation of life should we expect over the course of a well-lived Christian life, and where and how do seek after that?

Recycle or go to Hell!

Posted by on March 18, 2008 9 comments

Apparently the Catholic Church has recently updated its list of mortal sins to include more specifically modern maladies.  It used to be that only pride, sloth, envy, wrath, et al would land you straight in hell at the point of death.  Now it turns out that “drug abuse, genetic manipulation, morally dubious experimentation, environmental pollution, social inequalities and social injustice, causing poverty and accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of the common good of society” will all earn you a one-way ticket to hell.  Now it seems that the pot-somking hippies and the rich consumerist socialites will be given the ultimate eternal punishment: life together forever.  A fearful prospect indeed.

Identity as Sin

Posted by on February 23, 2008 3 comments

“Identity-in-sin means not to live from God, not to honor God as the constant source of our being, not to be thankful to God as the one who constantly gives us ourselves.  Identity is sin when persons imagine that their being has been conferred over to them, when they try to live out of themselves in terms of the reality which God may have once conferred onto them by which they now hold in their possession.  Sin is to refuse to life out of the reality in which a person constantly receives from God.”

–Arthur C. McGill, Death and Life: An American Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1987), 52.

McCabe on Sin

Posted by on August 9, 2007 3 comments

Life in Christ…is a seeking into the meaning of human behaviour which involves a constant reaching out beyond the values of the world. Sin consists in ceasing to reach out, refusing to respond to the Father’s summons, and settling for this present world. What makes it possible for us to reach out, to hear and respond to the summons, is that through the resurrection of Christ the future world is already with us as a disruptive force disturbing the order of the world. We are able to some extent to live into the mode of communication that belongs to the future world, the mode we call charity or the presence of the Spirit. Of course trying to live in the present world a life in accordance with the future is a dangerous business, as Jesus found out. The christian may expect to be crucified with him.”

Herbert McCabe, What Ethics is all About: A Re-Evaluation of Law, Love, and Language, p.153

Recent Discussions on Homosexuality

Posted by on January 19, 2007 Comments Off

In the last few days there have been a number of interesting conversations going on in the blogosphere about Christianity and same-sex relationships. The always thought provoking Kim Fabricus recently posted 12 Propositions on Same-Sex Relationships and the Church which has generated no small amount of conversation (68 comments at the time of this writing). In response The Blue Raja has posted a few anti-theses on same-sex relationship.

Meanwhile Michael has been laboring for sometime at Levelers on a series on the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the church as well.

Also, Douglas Knight recently posted an excerpt from this excellent article by Oliver O’Donovan, which I think deserves a wide reading.

I plan on offering my own thoughts on all of this discussion soon. Regardless, however it’s been interesting to see some constructive dialogue about this very contentious issue.

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