tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post8807078994951869605..comments2024-03-25T13:40:30.747-04:00Comments on Faith and Theology: Homosexuality and the church: a meditation on the tragic (Part One)Ben Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-86947048558942754442008-07-20T10:22:00.000-04:002008-07-20T10:22:00.000-04:00Bruce HamillI have tried to put 'finitude' (time a...Bruce Hamill<BR/><BR/>I have tried to put 'finitude' (time and space) as part of the construct of the tragic under the promise of redemption from the beginning, with the final act of redemption with the eschaton when the 'new heavens and earth' (whatever that means!) replaces the old. So 'bless finitude' for in doing so one is embracing the realty of life here on earth as God created, God purposed, and God blessed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-41057656269140605882008-07-20T01:32:00.000-04:002008-07-20T01:32:00.000-04:00Thanks for the link Ben.Thanks for the link Ben.Bruce Yabsleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10091471695711534450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-42077227871461583322008-07-19T05:42:00.000-04:002008-07-19T05:42:00.000-04:00Following Bruce's comment on Ecclesiastes, perhaps...Following Bruce's comment on Ecclesiastes, perhaps I should also point to Ray's book of sermons on Ecclesiastes, which I reviewed <A HREF="http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2007/02/ray-anderson-exploration-into-god.html" REL="nofollow">here</A>.Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-72568976102309839612008-07-19T01:01:00.000-04:002008-07-19T01:01:00.000-04:00In the discussion on whether the "tragic" has a pl...In the discussion on whether the "tragic" has a place in a Christian understanding of experience, I'm surprised that the Wisdom literature has not been taken in evidence: Ecclesiastes in particular. The teacher's complaint (and analysis) that all is absurd, including things that he ascribes to God and calls good, is clearly relevant here.<BR/><BR/>There's a technical argument to be had about whether "tragic" is quite the right word, and exactly what one means to say by using it, to be sure. But the idea that such categories are inappropriate to Christian analysis --- or should be limited or reduced to cases of unavoidable-choice-between-evils --- is untrue to experience (because too flattening) and I see no way to square it with <EM>Qohelet</EM>.<BR/><BR/>So, a "but the Scripture clearly states" argument can also be made on behalf of Ray's position here, and to me it seems a pretty strong one.Bruce Yabsleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10091471695711534450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-87931610538252809162008-07-18T21:00:00.000-04:002008-07-18T21:00:00.000-04:00Sorry to enter this scholarly discussion on McKinn...Sorry to enter this scholarly discussion on McKinnon et al with a simple question... for what it's worth. <BR/>When I do funerals I include in my committals the words "God has blessed us with finitude" and then go on to talk about hope in the resurrection. Am I wrong to talk of blessing here? Is the blessing also tragic per se (whatever that might mean) or is the tragic a consequence of some aspect of our human situation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-13310141047763771612008-07-18T15:15:00.000-04:002008-07-18T15:15:00.000-04:00Anonymous:You say: "I think the tragic viewpoint i...Anonymous:<BR/><BR/>You say: "I think the tragic viewpoint is flawed because it is to narrow a view, almost to conservative. I think it should be balanced against God sovereinty to make it carry the weight of the homosexuality argument"<BR/><BR/>Actually, I think that it is God's sovereignty that holds the tragic under the promise of redemption. God withholds his sovereinty partially in order to give humans space for freedom, but not total autonomy. In that freedom humans live in time and space where not everything that one longs to do or have is possible. But the loss of one thing in order to have another is a loss that does not rise to the level of the tragic in our awareness until it causes pain. In God's sovereinty, grace is experienced both as redemption in time and ultimately from time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-87221239632887994062008-07-17T15:29:00.000-04:002008-07-17T15:29:00.000-04:00How would you respond to Christ? Is his response t...How would you respond to Christ? Is his response to humanity tragic considering he invested his time in very few people considering he is God? Hauerwas would be disappointed in Christ's investment on Peter or Matthew who would be consider social rejects by modern society. I think the tragic viewpoint is flawed because it is to narrow a view, almost to conservative. I think it should be balanced against God sovereinty to make it carry the weight of the homosexuality argument.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-88822743863617920162008-07-17T07:24:00.000-04:002008-07-17T07:24:00.000-04:00André is bang on about Gillian Rose. This Simone ...André is bang on about Gillian Rose. This Simone Weil-like, exilic philosopher, so intellectually restless, a creative expositior of Hegel and deployer of Kierkegaard, and another huge influence on Rowan Williams - she would make a brilliant partner in this conversation. <BR/><BR/>"What [finally] brought her to baptism," Williams writes, "is the belief that thinking and loving are connected." And yet for Rose the idea of "love without violence" is characteristic of bad faith: love is always discovered to be implicated in violence. On the other hand, Rose's work "can be read as a protest against the essentialising of violence" (Williams). Rose rebels against premature closures and tidy reconciliations. Hence "the broken middle" - an ambiguous existential place we have always already entered, fraught with ethical risk, yet a "position that allows the past to speak to the realities of the present without determining it," and so open to the possibilities of self-dispossession and practices of peace.<BR/><BR/>I confess I haven't read Rose's most important work <I> The Broken Middle</I> (1992) - the themes of which are "anxiety of beginning, equivocation of the ethical and agon of authorship" - all very gnomic! - but I can recommend her short book <I>Love's Work</I> (1997), which is a gem.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-82399598151084989502008-07-17T05:40:00.000-04:002008-07-17T05:40:00.000-04:00Could I perhaps add to the discussion the names of...Could I perhaps add to the discussion the names of a couple of people who might also help re: this discussion around Professor Anderson's posts? The first is Professor Kenneth Surin, who has made some very important contributions to the discussion about theology and tragedy (including an essay on Styron's Sophie's Choice). The other person is a British philosopher named Gillian Rose, whose career was sadly cut short by cancer. I think Kim may have already mentioned her in another post, but her talk of "the broken middle" is perhaps relevant to the present discussion (it may, in fact, be more helpful than the category of the tragic). Of course, those who reject talk of the tragic will probably reject Rose's language too - and for much the same reasons.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-54928303499959216292008-07-17T04:00:00.000-04:002008-07-17T04:00:00.000-04:00Shane,No, the decision to feed our own children is...Shane,<BR/><BR/>No, the decision to feed our own children is not usually experienced as a dilemma - but I think Ray Anderson is right that it is tragic and it is definitely a conflict of moral obligations. Every human has an obligation to be concerned about the welfare of every other human being. In this basic sense every action we take is a choice between qualified goods and has moral implications that are tragic - in that potential goods are being lost or even destroyed. No the choice to feed your own child does not directly cause the hunger of another child, but in this world of complex causation we cannot deny our responsibility for hunger, suffering and death all over the world.Aric Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15241157655075444268noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-59738938532050559342008-07-17T03:36:00.000-04:002008-07-17T03:36:00.000-04:00Hi André,Thank you for that splendid explication o...Hi André,<BR/><BR/>Thank you for that splendid explication of MacKinnon on tragedy (and your detailed bibliography of more obscure texts of which I was unaware - I'm only doing MacKinnon 101!). Yours is a much more sympathetic reading of MacKinnon than Hart's (who I think is even less sympathetic in his reading of Lash, whom he accuses of "more or less collaps[ing] Easter into Good Friday"). You are certainly right to say that it would be inaccurate to call MacKinnon's (or Lash's) theology "tragic theology" tout court; it's more, I think, a way of <I>reading</I> both the biblical narratives in the light of great tragedians and the human condition in the light of the biblical narratives - as well as a caveat against epistemological - and theological! - hubris.<BR/><BR/>Hart's discussion, by the way, brilliant as it is, needs to be read in the context of his broader attack on contemporary theologians who critique the classical notion of the divine impassibility (like Moltmann as well as Jüngel), as well as those (like Jenson) who draw together the immanent and economic trinity and see history as the locus of God's self-determination.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-51630574773899327162008-07-17T02:01:00.000-04:002008-07-17T02:01:00.000-04:00Prof. Anderson, I'm with Doug, and others, who've ...Prof. Anderson, <BR/><BR/><BR/>I'm with Doug, and others, who've balked at your understanding of the tragic as existing "before" the fall.<BR/><BR/>I agree the tragic is not the (direct) result of sin. Instead, it is the response of the human spirit to the (dreadful) recognition of fallenness. The tragic is a coping mechanism, not a condition. It is a <I>hermeneutic</I>, a way of making meaning (as in David Tracy's understanding of the 'tragic vision.') <BR/><BR/>The Christian believes that apart from Christ, apart from God's future arriving in Jesus' death and resurrection, the tragic vision is the best hermeneutic, the most humane response to our condition. But in Christ, standing within the faith, we exchange the tragic for the hopeful. And this hope casts light for us both forward and backward, so that we can't not see creation as well as new creation as good. <BR/><BR/>This is not to say that our experience of the world isn't going to seem "tragic." But I think that in many ways it is for us a <I>temptation</I> to read our experiences that way, at least insofar as it takes our eyes away from the healed/wounded body of the resurrected Jesus and directs them to our own still-bleeding wounds. <BR/><BR/>All this to say, I think the way forward pastorally isn't by giving people eyes to see the tragic, but by giving them eyes to see the first rays of the "sunrise of God's justice" (Moltmann). We need not so much to say, "This is the way things are" as to say, "This is the way things shall be."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-32500087920493089102008-07-16T23:34:00.000-04:002008-07-16T23:34:00.000-04:00Mr. Anderson,Thanks for your words on Barth and Ki...Mr. Anderson,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your words on Barth and Kierkegaard. However, I think the discussion must go forward recognizing two things: there's more to Kierkegaard than his "infinite qualitative distinction," and there's more to "dialectic" than Kierkegaard. So whereas Barth certainly started, in a way, with the infinite qualitative distinction and never rejected it, it is still a question how much of Kierkegaard's whole thought in general he accepted, when, to what extent, etc. And there are Hegelian dialectics as well as Kierkegaardian. My sense is that Barth's biggest problem with what has been said so far is assuming we can know what the basic structure of human existence is, and then fit redemption into it.JKnotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13567721786402019427noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-69003114566777894432008-07-16T22:21:00.000-04:002008-07-16T22:21:00.000-04:00Prof. Harink - Hart's critique is very important, ...Prof. Harink - Hart's critique is very important, I think, although I'm not sure it's the last word on MacKinnon's view of tragedy, in part, because he was himself very aware of the dangers of putting the language of tragedy to work in a theological context (e.g., the fostering of an attitude of acquiescence). As Hart notes, MacKinnon is offering a suggestion (a word that needs to be underlined), about how we might go about reading the crucifixion. But it isn't a straightforward suggestion (nothing in MacKinnon is!): more like an attempt to wrestle with a complex set of problems that have arisen at the place where his reading of literature, his philosophy (the stress on the contingent etc.) and his attempt to make sense of certain aspects of the Gospel narratives, impinge upon each other. I don't think we can talk about MacKinnon's "tragic theology" here, because that assumes that he knew what the end result of that process of impingement was... But that's to misread MacKinnon and to ignore all the cavaets that he enters along the way. Of course, we could say that the set of problems MacKinnon was wrestling with were false, or wrongly framed, but we would need to be sure we knew what those problems were in the first place, and that is no easy task, not least because MacKinnon seems unable to articulate those problems clearly. In spite (or perhaps because) of this, MacKinnon is still worth reading I think, not because he gives us a "tragic theology" but because he forces us to ask whether the insights into human nature that we discover in Sophocles, Shakespeare, Faulkner or Styron might impinge upon the way we understand the Christian narrative (and, of course, vice versa). <BR/><BR/>Shane - Many thanks for the clarification.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-28452965515358983372008-07-16T21:47:00.000-04:002008-07-16T21:47:00.000-04:00I'll keep Hart in mind, Prof. Harink, which is eas...I'll keep Hart in mind, Prof. Harink, which is easy because thats where my sympathies already lie.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-63416964520641085372008-07-16T21:13:00.000-04:002008-07-16T21:13:00.000-04:00@ André Muller, Of course in the classical greek w...@ André Muller, <BR/><BR/>Of course in the classical greek world, inevitability did not imply lack of culpability. However, I think this would be a hard position for a Christian to hold--even that stalwart defender of Grace, St. Augustine argues that without the freedom of creaturely will, God could not legitimately condemn sinners (De Libero Arbitrio). <BR/><BR/>Gadamer has a remark in <I>Truth and Method</I> to the effect that in Christianity there are no more tragedies. And I think he means no tragedies in this Greek sense--there aren't any because the world is ruled by a kind providence, not the impersonal or capricious Fates. I think Gadamer is right at least to the extent that Christians do not fear the impersonal forces of fate. However, it seems to me a fact of life that there are situations which are tragic, in the sense I outlined above, namely being forced to choose between two evils. <BR/><BR/>(I'm taking this sense of tragedy from Rosalind Hursthouse, incidentally. Especially the chapter of her book <I>Virtue Ethics</I> entitled "Tragic and Irresolvable Dilemmas" or something like that.)Shanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14594090275917087869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-10026391317901694162008-07-16T20:48:00.000-04:002008-07-16T20:48:00.000-04:00While the suggestions to read MacKinnon and Lash o...While the suggestions to read MacKinnon and Lash on theology and tragedy are helpful, I would also then recommend reading David Bentley Hart's critique of them, and "tragic theology" more generally, in The Beauty of the Infinite, pp. 373-394. While acknowledging the pathos and partial profundity of MacKinnon's vision, Hart nonetheless rightly concludes:<BR/><BR/>"Theologians must not embrace MadKinnon's suggestion that the crucifixion be read as a kind of tragic drama, in the hope that tragedy's concern for the irreconcilable contradictions of the particular might put theology on the guard against any metaphysical solace that would ease Christian discomfort before the terror and desolation of the cross: metaphysical solace is precisely what the tragic is. It turns attention not toward the one who suffers, but to the sublime backdrop against which the drama is played out; it assures the spectator that this is how things are, this is the constitution of the universe, and that justice is strife; tragic wisdom is the wisdom of resignation and consent, a wisdom that is too prudent to rebel against what is fixed in the very fabric of being, and that refuses to suffer inordinately, enraged by death or resentful of civic order. Tragedy legitimates a particular regime of law, violence and war: it teaches that moira [Gk. fate] places and displaces us, and so leads us to a serene and chastened acceptance of where we are placed and how we are displaced; tragedy resists every motion outward, beyond the sentineled frontier, and reinforces the stable foundation of the totality. Christianity, however, feeds upon a different wisdom..."<BR/><BR/>We can see where the "tragic theology" of MacKinnon, Niebuhr and Anderson takes us: to the "realistic" necessity of certain tragic "choices," which is just the situation of humans as finite creatures of desire faced with infinite possibilities that are intrinsically morally ambiguous.<BR/><BR/>For an antidote to that kind of fatalist thinking, see also Hart's discussion of created human desire (which I won't quote at length) on pp 269-273, especially the bottom half of 270.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-56234639239383957672008-07-16T20:13:00.000-04:002008-07-16T20:13:00.000-04:00Prof. Anderson - Many thanks for the MacKinnon rem...Prof. Anderson - Many thanks for the MacKinnon reminiscences, and also for a very interesting and helpful application of the category of the tragic to the realm of sexual ethics. <BR/><BR/>Following on from Kim’s suggestions about reading MacKinnon on tragedy. I think there are really three essays which ought to be read together: “Atonement and Tragedy” in Le Mythe de la peine (Paris: Aubier, 1967), 373-378; “Subjective and Objective Conceptions of Atonement” in F. G. Healey (ed.), Prospect for Theology: Essays presented to H. H. Farmer (London: Nisbet, 1966), 169-182; and “Theology and Tragedy”, Religious Studies 2 (1967), 163-169. The first essay is reprinted in MacKinnon’s Borderlands of Theology (1968), 97-104; the third in his The Stripping of the Altars (1969), 41-51. All three essays are indebted to a book by a very interesting philosopher named D. Daiches Raphael (who first taught in Glasgow, I think, and then came to the University of Otago, Dunedin), called The Paradox of Tragedy (1960), which is still worth reading. That book isn’t entirely unrelated to the last query (re: Barth), because Raphael contended that in the end, the Christian conception of providence ruled out tragedy (in the technical sense of the term). MacKinnon, of course, disagreed, or rather, felt that things where much more complicated (or, as he would have put it, more difficult) than Raphael was suggesting. One book that is really worth reading on the differences between MacKinnon and Barth re: tragedy is Anthony Cane, The Place of Judas Iscariot in Christology, which was published by Ashgate in 2005. <BR/><BR/>Finally, in the discussion so far, the suggestion has been made that to identify a set of actions as “tragic” is to somehow introduce factors that might mitigate the culpability of the agent responsible for those actions. I’m not at all sure that this is in fact what tragedy, in the technical sense of the word, is about. Without wading into the very complex debate about what does and does not constitute genuine tragedy, I would like to suggest that Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet do not offer any easy mitigation of the culpability of their chief protagonists (in fact, quite the opposite). As Milan Kundera points out in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, where we would have Oedipus go merrily on his way, with perhaps a little bit of therapy – after all, his sins were the product of ignorance, and therefore, (so we might think) not really his fault, Sophocles has him pluck out his own eyes. This is not to say that tragedy is about increasing a sense of culpability for the consequences of actions which we may have committed without knowing what it was we were in fact committing ourselves to. Rather, it is that tragedy isn’t (it seems to me), first and foremost, an invitation to quantify culpability, but instead, an invitation to look at human actions for what they really are. That is, it’s an invitation to a kind of empathy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-32751787587059431912008-07-16T19:18:00.000-04:002008-07-16T19:18:00.000-04:00Jknott:In the preface to the second edition of h...Jknott:<BR/><BR/>In the preface to the second edition of his commentary on Romans, Barth said, "If I have s system it is limited to what Kierkegaard called 'the infinite qualitative distiction between' time and eternity. . . God is in heaven and thou art on earth." This was written in 1921. My impression is that following Heidegger's emergence with his emphasis on an existential hermeneutic, Barth moved more away from this concept, though, as McCormack has shown, never really abandoning the dialectic. I let others judge on this matter.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-27626966203485308432008-07-16T18:08:00.000-04:002008-07-16T18:08:00.000-04:00I wonder, since at least Ben and Kim on this site ...I wonder, since at least Ben and Kim on this site often speak approvingly of Barth and of the man who, in my view, is his best contemporary interpreter and even correcter, Bruce McCormack, whether a fruitful discussion might be had here at some point concerning the ways in which Barth was, or was not, or was sometimes and in certain ways, Kierkegaardian, particularly in the way Prof. Anderson (and Williams and his teacher MacKinnon) seem to be. I'm thinking that at least as early as Barth's controversy with Brunner, Barth saw "a certain type of Kierkegaardianism" as the last, perhaps, but certainly the worst mistake (cf. "Nein," in Brunner and Barth, _Natural Theology_, Wipf and Stock, 2002, pp. 119-20.). Can we have our Barthian cake and eat Kierkegaard too?JKnotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13567721786402019427noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-2799023542879915052008-07-16T17:15:00.000-04:002008-07-16T17:15:00.000-04:00Brainofdtrain:You wrote: "relationships where all ...Brainofdtrain:<BR/><BR/>You wrote: "relationships where all equally deserve the "neighbor-love" of Jesus (as you put it in one of your recent books, the ethic of neighbor love "cuts across" all our relationships), we cannot hope to always make choices that are best for everyone. Hence, even in our best moments, a "tragic" element is unavoidable in our choices. Would you agree with this?"<BR/><BR/>I do agree. The homeless man who asks food of me is my neighbor and Jesus tells me to be neighbor to him by giving him food. But God also tells me to feed my own children. <BR/><BR/>Kim. <BR/><BR/>Donald MacKinnon was the external examiner for my Ph. D. thesis written for T.F. Torrance at Edinburgh in 1970 (Historical Transcendence and the Reality of God, Geoffrey Chapman, 1975).I only had one meeting with him at Cambridge, and found him to be a delightful, deeply brooding,but sensitive man. He would never look you directly in the eyes when he spoke to you, but then, with piercing eyes, look at you for your response! There are many stories about the eccentricity of MacKinnon, among them one told by his wife that she discovered his trousers after he had left in the morning for his office and assuming that it would be typical of him to go to the campus without his trousers hurried over with them only to find that he had without her knowledge purchased another pair!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-49610745555058203252008-07-16T16:41:00.000-04:002008-07-16T16:41:00.000-04:00Hi D. W.,First, a spelling mea culpa - the "K" in ...Hi D. W.,<BR/><BR/>First, a spelling mea culpa - the "K" in MacKinnon should, of course, be a capital letter.<BR/><BR/>As for recommendations, the list is short, because (as far as I know) there is next to nothing of MacKinnon's work available in print. You can get a second-hand paperback copy of <I>Explorations in Theology</I> (1979) at Amazon, and <I>Themes in Theology: The Three-fold Cord</I> (1987) is available new (only in hardback, I think).<BR/><BR/>There is a great essay on MacKinnon in Nicholas Lash's new collection of essays <I>Theology for Pilgrims</I> (2008) entitled "Renewed, Dissolved, Remembered: MacKinnon and Metaphysics". In it Lash quotes a passage from Rowan Williams' obituary for MacKinnon in <I>The Tablet</I> (1994), which goes "to the heart of MacKinnon's theological concern":<BR/><BR/>"... if the Christian vision had anything to contribute, it might be, not a consolatory word, but a recognition that tragedy was inbuilt into a contingent world. Not even Jesus' choices could be unshadowed: the triumph of the cross is the shipwreck of Judas and the beginning of the pathologies of anti-Semitism. Donald would not allow you to evade the particular, and his hostility to grand schemes that 'answered' the problem of evil has much to do with this."<BR/><BR/>Interestingly, Williams writes "contingent", not "sinful", though I wouldn't want to read too much into this choice of words, or speak for either MacKinnon or Williams on the question of prelapsarian tragedy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-72909141851363587492008-07-16T15:58:00.000-04:002008-07-16T15:58:00.000-04:00Professor Anderson,Forgive me if i am grossly over...Professor Anderson,<BR/><BR/>Forgive me if i am grossly oversimplifying your view, but would it be appropriate to summarize your sentiments by saying that often in life, matters of sexuality included, there is no "perfect choice." <BR/><BR/>Since we are unavoidably social creatures, bound up in a myriad of relationships where all equally deserve the "neighbor-love" of Jesus (as you put it in one of your recent books, the ethic of neighbor love "cuts across" all our relationships), we cannot hope to always make choices that are best for everyone. Hence, even in our best moments, a "tragic" element is unavoidable in our choices. Would you agree with this? I'm not trying to be combative, but trying to understand you. It seems to me that the chapter that deals with ethics in your book about the emerging church espouses a similar view. <BR/><BR/>Thanks for your thoughts professor. I may not always agree, but you always help me to think through matters in new ways.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-19398694590781809592008-07-16T15:57:00.000-04:002008-07-16T15:57:00.000-04:00Kim, could you recommend the book one ought to sta...Kim, could you recommend the book one ought to start with when reading Donald Mackinnon?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-12003858205495796512008-07-16T15:49:00.000-04:002008-07-16T15:49:00.000-04:00It's so sad that the debate of homosexuality doesn...It's so sad that the debate of homosexuality doesn't really end in the christian community.<BR/><BR/>It's blatant to anyone who reads the Bible that homosexuality is sin. What more do you want to believe it?<BR/><BR/>It's faith in the Bible we should discussing. Because if you are christian and still debating homosexuality, then you lack faith in Bible teaching.<BR/><BR/>Sad, really...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com