Trevor Mouw

Steven, 
Ezekiel mentions that inhospitality was a sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. If the Bible says it, then it's true! But that's not all it says, and skipping Jude's contribution has hugely deceptive implications for this conversation.

The simple truth is that nobody credible holds to "the conclusions we (revisionists) hold to", only agenda-driven scholarship. The HSR points that out adeptly.

The fact is that God's Word is a double-edged sword, and it's the only knife we need in this fight.

Perhaps you betray the foundations of your moral compass with your last two sentences? There is no left or right in God's Word. And your assumption is wrong anyway. I'm not a Republican. I never voted for Trump. This has nothing to do with politics.

Worst of all, though, is the "practical athiesm" inherent in your final line, which shows that you think standing firm on God's Word would do MORE harm than would dismissing God's Word in a therapeutic attempt to make people more comfortable. 

The need for the study committee didn't come from the unclarity of the issue but came from the American culture's growing divergence from Biblical moral values and thus the need for a final and clearly articulated statement that could withstand these growing waves of assault and serve as a final flag in the ground for the CRCNA's position on the topic. Hence the name "Foundation-Laying Biblical Theology".

Again, in your comment, we find a false equivalence that because human sexuality is complex, therefore the Bible's teaching on the topic must be complex, but it isn't. It's beautifully simple! All sexual activity outside of a one-man, one-woman lifelong marraige is forbidden. 

It's frustrating that you call for us to follow the example of Jesus while ignoring Jesus' own teaching on this topic!

Steven,

My entire reply is a reply to the comment that you accidentally deleted. I must have started my comment while it was still up, so I was looking at your reply whole time. 

FYI, "practical atheism" is a specific Theological term, which in this context means claiming to believe God's Word while not behaving like it... aka acting as if modern identity affirmation must be more effective for helping make LGBT individuals feel better than would encouraging and assisting them in Godliness and righteousness.

I do not think you are an Atheist. Though I'm sure this explanation won't be of any consolation...

Staci,

Could you explain why you felt that the replies to Steve's comment were off topic to the original post and thus worthy to delete but Steve's comment was not off topic and not deleted?

Hi MJill H,

I'm curious if you think that Jesus was "unconsciously racist" as a part of the Jewish social class and the systemic treatment and subjugation of the Samaritan social class?

Because I have concerns about the implications that such a view of systemic racism would turn Jesus into a sinner. Would you have any concerns in this regard?

Thanks

-Trevor

Jonathan,

We're talking about CRT here, which claims that people of the privileged social order can be inherently racist even while actively attempting to be anti-racist. So even if Jesus' teachings were "anti-racist", he himself was still a member of the privileged (and prejudicial) Jewish social order, and thus inherently racist.

Now, I'm going to hope that you consider being racist as something sinful...

Similarly, if the Syrophoenecian woman is correcting Jesus's sinful words of prejudice, that implies Jesus sinned in what he said.

Obviously, if Jesus Christ sinned, we are all damned to eternal destruction, because we have no savior.

All is lost.

"If Synod 2021 passes the recommendation that the church's teaching on sexuality already has confessional status - that statement in itself recognizes this teaching not in the pastoral advice category, but in the confessional category."

Beautiful.

Hence why Henry has to explicitly state that (for some reason) we CANNOT use Ursinus's definition of "unchastity", even though he wrote the Heidelberg Catechism.

Because, as the report states...

"By the word “unchastity” the catechism intends to encompass all sexual immorality, including homosexual activity. The Reformed Church in America acknowledged this in 2017, affirming that in the catechism “God condemns ‘all unchastity,’ which includes same-sex sexual activity.”244.  Ursinus, one of the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, confirms this in his commentary on Q&A 108."

But I, like you, believe that original intentions and definitions are extremely important to a proper reading of a written confession! It is instead a change from the original meaning of "unchastity" that would need to be explicitly stated by a previous Synod. Otherwise the original intention should be assumed as the continued, unchanged definition.

From the Executive Summary of the Human Sexuality Report:

"We also conclude that this status is warranted because these sins threaten a person’s salvation. The Scriptures call the church to warn people to flee sexual immorality for the sake of their souls and to encourage them with God’s presence and power to equip them for holy living. A church that fails to call people to repentance and offer them the hope of God’s loving deliverance is acting like a false church. In coming to this conclusion, we observe that we stand with the majority church worldwide, including the Roman Catholic Church, all branches of Orthodoxy, the non-Western global church, and a majority of active Protestants in North America and Europe. Indeed, the global church finds the Western church’s challenges to biblical teaching on human sexuality incomprehensible and offensive. To refuse to uphold Christian teaching on sexual immorality would signal that the Christian Reformed Church in North America is deviating not only from Scripture but from the shared confession of the historic and worldwide church."

I agree with them. It's not missing the point at all.