August 27, 2005 7:23 AM A draft letter regarding the contextual interpretation of the liberty of the Paulian (gentile) Christian.

I am taken by your suggestion of context for the interpretation of scripture.

I am thinking this is very helpful in considering the Edict of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15). Liberty is convey with the exception of the four "necessary things". Now Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (cit?) Indicates that at least the first three, i.e., excluding fornication, are to be understood not as a restriction but as a contextual matter, e.g., idol food is ok unless it offends another Christian. And of course this ties in well with Romans 14.

Now fornication, I think, can also be understood in a contextual sense as a violation of the essential purpose of a Christian union. It is in the Christian union of utter candor and shamelessness that the human is able to express himself totally, i.e., in utter freedom and in the company of other humans. The human is a social being and cannot be totally human unless he is in a company, but he can also not be himself or herself unless he is free. This freedom in company is made possible by the Christian union. But in order for this to be possible it must be impossible that anything expressed in that freedom in that company (of one's spouse) ever become public knowledge. For that reason then the vow of the Christian union must be absolute, like that to Christ and of Christ to us, and this is expressed for the humans, according to the disciples of Jerusalem, by a sort of circumcision of the flesh, where sex apart from the union is verboten. Hence the prohibition against fornication. It is to be understood as a sign of one's vow. The Christian avoids fornication as an indication of his or her worthiness to make a vow of any kind. The vow to Christ.

And so this suggests that the liberty granted by the disciples was unlimited, as Kant himself once observed, and the gentile Christians were considered as adequately ruled and governed by the application of the law of love alone to which they had vowed allegiance.

Now I also think that Paul's interdiction against same-sex sex can be understood in this contextual way. The context of same-sex sex, perhaps, was that of a demonic sex. This would be more than merely a domination sex. In domination sex I am aroused by the thought to making another person, man or female, my slave, my toy. In a demonic sex the desire is to violate the law, i.e., the delight is not in the act but in the violation of the law. In this way we can imagine someone deliberately engaging in same sex sex for the very reason that it is contrary to the natural order, where sex is aimed at procreation. Such people would be like the Joker of Batman who delights in violations for the sake of violations alone. Such people then also would violate the moral laws and commit murders and slanders and simply for the sake of it being forbidden by the laws of decency and respect among people.

And so then if we consider that possibility, then it is easy to see that the heart of a homosexual Christian (who is no more queer than a left handed person) could be identical with that of a heterosexual Christian. In a word, this means that the same-sex sex act would have to be considered in the context of the heart of the couple, regardless of sexual make up.

Now this comports well with the restriction against fornication, and thus argues well for a recognition of homosexual unions by the church.