What is the ancient notion of a “Disputed Question” and how might recovering it help us today?

By The Rev. James Medley, Associate Priest
Eastern Shore Chapel, Virginia Beach

The disputed question is an ancient practice of the medieval Church where groups of students bring forth opposing arguments about theological questions (normally questions not having to do with core doctrine) and debate their contrasting points.   The master (professor) resolved the dispute by making a doctrinal decision as to which argument was correct. 

The disputation is also used today in most, if not all, Episcopal seminaries.  I remember participating in the discipline at the Seminary of the Southwest under our theology professor, Anthony Baker. Tony would give us a question like, “Does scripture contain everything necessary for salvation?” or “Does God suffer?” and then divide a group of us into two teams. One team had to defend the yes point and one defend the no point.  After each team made brilliant arguments (drawing on scripture, early theologians, and reason) Tony would tell us who made the better argument and then which answer, yes or no, was correct from the standpoint of the orthodox faith of the Church. 

Tony had only one hard and fast rule for our disputations: a participant could never argue from the position of unsupported belief.  For example, we couldn’t say, “The answer is this because that’s just what I believe.”   You had to argue from the evidence of your sources.  Sometimes that evidence was inconclusive, especially if the question being disputed concerned issues that weren’t considered matters of core doctrine by the Church.  On those types of questions, we sometimes had to agree to disagree, even to the point of disagreeing with our professor. 

If homosexuality is not a sin, then what is?

By the Rev. Drew Foisie, Curate for Christian Formation

Old Donation, Virginia Beach

It’s a good question, actually. The question is really a straight up look into what sin is and what sin is not. But that’s a big question. Not an easy question. Look up sin in the bible dictionary and you will get reams of entries on the matter. You’ll learn about “moralistic” sin, “monistic” sin, “personalistic” sin and all sorts of other fun things to bring up at cocktail parties. The simplest and most universally agreed upon answer to this question, however, might just be that sin is whatever separates us from God, whatever severs our relationship with the Creator. To do that, to make that happen, usually involves a choice to, in some form or other, either take life from others, or reject and walk away from Life being offered to you. When in the Garden and confronted by the serpent Adam and Eve decided, after some “reasoning”, to walk away from life and into death (Gen 3:2). After eating the fruit and experiencing shame for their nakedness they were later led out of the Garden. But before going God made for them garments. He gave them what they needed to begin their next life – one in which they would learn how to live again. One that would involve loving and trusting God with all their heart, mind and strength and loving their neighbor as themselves.  

What is meant by blessing? *

By Bill Hunter, Eastern Shore Chapel, Virginia Beach

& member of the Leading a Holy Life Task Force

“Blessing” has been defined as the authoritative pronouncement of God’s favor… In Christian practice, blessing finds a frequent place in liturgy, especially in the blessing of the elements in consecration and the blessing of the people at the end of the Mass.  In Holy Matrimony, the formal name of the service is “The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage.”

From a theological perspective what then is a “blessing”?  If a blessing is the pronouncement of God’s favor, does this also imply God’s approval?  

Blessings appear to have one function in liturgy (the act of consecration or to make holy) and another in the context of the blessing of a home.  In such a blessing, homes are not made holy in the way that a church is dedicated or consecrated as holy space.  What is happening when a home is blessed?  Could it be that we are inviting God’s favor in the hope that we will be worthy of such favor and that we will align our lives with God’s will?  If so, the function of blessing is to remind the ones blessed of who they are.  By grace, we receive the blessing of God.  The blessing is intended to be relational, a two-way street.

Then, what would it mean to bless a same-gender relationship in the context of worship?

What are the theological implications of current scientific data suggesting sexual preference is a genetic trait?

By The Rev. Dr. John Maxwell Kerr, SOSc (Society of Ordained Scientists),

Episcopal Chaplain to the Faculty, Staff and Students of the College of William & Mary.

 

Science tells us about the way the natural world is, based on carefully-researched evidence.  Scientific understanding of sexual preference does have theological implications because all science provides raw material for Christian theology, which must take seriously what we learn of the world God has created.

The best current scientific evidence on sexual preference is based on several years of extensive peer-reviewed research principally carried out at McMaster University Medical School, the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary College in the University of London, and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. It refutes two polar positions.

First, is the idea that sexual preference, unlike all other aspects of what it is to be human, is a matter of freely choosing to sin, and has no relationship to our genetic inheritance, or any other aspect of our physical selves. This view is wrong: genetically inherited brain structures correlate with sexual preference (and also with left-handedness, presumably also not a matter of sinful choice.)

The Bible, Sexual Orientation and Vacuum Cleaners

By The Rev. Ed Pickup

Rector, Emmanual, Franklin

 

People often ask, “what does the Bible say about sexual orientation?”  The correct answer is: “the same thing it says about vacuum cleaners.”

In 1869, the Austrian writer Karl‑Maria Kertbeny first coined the words heterosexual and homosexual.^[1]  Prior to that time, there was no idea that people had a sexual orientation. ^[2]

In the same year Chicago inventor Ives W. McGaffey obtained a patent for the first hand-pumped vacuum cleaner.  Named the “Whirlwind” it was manufactured by American Carpet Cleaning Company of Boston and cost $25.00. 

So the Bible doesn’t have much to say about either sexual orientation or vacuum cleaners, since neither concept was known at the time.

Well then, what was Paul writing about in Romans 1:26-27?  The answer is what Paul knew at the time: temple prostitution.  Beginning in verse 18, Paul condemns idolatry - the worship of pagan deities, images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.  

Whatever happened to celibacy?

by The Rev. Drew Foisie

Curate for Christian Formation, Old Donation, Virginia Beach

People today don’t have to look far for reasons to dislike celibacy and distance themselves from any endorsement of it. The tragic and appalling, wide-spread abuse perpetrated by an alarming and disturbing number of Roman Catholic priests is enough to make anybody want to cut celibacy from any equation of faithful living. In addition, the wider culture exudes a deep distaste and distrust for myriad forms of faithful living involving self-denial, abstinence and celibacy chief among them. The cultural subtext being that any ordering of one’s life that resembles self-denial is a form of “repression.” And yet despite its difficult and sometimes unpopular reputation, celibacy has been and remains a valuable and transformative source of life within the Christian tradition. It is a gift from God that the Apostle Paul and countless other saints have known. But many feel this gift to be far outside their sense of call or Christian vocation. And indeed, celibacy is not for everyone. Regarding celibacy Jesus said, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given.” It must then be granted that some are not given this gift, but also that some are indeed given this gift, and given the grace to live it out.

On the subject of sexuality, how does scripture inform our lives today?

 by the Rev. Eileen Walsh, Rector, St. Christopher's Portsmouth

There is no way to fully explore such a vast topic in a brief blog post, but I offer this as an introduction and hopefully a catalyst for readers to pursue the topic further.  First let’s look at a couple of passages that are frequently cited in most discussions of homosexuality. There is the attempted gang rape in Sodom (Genesis 19:1-29) and a similar account in Judges 19-21. These passages describe brutal behavior that has nothing to do with whether genuine love expressed between consenting adults of the same gender is legitimate or not. I would hope that in this discussion these passages would be rendered irrelevant. There are also several passages that are rather unclear as to whether the issue at hand is homosexuality alone or promiscuity. (1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10)

Aside from these there are two texts in the Hebrew Scriptures that undeniably condemn homosexual behavior. They are: