Sarx

COUPLE OF Weeks ago, Adam, over at Pomomusings, began a serious of posts on Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality. He had quite a huge conversation up and running through the entire series of posts.

The problem is that explaining away a couple of passages in Paul and Leviticus doesn’t do it for me: the Bible is only part of what Christians have to deal with. It is only the written part of a Tradition that includes liturgy, hagiography, the 7 Ecumenical Councils, Iconography, commentary, preaching… The Christian Tradition sees, in one way or another, all of these as Inspired by the Holy Spirit. And all of them must be involved in the discussion.

So, for Lent, I’m going to be reading Fr John McNeill’s The Church and the Homosexual. At a friend’s request I will follow it up with Fr Thomas Hopko’s Christian Faith And Same Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections. If anyone wants to follow along, both books are available from Amazon.

This series won’t be a “book discussion” format, but rather a series of posts, book reports as it were, one on each chapter, summarising the material and presenting it for discussion.

I shall start the week after Meatfare Sunday, the week of Ash Wednesday. I hope to carry us all the way through to (Western) Palm Sunday, the week before Pascha.

I’m looking forward to our conversation!