The Fourth Wall

In our world of fleeting meaning there is a meme (I think it’s properly called a meme, but I’m unsure) that stands out.  It arrested me because of my experience with its truthfulness.  The meme features Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez hoisted on the shoulder of his Sandlot compadres.  The copy reads “At some point in…

There are a few memories that I can recall with precision that were formative for my moral development as a child.  The year was 1992.  I was 11 years old.  In my evangelical household swear words and then some not swear words like “sucks” were not on the linguistic menu.  My parents were also fastidious…

There was a presidential debate last week.  Ostensibly, the only we will see before the election.  Of note was Donald Trump’s comments about Haitians abducting (implied not said) and eating (said and implied) the cats and dogs owned by the residents of Springfield, Ohio.  I listened to a Daily episode that told more of the…

Well, it’s long past time I wrap this up, and I say that knowing there is so much more that can be said. I’d like to use this concluding post to both synthesize what I’ve analyzed where that may prove helpful and talk about my shift in perspective. Methodist theologian Albert Outler synthesized the work…

In part 6 of this series I summarized the work of William Webb by suggesting that Webb affirms hermeneutical trajectories of liberation with regards to women in ministry and slavery, while maintaining that a hermeneutic of restriction remains uniform in the voice of scripture with regards to homosexuality. I’d like to further consider the complexity…

The last three posts, William Webb’s analysis of hermeneutical trajectories, Rowan Williams’s exposition of human sexuality, and Eugune Rogers’s exploration of biblical imaging, I have categorized under hermeneutics. While Webb’s book offers some explanation of the mechanics of hermeneutics, none of what I have written actually makes a hermeneutical argument using their texts. I have…

Eugene Rogers is a professor of religion at UNC Greensboro.  His contributions to this study are many, but most notable among them is his book Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God.  In this post I want to interact with his much briefer article “Same-Sex Complimentarity: A theology of marriage,” which…

To read the article that this post is summarizing with click here.  A friend told me that it has been said that these ten (or so) pages by Rowan Williams are the best ever written on sexuality.  That’s a helpful starting place.  William’s article is not explicitly about same-sex relationships.  It’s about sexuality.  For this…

Slaves, Women, & Homosexuals At the conclusion of my last I raised the hermeneutical question.  I’ll state it again here.  Is there interpretive reading strategy that takes into account the cultural context in which Paul and others are writing that allows us to supersede the univocal voice of Biblical writers?  The most obvious examples that…

For all four of these posts on biblical texts, which are attempts at exegetical dialogue, I will be pairing Peter Gomes and Richard Hays as conversation partners.  Gomes, now deceased, was an American preacher and theologian, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School as well as the University’s chaplain. Richard Hays was…