Apart from such general statements, however, we should neither expect nor seek from Christian ethics any single principle by which to specify how Christian life must take shape within these worldly spheres
To presume that God blesses such arrangements and to ask the Church to echo such a presumed blessing is perilous to those involved, and to the unity of the Church.
The story of Sodom, the “Holiness Code” of Leviticus, the lists of dark behaviours in the epistles, and the more extensive illustration of Romans 1 all register disapproval. The biblical teaching is not unconsciously coloured by cultural norms; rather, it adopts a decisive counter-cultural stand for its time.
Sexual disorder is at once, then, profoundly personal and clearly communal in its effects.
In summary, the Bible presents sexuality as a divinely-prescribed mode of being for human beings, valuable in itself and in its iconic representation of divine-human relations. From the beginning, sexuality entailed interdependence, companionship and procreation; the distortion and strained fulfilment of these good things, subsequent to the Fall, has not completely thwarted the original intent (the celebration of human love in the Song of Solomon, and the explicit blessing of marriage in the New Testament).
The grand story of the atonement, like a huge symphony, with an overall shape, and various themes that lend themselves to it, sounds in our ears, compels us to gaze at it like a spectacle, and moves into the depths of our heart.
Abraham’s article, Cortez’ response and Abraham’s reply on the project of analytic theology
