THE following letter, written by (non-gay) Steuart Campbell of Edinburgh, appeared yesterday in The Scotsman:
The Kirk’s claim (your reports) that the Bible “promoted” (sic, doesn’t it still do so?) heterosexual marriage is both naive and irrelevant. The arcane marriage rules of the ancient Jews are hardly relevant to modern Christians; do men still marry their dead brother’s widow?
More relevant would be Jesus’s own teaching, but unfortunately he was rather vague on the subject. There is no evidence he himself was married (unusual in itself) or that he encouraged marriage. Indeed, questioned by priests on the matter, he appeared to suggest that marriage was irrelevant in the face of resurrection.
THE following letter, written by (non-gay) Steuart Campbell of Edinburgh, appeared yesterday in The Scotsman:
The Kirk’s claim (your reports) that the Bible “promoted” (sic, doesn’t it still do so?) heterosexual marriage is both naive and irrelevant. The arcane marriage rules of the ancient Jews are hardly relevant to modern Christians; do men still marry their dead brother’s widow?
More relevant would be Jesus’s own teaching, but unfortunately he was rather vague on the subject. There is no evidence he himself was married (unusual in itself) or that he encouraged marriage. Indeed, questioned by priests on the matter, he appeared to suggest that marriage was irrelevant in the face of resurrection.
The reason for this attitude was his expectation that the world was about to be turned upside down by the appearance of the kingdom of god, a belief continued by St Paul.
Consequently, an appeal to the Bible is no guide at all to this dispute over homosexual marriage. If the Kirk still believes in the coming kingdom, why is it bothered about people’s sexuality?
The Author
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