Comments for What Do You Do With the Body? at http://www.logia.org , comment 1 to 3 out of 3 comments http://www.logia.org Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:59:10 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.logia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105&catid=39:web-forum&Itemid=76#comment-192 "May God the Father, who created this body; may God the Son, who by His blood redeemed this body; may God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be His temple, keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh." then.."we finally cannot transcend the reality that we are flesh and blood which will perish." So our flesh and blood, ie an integral part of us, that is to be identified as "us", will not perish. Right? We HAVE transcended that reality that remains with that Old Adam that is still under the full curse of the law and will die. This is called the New Birth or Christ-in-us or putting-on-christ. This is the NEW reality that is where we now live in faith, even as we continue, as before our new birth , to live for our neighbor only by force of carrot and stick of the law. In Romans 8 Luther overcame this scholastic understanding of the words "flesh/body" reflected here and came to understand that "flesh/body" did not merely mean carnal, sexual, sinful... it meant rather anything not included in faith. In which the just live. Our bodies, as with the rest of us, will live forever. This is how we should think to honor our bodies. This humble (and not very good) bread and wine are honored by the in, with and under Christ, even as our unloveable bodies carry that Love that the world cannot give with their love. This Food will not perish. Nor will the flesh and blood who feed on It. In the resurrection those bodies will be delivered from the Old Adam that still clings to us and be entirely filled with the the New Man. So article VI of the concordia will no longer need to tell us "insofar as we are reborn" or "If we were fully reborn, then.... we would do good as light from sun ...spontaneously." and then, as it also says, there will be no law or gospel. - fws Mon, 17 May 2010 04:31:55 +0100 http://www.logia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105&catid=39:web-forum&Itemid=76#comment-188 c) celebacy is impossible, therefore gays should join a church but not be honest about the fact that it is impossible for them to be celebate. But then must be added.... and neither should we others in the church be honest about these biblical/confessional/Divinely Inspired and Inerrant Facts. We should implicitly but stridently insist that we are not be told by them that they are homosexual (so as for them not to be "militant" or pushing an "agenda"). And how do we very loudly insist on this to be done? Simple: whenever we refer to homosexuals we have a rule that is strictly enforced among our group. The infraction of this rule even by someone using the word "gay" rather than "homosexual" marks one as not-of-the-group. And what is that rule? We always carefully demand that our pastors and fellow christians never ever include homosexuals as part of "us" in any paper or discussion about homosexuals or homosexuality. We must always talk as if they are never present among us. Their existence is negated. Further, anyone who would, even in language, attempt to publicly include them as part of "us" or "we" will become "them". Now if one troublemaker like me shows up, then....well, ignoring what our confessions and Paul say is an obvious fact about celebacy, we decide to insist on exclusion in a more... um... personal way. It then becomes every christian´s right and solemn duty to ask "them" the following rather intimate question: "How is your sex life?". And just how did any of the readers here respond the last time someone asked you a question like that in your church? But we insist it is our right to ask this question and ask assuming that we have the right also to ignore the biblical fact that celebacy is not a doable option for anyone at all. - fws Sat, 15 May 2010 06:02:28 +0100 http://www.logia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105&catid=39:web-forum&Itemid=76#comment-187 "We need an ethic that is more relational and less "physicalist" was the argument advanced by one of the proponents of change in the debates within the ELCA leading up that church body's adoption of novel policies that run counter to the Sacred Scriptures this past August." The Apostle takes a position and asserts an ethic that is physicalist indeed for "The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." Amen! Especially to your pushback at ELCA! "Hence he says "flee sexual immorality" for every other sin a person commits outside of his body-but this sin is against your body- the very body that God has created, redeemed and sanctified." Amen! So how is it that St Paul would have us do this? Practice this mortification of the flesh? Not by "spiritual" sanctification-as-try-harder-with-da-holy-ghost-power. No. Paul suggests a Law solution that has nothing to do with what makes us a christian. This is all about Law and Mortification of the flesh. This is beating the Old Adam into submission and death. So I agree! Let´s not overly spiritualize. We are talking Romans 8 "flesh/body" here and not anything about "spirit". And what does St Paul say is the deal here? (along with art XXIII AC/apology): (1) Celebacy is best, but is a gift not something one can chose and is an extremely rare gift. So without an "extraordinary work of God" (ie "It´s a miracle!").... (2) Celebacy is simply not possible. (3) It is therefore impossible and sinful to require celebacy of anyone, and to do so causes great social evil, sin, and is in fact a cruelty. (4) Therefore everyone should get married to channel the sex drive. (5) The sex drive is such a strong "force of nature" (ibid) that even within marrige, sex must be a constant and only abstained from by mutual consent for a very short time to avoid temptation. Wow. That means we are dealing with one strong force eh? Ok. So since you brought the topic up in the sermon, how exactly would one counsel a homosexual, given this very specific and definite list of biblical and confessional facts? Options I can think of: a) celebacy is impossible, therefore God requires homosexuals to try hard to be celebate or they are not christian. b) celebacy is not possible, therefore it simply has to be possible for gays to successfully become heterosexual with a 12 step-like program like exodus and failure is not an option. THEN they should get married. c) celebacy is impossible, therefore gays should join a church but not be honest about the fact that it is impossible for them to be celebate. d) celebacy is not an option, therefore gays should find a church be honest there about their lives, and so be labeled "militant" or "unrepentant", and so definately marking themselves as non-christians and be thrown out. e) celebacy is impossible, therefore gays should become chemically castrated. This would please God f) celebacy is impossible, therefore gays should..... I would be interested in someone clueing me in here, since so many seem to feel that this is pretty easy and cut and dried. Clue me in please. - fws Sat, 15 May 2010 05:34:54 +0100