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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.
The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the
United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
James White. I've been going through an evolution on this issue and I had hesitated on gay marriage, in part because I thought civil unions would be sufficient.
But I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I talk to friends and family and neighbors, when
I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same -sex relationships, who are raising kids together, at a certain point
I've just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same -sex couples should be able to get married.
And I continue to believe that this is an issue that is going to be worked out at the local level because historically this has not been a federal issue.
Those, of course, are the words of President Barack Obama yesterday. I had to chuckle after later on in the interview.
The reporter asked the President about the timing of this and was he sort of forced to come out and say this due to what
Vice President Joe Biden had said on Sunday on Meet the Press. And with a rather bemused look on his face, the
President said some line along the lines of, ìYeah, Joe got a little bit out over his skis there ,î which actually
I felt was about the only thing that I found humorous in the entirety of the interview. Dr.
Albert Mueller has said that May 9, 2012 is a historical date for the
United States of America. I donÃt think he said this but he could have said this and maybe this is a difference between he and I.
I will say this. It is a day which will live in infamy. It is the day when a sitting
President of the United States of America in very post -modern language sat in front of the flag of the
United States and the seal of the President of the United States and enunciated a revolutionary moral and ethical rejection of the foundations upon which the entire moral structure of the
United States relate. There is not any serious person who can suggest that any one of the founding fathers of the
United States of America in crafting the Constitution, the
Bill of Rights ever, ever, ever had in their mind this kind of fundamental overthrow of public decency, ethics and morality.
It never crossed their mind. What we really have seen here, first of all, is nothing surprising as far as Barack ObamaÃs personal views.
ItÃs documented beyond all question that as early as 1996, he said he was for gay marriage.
That changed before the presidential election for some odd reason but we will leave that off to the side.
That wasnÃt surprising to I think anyone who is familiar with how the current administration has dealt with this particular issue.
But what is, I think, monumental and what is worth talking about during the
Dividing Line today is what we see going on in our culture. It just so happens,
I mean, no one knew that this was going to be the weekend that this took place, but certainly what we experienced over the past few weeks in the
Dan Savage material, in dealing with Matthew Vines and the kinds of discussions that have been going on, this is front and center and now it is going to be right on the table as far as the entire conversation leading up to the election of 2012.
I did mention this morning on Twitter, well actually
I donÃt know what I did on Twitter, I may have just been in channel, but I find it incredibly ironic that of the two candidates who have any reasonable chance of becoming president, one has now stood in front of the
American people, or sat in front of the American people I guess, and said that he is personally for the profanation of marriage, which is what this is.
It is a complete redefinition and not just a redefinition, not just a well we need to clarify the definition, it is a complete overthrow of the definition of marriage that has existed in this country, the only meaningful definition of marriage.
And the other candidate has a religion that is soaked in polygamy, and in fact if you talk to a
Mormon to this day and question the issue of polygamy, you will be amazed at how quickly they come to the defense of section 132 of the
Doctrine and Covenants, and there is many a Mormon who believes that the true proper means of marriage and form of marriage is actually a polygamist marriage, and how else could they view it?
Their God is a polygamist, so that is the way it is. What an amazing thing that this is, who could have predicted this?
If 20 years ago someone had said that we would be facing a presidential election that would pit an individual whose religion is associated with polygamy with a sitting president who had just said that he agrees with same -sex marriage, 20 years ago would anyone have believed that?
I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have and I would have looked at you and said that is not going to happen in my lifetime, that is just not possible.
Well, things change a whole lot faster than a lot of us expected that it was going to be changed.
Now, I think one of the things that we must think about is this was not an in -depth interview, okay?
Unfortunately, no one is going to ask Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi or any of these people pressing for the complete revolution of morals and ethics in our society, no one is going to be really asking them the questions that need to be asked of them.
We all understand that, that is just not going to happen. But I do think that we need to ask those questions, we need to be thinking about those questions.
Notice what was said, what I played at the beginning, then a little bit later on, we have
President Obama saying, I think it's important for me to say to them and he's talking about people who, as he put it, narrowly define marriage, that's like,
I narrowly define my bicycle. Oh, you narrow person. No, I just think I need to make sure that I know which one's mine.
But anyway, I think it is important for me to say to them that as much as I respect them, as much as I understand where they're coming from, when
I meet gay and lesbian couples, when I meet same -sex couples and I see how caring they are and how much love they have in their hearts, how they're taking care of their kids, when
I hear from them the pain they feel, that somehow they are still considered less than full citizens when it comes to their legal rights, then for me,
I think it just has tipped the scales in that direction. Now this is the quintessential postmodern feel -good morality.
It is basing morality and ethics upon experience. It's basing morality and ethics upon feelings and emotion.
It has no objective standard that can be referred to. And of course, what it results in is if your experience is different than someone else's experience, then you can argue that your experience is equivalent to their experience, and therefore, there should be no objective moral legal grounding in the law for the condemnation of any behavior whatsoever.
And that's exactly why those promoting intergenerational love, those who would like to have polygamy, those who would like to be married to their dog, their cat, or their horse, will make the exact same argument that this is my experience, you're making me feel like a second -class citizen,
I was born this way, aren't you just being bigoted, have you ever thought about the fact that everybody has their own thing, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And so you observe people, and you say that those people are caring, well,
I know a lot of caring people who hold to improper behaviors and improper beliefs, clearly, there has been a complete rejection, a complete abandonment of any type of ethical, objective, ethical and moral foundation in this kind of thinking.
They take care of their kids, they have love in their hearts, and this is exactly what we've been hearing from Matthew Vines, I want to be able to love someone.
Now what he needs to be asked, what the president needs to be asked is, sir, how do you define love when you're a parent, but you do not allow your love for your children to allow them to go running out in the middle of a busy street when they're children.
Your children especially have to have secret service agents around them and things like that, they have to be cared for, they can't just go and do what they want to do, and your love for them means that you provide rules, you provide boundaries, and those boundaries are based upon what is right for them.
Christianity identifies love as first and foremost being for God, and then the love that we're to have for others is to reflect our love for God, well, that means that there's definitions of what is truly love and what is not truly love.
And as I've said many, many times, you cannot love a mirror. There is something about correspondence in the marriage relationship that precludes the idea of homosexual love.
You might have compassion for somebody, you might have a strong emotional feeling, but see, the problem is, and folks, here's where theology matters and here's where we have been debilitated in really being able to address this consistently, this comes back to Reformed theology, and this comes back to something we've pointed out before, and that is those people who turn love into the only divine attribute so that it is not connected to and not related to in any way, shape, or form
God's justice and God's holiness. When they make omnibenevolence the omni of all attributes, then they no longer have a meaningful foundation upon which to really address this particular issue because their doctrine of love has become imbalanced and unbiblical, and that's a problem.
And so when we talk about love, the love that a man is supposed to have for his wife biblically involves what?
It involves self -sacrifice. Love your wife as Christ loved the church.
It doesn't say anything about your emotions, it doesn't say anything about your gratification, it doesn't say anything about meeting your felt needs, it's self -sacrificial.
That's Christian love. Now, this man claims to be a Christian, but doesn't seem to understand what
Christian love is all about, and unfortunately that would mean that he's like a large majority of the rest of people who likewise call themselves
Christian. But we continue on. They talk about the pain that they feel when they are somehow still considered less than full citizens when it comes to their legal rights.
So if you do not legally give rights based upon moral principles to people, then you should feel bad about that.
So you should feel bad if you don't give legal rights to people in prison, because you're making them feel less than full citizens.
Well, wait a minute. They did something that required them to give up those rights.
They went against the law. Oh, well, that's not a big deal, is it? And that's why there are people who are saying that inmates should get the vote and everything else.
And you don't want to make anybody feel bad. That's the greatest offense there is, is to make someone feel bad.
Well, don't you make a thief feel bad when he's convicted of thievery?
What was the name of that guy? Bernie Madoff. Bernie Madoff, he looked so sad.
And all he did was take some money. And we've made him feel like he's not really a citizen.
He's less than the rest of us because he just took some money. The great offense of offending.
That's the great dogma of our society now. Thou shalt not offend anyone. But what does this tell us?
What does this tell us about President Obama's ethical and moral thinking and the ethical and moral thinking of many people in our society?
Let me read, again, it has just tipped the scales in that direction.
What? His observation of people, not thinking through the nature of marriage, not thinking through the government's role in promoting marriage so as to produce citizens and to keep, you know, first cousins from marrying or something like that.
No, it had nothing to do with considering the historical ramifications of marriage. It had to do with looking at how caring people were.
And then it goes on, later on, that they're respectful of religious liberty, that, you know, churches and other faith institutions are still going to be able to make determinations about what their sacraments are, what they recognize.
But from the perspective of the law and perspective of the state, by the way, I'm just reading the transcript and it's a literal transcript.
I think it's important to say that in this country, we've always been about fairness and about treating everybody as equals, or at least that's been our aspiration.
I think that applies here as well. Now, think for just a moment what this means.
Fairness, that is how this is now being laid out before us. You want us to be treated unfairly.
Is that what it's about? No clear thinking person will ever say that. But unfortunately, the reason that this is just expanding across our nation and our culture is that very few people have been taught to think clearly and think logically and think rationally and set emotion to a side and examine what people are actually saying and the foundations and presuppositions, their arguments and things like that.
Treating everyone as equal, that would mean, of course, that there shouldn't be any limitations on who becomes
President of the United States. You have to be at least 35, as I recall, to be
President of the United States. Well, that's unfair. That's treating my five -year -old in an improper way.
I have a five -year -old. I don't have a five -year -old. But a five -year -old should be allowed to be President, right? Because that's equality.
And you have to have been born in the United States. We all learned about that from Eric and Kanna, right? But that's treating people unfairly.
And shouldn't inmates be allowed to be President of the United States as well?
I mean, we need to have equality, right? Everything needs to be equal. Well, that's what people say.
But none of us actually live that way. I mean, if you really believe in equality, then communism would seem to be your only choice.
And everybody has the same amount, which is normally poverty. And no one has more power than anybody else.
And of course, it's never worked that way, because everybody knows the people in the party actually do have that thing. Communism is so absurd, because it does not have a
Christian view of man. Hence, by necessity, it must be a self -knowledgeable lie.
And everybody knows that it is. But fundamentally, no one lives that way.
Right now, the NBA playoffs are going on, right? And I think the Lakers are still in it, aren't they?
So shouldn't everybody be able to play for the Lakers? Shouldn't any of the fans be able to just jump up and take the last shot?
Because we want equality. I think if you're a Lakers fan, you want
Kobe to do that. Because nobody has ever had as smooth and amazing a jumper as Kobe Bryant.
But that's not fair. He has skills and abilities somebody else doesn't have.
That's not fair. It's absurd to complain about reality.
There are certain skills and abilities that certain people have that other people don't. I cannot play for an
NBA basketball team. If anyone saw me doing the wedding for Lane Chaplin and Susan Yenser, then you know
I don't belong on an NBA basketball team. The wedding pictures were hilarious. There I am.
The Lilliputian in the Land of the Giants. The Maid of Honor in her in her shoes was seven feet tall.
I'm looking at the shading, the sun. It's just incredible. I can't play in the NBA. Is that unfair?
No, it's not. It's the way things are. Fairness has to be grounded upon a meaningful recognition of reality.
Okay, so when we decide that there are certain moral and ethical standards, it is not logical to say that it's unfair when we apply them.
When we say that you cannot rip people off by stealing their identities on the internet, is that unfair to people who have the skill to do that?
We make them feel bad when we arrest them. I've never found anyone who cared. But let's get more specific.
We make a lot of people. We have been making a lot of people in southern
Utah and northern Arizona feel very bad for a long time. Because we look down upon their polygamy.
We've actually tried to stop it a couple times, but it didn't work. We've let it go. But they have to live in their little communities and they're cut off from the rest of the world.
How dare we make them feel bad if that's what they want to do? Why was the FBI chasing around after that fellow just a few years ago?
Just because he had a 14 -year -old bride. I mean, hey, isn't that bigoted?
What about equality? But I think probably the most telling paragraph was this one here.
Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same -sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table.
We've been talking about their friends and their parents. Malia and Sasha, it wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friend's parents would be treated differently.
It doesn't make sense to them. And frankly, that's the kind of thing that prompts a change of perspective.
You know, not wanting to somehow explain to your child why somebody should be treated differently when it comes to the eyes of the law.
That to me was the saddest element of this particular discussion.
Yes, it's sad that this is the President of the United States and all that. But that last line, you know, not wanting to somehow explain to your child why somebody should be treated differently when it comes to the eyes of the law.
President Obama, do you explain to your children why pedophiles are treated differently in the eyes of the law?
I sure hope you've told your children, stay away from strangers. Why do we do that? Isn't that an opportunity to explain the objective grounding and nature of the law?
Unless, of course, you don't believe that there is an objective, moral, ethical basis for law.
If it's just what we all happen to like at a particular point in time, if it's just what our, if our society just decides these things and that's just how it is, then we're stuck with the same situation that my atheist opponent was stuck in about a year and a half ago when we debated in New York.
And we talked about standing outside the gates of Dachau or Buchenwald.
And upon what basis, standing there, would you be able to condemn the men and the women who were involved in the atrocities that took place during the
Holocaust? Because you see, as far as their culture was concerned, as far as their nation was concerned, they were doing what they had been told to do by the duly elected government to which they had sworn their oath of fealty.
And yet we executed many of those people because we recognized that there was a moral law that transcends cultural law.
And remember what my opponent said? My opponent said that the only thing he could say standing there at Buchenwald or Auschwitz would be that he thinks that that was inappropriate.
And when you have no objective moral foundation, that's all you're left with. And so is that where the president of the
United States is? That he doesn't want to tell his daughters about the foundation of the law?
That he doesn't want to tell his daughters that our law should reflect, must reflect if it's even going to function as law, the foundations upon which this nation was built?
That truly is an amazing thing because I have raised children and they will tell you that I would often take, sometimes to their distraction, sometimes to the rolling of their eyes, if they will admit it,
I would take many opportunities when things were happening in the society to use it as an example of applying a
Christian worldview. What is the worldview that the president of the
United States has just enunciated in these words? The worldview is
I will not explain to my daughters the moral foundation of maintaining a meaningful, logical definition of marriage wherein it is a man and a woman committed for life that produces life and is the very foundation of a thriving society.
It's too hard for me to explain to my daughters that there are sinners in our society who are doing things that are self -destructive, destructive to themselves, destructive to the other person, and destructive to society.
I don't want to have to do that. That's too hard. I don't want to seem harsh.
My friends, when a society lacks the commitment to morality and ethics reflected in that, it is doomed.
Look at history. No society that has ever looked with favor upon this kind of behavior has lasted long upon the face of the earth.
And Western society is going that direction. It's a shame no one will ask those questions.
It's a shame that no one will press those issues. What was also a shame was an article that I saw.
I believe Al Mohler linked to it. Baptists split on North Carolina gay marriage ban.
And it will give you a very clear indication that the term Baptist, like the term
Christian, has to be defined in a meaningful fashion. And that there are people who use both, would identify themselves both as Christians and as Baptists, who do not have the slightest hesitation in rejecting the clear teachings of Jesus Christ himself on this issue.
There were Baptist organizations in North Carolina, the Alliance of Baptists, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, an association of welcoming and affirming
Baptists who oppose the amendment. And one of the speakers,
Robin Lund, said, nobody can take away love. They can make it illegal, but they can't take it away.
Well, again, here's a person who evidently claims to be a Christian, claims to be a Baptist, but doesn't seem to have a clue about the fact that for a
Baptist, for a Christian, it's the Bible and Jesus's teachings.
That define what is love. And so it was sad to note that, but then just before I came on the air, my good friend and brother,
Michael Brown, tweeted out a article from his blog in the line of fire for today.
And the subject line is, does Billy Graham advocate Christian Sharia?
And of course, I knew what it was about as soon as I saw that. And it talks about the ad, the full page ad in 14
North Carolina newspapers that Billy Graham had taken out. And the ad featured a large picture of Graham with these words.
At 93, I never thought we would have to debate the definition of marriage. The Bible is clear.
God's definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. I want to urge my fellow North Carolinians to vote for the marriage amendment on Tuesday, May 8th.
God bless you as you vote. Wow, that's radical. That's, oh, how dare he?
I mean, just in your face, huh? And of course, what has been the response to that?
Well, let's just say that a man by the name of Wade Besson, I don't know the pronunciation.
My apologies. Gay activist Wayne will go with Besson. How did
Besson respond to the ad? He called Graham a one -time anti -Semite, referred to him as this fraud, grouped him with other totalitarian preachers, and claimed that Graham is now trying to jam his own church's rules and doctrine down my throat, and that he thinks
I should be forced against my will to live by its rules. Boy, aren't those the words of a rebellious 13 -year -old?
Can you just see some 13 -year -old that didn't get spanked enough when he was a kid acting like that?
I am awfully glad, awfully glad that I was given a disciplined upbringing that actually taught me to be an adult.
Besson asked, do we now make our civil laws based upon Christian Sharia?
Do we all have to follow his version of the Bible to be punished by government? And if this is the case, are we really a free country?
It's hard not to laugh at this. I mean, these people, it's just so absurd.
There isn't the slightest bit of honesty in any of this. Do they know anything about the history of this country?
Anything at all? Do they know anything about the beliefs of the
Founding Fathers? I mean, they can't. It's just so absurd.
It's hard to even keep a straight face in responding to it. We continue on. Are we really much different than Iran, or is it only by a matter of degrees or a matter of time until these so -called
Christian supremacists get their paws on all of our laws? I'm sorry, but it's just so wide -eyed, and it's just amazing.
He continued, I'm not sure who Billy Graham thinks he is, but it seems like he believes he is superior and his followers have a mandate to hijack civil law and decide for the rest of us how we live.
You know, if this had been founded as a purely secular nation by atheists without a
Christian around, if there wasn't anything in the Declaration of Independence about God and being endowed by our
Creator and stuff like that, then, okay, maybe I could understand some of this wild -eyed lunacy, but that's not the case.
I mean, I think I mentioned it in a video. Maybe I didn't, but I might have.
But just a couple of Wednesday nights ago, my fellow elder brought in his father's New Testament. His father had died recently, and evidently he had received this, and it was the
New Testament that he carried with him during World War II. And you open up the New Testament, and the very first page is an
American flag, and directly across from it is by order of the Supreme Commander, the
President of the United States, recommending to everyone in the armed forces the reading and carrying of the
Christian Scriptures. And this was provided to everybody. And even though my fellow elder's father was not a
Christian, he carried it with him in battle anyways. This was 60 years ago.
All right, 70 years ago. Between 65 and 70 years. Anyway, this wasn't all that long ago, and no one blinked an eye.
No one had any problem about it. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln called for times of fasting and prayer.
And so just from a simple historical perspective, this kind of wild -eyed lunacy is just really difficult to begin to understand.
Billy Graham at 93 takes out a newspaper ad and says, I hope you'll vote for defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
And this man loses his mind. If that doesn't tell you something about the homosexual movement,
I don't know what does. Let's see.
As for what the Bible says about marriage, Beeson stated that Graham is dead wrong about the Bible being clear.
Well, I would be happy to debate him on that. We already know how they get around with that.
Get around that. John Becker, a colleague of Besson, wrote, it says a lot about the man's true character that he selected for what may be his final public gesture, an act of malice, divisiveness, and discrimination.
So, if you encourage people to stand for Christian morality, then you are full of malice, divisiveness, and discrimination.
Now, that is just so stupid. It's hard to even know how to respond to it. There's not an iota of honesty or integrity in that kind of statement.
It's illogical. It's irrational. It is itself so soaked in bigotry that it's hard to even separate the words out and give a meaningful response to it.
But that is the rhetoric of the homosexual lobby. It's just amazing.
According to actor Michael Verratti, implicit in the First Amendment is the separation of church and state, a basic principle that was championed by Thomas Jefferson to ensure that you could celebrate your faith peaceably without bleeping all over someone else's rights or beliefs, as if that's even what
Thomas Jefferson meant. I mean, talk about revisionist history. Talk about just ravaging history.
That's what this is all about. It is truly, truly amazing. So, I retweeted the blog here.
If you just go to lineoffireblog .blogspot .com, you can find it there.
And pray for Michael Brown. I'm sure in light of his excellent book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, which the former
Coral Ridge ministry, I forget what the name of it is now, has put out a 64 -page condensation of that huge, massive work.
I haven't talked with Rich about it yet, but it would be interesting to see if we can get hold of that, because especially during this time period, it would be excellent to have something to hand out to people and to talk to people about.
I did want to respond to an email that I received, because I told the fellow that I would, basically.
Basically, my first response, when this fellow contacted me, was to say,
I don't get this argument at all. And it's still difficult for me to figure out what the argument is.
But this is relevant to some of the texts we looked at last time. And then we have someone on this same subject that I'll get to, that's
Tom and Enid, who I'll get to in just a moment after I respond to this particular question.
I'd like to at least try to stay on this topic as long as possible before we go to any other topics.
If you'd like to comment on this particular topic, the subject of homosexuality, gay marriage, and President Obama, we do have a couple callers online.
One is on a different topic. And if no one else calls in, we'll get to that. But otherwise,
I'd like to try to stay as close to the topic as possible. But I had made the comment in discussing the
Leviticus passages. And I was basically giving us a heads up.
When we get over to 1 Corinthians 6, and Paul's use of the term arsenikoites, the question is, what does arsenikoites mean?
And I had mentioned that Matthew Vines admits from his perspective that the earliest use of arsenikoites is found in Paul.
And I raised the issue of, did
Paul coin this phrase? We know that he, at times, does do this.
And that when he does so, it's normally by combining terms from the Greek septuagint, which of course is the default version of the
Old Testament used by the early church. And of course, when he's writing to Gentiles, he's not going to be quoting Hebrew.
He's going to be quoting something that they have access to. And that would be coin a Greek, and hence the
Greek septuagint. And I pointed out that in Leviticus 18 .22,
you have arsenos, the specific term for male. And you have koitain, which is the very term from which we get the
Latin term, koitis, which refers to sexual intercourse.
And so you have in one verse, arsenos and koitis, hence arsenikoites, and hence the possibility that either rabbinic sources before Paul had done this, or Paul himself, is the source of this compound term.
And then we go back and we see what he's talking about in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20.
Well, someone wrote to me and said, well, but I've had it thrown at me that those terms also appear in Numbers 31, verse 17, and hence we can't make that application.
And so I look at Numbers 31 .17, and it says, now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him.
Now, this is about what the armies of Israel were to do in driving the people out of the land.
This is one of those tough texts, because it is talking about the cleansing of the land, and it is talking about the destruction, the wholesale destruction, of the pagan nations that inhabited the land.
And hence what it's saying is the men of the land are to be wiped out, all of them.
And every non -virgin is to be wiped out. Now, we can talk all we want about what the possible reasons for this were, and yes,
I think it's appropriate to talk about the diseases amongst the people, and the sexual immorality, and the offering of children in Mulloch, and all the rest of that stuff, and that's appropriate.
But the fact of the matter is, God was bringing absolute and full judgment upon these nations.
And that is what this text is about. But this text has nothing to do with homosexuality.
It has to do with the destruction of every male, and every woman who has been known by man, has had sexual relations with man.
That's what koitain means, who has known a man sexually, has been penetrated by a man, that's literally what it means.
And so you have the term arsenos, which means man, and it's talking about a woman who has known a man sexually.
That woman is to be killed. So, what this does is it demonstrates that, yeah, arsenos means male, as in the gender, and koitain means sexual relations.
But how is that relevant to Leviticus? I still can't figure it out, how it would be relevant, unless you're assuming that all words have the same meaning in every context, which of course is absurd.
None of us could even begin to speak if we didn't recognize the context of Leviticus.
So, here's the question, because I kept going back and saying, I don't understand what this argument is.
Unless you're assuming that because these words appear in one text, they appear in another text, that the two texts are the same, or that all words always have the same meaning, or that context means nothing.
I mean, I just can't follow any of that. There's so many absurd presuppositions and assumptions being brought in, that it's hard to even respond to it.
And so, a fellow wrote back and said, okay, in 1
Corinthians 6, when he uses arsenokoitas, is that a masculine noun?
I guess that if it is, then that would mean that the referent would have to be a male, men betters, rather than any other possible workaround that a homosexual apologist might use.
Again, arsenokoitas, we know what arsenokoitas means, and koitas means what men do with men in bed.
I don't understand, and I've not seen any foundation, how
Numbers 31 is relevant outside of the fact that Numbers 31, 17 talks about the fact that men can have sex with women.
But in Leviticus, it's men having sex with men. So, where's the confusion?
What else could it refer to? This is Paul writing. He's certainly not talking about men who have had sex with women, because that would be every father in the world.
So, what else could he be referring to? I don't understand. Unless someone is saying that we can't possibly know what arsenokoitas means.
Which, again, means you can go back to Leviticus, you can go back to the law, you can go back to the repeated, twice -repeated references, and still say, no, that's not what
Paul meant. Well, what did he mean? Well, we just don't know. Ah, the great agnostic concept,
I guess. I don't know. But Numbers 31, 17 actually proves my point.
Numbers 31, 17 actually strengthens the identification of arsenokoitas as a male homosexual in 1
Corinthians 6, because it demonstrates there a different kind of sexuality.
That is, natural sexuality. Now, I've been trying to sort of follow what the lines are here, and I guess we have two calls then on the topic that we can get to.
And so, let's go ahead and talk with Tom. Hi, Tom. Hey, Dr.
White, how you doing? Doing good. Great. About a month ago,
I got a flyer in the mail from a religious group, from a theistic group, actually Catholic, I think, entitled, 77
Non -Religious Reasons to Support Man -Woman Marriage. My question for you is, as far as giving the secular premise or granting the secular arguments to the dialogue, as opposed to coming from a straight -up theistic or presuppositional argument, what's the place for all of that?
How do secular arguments fit into the mix? Well, because we are creating the image of God, there will be very basic, simple reasons to follow
God's law. I mean, almost nobody ever talks about it, but the average male homosexual lives 11 to 21 years less long, on average, than the average male heterosexual.
So, you're talking about a lifestyle and behavior that decreases life by far greater than sitting on your couch and eating potato chips all day while smoking six packs of cigarettes.
But no one can get to talk about that, because, well, we don't want to talk about things like that. That's just not
PC. So, you could, I'm sure, because God made us in certain ways, and therefore we reflect
His creatorship, that there are all sorts of, quote -unquote, secular reasons to oppose same -sex marriage.
I mean, just on a very basic level. In fact, from a Darwinian viewpoint, there isn't even a question about this.
I mean, from a naturalistic perspective, if you're truly a Darwinian, if you're like Dawkins, you would have to say that homosexuality as a whole and gay marriage in particular is just simply dumb, because all you are is a organic bag of DNA, and you're supposed to spread your
DNA to the next generation as widely as possible. And therefore, the least effective way to do that is to be homosexual.
And so, really, if homosexuality was just a genetic thing, it should have been chosen against and filtered out of the genome a long time ago.
Obviously, it hasn't been, and therefore there's some issues there. So, because that reflects
God's reality, God is creator, certainly we can come up with those things, but as a Christian, I really don't see that that's much of an assistance to us, because any type of secular argument is going to be subject to multiple interpretations and things along those lines.
I suppose only insofar as they reflect the reality of God's creatorship, and we can make that tie in, then fine.
But my concern would be that a lot of Christians would go that direction just simply so as to avoid the inevitable backlash of bringing to bear the command of God upon anyone's life.
We all know the disapproving stares and responses we get from that. So, I realize some people lean much more toward that direction, more comfortable with making that kind of argumentation, but I think it just simply flows from the fact that God is our creator, and therefore there's going to be natural evidence.
Just like the complexity of life, intelligent design is evidence of God's creation.
It's there, but separating that from the power of the gospel is not going to change any hearts and minds.
I just see that in our culture today, it seems that do what you want and make sure you're happy with it seems to be the milieu of our time.
So, I worry that arguing from a secular premise too much grants that a little bit too much. That's pretty much where Rome was right before the barbarians sacked
Rome. It really is the end of a society.
Why should anyone sacrifice themselves in defense of a nation? Why should anyone sacrifice themselves for the good of a community or a people when that is the greatest good, is my feelings, my things.
It's narcissistic, and a narcissistic society will not live for very long. Absolutely.
Thank you, sir. Thanks, Dr. White. All right, God bless. Let's go to Tim in Syracuse.
Hi, Dr. White. Hi, Tim. Long -time listener, first -time caller, dittos or whatever we say here.
I'm sorry. That is definitely a copyrighted phrase that could get us sued big time. And your mic is more of a silver hue than golden,
I'm sure. Oh, no, mine's just plain old black metal. Plain old black, a big condenser mic. Yeah, it's low -end, man.
But you sound fine. I have a mic. I'm talking to my MacBook Pro. I just want to say how much
I really appreciate the work you do. Your dividing line accompanies me on my jogs and learn much from it.
And when your knees go bad, it'll accompany you on your rides. I got my bike oiled up, ready to go.
So there. Hey, I was somewhat encouraged by the vote in North Carolina.
Although, as my wife said, can you believe that 39 % actually voted against this thing?
Yeah, that always makes you think about that. Of course, that's those who turned out as well.
And one of the things as a result of that, some of my Christian friends have been just, it seems like they're overly concerned with not appearing to be, fill in the blank, legalistic, harsh, whatever.
And my concern is, and I'm sure yours as well, but why are
Christians more concerned about what people think than what the Lord thinks in the long term, in the aggregate?
And then there's also this weird kind of pietistic, well, hey, America is not the church, and then they get into separation of church and state and somehow think that, well, the whole evolution of quote -unquote gay marriage, that doesn't affect me or my family.
How could that hurt my marriage? I'm just mortified. Yeah, well, let's be honest.
Most people are not challenged in most churches to develop a
Christian worldview and to recognize the harmony of God's truth and the fact that theology does matter and that we are to act and think in particular ways in light of our confession of faith and the lordship of Christ and that we are to make application that, in fact, one of the highest callings in the
Christian life is to develop a heart of wisdom. And that wisdom, what is the beginning of wisdom?
It is the fear and knowledge of God. And I've said before,
I think back to the fact that when we first moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1974, there were just a couple of broadcast television stations at the time, and one of them was
K -O -O -L, Kool, which given as Phoenix is sort of a wishful thing.
But every hour on the hour, there would be a picture of the American flag and an announcer specifically saying, blessed is the nation whose
God is the lord, K -O -O -L TV channel 10, which is now a Fox affiliate.
And given what you find on Fox, they don't do that anymore for some odd reason. But yeah,
I can't either. But how things have changed, that people would be so deeply offended by that quotation of that text.
But what does that text actually say? It's not talking about the setting up of the theonomic system in every single nation, but it is saying that every nation will be judged based upon those moral principles that God has pressed upon the hearts and minds of every person because we're creating the image of God.
And I do believe, call me a theonomist if you must, but I don't think this is the proper definition of that.
But I do believe that if you look at the minor prophets and if you look at the destruction that God brought upon nations around Israel, that nations will be judged based upon moral principles that God has built into the very fabric of who we are as human beings.
Right. The adulterer still looks around to see if anyone's spying on him.
Oh, you bet. There is that conscience that is there. And it really does take,
I think, an act of judicial hardening on God's part to allow a nation to go as far as we've already gone.
And it seems like we're only accelerating, which to me is absolutely clear evidence of the judgment of God coming upon Western culture.
And if we want to ask why that's happened, the answer is not very far to be found.
I hope that he, I mean, he continues to be patient and merciful to his church, but it just seems like as a nation, we're already blind and wearing ourselves out, looking for the door.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We're putting ourselves out. That may be, that may sadly be one of the very terms that we can use of our society.
And what concerns me is I have children and looking forward to grandchildren and things like that.
And what an impact that's going to have. Hey, Tim, we're out of time. Thank you very much for your phone call today. Keep listening. And we will be back next
Tuesday on The Dividing Line. Who knows what we'll have developed between now and then, but we've still got a lot to talk about.
And we hopefully will still have the freedom to talk about those things next time we're together. We'll see you then. God bless.
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