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Jürgen Moltmann on Homosexuality vs Fundamentalists

1024px-Rainbow_flag_breezeIn the 2009 Emergent Village Theological Conversations conference, Jürgen Moltmann made several statements on Homosexuality:

TONY JONES: There's a lot of strife in the American Church, and as I look at it, it almost all boils down to biblical hermeneutic. You may say its about gay marriage, you may say its about whether women should preach, and you may say its about different denominations, and you may peal away the layers andyou get down to 'we just read the bible differently than you do' and different camps all read it differently. You've answered it already, but I just want to hear it reiterated, you are advocated a hermeneutic, a biblical hermeneutic, that is reading what's closest whats closest to Christ, reading a passage as it can be closest to Christ. The next question is, how do you, by what criteria, do you determine what is closest to Christ? In what I appreciate, even in the title of your book, 'Experiences in Theology', you don't discount personal experience in developing that hermeneutic.

JÜRGEN MOLTMANN:Well, my question to some of the Fundamentalists is "Do you really read the bible?" and the second questions is, "Do you really understand what you are reading?" Just to quote the bible on so-called homosexual-persons is wrong because the term does not appear in the original hebrew words, and so I can go on into that debate, but so we should not leave biblical hermeneutics to Fundamentals who only believe in the fifteen fundamentals and not in the rest."

Jurgen Moltmann, 2009 Emergent Village Theological Conversations Conference, session 2, 41h00m

The @Moltmanniac has an additional audio clip/transcript on the topic of homosexuality that is related to this discussion:

TONY JONES: Paul seemed to think a lot about sex. Augustine certainly thought a lot about sex. And in the American church in a lot of the denominations represented around here, sexuality is a schismatic topic currently, and its the reason some of us have withdrawn from those denominational fights because of the schismatic nature of these debates. It might’ve been Filioque 1000 years ago, but now its the questions of who can be ordained and who can be in a sacramental marriage, and who can be in a legal marriage, and those kinds of questions.

JÜRGEN MOLTMANN: Let me first say, this is no problem in Germany. We never have a struggle about sex and homosexuality in the churches and between the churches.

TONY JONES: Why?

JÜRGEN MOLTMANN: Because the church is about the Gospel and not about sex. And we believe in the justification of human beings by faith alone, and not by faith and heterosexuality or whatever. You can’t add to it. This is for us, in the Protestant tradition in Germany, heresy. And homosexual or heterosexual, whatsoever believes by faith alone is saved and is certainly able to be ordained in a Christian community. I will not say that a lesbian or a homosexual partnership is equal to a marriage, because a marriage is intended to father children, while these partnerships are not intentionally directed to adopt children. But I have no problems in blessing such a partnership. Why should I not bless a partnership between human beings? And homosexuality is neither a sin nor a crime. To be short-sighted, as I am, is neither a sin nor a crime. So I don’t see the schism or the heat of the debate on it. I know how much this is destroying churches in this country, but I don’t know why this is more important than the question of war and peace, for example.

http://moltmanniac.com/jurgen-moltmann-on-homosexuality/

Tony Jones and Jürgen Moltmann, Theological Conversations 2009 Conference: Session 2
(original source: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2013/12/02/jurgen-moltmann-audio/)

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  1. Anselm is the outstanding thielogoan of the medieval period.He sees man’s primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read Cur Deus Homo?’Anselm 93%Jonathan Edwards 87%Martin Luther 73%John Calvin 73%Karl Barth 60%Charles Finney 60%Augustine 47%Friedrich Schleiermacher 33%Paul Tillich 33%Jfcrgen Moltmann 27%

  2. Correct, the church is about the Gospel. But, this means that it is also about so much more, including sex- here’s how that has implications for sex: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” Regardless of your stance on homosexuality, it is obvious that there can exist sin that is sexual in nature. Therefore, the Gospel has implications for how we think about sex.

    Wow, I just corrected Jurgen Moltmann.


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