The following comes from a June 30 story by Michael Brown on CharismaNews.com.

On Saturday, June 28, Michael Brown debated Matthew Vines [proponent of reconciling homosexuality with the Christian faith] on the topic of homosexuality and Christianity. That debate can be viewed for free here.

For the last few decades, there have been gay-affirming Christians who reject the full authority of the Bible and who have no problem saying that Moses or Paul were wrong on certain subjects. But it is only in the last few years that there has been a rise in gay-affirming Christians who claim to be orthodox believers in the full inspiration of the Scriptures.

The simple fact is that is impossible to fully affirm the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, which includes a full affirmation of the deity of Jesus, while at the same time claiming that God approves of committed homosexual relationships.

For example, gay-affirming Christians commonly claim that while the Bible’s prohibition of homosexual practice is categorical, it is not talking about homosexuality as we know it today. Instead, we are told that the biblical authors were speaking against abusive homosexual relationships involving pederasty or prostitution or rape or excessive lust. (Another argument would be that they were denouncing homosexual practices involved in idolatrous rites.)

It can be easily be demonstrated that this is not true, as other scholars have done, and as I seek to demonstrate as well in Can You Be Gay and Christian?

But for the sake of argument, let’s say that this was true and that Moses and Jesus and Paul knew nothing about long-term, committed homosexual relationships or that they had no notion of modern concepts of allegedly inborn, fixed homosexual orientation. That would mean that God inspired the biblical authors to write in such a way that homosexual men and women would be rejected and marginalized and judged for almost 3,500 years (from the time of giving of the Law to Israel until the late 20th century).

It would mean that God inspired Moses to write that it was an abomination for a man to lie with a man even though he didn’t mean committed men lying with committed men, and even though Old Testament Israel (and religious Jews to this day) and the New Testament church (including conservative Christians to this day) would think God was prohibiting all homosexual relationships.

That is what a loving God would do? That is how He would inspire His children to write?

The same could be said for Paul’s clear words in Romans 1:24-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Why would God inspire him to write in this way if He knew that the words would be so terribly misconstrued and misused?…

To read the entire story, click here.