13AR18-40
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Apologia Report 18:40 (1,176)
November 6, 2013
Subject: A top resource for responding to same-sex marriage
In this issue:
HOMOSEXUALITY - "The leading statement of the case against same-sex marriage"
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES - "the earliest visual reference to Jesus' crucifixion" challenges their longstanding claims
MISSIONS - "profound consequences" of shifts in the emerging generation?
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HOMOSEXUALITY
In "More Intuition than Argument," Andrew Koppelman reviews What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense [1] for Commonweal magazine (May 3 '13, pp23-25). But Koppelman offers more excuses than reasons in this rebuttal to a book that even he describes as "the leading statement of the case against same-sex marriage, together with Maggie Gallagher’s half of Debating Same-Sex Marriage (coauthored with John Corvino). [2] Gallagher’s strategy is consequentialist, turning on baleful but improbable predictions about the effect of same-sex marriage on heterosexual familes. The authors of What Is Marriage?, on the other hand - Sherif Girgis and Ryan Anderson are unusually bright graduate students, and Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Politics at Princeton - are proponents of the New Natural Law theory, a philosophical school whose leaders are the Catholic scholars Germain Grisez and John Finnis. They make some of Gallagher’s claims, but their central thesis is not a guess about consequences. Their theory’s central idea is that there are universal human goods. ...
"The New Natural Lawyers have responded by claiming that heterosexual marriage has an intelligible essence, one in which same-sex couples cannot possibly participate." Koppelman suggests that marriage 'might be a practice that suits human needs but which can be modified freely as our understanding of human needs changes.'"
Koppelman concludes that What Is Marriage? "is a lucid window into a disappearing worldview." <www.ow.ly/qqQCx>
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JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
History is a subject that many cultic movements try to avoid. The Watchtower Society emphasizes its rejection of the cross in favor of a single post or "torture stake" (e.g.,
<www.http://ow.ly/qx1cx>). Recently we noticed this summary of an article by Larry W. Hurtado, long a champion of Christ's deity: "Crucifixion was considered shameful in Jesus' time, so until about the late fourth century Christians refrained from depicting Jesus' crucifixion - or so it was thought. A depiction of Jesus' crucifixion 200 years earlier has been identified in some ancient papyrus codices, consisting of a combination of two overlaid Greek letters."
Hurtado writes in "The Staurogram" (Biblical Archaeology Review, 39:2 - 2013, pp49-52): "In Greek, the language of the early church, the capital tau, or T, looks pretty much like our T. The capital rho, or R, however, is written like our P.
"If you superimpose the two letters, it looks something like this: [picture a 'T' with a 'P' stacked above it]. The earliest Christian uses of this tau-rho combination make it what is called a staurogram. In Greek the verb to 'crucify' is stauroō; a 'cross' is a stauros. In scholarly terms a combination of letters like this is called a compendium, a monogram-like device, in this case (in the earliest Christian uses) producing a pictographic representation of a crucified figure hanging on a cross - used in the Greek words for 'crucify' and 'cross.'"
Hurtado calls the staurogram the "earliest visual reference to Jesus' crucifixion." He further explains the "the earliest extant examples of the staurogram date 150-200 years earlier than what have often been posited as the earliest Christian depictions of the crucified Jesus - that is, to about 200 C.E.
"That the staurogram is intended as a depiction of the crucified Jesus is confirmed by the fact that in the earliest surviving Christian instances it is used in the word 'crucify' (stauroo) and 'cross' (stauros). In these instances, these words are written in a special 'contracted' (abbreviated) manner, and the tau-rho compendium is part of this abbreviated form of the words."
Hurtado compares the tau-rho staurogram to "the most widely known christogram," the chi-rho, and adds: "Unique among christograms, the letters of the tau-rho combination seem to be intended to refer *visually* to the crucified Jesus. ...
"Almost all of the christograms were also used in pre-Christian times, before they were adopted by Christians. This was true of the chi-rho combination, as well as for the tau-rho combination." He goes on to give examples from archaeolgy. [
This article is a popularized version adapted from his book The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (pp135-54) [3], which is partially available here: <www.ow.ly/qqNda>
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MISSIONS
"Emerging Adults and the Future of Missions" by Rick Richardson -- the opening paragraph observes: "It is evident that shifts in the emerging generation (especially twenty-somethings) will have profound consequences for the recruitment, formation, training, deployment, and retention of the next generation of missionaries and thus for the shape and sustainability of mission itself, as this generation will practice it."
Richardson finds that "The faith trajectory of emerging adults may be summarized as movement from the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism [MTD] of their teens toward the bricolage (tinkering and picking and choosing) of their twenties. ... During their passage through this stage of life, emerging adults may pick and choose doctrines and beliefs that have greater appeal to them and may leave out more exclusive and challenging beliefs.... At the same time, the broad trajectory of twenty-somethings going from MTD to bricolage can conceal nuances within the emerging adult population - for instance, the growing polarization of increasing conservatism (9 percent) and increasing liberalism (19 percent)...."
Richardson concludes that "priorities shaping the character of mission in the years, if not decades, ahead" will include a movement away from organizational self-centeredness toward "other- centeredness and humility"; greater emphasis on "contributing demonstrably to human flourishing"; and an insistence on the "full integration of justice, compassion, relief, diversity, and witness."
Further, "Neomonastic and multicultural communities pursuing mission together are here to stay and will increase." "Mission organizations must enable high school students to participate in more, not fewer, experiences of short-term cross-cultural service and mission...."
"Mission-sending churches and organizations urgently need to develop new and less expensive ways to fund younger missionaries."
"Cross-cultural missionaries must become skilled as collaborative coaches, brokers, bridge-builders, and facilitators of flows of resources, people , skills, ideas, and influences who can use social media technologies with facility and wisdom to serve and strengthen these flows." (What do you think? Piece of cake?) International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 37:2 - 2013, pp79-84.
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, by Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George (Encounter, 2012, paperback, 152 pages) <www.ow.ly/h0j8s>
2 - Debating Same-Sex Marriage, by John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher (Oxford Univ Prs, 2012, paperback, 296 pages) <www.http://ow.ly/qqPOn>
3 - The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins, by Larry W. Hurtado (Eerdmans, 2006, paperback, 262 pages) <www.ow.ly/qqNtQ>
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