trueman on gay marriage

Sometime ago Phyllis Tickle wrote;

The erosion of the authority of sola scriptura will have been in 4 stages: the end of slavery as a biblically justified practice, the acknowledgement of the reality of divorce and that those who suffer it might find total restitution in the eyes of God, the ascendancy of woman to ministry, and finally (and as yet incomplete), an acceptance of homosexuals into the Church.

Aside from the obvious miss regarding what sola Scriptura is about, I fail to see how she links these points and their link to sola Scriptura. Moreover, I'm not even sure what she is saying about anything other than some wrongly used Scripture to support slavery. But regarding homosexuality, I personally haven't heard anything new on the topic since submitting to Christ 30+ years ago. I have heard and continue to embrace the position of caring for sinners by, among other things, confronting their sin and helping them find healing.

Anyway, all of that aside, I thought it true that the church who places women in authority over men will have trouble holding to the Biblical position regarding homosexuality and therefore very much appreciate Carl Trueman's words on gay marriage, especially;

Churches that have sold the pass on other issues -- most notably women's ordination -- are going to find themselves skewered by the need to oppose homosexual practice with a consistent hermeneutic rather than the appearance of arbitrariness based on simple bigotry. I suspect many evangelicals were able to live with women's ordination because, hey, they liked women; women's ordination may have been wrong, but it was not distasteful in the way that two men in bed together is distasteful; they never in their wildest dreams imagined what was coming round the next corner, even though enough people pointed it out to them. Now, if they stand against homosexuality, they look like homophobes. Better to look like an outdated fundie than a bigot. Churches that have held the line on women's ordination can at least say `Nothing personal against homosexuals; we simply follow scriptural criteria' when asked by a practising homosexual why he should not be ordained.

Technorati Tags: homosexuality, Scripture