2008-12-04

Hays gives some thoughts on why it isn't good to let men or women who practice homosexuality adopt children. First, he discusses ways in which it is an inherently unstable situation.  "One of the problems with homosexuality is an inability to distinguish between sexual affection and asexual affection. Since both forms of affection are directed at members of the same sex, that’s catastrophic for child-rearing." "Homosexuals are bound to hate Christian values. You’re placing a child in an environment that’s bound to be militantly anti-Christian." Homosexual adoption

Phillips recalls Athanasius contra mundum (against the world), which may well be fictional, but then points to Noah - how he stood against the world and condemned it in constructing the ark. And it Noah's case, it did not go well for the majority. "Sometimes we feel (and are made to feel) that we're odd, that we stick out, that we're not trendy. Well: we are, we do, and we aren't. What's odd is that it is professing Christians who make those accusations — as if they're bad things, rather than par for the course" Pyromaniacs (and you-) contra mundum

Hays gives some good practical advice and thoughts on how to deal with feelings of being slighted, or being hurt. Making light of a slight

Hays writes that a common objection to sola scriptura is, how can it be true unless Scripture alone is used to identify Scripture? It's easy to construct a parallel dilemma for the Catholic rule of faith. Take 'patristic unanimous consent.' i.e. In sum, where do the church fathers unanimously consent to where the church fathers unanimously consent? If we have to go outside the church fathers to identify their consensual core, then we aren’t really relying on the unanimem consensum Patrum. Moreover, how do we know that the church whose authority he invokes is the true church to which Scripture or the church fathers refer? And how does he know what the Bible or the church fathers truly refer to apart from the unanimem consensum Patrum? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The unanimous consent of the fathers