New Video Posted: How can we find unity in disagreement?

New Video Posted: How can we find unity in disagreement?

Richard J. Mouw, President at Fuller Theological Seminary, discusses how pastoral theology can help Christians find unity in disagreement. Check it out here.

4 Responses

  1. Al Sandalow says:

    I just finished watching Dr. Mouw’s comments. As always, I am delighted that the president of my alma mater presents a thoughtful and moderate Evangelical approach in the many opportunities he has. I would make three comments:

    First, I appreciate his concern that we approach sexuality issues in a pastoral way. I think anyone who has been in the ministry has had opportunity to practice this, imprecise as the craft may be.

    But, I think our seeming inability to speak with any certainty on the issue as a denomination makes any pastoral response more difficult. It’s hard to help someone through a problem is you can’t decide if it’s a problem.

    The provost with the lesbian daughter he speaks of has no doubt homosexuality is not part of God’s plan for humanity and no doubt of his love for his daughter. I think the church will be more pastoral when it can clearly articulate this same view as God’s view for all people.

    Second, Dr. Mouw talks about the many important areas where the people who disagree on sexuality agree on other critical matters. To be honest, my own experience has been that the folks I disagree with on homosexuality are often people I disagree with on many other fundamental issues of theology – Biblical authority, salvation by Christ alone, eternal judgment, etc. This issue would be a whole lot easier to deal with if it was simply about same-sex behavior, but I find the currents of deeper, more important issues almost always run just under the surface of this discussion.

    Finally, Dr. Mouw seems to leaning towards the belief the committed same sex relationships may, in some ways, be acceptable, or at least more easily tolerated. Forgive me if I understood this incorrectly.

    Certainly, I would agree that in the human terms of right and wrong, someone living in a committed relationship is better than someone having weekly hook-ups (homosexual or heterosexual).

    But, I think we need to be careful that we don’t simply come to a de facto acceptance of something simply because it is “less wrong”. Yes, stealing to feed your family is not as bad as stealing to feed a drug habit, but we would never accept that stealing is right.

  2. Frank Norment says:

    I too was confused by some of Dr. Mouw’s remarks. At times same gender sexual relations were sin and in the next part same gender sexual relations were OK. I do not think we can have it both ways—it is like the old adage–“you can’t be a little pregnant, you either are or you are not”.

  3. Chris Handley says:

    This (what is below) is a section of the Capetown Commitment written during the latest gathering of the Lausanne Congress this last October that addresses the issue of “disordered sexuality”. It pastoral-ly as well as theologically deals with this issue in the best of manners.

    As I stated an earlier post the Capetown Commitment could be something to guide us as we begin drawing ourselves together, or something of its nature. It can be found at http://www.lausanne.org/ctcommitment

    This is section IIE2 of the Capetown Commitment.

    2. Walk in love, rejecting the idolatry of disordered sexuality [84]

    God’s design in creation is that marriage is constituted by the committed, faithful relationship between one man and one woman, in which they become one flesh in a new social unity that is distinct from their birth families, and that sexual intercourse as the expression of that ‘one flesh’ is to be enjoyed exclusively within the bond of marriage. This loving sexual union within marriage, in which ‘two become one’, reflects both Christ’s relationship with the Church and also the unity of Jew and Gentile in the new humanity.[85]

    Paul contrasts the purity of God’s love with the ugliness of counterfeit love that masquerades in disordered sexuality and all that goes along with it. Disordered sexuality of all kinds, in any practice of sexual intimacy before or outside marriage as biblically defined, is out of line with God’s will and blessing in creation and redemption. The abuse and idolatry that surrounds disordered sexuality contributes to wider social decline, including the breakdown of marriages and families and produces incalculable suffering of loneliness and exploitation. It is a serious issue within the Church itself, and it is a tragically common cause of leadership failure.

    We recognize our need for deep humility and consciousness of failure in this area. We long to see Christians challenging our surrounding cultures by living according to the standards to which the Bible calls us.

    A) We strongly encourage all pastors:

    1. To facilitate more open conversation about sexuality in our churches, declaring positively the good news of God’s plan for healthy relationships and family life, but also addressing with pastoral honesty the areas where Christians share in the broken and dysfunctional realities of their surrounding culture;

    2. To teach God’s standards clearly, but to do so with Christ’s pastoral compassion for sinners, recognising how vulnerable we all are to sexual temptation and sin;

    3. To strive to set a positive example in living by biblical standards of sexual faithfulness;

    B) As members of the Church we commit ourselves:

    1. To do all we can in the Church and in society to strengthen faithful marriages and healthy family life;

    2. To recognize the presence and contribution of those who are single, widowed, or childless, to ensure the church is a welcoming and sustaining family in Christ, and to enable them to exercise their gifts in the full range of the church’s ministries;

    3. To resist the multiple forms of disordered sexuality in our surrounding cultures, including pornography, adultery and promiscuity;

    4. To seek to understand and address the deep heart issues of identity and experience which draw some people into homosexual practice; to reach out with the love, compassion and justice of Christ, and to reject and condemn all forms of hatred, verbal or physical abuse, and victimization of homosexual people;

    5. To remember that by God’s redemptive grace no person or situation is beyond the possibility of change and restoration.

  4. Jim Caraher says:

    Dr. Mouw:

    Your video address on this website is engaging and your perspective on your denominations’s dysfunction is gracious, pastoral and important. However your point #6 suggests that you don’t have a very good grasp of the full extent of your denomination’s disintegration. You suggest somewhat plaintively that at least your church can achieve a consensus that promiscuity, both heterosexual and homosexual, is sin.

    Where is the evidence of such a consensus? Presbyterians are so devoid of agreement on anything having to do with sexual morality that the only way the revisionists could get rid of G-6.0106b was to offer language that is silent on the issue of sex. Surely you discern the yawning gap between the vacuity 10-A and the definitive guidance of Lutheran revisionists who successfully asked their Lutheran brothers and sisters to embrace “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same gender relationships.” I’m afraid your love for your church has you looking at things through rose colored glasses. The sad reality is that there is no consensus in your church on sexual promiscuity just as there is no consensus that what happened on the first Easter was the supernatural resuscitation of a corpse.

    Jim Caraher

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