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REYNOLDS |
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Obama: Messiah, Badly Read, Very Liberal, Or Guilty of a Gaffe?
by John Mark Reynolds [author,
academic] 3/6/08
The Sermon on the Mount supports homosexual civil unions.
The Book of Romans is less important and is an obscure part of Scripture.
So says Barack Obama arguing for civil unions and if he is the last best hope of
America
, then it must be true. But for the rest of us, who like him, but are not of Obama, these statements seem bizarre at best and messianic at worst.
Obama could be messianic, ignorant, way left of center, or just guilty of a silly blunder. Here is hoping he soon admits that he spoke badly. The other alternatives should lead Democrats to reconsider their chances in November.
Contributor
John Mark Reynolds
John
Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of
the Torrey Honors Institute and Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Biola University.His
personal website can be found at www.johnmarkreynolds.com and
his blog can be found at http://scriptoriumdaily.com.
[go to Reynolds index] |
It is the habit of messiahs, true and false, to clarify the ancient scriptures and to introduce new. Charity can only hope that Obama has not taken plaudits in the press so seriously that he has decided to issue his own theological reinterpretation of the Bible.
Perhaps, Obama is simply badly read. The book of Romans, which he dismisses, is the most important epistle written by
Saint Paul
, the most important theologian in the development of Christianity. The exact chapter in Romans to which Obama refers is an important basis for the Christian philosophy of
Saint Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas. As such, it helped create the Western intellectual tradition that formed the
United States
.
By bringing a Biblical argument regarding civil unions (Obama thinks Jesus is for them!), into a discussion full of folk who do not read the Bible, Obama ignores the wisdom of Paul in the first chapter of Romans. Paul points there to the existence of a common natural philosophy available to Christians and non-Christians. This allows for a civil society that need not be based on revelation available only to believers.
Obama should return to the passage he has called obscure to learn how to argue a tough case well. All lawyers used to read Romans as a model for persuasive rhetoric, but younger attorneys like Obama have missed out. The argument Obama uses is not persuasive, but Paul’s has persuaded billions over centuries. Perhaps, the argument that sexuality is naturally between a man and a woman is odd to a culture out of touch with the natural world, but it is not hard to recover the intuition that sexually men are designed for women and women for men.
Since it is impossible to think a church going man like Obama is as ignorant of Romans as he sounds, it is more charitable to assume that Obama is simply a conventional theological liberal who reads the Bible the way he reads the Constitution.
We already know that Obama reads the Constitution looking for what he wishes were there. Liberal ideology affirms the Constitution as “good,” but then is troubled when the actual document contradicts what the liberal believer asserts should be in a good document. If the Constitution does not affirm a right to abort, then our reading of the Constitution must be mistaken. As a result, leftists “find” their goals in ever more weird readings of the text.
Obama is doing the same thing with the Bible. He wants, like the liberal establishment, to justify civil unions so he uses the phrase “Sermon on the Mount” to stand in for all the good things he wishes were in Scripture. Sadly for him, this will not work out well.
He is using his own wishes to ignore a clear passage condemning homosexual practice (Romans 1) in order to justify a weird reading of the Sermon on the Mount that says nothing about homosexuality. This is bad exegesis and worse for a political leader.
Nothing is left to restrain a liberal who will read a book or document in this manner. Obama finds what he needs in the Constitution or Scripture and so the rule of law in the state and in the church is endangered.
Here is hoping that none of these possibilities is true and that Obama has just committed a horrific, confused gaffe. He better let us know soon. ExileStreet
copyright
2008 John Mark Reynolds
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