Nearly twenty years ago, the liberal journal Christianity and Crisis devoted a special double issue (May 30 and June 13, 1977) to the subject of homosexuality, noting on the front cover, “The scriptural and theological bases on which the condemnation of homosexuality has been founded are under challenge. The condemnation itself, and the treatment of homosexual persons which flows from it, are out of harmony with the central message of Christian revelation.” The editors concluded, “In our reading of the evidence there is no longer a tenable case for excluding homosexuals from full participation in the life of the church and of society.” (p. 114) The emphasis is theirs.
5. See Reay Tannahill, Sex in History (New York: Stein and Day, 1982), p. 143–145.
6. Andrew Sullivan’s piece appeared in The New Republic (March 1996) of which he was for some time editor. A conservative, Roman Catholic, and homosexual, he is the author of Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (New York: Knopf, 1995).
7. Charles Hefling, an Episcopal priest and associate professor of theology at Boston College, is editor of Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God (Boston: Cowley, 1996). In addition to his own essay in the section on Scripture and Tradition, “By Their Fruits: A Traditionalist Argument,” the book contains seventeen essays by some of the leading theologians in the Anglican tradition and provides an excellent study guide that can be used in discussion groups and seminars.
Chapter 9: The Bible and the Good Life
1. F. Forrester Church, The Essential Paul Tillich: An Anthology of the Writings of Paul Tillich (New York: Macmillan, 1987). Martin Marty describes Paul Tillich as “ascendant after mid-century” and “a familiar if not often easily understood celebrity of the campus circuit.” (Martin Marty, Modem American Religion: Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). His books The Courage to Be and The Shaking of the Foundations were required in Religion 101 in my freshman year of college in 1961, and his more substantial works, including Systematic Theology, were fodder in the Divinity and Graduate schools. One of the earliest public occasions I attended upon entering Harvard Divinity School in the fall of 1965 was the state Memorial Service for Tillich in The Memorial Church. We didn’t know it at the time, but “The Protestant Era” of which he had written was over.
2. Robert Wuthnow, Christianity in the 21st Century: Reflections on the Challenges Ahead (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 133.
3. John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Knopf, 1994). The questions posed to the pope in this book are those of Vittorio Messori, an Italian journalist of independent mind but a son of the Church, who was invited to conduct an interview with the pope on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of his pontificate. The interview never took place, but the pope kept the presubmitted questions and wrote these answers and chose the title for the book himself. The back cover contains in the pope’s own hand the three most powerful words in the Bible: Be Not Afraid.
Chapter 10: The Bible and Suffering
1. John Habgood, Making Sense (London: SPCK, 1993). As Archbishop of York, Habgood was the Primate of England, whereas his brother Archbishop of Canterbury was Primate of All England, with a seat in the House of Lords as one of the Lords Spiritual and a reputation as a thinking bishop. Indeed, David L. Edwards in the jacket blurb said of Habgood, “Were there to be an Olympics in episcopal theology, Dr. Habgood would win the gold.” The tradition of “thinking bishops” in the Church of England is an old and lively one, but in this managerial and politically correct age, where the lowest point of nonoffense is appealed to, the appointment of a thinking bishop who makes others think as well is a rarity in the Church of England and nearly nonexistent in the other realms of the Anglican Communion. These essays are drawn from his writings in his own diocesan magazine, professional and scholarly journals, articles in the press, and some of his lectures and sermons. In the essay “Do Pigs Have Wings?” he argues, “Religion in its simplest terms is about making sense of life, this life, first of all, and particularly those aspects of it which challenge and disturb us.” It was from this essay that the third and final section of my own book, the pastoral section, took its inspiration.
2. John Huxtable, The Bible Says (London: SCM Press, 1962). This is a small but very effective essay against the ever-present temptation to make a graven image out of the Bible. One of his best lines is “Jesus Christ came into the world to be its saviour, not an authority on biblical criticism.” (p. 70)
3. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (London, 1930), Chapter 2. Richard Webster in Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, and Psychoanalysis (New York: Basic Books, 1995), in writing of Freud’s low estimate of the human condition, quotes from a letter to Lou Andreas-Salome in which he says, “In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.” (p. 324)
Chapter 12: The Bible and Evil
1. “Ode Written During the Battle of Dunkirk, May 1940” in The Questing Spirit: Religion in the Literature of Our Time,” ed. Halford E. Luccock and Francis Brentano (New York: Coward-McCann, 1947), p. 451.
2. Saint Augustine discusses the evil of lust and its irrational qualities in The City of God XIV:16 and 18. Christopher Kirwan in Augustine (London: 1989) notes that Augustine argues that “Adam’s and Eve’s genitals become disobedient in punishment for Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience; that is why they covered them.” (City 13.15; 14.23) “But the theory that sexual activity became disgraceful because of the Fall does not explain why the involuntariness of erection is a disgrace; it assumes that.” Kirwan concludes, “To my mind the mystery why Augustine regarded sex as bad is only exceeded by the mystery why Christian culture for so long agreed with him.” (p. 196)
Chapter 14: The Bible and Wealth
1. William W. How wrote this hymn in 1858 and based the text, “We Give Thee but Thine Own,” on I Chronicles 29:14. It was often sung as a Sunday school offertory hymn in my childhood.
2. Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. Peter Shaw (New York: Bantam, 1989), p. 99.
3. Kit and Frederica Konolige, The Power of Their Glory: America’s Ruling Class: The Episcopalians (New York: Wyden, 1978), p. 86. This is a lucid and not altogether favorable account of the religious caste the authors call the “Episcocrats.”
4. Ibid.
5. David Owen, English Philanthropy, 1660–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 13.
6. Bishop Reginald Heber’s hymn “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning” first appeared in a collection of his hymns published after his death in 1826.
7. Robert Wuthnow’s piece, “Pious Materialism: How Americans View Faith and Money,” appeared in The Christian Century, March 3, 1993, pp. 238–241.
Chapter 15: The Bible and Science
1. Herbert Butterfield quoted in L. S. Stavrianos, The World Since 1500: A Global History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 185.
2. James Bryant Conant, quoted in Stavrianos, p. 186. Before assuming the presidency of Harvard in 1933, Conant was a very distinguished professor of chemistry. During his presidency (1933–1953) he was one of the chief scientists at work on the Manhattan Project, and after the war he became high commissioner to Germany.
3. Joseph Addison’s paraphrase of Psalm 19:1–6 first appeared in The Spectator for August 23, 1712, at the close of an essay on “Faith and Devotion.” His texts were much appreciated by Wesley and Watts. The third verse of the hymn generally known as “The Spacious Firmament on High” and set to a tune of Haydn adapted from his oratorio The Creation, reads:
What though, in solemn silence, all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
Forever sing
ing, as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”
4. Paul Davies, “The Harmony of the Spheres,” in Time, February 5, 1996, p. 58. Davies is a professor of natural history at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and the author of more than twenty books, including The Mind of God (New York: Simon and Schuster) and in 1995, Are We Alone? (New York: Basic Books).
5. Frederick B. Burnham, “Chaos: A New Theology,” in Mundi Medicina, the newsletter of Holy Cross Monastery, Vol. 4, No. 1.
6. Owen Gingerich is professor of astronomy and of the history of science in Harvard University and a member of the congregation of The Memorial Church. A member of the Mennonite Church, he preached this lay sermon in Washington Cathedral on Advent Sunday, 1995. It is as yet unpublished.
7. A. Lawrence Lowell was president of Harvard from 1909 to 1933. The source of this quotation is not known.
Chapter 16: The Bible and Mystery
1. Diogenes Allen is professor of philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary. Temptation was previously published as Between Two Worlds, and was issued under the new title by Cowley in 1986. Although they are not cited in this work, I am deeply indebted to Professor Allen’s thought in his little essay “The End of the Modern World,” from Christian Scholar’s Review 22/4 (1993), pp. 339–347, and for his book Christian Belief in a Post-Modem World (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1989).
2. John Polkinghorne is an Anglican priest, formerly professor of mathematical physics in the University of Cambridge, and is now president of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Science and Providence: God’s Interaction with the World was published in England by SPCK in 1989. The summary of Hume’s arguments is on pages 54 to 58.
Editor’s note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of a given e-book’s software reader. Nor are these entries hyperlinked. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader software.
Index
Aaron
Abel
“Abide with Me”
abolitionism
Abraham
Acres of Diamonds (Conwell)
Acts, Book of
Adam
Adams, Abigail
Adams, Charles G.
Adams, William Wisner
Addison, Joseph
“Address to Christians Throughout the World”
“Address to Persons of Quality and Estate An” (Nelson)
Aesop’s Fables
Age of Reason, The (Paine)
Ahab
AIDS
Alcoholics Anonymous
Allen, Diogenes
Allen, Jimmy
Alzheimer’s disease
America
American Baptist Quarterly
American Jewish Committee
American Revolution
Amos
Ananias
Andrew
Anna
Annenberg, Walter
Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith
anti-Semitism
Apocrypha
Apologia pro Vita Sua (Newman)
Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (Walker)
Appleton Chapel
Aquila
Atahualpa
Augustine, Saint
Baal
Bach, Johann Sebastian xv
Baer, George F.
Bainton, Roland
Baker, Russell
Baldwin, James
“Baltimore Sermon” (Channing)
Barabbas
Barth, Karl
Barton, Bruce
Bates College
Bathsheba
Beacon Hill
Beecher, Henry Ward
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing (Tillich)
Belfast
Belmont, August
Bengel
Bergant, Diane
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church
“Beyond God the Father” (Daly)
“Bible and Homosexuality, The” (Lance)
Bible Recorder
Bierce, Ambrose
Blaine, James G.
Blake, William
Blomberg, Craig
Bloom, Harold
Boaz
Book of Common Prayer, The
Bosnia
Boswell, John
Brahms, Johannes
Branch Davidians
“Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning”
Brown, Robert McAfee
Bryan, William Jennings
Bryant, Floyd
Buchanan, Patrick
Burnham, Frederick
Burton, Richard
Bush, George
Butterfield, Herbert
Byrd, Harry Flood
“By Their Fruits” (Hefling)
Cain
Calvin, John
Campbell, Joseph
Canaan
Canaanites
Carver, George Washington
Cather, Willa
changing times
Channing, William Ellery
Charlemagne
Charles I, king of England
Charlesworth, James H.
Chirac, Jacques
Christian Anti-Semitism and Paul’s Theology (Hill)
Christian Century, The
Christian Coalition
Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Boswell)
Christianity in the 21st Century: Reflections on the Challenges Ahead (Wuthnow)
Christianity Today
Christie, Agatha
Chronicles, First Book of
Churchill, Winston
“Church’s Mission and the People of Israel, The”
City of God, The (Augustine)
Civil War, U.S.
Claudius, emperor of Rome
Cleveland, Grover
Coffin, William Sloan
Cold War
Cold Water Army
Colossians, Epistle to the
Conant, James Bryant
Confessions (Augustine)
Consideration of the Keeping of Negroes (Woolman)
Constitution, U.S.
Conwell, Russell
Copernicus, Nicolaus
Corinth
Corinthians, First Epistle to the
Corinthians, Second Epistle to the
Cortés, Hernán
Council of Trent
Craddock, Fred
Cranmer, Thomas
Cromwell, Oliver
Crossfire
Crossing the Threshold of Hope (John Paul II)
Dallas
The Good Book Page 43