The rise of marriage expansion for same-sex couples has many Christian scholars and conservative thinkers amending their views on the subject. All are not acquiescing to the same-sex marriage movement. In fact, one gay atheist is travailing over the need for intellectual Christians to stand for the principles of their faith. Almost in response, Christian scholars John Finnish and Robert George have written an excellent and fully reasonable Catholic sexual ethic that offers an understanding of human fulfillment. I have recently drafted a Call to Convictional Christian Scholars illustrating through the works of C.S. Lewis how Obergefell also represents an opportunity. There are indeed Christian scholars sharing an intellectual defense for marriage by design.
Consider also this post is an excerpt from Mark Galli's "2 Billion Christians Believe in Traditional Marriage," from Christianity Today:
"It’s not at all certain that the rapid cultural shift in America on gay marriage will be mirrored in the Christian church. North American and European Christians who believe in gay marriage are a small minority in these regions, and churches that ascribe to a more liberal sexual ethic continue to wither. Meanwhile, poll Christians in Africa, Asia, and practically anywhere in the world, and you’ll hear a resounding “no” to gay marriage. Scan the history of the church for 2,000 years and you’ll have a hard time turning up any Christian who would support same-sex marriage. The church has been and remains overwhelmingly united. It’s undergoing stress, certainly. But the evidence doesn’t support a narrative of division and collapse on this point.
The reasons for this are many, but one that most commentators and same-sex marriage advocates fail to recognize is the profound theology that undergirds our ethics. That theology has been either assumed or articulated by the great theologians and Christian philosophers in the Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic traditions—the most sophisticated recent effort being John Paul II's work on the theology of the body. (See our pages on homosexuality and same-sex marriage for more on what CT has said over the years.) It is not driven by an irrational prejudice of people living in the past, as the American zeitgeist assumes. It’s a consistent, nuanced, and, we believe, biblical working out of a theology of sexuality.
The unity and depth of Christian teaching on marriage may not be news. Neither are the hundreds of thousands of planes that land safely each day. It’s not novel. It’s not surprising or counterintuitive. But it is reality—and a reality that is not going away anytime soon. Any time at all, for that matter, because it is grounded in the deepest realities.
A theology of sexuality has been either assumed or articulated by the great theologians and Christian philosophers in the Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic traditions.
We at CT are sorry when fellow evangelicals modify their views to accord with the current secular thinking on this matter. And we’ll continue to be sorry, because over the next many years, there will be other evangelicals who similarly reverse themselves on sexual ethics.
We’ll be sad, but we won’t panic or despair. Neither will we feel compelled to condemn the converts and distance ourselves from them. But to be sure, they will be enlisting in a cause that we believe is ultimately destructive to society, to the church, and to relations between men and women. …It’s disappointing, but no reason to react defensively or angrily. We plan to treat with charity and respect those with whom we disagree, while we continue to call for a sexual ethic that, by God’s design, is one of the key ways to foster human flourishing."
Mark Galli is editor of Christianity Today and you can see his full article here.
For more on this subject, see my most downloaded article last week, co-authored with Dr. Mark Yarhouse, "Fairness, Honesty and Accuracy in Discussing Homosexual Relationships."
Christianity remains firm on marriage as the foundation for family restoration.
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