Plain sense or just plain nonsense?

Without detracting one iota from DeYoung’s piece, I want to use it to drive home an important truth which we need to meditate on carefully.  The force of DeYoung’s scriptural argument depends on whether or not he can demonstrably prove that, contrary to the person he is responding to (someone called Daniel Heminiak), “the Bible really really calls homosexuality a sin.”   And he’s right, it does.

 

BUT – the Bible only “really really calls homosexuality a sin” if we believe what it says!  That is, if we employ the kind of hermeneutics which let’s the words say what they say without re-interpreting them by use of a non-literal hermeneutics.

 

Now some of you might recall that in my debate with Steve Hays I constantly referred him to “the plain-sense,” making repeated pleas for what the text says in its context, and providing many clear examples where later OT writers took earlier writers literally.  Hays’s persistently refused any interaction with these examples, or with my rebuttals of his interpretations of some passages in the Prophets, and ducked and weaved while questioning what “the plain-sense” and “face-value” mean.

 

This last example, part of which was used by Steve Hays to demonstrate a “New Exodus” motif which pointed to fulfillment beyond the “land,” is helpful because once we see how “land” is used in verse 13 (which Steve did not quote), we can understand what he means by “land” being returned to in verse 15.

 

Did Hays yield to what the Bible says here?  No.  Like most others today he continued either questioning it or else avoiding it!  This is standard operating procedure among many evangelicals.

http://drreluctant.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/what-the-bible-really-really-says/

Several issues:

i) Henebury contents himself with repeating his stale arguments while disregarding my extensive counterarguments. I might as well be conversing with a prerecorded message.

ii) I’ve also analyzed the arguments of dispensational scholars like Robert Thomas, Craig Blaising, and Harold Hoehner.

iii) Actually, you don’t win an argument with a homosexual apologist by simply appealing to the “plain sense” of Scripture. For instance, Robert Gagnon doesn’t merely invoke the “plain sense” or “face-value” meaning of Scripture. Rather, he conducts painstaking exegesis of his prooftexts, and carefully deconstructs interpretations to the contrary.

iv) Let’s take some examples of groups who appeal to the “plain sense” or “face-valuing” meaning of Scripture:

a) Open theists/Mormons

Open theists take at “face value” Biblical statements about God changing his mind, expressing surprise, regret or disappointment.

And Mormons are in a position to take literally various statements about God’s physical or humanoid features.

b) Annihilationists

They take “literally” statements about the eschatological “destruction” of the lost.

c) Sacramentalists

Lutherans, Catholics, Anglo-Catholics et al. appeal to the “plain sense” of Jn 3:5, Jn 6, Tit 3:5 &c. to prove the real presence and baptismal regeneration.

d) Geocentrists

They take at face-value Biblical statements about the immobility and centrality of the earth in relation to the sun, moon, and stars.

e) Arminians/universalists

They take "literally" statements about the atonement for "all" or the "world." 

f) Errantists

They appeal to flat-earth prooftexts, which they take literally. The solid dome, subterranean hell, &c.

They say the chronology of the fourth day plainly contradicts the chronology of the first day. They say the chronology of Gen 1 plainly contradicts the chronology of Gen 2. They say the flood account contradicts itself on the number of animals (one pair or seven?). They say the chronologies of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are mutually contradictory. They say the genealogies of Christ (in Matthew and Luke) are mutually contradictory. They say the chronologies of John and the synoptic gospels are mutually contradictory. They say the resurrection accounts are mutually contradictory. They say the two accounts of Judas’s death are mutually contradictory. They say Daniel plainly mispredicted the demise of Antiochus. They say Jesus plainly mispredicted the Parousia. They say the Bible makes contradictory statements about the visibility of God, as well as contradictory statements about the mutability of God. 

Henebury is emulating the tactics of liberals and cultists who preemptively discredit orthodox, Bible-believing scholars who patiently correct their naïve interpretations and facile attacks on Scripture. 

v) According to the “literal/plain sense/face-value” meaning of Gen 17, the Abrahamic covenant is exclusive to circumcised male posterity of Abraham.

Does Henebury think that only ethnic Jews are party to the Abrahamic covenant? Does the Abrahamic covenant exclude Christian gentiles?

vi) Apropos (v), the terms of the Abrahamic covenant are hardly confined to land-promises. For inheritance is contingent on circumcision. The duration of the Abrahamic covenant is commensurate with the duration of circumcision, as the mandatory rite of initiation. The perpetuity of the land-promises is inseparable from the perpetuity of circumcision.

Is that Henebury’s position?