From a netfriend (on a list I subscribe to):

Earlier in this discussion, while commenting on JI Packer’s attempted division of us all into two camps, I said that in practice, the first tends to mutate into little more than a form of conservative family values, and the second mutates into worldly liberal values. The debates then come down to little more than a debate between those two values systems, with both sides appealing to the legacy of their dearly departed God to bolster their positions.

In the hope that someone can show me why I’m wrong, I want to comment a bit more on why I believe that Packer’s first model tends to be just conservative family values dressed up in quasi-biblical clothing. Packer’s first model is characterised by a belief that the Bible reveals God’s mind “definitively and transculturally” and that, as such, it is supremely authoritative and normative for Christian disciples today. In common parlance, this is the “scripture says it, I believe it, that settles it” position.

My contention is that those who identify themselves with this position appear to be no less selective in their use of scripture than those they would characterise as more “liberal”. In fact, they appear to read scripture through the lens of an agenda set by a cultural value system often known as “traditional family values”, because their prioritisation of moral issues seems to follow the priorities of that system rather than having anything to do with how much clarity or weight scripture seems to accord them. Thus the “big ticket” moral items of the traditional family values system (eg. homosexuality; pre-marital sex; censorship; male-headship) are given a priority out of all proportion to the scriptural witness; while many of the big ticket moral issues in scripture (concentration and abuse of wealth, power, and the means of grace; refusal of hospitality; neglect or exploitation of the needy and vulnerable; misuse of the name of God) are given much gentler treatment or sometimes even just overlooked.

In some cases, we even find that where scripture links two issues for us, the conservative family values agenda mandates that we take one seriously and ignore the other, and sure enough that is what we see happening. Let me illustrate with a specific example, so that we’ve got something concrete to work with.

The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15:20, after considering Peter’s vision of the unclean foods and the experience at Cornelius’ house, concluded that believers should still refrain from eating blood or meat that had been strangled or offered to idols, and from sexual immorality. Now we know that Paul later contradicted one of those food rules, but you will not find any verse in the Old or New Testaments moderating the injunction against eating blood. This is quite specific and unambiguous. It is the consistent teaching of both Old and New Testaments. The Council of Jerusalem’s decision is now part of the canon of scripture, and furthermore, the council was the first of the great councils whose later decisions included the definition of the doctrine of the Trinity and the final contents of the Bible. Blood eating is quite common in our society. Most delicatessens stock ‘black pudding’ sausage, which is made from blood. I have never seen Christians picketing the shops and I have never heard a preacher speaking against the evils of black pudding eating. So far as I can tell, even the most conservative “bible-believing” Christians routinely regard this as a matter of no consequence; as an anachronism from a bygone culture. Such a conclusion would be consistent with the conservative family values agenda, but how can it be justified by those who take their cues from the Bible alone?

The Council put blood-eating and sexual immorality alongside each other as big-ticket items to be taught to the new gentile believers. The Bible offers no teaching on how to differentiate between them other than Jesus’ willingness to read the entire law through the commands to love God and love neighbour. The commonly made distinction between moral law and ritual law is a modern liberal theological opinion, not a biblical idea. Even if it is accepted, it is usually only applied to Old Testament laws which are not reiterated in the NT, and in fact there are quite convincing arguments for why some of the sexual morality laws would actually be most appropriately categorised as ritual law.

I’ve never yet found anyone who can show me that there is a persuasive case, founded on the Bible alone, for concluding that the laws against eating blood are less applicable to today’s Christians than the conservative family values’ agenda items. There are of course lots of cultural reasons, but if you are arguing that where scripture is clear the case is closed, then only biblical reasons will suffice. At the same time though, I have never found anyone who is willing to preach and write to the papers on the evils of blood eating.

Is there someone out there who can show us how a system of morality based solely on a supremely authoritative and normative Bible can regard blood eating as any less of an issue than sexual morality. Or, if not, do we have a volunteer to begin the anti-black-pudding campaign?

Not having yet found anyone who will do either of those things, I find myself having to conclude that those who are convinced that all homosexual activity is sinful are no different from me in picking and choosing between biblical laws on the basis of post-biblical assumptions – we are just using different post-biblical assumptions.