Customer Reviews

The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selected Issues

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This book provides helpful, clearly written and provocative background for understanding St. Paul's thinking on moral issues. It places the Pauline writings on matters like homosexuality in context and shows how they relate to pagan philosophical movements and Jewish thinking of Paul's time. It deciphers Paul's often complex writings so that these texts can be treated as a living witness, rooted both in cultural context and faith experience rather than simply a morass of convoluted strictures. In addition to this the author provides articulate commentary for people seeking to apply these ancient texts to modern realities. Readers who were intrigued by the approach to scripture taken in John Shelby Spong's RESCUING THE BIBLE FROM FUNDAMENTALISM, but perhaps found his treatment of Paul wanting, will welcome the information and refreshing insights this book provides.

He includes discussion of: Sex: Marriage and Divorce; Women in the Church; and Christians and the governing authorities. He discusses homosexuality on p. 52 to 82. There is a brief discussion of Sodom, Gibeah and sodomy. When he comes to Paul he is mostly using the exploitive argument used by Scroggs in much more detail. The fact that Paul describes the Rom 1 men as "consumed with passion for one another" and "receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error", plus the fact that Paul includes lesbians (their sex was not exploitative), indicates that Paul is not describing the exploitative side per se. Furnish is certainly useful on the history of homosexuality in Paul's world. He is easy reading and the article would be useful for those who want to know more about homosexuality in Paul's time, although I think that Scroggs (New Testament and Homosexuality) is the better buy, if you are only interested in the section on homosexuality

I had to read this book as a supplementary text for a class on Paul. It's very easy to understand and straightforward, which is a refreshing change of pace for scholarly biblical criticism.