by Peter Enns
* Not to get pedantic about it, but logos is derived from the verb legein (“to speak”) and shows up all over the place in English meaning either “speech,” as in “eulogy” (speaking a “good word” of the departed), or a body of knowledge, as in “anthropology,” “zoology,” and everything in between, including college courses you may have hated.
* See, for example, John 8:24. English translations often read I am he (as does the NRSV), but “I AM” is better. The phrase alludes to Exodus 3:14, where Moses asks for God’s name, which God gives as I am who I am. “I AM” in Hebrew (‘hyh) is thought to be the basis for the divine name Yahweh (yhwh).
* I capitalize these words because Paul almost seems to give them a personality, namely, in Romans 5:12–21.
* Rhetorical question.
* “Why does he keep bringing up baseball . . . and Yankee baseball?” (Spoken in your best Jim Gaffigan voice.)
* I say “perhaps” because some of Paul’s letters, according to most scholars, were likely written later by someone else. That’s a complicated issue we don’t need to get into here, but I wanted to mention it lest some overzealous doctoral student reading this thinks I am a moron who isn’t aware of all this, because, apparently anytime I say anything I have to say everything.
* Technically, Paul says nothing about “homosexuals”; rather, he talks about those who engage in same-sex intercourse. The latter is an act, whereas the former is a modern category that speaks to an “orientation,” what someone is, which the Bible doesn’t cover. I’m using “homosexual” here out of convenience.
* Both passages are thought by most scholars to have been written by someone other than Paul. That doesn’t make a huge difference for us here, though some argue that these and some other problem passages can be dismissed for that reason. I think they need to be addressed regardless, if for no other reason than the unwise manner in which these passages have been used.
* I might as well also mention that Ephesians is another one of those letters that Paul himself may not have written.
* Some thoughtful treatments include Matthew Vines, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships (New York: Convergent, 2014); James V. Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009); Dale B. Allison, Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006).
* But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! (1 Kings 8:27); Am I a God near by, says the LORD, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the LORD (Jer. 23:23–24).
