Opinion of John Piper

[useful idiot]

He's mixed because I take issue with quite a bit of what he writes and says, but I wouldn't call him an HP.

Regarding this blog post, John Piper is hardly a "Christian Zionist" in any way, just want to throw that out there. Regarding Piper's blog post, the connection was a leap by any standards and I don't agree with him doing it. Racism is a sin, and homosexual acts are sins, the Bible is clear about both (regardless of whether we like it), but the similarities between the affirmation of homosexuality and the Holocaust stop there.

Pannenberg's original article isn't bad, I'd recommend someone read that rather than the Piper post. There are plenty of guys out there dealing with this issue in a more thoughtful way that still maintain their orthodoxy (N.T. Wright, Timothy Keller, etc), I'd suggest them instead.

[useful idiot]

The Greek text isn't actually remarkably clear about either, but the point is taken.

Well I think the central theme of the Pauline corpus is racial reconciliation, so I'm pretty sure it's clear on that account. As to homosexuality, let's get serious....do you honestly think that Paul, a 1st century Pharisee, supported the practice? Leaving questions about Jesus or Paul's representation of Jesus' teaching aside. The books that directly speak to homosexuality are undisputed Pauline letters. So what would lead someone to believe, treating the text properly, that Paul would possibly approve of it?

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Out of curiosity, what do you find so abhorrent about his eschatology?

[useful idiot]

The Greek text isn't actually remarkably clear about either, but the point is taken.

Well I think the central theme of the Pauline corpus is racial reconciliation, so I'm pretty sure it's clear on that account. As to homosexuality, let's get serious....do you honestly think that Paul, a 1st century Pharisee, supported the practice? Leaving questions about Jesus or Paul's representation of Jesus' teaching aside. The books that directly speak to homosexuality are undisputed Pauline letters. So what would lead someone to believe, treating the text properly, that Paul would possibly approve of it?

I'm not wedded to the idea that Paul would approve of it, mainly because that's as you say a very strange thing for anyone to think, but there are aspects of the way the Greek text is structured grammatically that cast doubts on whether he cared as much about the subject as the plain text would indicate (for example, the second half of Romans 1 is really weird and has an entirely uncharacteristic preponderance of third-person pronouns that don't appear very often elsewhere before switching back into the vocative, which has led Calvin L. Porter and some other recent theologians to think it might actually be a Greek rhetorical device where Paul advances an idea that he might or might not agree with in deliberately excessively strong terms and then starts to moderate from there, but this is by no means yet a received interpretation, since it's fairly new; as someone who's studied Greek, though, I find it fairly convincing. And the word used in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1 Paul seems to have made up, so it can only really be parsed etymologically anyway). So no, I don't think anybody can seriously argue that Paul, coming from the background he did, would 'approve', but there are reasons to think he was less interested in it than he was in some other subjects or than the plain text without familiarity with Greek rhetorical practices would indicate.

If you're interested in Calvin L. Porter's argument, incidentally, I can link you to it, but you have to pay several pounds to Cambridge University to read more than the abstract.

Yeah I'd appreciate the link, I'm interested in what he has to say. I was honestly never of the opinion that homosexuality was something Paul had a particular disdain for over other forms of sexual practice outside of marriage. Being fair, he seems to have much more of an axe to grind with heterosexual sex outside of marriage. What I think makes the case is his affirmation of heterosexual marriage (both as a picture of Christ's relationship to the Church and as an outlet for those so inclined) and what I think is his inclusion of homosexuality in a category of behaviors that fall outside of that ideal form of marriage.

Obviously he doesn't place marriage above celibacy (1 Cor. 7: 8-9), in fact if anything it's the opposite. I think it's one of the greatest shames of evangelical Christianity that the calling of celibacy has been completely ignored or even ridiculed. What's even worse is that it has been relegated to homosexuals, as if everyone else is supposed to get married and they aren't. Of course the Catholics have gone the opposite way, and I think the approach of the mainline traditions (completely uninhibited sexual activity for everyone) isn't really any kind of solution at all. I don't think any Christian tradition really gets it right, and none of these streams has been well equipped to deal with the hyper-sexuality of our context.

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Out of curiosity, what do you find so abhorrent about his eschatology?
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I'm as a rule wary of eschatologies that place emphasis on the role of ethnic Israel, and of premillennialism in general.
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He's covenantal, he doesn't really place any emphasis on ethnic Israel. He is premillennial, but not dispensational; his underlying hermeneutic isn't really distinguishable from Amillennialism. I think his Christian Hedonism is simplistic and far too individualistic for my taste. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I think God is most glorified in us when we engage in the work of the Kingdom, not when we have subjective emotional feelings about Him. Yes, his complementarianism is annoying (I think it's actually just patriarchy, there is a more reasoned form of it I find much more palatable). On those points I'll agree with you, I'm not a fan.