Opinion of John Piper

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Intellectual Holocaust profiteer. Purveyor of trash theology, and not just for this reason either.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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

This is only the most recent example of my problems with Piper (I think his eschatology, complementarianism, and 'Christian hedonism' are atrocious) but I think it indicates his basic intellectual dishonesty.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

You're right about racism, technically defined, but the Bible takes the institution of slavery as an historical given and except for a few admirable flashes of greater moral understanding by Paul and his followers doesn't for the most part feel the need to delve much further into it. While race and slavery weren't necessarily associated at the time, they have of course become so in our culture.

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.

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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.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

I agree with your second paragraph entirely, as a mainline Protestant who finds myself articulating a fairly conservative (in the sense of general forbearance, not any politicized sense necessarily) view of sexual behavior in the context of my denomination, but at the same time something approaching an absurdist or radically constructivist view of gender.

Here is the Porter article that I was able to find. I'm afraid the abstract isn't immensely relevant.

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I agree with most of this as well, and I suppose I perhaps just very strongly react against any form of premillennialism because it has ethical implications that I'm less than fond of. Ones similar to those of the idea that God is to be sought entirely in subjective emotional states, actually.

Intellectual Holocaust profiteer. Purveyor of trash theology, and not just for this reason either.

Care to elucidate?  I didn't find anything in the link that indicated Piper has any particular theological or historical position concerning the Holocaust.  Nor does his Wikipedia bio indicate that, and I really don't care enough about the bloke to do a deeper search on my own.

Evoking the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this context. Maybe not Holocaust profiteering in the technical sense but definitely highly emotionally manipulative and intellectually dishonest.