The most contentious debates among Christians are arguments over biblical authority. While Christians who accept the full authority of Scripture--even the inerrancy and infallibility of the biblical text--may debate issues ranging from baptism and church government to eschatology and spiritual gifts, the issues of greatest debate in our time fall along the fault line of biblical authority.

This is especially true when dealing with the issue of sexuality, and the question of homosexuality in particular. Those who argue for the acceptance of homosexual behavior and the blessing of homosexual relationships have to deal with the fact that the Bible straightforwardly condemns homosexual behavior. In light of this, some attempt to subvert the text by arguing that these texts have actually been horribly misunderstood for over two thousand years. Increasingly, however, some now concede that the Bible condemns homosexuality in every relevant text, but that Christians are no longer bound by the authority of these texts as we deal with the present moral crisis.

One scholar who takes this approach is Brian K. Blount, Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Princeton Theological Seminary. Professor Blount specializes in "cultural hermeneutics," and he applies this approach to the issue of homosexuality and biblical authority in an essay entitled, "The Last Word in Biblical Authority."

Blount's essay is published in Struggling with Scripture, which Blount authored along with coauthors Walter Brueggemann and William C. Placher. The book emerged out of a symposium on the theological interpretation of Scripture in which the three were participants.

Blount begins his essay by suggesting that some persons simply must have the last word on any subject. "Many people treat the biblical words that way, believing that those words, all of them, must always be the last words standing. Now in matters of faith--in matters of understanding our human relationship before God and God's moves to nurture, develop, restructure, and refine that relationship through the prophetic and incarnate Word--most of Christendom, I think, agrees that those inspired words are lasting words. But in matters of the proper way to appropriate those words of faith ethically, there is and has always been considerable discussion and debate."

Well, give Professor Blount credit for honesty. When he looks to the Bible, he does not see eternal words that are to be received as fixed and determinate, but as a text that is to be divided between "matters of faith" and other, presumably negotiable issues.

In making his case, Blount points to the issues of slavery, gender, and sexuality as evidence that "even the inspired biblical authors, when they applied God's prophetic and incarnate Word to their very human situations, allowed those situations to influence how they heard God and therefore how they talked to each other."

Several clarifications must be inserted here. First, the Bible does not sanction race-based chattel slavery as practiced in many parts of the world, America included, throughout history. The Bible does seek to regulate slavery, but there is no way that slavery, gender, and sexuality can be linked as equal issues in terms of biblical interpretation.