• Any Questions on Marriage?

    I’m going to be posting sometime over the next week a considered response to the announcement last week regarding marriage law reform in Scotland.

    (Note that I’m not calling it Equal Marriage yet as it seems to me to be a step in that direction but very definitely not yet a proposal for equality).

    I’ll be responding to comments and questions that have been raised off blog with me in the last week. Some in relation to what this means and some in relation to what it means within the church. Anyone who wants to ask anything or make a comment on here about all of this, is welcome to do so either in the comments, using the contact form or by twitter.

One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”

  1. Tim Avatar

    As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.

    One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
    It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
    But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).

    In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.

    Oofft.

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