Humphrey noted that this phenomenon is reflected in "business items on marriage, sex, and the standards of fidelity "that persist in returning to the PCUSA General Assembly." Edith Humphrey

"Well then, what is it about sex, about the erotic, that is so enticing?" Humphrey asked. After she and everyone else in the room chuckled, she continued: "But really. Isn't it that a physical encounter with someone else has the promise of taking me out of myself ... at least for the brief moments of passion? There is something primal, visceral, exquisitely promising about the coming together of two so that they make one body."

Humphrey acknowledged the many possible approaches to marriage now afoot, and the arguments, Scriptural and sociological, that accompany the radically departing viewpoints. She commended godly arguments that "refute those who are revising or distorting the Scriptures in order to provide a false foundation for the acceptance of easy divorce and same-sex behavior in the Church."

"For those who need a crash course on how to answer such revisionists," she counseled, "consider the excellent and world-renowned work of Robert Gagnon, and the wisdom of Alan Wisdom in Theology Matters recently."

Humphrey also spoke of "a more subtle attack on the classical Christian understanding of sexuality" arising from revision of the doctrines of the Trinity and of humankind. While revisionists "admit that Biblical writers never intended to countenance same-sex relations," for example, "they argue that Paul did not realize the potential of his own theology" and "we know better than even Paul about what the gospel means."

To this, Humphrey had an emphatic response: "God is to be worshipped, not turned into a mascot of our own desire for ecstasy. Yes, erotic love is wonderful, but chastity and celibacy also have their place in our world - and especially in the Church. Who dares to say that Jesus was less than human because he refrained from erotic relations?"

"Remember," Humphrey said, "the primal sin, according to St. Paul, is that humankind did not adore God or give thanks for what he has given us. Lack of thankfulness is typically expressed in our desire to re-imagine how we should like things to be." She even supplied - delicately - various progressive theologians' "blasphemous pictures about the Holy One. ... Twentieth century theologians look at our diverse lovemaking and imagine that diversity is good in itself.

But have they forgotten the ability of viruses and cancers to diversify? Those championing same-sex relations look at their desire and project lust onto the nature of God, or God's desire for us." Humphrey's conclusion was clear: "If we muddle our thinking about human beings, it is quite likely we will be muddled about God, and vice versa.... Thinking carefully about sexual matters means to think carefully about the nature of humanity, of the world's fallen condition, of the Church, and of God, as shown to us in the Son."

"Marriage is no humanly derived institution," Humphrey thundered, "but a God-given reflection of God's own goodness. We did not invent it, and we cannot re-imagine it. Whatever resolutions any Church passes that might recognize a newly constituted from of marriage, they cannot change God's creational declaration about male and female, that 'It is very good.'"

"Human beings cannot change the nature of marriage any more than they can make the sun revolve around the earth. If the church does this, to where will people look for light?"

END