Wednesday 19 September 2012

What God has Made Clean - e-book version available


"This booklet answers some of the serious questions that have been asked about the Bible's teaching on homosexuality in a clear and concise manner. A great read for everyone." - David Peterson, former Principal, Oak Hill College

A long time ago I got fed up with hearing the argument that Christians were being illogical if they ate shellfish (forbidden in the Old Testament) but held that same-sex sex was wrong (also forbidden in the Old Testament). So I wrote a booklet called What God has Made Clean.

For those of you who don't immediately recognize the source of the title, it relates to Peter's vision of a large sheet descending from heaven, filled with all kinds of animals, clean and unclean. Peter is told, "Get up ... kill and eat." Thinking it's a no-brainer, he replies, "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean," only to be told, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." (Acts 10:9ff).

Taking this principle as its starting point, my booklet sets out to explain how we read the Old Testament as Scripture without being under its prescriptions as Law and how to apply this principle in the area of sex and sexuality. On the way, it has quite a lot to say about Christians and the OT Law generally, and some will find it helpful from that point of view alone.

The contents page lists the following:
  • Trouble at Church
  • Trouble with the Bible
  • The Law of Death
  • Dead to the Law
  • Jesus and the Law
  • The Penalties of the Law
  • God and Sex
  • Conclusions
 The paper edition has been out of print in this country for some time. However, I was asked to make a new edition available, and The Good Book Company have now kindly done so. It is pretty much the same as the old edition, so if you've got that you don't need a new copy, but the introductory material has been rewritten a bit. (I was told to make it less 'Anglican'!)

Stephen Bates hated it, and was very rude about it in his A Church at War (see the index), so it can't have been entirely bland -- or that bad, I'm inclined to add.

The e-book edition will set you back £3.

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2 comments:

  1. Hi John,
    Apparently it's still in print in Australia. However, the e-book version (which I'd prefer) isn't available here. Any chance you could ask the folks at Good Book to make the e-book available outside the UK?
    http://www.thegoodbook.com.au/bible/bible-study/what-god-has-made-clean

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andrew, Tim tells me it should be downloadable in Australia from the UK website.

    Does that not work?

    ReplyDelete