In a TitusOneNine comment, "Br. Michael" writes: “The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself. Thus the Holy Spirit cannot condemn homosexual behavior in Scripture and then two thousand years later say it is Ok[.] If there was such a thing as a holy ‘committed same sex relationship that was acceptable to the Lord’ then the Holy Spirit would have communicated that to Paul at the time.”
My response was that this is a really presumptuous claim. For traditionalists to decree so categorically that the Holy Spirit cannot be doing something, is to assert that they are 100% conversant with the Spirit’s mind, capabilities, and desires; a bold assertion indeed.
Jesus is said to have promised that the Spirit would come to guide us into all truth (Jn 16.13). It does not seem to be up to us to say that this guidance can absolutely never take the form of a series of instructions, given at different times, even if some of the instructions seem to contradict prior ones.
Consider an analogy. Alice, a sighted woman, is guiding Bob, a blind man, as they walk together on the sidewalk. They come to a crosswalk. The traffic light is red, and cars are whizzing by, so Alice holds Bob back. A few moments pass. The light changes; it’s safe to cross now. Alice nudges Bob to move forward.
Does Bob refuse to budge, snapping testily that Alice is contradicting her previous guidance? Or — assuming he’s sufficiently confident that it’s Alice, and not someone else, who’s nudging him — does he move forward?
Many reexaminers believe something like this has been going on in the Episcopal Church ("TEC") on the subject of sexuality. They think the Spirit is guiding TEC to explore, for example, the blessing of committed same-sex unions. Some of these folks acknowledge that at first glance, this appears to contradict the Spirit’s previous guidance as putatively set forth in Scripture. But, they say, that does not automatically require us to reject what they believe is the Spirit’s new guidance. Only time will tell whether these folks are right (cf. Deut. 18.18-22 and 1 Thess. 5.20-21).
UPDATE: Brother Michael responded, "I disagree DC. You leave us with a Holy Spirit and God who is not to be
trusted and who plays mind games. I stand by what I said."
I replied that it was his position that didn’t trust God. If we truly trust
in God, we won’t be troubled by the prospect that, from time to time, he might give us
guidance that seems to contradict past directives. Recall the story in Genesis 22: God commanded Abraham to kill his son Isaac. That command utterly contradicted the rules about how fathers should
treat their sons. But Abraham trusted God. He was sufficiently confident that it was indeed God who was giving the command; so, he was willing to do it.
(The trads are right about one thing, however: If putative new guidance from the Spirit flagrantly contradicts Scripture or the church’s tradition, that’s certainly a yellow caution flag. But that can never automatically be the end of the inquiry.)
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