Some of my best friends are Fund-- No, that's not the right way to put it, is it? Honestly, I don't regard Fundamentalism as a swear word. It's just that most Christians aren't Fundamentalist; hence my unwonted assumption that you weren't. My apologies.

"I believe that the Bible is
the truly divinely inspired
immutable Word of God."

You're going to have to excuse me for my ignorance, but my impression has been that Fundamentalists don't simply believe that the Bible is the Word of God (which most Christians do), but also that it is literal and inerrant. Am I wrong about that?

An example of what I mean: Ephesians 5. Paul was living in a world where virtually all relationships were hierarchical. Certainly all marriages were. He may or may not have been able to envision a world in which marriages were not hierarchical. But in any case, I don't think he was addressing that issue in Ephesians. He was simply addressing the issue of what sort of behavior should take place in hierarchical relationships such as the marriages he knew.

So I don't think that Ephesians 5 really provides enough information to settle the question (for a Christian) of whether all marriages should be hierarchical. It certainly settles the question (for a Christian) of how husbands and wives in hierarchical relationships should behave towards one another.

My impression has been that a Fundamentalist would say, "It says right here, 'Wives, submit to their husbands.' Of course that means all wives must submit to their husbands. It's absolutely clear."

But perhaps I'm misrepresenting Fundamentalism, not knowing enough about it.

"the Levitical passage is so difficult to translate that it's true meaning may have been lost to the ravages of the Roman fires"

And that's what I was trying to say about Paul: that there's not enough information to tell, not only what his views on homosexuality were, but also what his intent was in expressing those views. In the Ephesians passage, he's clearly trying to shape hierarchical relationships into a Christ-like pattern. But what his overall intent was in mentioning homosexuals (if he was mentioning them) isn't at all clear to me or, I think, anyone else.

Dusk (feeling a bit inadequate, in face of your beautifully worded post)