It\u2019s an argument from silence. <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\nThere are lots<\/em> of things Jesus never mentioned that clearly violate God\u2019s moral. Are we really to believe that Jesus didn\u2019t care about incest, rape, abortion, human trafficking, wife-beating or child-molesting just because He said nothing about them? There are any number of immoral behaviors Jesus did not mention by name; surely we don\u2019t condone them for that reason alone! What reason do we have for believing that Jesus\u2019 ostensible silence on any issue, should be understood as his support for it? The answer is \u201cAbsolutely none<\/em>.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n- The argument wrongly assumes that the Gospels are more authoritative than the rest of the books in the Bible. <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
At no point did Matthew, Mark, Luke or John say their books should be elevated above the Mosaic Law (Genesis-Deuteronomy) or, for that matter, any<\/em> writings yet to come. What the Bible does<\/em> say is that \u201cAll<\/em> Scripture is God-breathed\u201d (2 Timothy 3:16). This verse assigns equal value to all books of the Bible, which prevents us from elevating some (i.e. the Gospels) over others (i.e. the Torah or the Pauline Epistles). <\/p>\n\n\n\nEven if the Gospels were<\/em> silent on the subject of homosexuality (which they are not), that would in no way condone homosexual practice. The entirety of biblical teaching must be taken into account before we can make conclusions concerning what the Bible actually teaches on any given subject. Again, even if the Gospels were<\/em> silent on the topic of homosexuality (which they\u2019re not), the rest of the Bible certainly isn\u2019t<\/em>. And the books of the Bible outside of the Gospels are just as authoritative as the Gospels themselves, for they were just as much \u201cGod-breathed\u201d (2 Timothy 3:16) as the Gospels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n- The argument wrongly assumes that the Gospels are more comprehensive than they really are. <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
The Gospels do not provide us with all we need to know by way of doctrine and practical instruction in Christian living. That\u2019s why God gave us the rest of the Bible \u2013 the books outside of the Gospels. We need all<\/em> of it to learn to walk in God\u2019s ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n- It presumes to know all of what Jesus said. <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
The Gospels never claim to include everything Jesus taught. On the contrary, they teach the exact opposite<\/em>. The apostle John wrote in John 21:25, \u201cJesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.\u201d This means that we don\u2019t have in the Bible a record of every miracle or teaching of Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI\u2019m not claiming that Jesus said something on homosexuality that we don\u2019t have written down, only that based on John 21:25 we cannot rightly conclude that Jesus\u2019 silence on a subject automatically means that he never said anything on that topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CONCLUSION: A specious argument is an argument that is superficially plausible, but actually wrong<\/em>. That is precisely the case when it comes to the argument \u201cJesus said nothing about homosexuality.\u201d It looks good from far, but turns out to be far from good. At first glance it appears structurally sound, but if you test the foundation by the Word of God, it all comes crashing down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I once received the following email: \u201cIn the future when you want to talk about gay people in your sermons, just say what Jesus said about the subject, and that is nothing, nothing at all\u2026Show me a quote by Jesus that is DIRECTLY condemning homosexuality, and the answer is, you can\u2019t.. so don\u2019t you do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-position-papers","7":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Mike","author_link":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/author\/mike\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}