The move to reopen what was until about forty years ago a closed question, whether same-sex physical relations, sometimes loosely termed homosexuality, are good, beautiful and acceptable to God, caught both scholars and Christian people in general more or less completely off-guard. I am both a scholar and a Christian; these collected papers represent some of my contribution to modern discussion. I publish them in the hope that others may be blessed by my work, and may be enabled to think and act more consistently for Our Lord in the modern world. It is an honour to be able to include the text of J.I. Packer's 1998 Open Letter originally co-signed by him, Donald M. Lewis and me.
In some few copies of the first printing there are minor slips as follows: --
P. 3 para. 2 ll. 3-4 read: after several decades of passionate monogamy,
P. 21 n. 14 l. 9 read: However, if He had yielded to them,
P. 63 para. 2 l. 4 read: I think from "South Pacific".
P. 78 l. 2 read: not "Ruthless" but "ruthless".
Pp. 105 ff.: In the Greek search there is a handful of spurious examples, Rom. 1:28, I Cor. 9:27, II Tim. 3:8 and Heb. 6:8, where -dokim- lexemes have found their way in via Accordance. These should be ignored. These passages are distinct from a couple where the text includes a genuine -dik- item, and effectively IMHO there is wordplay.
There have otherwise been some very minor tweaks of formatting which most readers will not even notice.
For this third 2017 printing I have added one significant new item on p. 16, Harper, Kyle 'Porneia: The Making of a Christian Sexual Norm.' JBL 131/2, 2012, 363-383. It reinforces what I had concluded long ago from my original work on the Old Greek of Ezekiel 1-39.
It has also proved possible to solve some previously intractable problems to do with the display of Greek accents and diacriticals. Any changes of layout are so minor as to be imperceptible.
