
From a webpage titled: History of Winnie the Pooh
Gavin (at Otagosh) posted a fairly long response to my piece Biblical marriages. Since he took the trouble to reply at some length as a post, I’ll do the same.
His critique starts
Then Tim makes an amazing statement: “In terms of the teaching of Scripture it is clear that Gen 2 is a privileged text (Jesus and Paul both cite it when discussing marriage).”
Genesis 2 is a privileged text? In what sense? Both Jesus and Paul cite other texts too. Or, to be more specific, Paul and the Gospel writers cite other texts.
Well, yes, evidently both Jesus and Paul also refer to other parts of Scripture. A full treatment of what the Bible says about marriage would need to treat them and yet other texts (that neither of these use) also. But still it seems to me, for a Christian reading of Scripture the fact that both Jesus and Paul (more than once) cite Gen 2 does make that passage a somewhat privileged locus for seeking a biblical understanding of marriage. No, Gavin, I cannot accept that all texts, or passages, are equal. Like most people I have a “canon within the canon, though it will be different for different purposes and I think that (as I began to here)

From a webpage titled: History of Winnie the Pooh
Gavin continued:
There were no “red letter” options available to indicate Jesus’ actual words, quotation marks had yet to be invented, and speaking of “invented”, much (please note that I’m not saying all) of the material attributed to Jesus has clearly been put into his mouth.
This seems to assume that when I say “Jesus” my interest is historical. There is a terrible tendency in modern thought to value history and “facts”. But I am not a historian, I am a theologian, my primary interest is not in reconstructing a plausible history but in the character “Jesus” who inspires and is the centre of the New Testament. This Jesus whether or not “invented” does make special use of this passage.
This section of the post concludes:
Tim’s decision to anoint Genesis two as “privileged” is entired [sic] theological and subjective.
I hope that I have shown that the first is entirely true, but perhaps to be expected of a theologian, and that the second is true only in the most general sense. I gave a reason that Gavin did not like, and in a short post failed to present any of the others, perhaps I have begun to rectify that lack above.
Gavin then quotes something I wrote and rejects it. I wrote:
“in this (as in everything else) human sinfulness warps and twists God’s intent. All of the ‘biblical’ marriages listed in the graphic reflect this.”
Gavin replied:
The problem is that, as Tim knows full well, the documents themselves contain little or no condemnation of these customs. If there’s warping and twisting going on, wouldn’t you assume that this would be signalled within the text?
Well, Gavin and I might assume that, but the fact is that biblical narratives though they frequently recount the most terrible breaches of God’s desires (as expressed in the texts themselves) seldom mark them as such, we cannot rely on such explicit markers. But then the simple fact that no Bible character (with the arguable exception of Jesus) is presented without faults, sins and failings might suggest – and certainly does to my theological reading – that the Bible sees humans as sinful, warped and twisted. Nice middle-class liberal moderns may not like it, but we are all broken and in need of repair.
On the charge of biblicism that Gavin closes with, perhaps I’d be happy to plead guilty.