[RD] Ask a Theologian V

[classical_hero]

I just want to hear your comments on the "Ancient Examples of concept" part of the article.
http://www.lamblion.com/articles/articles_rapture6.php

 

[Perfection]

That would seem to be more in the line of Aquinas' meaning. But I'm interested to hear Plotinus's thoughts on this.

Well, I'd regard that as a diversion from what I'm really interested in hearing what Plot has to say (that is parallels to my argument) and more about God's thought versus reality.

Anyways, it seems to me that conceptions of God that lack timelike character deny God's agency, so I tend to not take them too seriously.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I think that the oldest source I've read that argues for God being outside of time was the 6th century De Consolatione Philosophiæ by Boethius.


I believe that Thomas Aquinas based his ideas on the timelessness fo God on the work of Boethius. When it comes to authorities that Aquinas liked to quote to support his position, Boethius is a close second behind Augustine. (Pseudo-)Dionysus is a distant third, followed by Justin Martyr. Of course, my knowledge of Aquinas is mostly limited to an English translation of Part 1 of the Summa Theologiae, which was all that was on Librivox back in the spring.


I read much of De Consolatione Philosophiæ in the original Latin back during college, but don't recall anything about God being outside of time from then. That part I remember only from listening to a Librivox recording of an English translation a few months ago. It is harder to find the exact passage in an audio book, or check to see how biased the translators might have been.

I do remember thinking that the argument did not seem all that strong, and that he was using terms in ways very different from the ordinary meanings of the Greek terms that either our English or his Latin vocabulary had been used to translate. Boethius could speak Greek, yet relied heavily on the authority of Augustine who could not.

 

[Arakhor]

What sort of English is "soon return"?

 

[Agent327]

Well, I'd regard that as a diversion from what I'm really interested in hearing what Plot has to say (that is parallels to my argument) and more about God's thought versus reality.

Anyways, it seems to me that conceptions of God that lack timelike character deny God's agency, so I tend to not take them too seriously.

That's not really what time being irrelevant to God implies. It's basically one of the attributes of God: eternity.

But as said, that's not the same as God being 'outside time'.

 

[Perfection]

That's not really what time being irrelevant to God implies. It's basically one of the attributes of God: eternity.

But as said, that's not the same as God being 'outside time'.

Right, I'm specifically referring to God having timelike characteristics (i.e. there's a sort of ordering to God's actions even if outside our conception of time), that's not incompatible with our conception of time being irrelevant to God nor God being eternal.

I'm skeptical that we can ascribe the property of agency (ability to perform acts) to God without giving Him some timelike characteristics.

 

[Takhisis]

Did it exist before you thought you needed one and took possession of it? (…)

Yes.

Hm. I wonder during what time God is watching the universe. The universe being everything we know to exist. Since time basically is another dimension of space, God exists outside time and space, i.e outside our universe.* But outside our universe there is nothing known to exist. If God exists outside of time and space we cannot know God to exist. I wonder if this can be reduced to a paradox or that it is simply a contradiction.

*The spacetime continuum doesn't have an outside Everything is inside. It's lke asking the question: What will I see when I arrive at the edge of the universe? Well, nothing. Firstly, because you can't go there (the universe doesn't have an 'edge'), secondly, because nothing is there. I'm ignoring the concept of a multiverse here, but that doesn't principally change anything.

You're arbitrarily defining 'the universe' as everything we know to exist. If God exists, then He has to be a part of the universe, by that definition.

I should note I'm not, in particular, looking for conceptions of God that do not follow my line of argument. I'm not really interested in proving or disproving God but in the nature of causality, information, and personal identity. That's why I asked plot if he's seen that line of argument before, not if he thought it to be valid.

Anyways, as for the idea that God is outside of time I don't find it that compelling to my argument. It seems to me that if God does exist outside of time, there are two options:
1. God has his own sort of super-time that exists beyond ours (think of super-time versus regular time as analogous to the timeline of an author to the timeline inside his novel), to which my line of argument would seem to still apply.
2. God does not have any sort of timelike character. In that case it seems to me that we cannot describe Him as doing things (watching, creating, thinking, etc.) because those don't really make sense without causality.

What those two scenarios have in common is that in both cases you're saying that God doesn't exist in 'our' time.

I just want to hear your comments on…

Whose?

 

[timtofly]

So may I characterize your view as follows?

The difference between me and God's concept of me is that I am physical whereas God's concept of me is not.

If not what do you think differentiates me from God's concept of me?

You are just a reproduction of the original human concept if you break it down to the DNA level. It is plausible that God could view you as a unique part of the concept and still view the whole concept as a whole. Humans having become physical are no longer a concept. The problem I see is that most would just view God as a human concept. God IMO is neither a concept, nor a physical entity. Thus God does not exist as either, but is just God. Saying that God had a concept of humans, is still projecting human and physical attributes on God that may not even exist, but the only way to comprehend is to use these as an abstract way to understand. In other words a concept that is not a concept, but an abstract view of something that has no physical form.

That would seem to be more in the line of Aquinas' meaning. But I'm interested to hear Plotinus's thoughts on this.



I have no clue what you are saying here.

At any rate, it seems fair to assume that what Aquinas meant was that time is irrelevant to God. Which doesn't quite amount to the same thing.

Some would argue that God was the first cause, and would be outside of time. I would hold that time only exist as a concept to show relationships with cause and affects.

 

[Agent327]

You might argue the latter, but the first appears to be illogical. If God is the first cause, then time starts with God, not after God. (After God obviously also being an expression of time, indicating that time already started.) However, if time is a function of space, than God would indeed exist before time, however contradictory that sounds.

You're arbitrarily defining 'the universe' as everything we know to exist. If God exists, then He has to be a part of the universe, by that definition.

There's nothing 'arbitrary' about the definition. The universe basically comprises everything we know to exist. (Cf. German das All, literally 'the everything'.) Philosophically speaking it would follow from that that God is in the universe, not outside of it, because physically speaking there is no 'outside' to the universe: there's the universe and there's nothing. Since God obviously can't be nothing, God must be in the universe. In the same vein God must also be 'inside' time, not 'outside' of it. Going back to Aquinas meaning when saying God exists 'outside of time', it seems reasonable to suppose he meant that time is irrelevant to God, not that God literally exists outside of time, since that winds up as a contradiction with respect to the modern concept of a spacetime continuum. Obviously Aquinas was not aware of this modern concept of time.

 

[Borachio]

I don't see why "God obviously can't be nothing".

Of course, to say "God is nothing" is a pretty meaningless statement, but in my experience that's fairly typical of religious discourse.

More particularly, it seems that nothing anyone can say of God is actually true. Including the statement "God obviously can't be nothing".

Still, I don't belong in this thread. I don't know what's prompted me to poke my nose in.

 

[_random_]

More particularly, it seems that nothing anyone can say of God is actually true.

Many theologians would concur.

 

[warpus]

Many theologians would concur.

"We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being."

Sounds to me like it was thought up by a couple college students baked out of their minds.

 

[Mouthwash]

What is the contemporary opinion on whether a timeless God can perform actions within the universe?

 

[Borachio]

Sounds to me like it was thought up by a couple college students baked out of their minds.

Wut? It's taken hundreds of thousands of people millenia of intense contemplation, study and privation to come up with the conclusion that God transcends definition.

But, as you say, baking soda could have done it, too.

 

[Plotinus]

The position rests on the concept that humanity is already condemned at a logical stage prior to salvation.

A thought experiment that might help: assume everybody owes income tax (for simplicity, a flat tax). The government then decides to grant a 100% deduction to a certain group (single mothers, whether rich or poor). At the latter stage, does the decision to favour single mothers necessarily imply condemnation of everyone else?

A real-life (and therefore messy) parallel: in the UK, universities are entitled to charge tuition fees. In Scotland, the Scottish government pays the fees for Scottish students, whether or not their results suggest they deserve it. Is that an act of condemnation of Welsh students? Obviously this example muddies categories, but hopefully you can see what I'm getting at.

If the government had unlimited resources, and it chose to pay the fees of Scottish students but not those of Welsh students, then that would in effect be a decision to charge Welsh students but not Scottish students. I don't see how it could not be! Similarly, if God has the ability to grant saving grace to everyone, but he grants it to only some people, then that's a decision not to grant it to the others.

Anyway: I did have a question. I have heard numerous different interpretations of Romans 13:1-7, but few if any of them really deal with the fact that the passage was written when Nero was emperor. I have seen people mention that fact to prove that Christians are called to obey even monstrously evil governments, but such people completely ignore Romans 13:3-4 more often than not.

What exactly do you think Paul meant when he wrote this passage? And, (from a Christian standpoint) could his intended meaning be different than the correct meaning?

I suppose Nero hadn't got on to his really nutty stuff when Paul was writing (and in particular he hadn't started torturing Christians to death). It seems to me that Paul just meant what he seems to mean in that passage, and perhaps hadn't thought through the implications of what it would mean if the government is evil. Perhaps he wasn't thinking of the emperor in particular. At any rate, I don't think I've heard any alternative explanations of the passage, though that doesn't mean there aren't any.

Is there any works that you could point to that would highlight this?

You might try:

Jolley, N. (1998) The Light of the Soul: Theories of Ideas in Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes Oxford: Oxford University Press (pp. 81-98)

Schmaltz, T. (2000) “Malebranche on Ideas and the Vision in God” in Nadler, S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche Cambridge: Cambridge University Press pp. 59-86

Commentators differ on precisely how to interpret Malebranche. But it seems to me that a computer simulation is not far off. Malebranche thinks that we can understand things (and perceive them in the first place) only if we have access to the concepts of those things. Concepts are essentially geometries, because Malebranche thinks that the physical world is a giant 3D Cartesian graph. So every physical object is basically just a mesh. The concept of any given object is the pattern for that mesh. These patterns exist in God, and he gives them direct to us every time we perceive or think about the object in question.

Consider the following argument

Given...God knows how my life will unfold

Q. How does God know how my life will unfold?
A. He had thought of it before.

Q. How did he think it before?
A. He had a concept of me that behaves the same way as me, that he imagined in a world just like ours.

Q. Did he know how my life would unfold then?
A. No, he is thinking this so he can know how my life, if I were to exist, would unfold.

Q. How can I be sure I'm the actual person not merely the figment of God's imagination?
A. You can't?

Well if that's the case I can't really say whether or not God knows how my life will unfold.

Have you ever heard anything like that?

I haven't heard anything like that. It seems to me that the problem with it is that it makes an unwarranted leap from "God has the concept of me" to "I might be nothing other than God's concept of me". To start with, an argument like that wouldn't be acceptable within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, because Christian orthodoxy holds (a) God has an idea of every possible object, and (b) not all possible objects are actual. There must, therefore, be a difference between objects that are merely possible and those that are actual as well. This difference is simply that God has created the latter and not the former. So you can't be just an idea in God's mind, because if you were, so would everything else be, and everything possible would be actual - which is Spinozism.

Perhaps more importantly, why would I be concerned that I might be merely an idea in God's mind? How could that be true? If God is outside time then I cannot be an idea in his mind, because I change through time, but God's ideas don't.

Suppose someone takes a photo of me - or even a video. I don't worry that perhaps I am just a photo or a video. Why would I? A photo or a video is quite different from a person, even though it may have a superficial resemblance. Similarly, an idea of a person is quite different from a person - even if that idea contains every piece of information about the person, as God's presumably would. An idea is a different sort of thing from an actual person.

If you reject a physicalist theory of identity (which pretty much everyone does), this becomes very plausible.

I really don't think "pretty much everyone" rejects physicalism.

I can't remember who it was, but someone (a Church Father, I'm almost sure) said that God existed otuside of time, watching our universe from the outside. Plot'll probably know better.

That was Aquinas.

I think that the oldest source I've read that argues for God being outside of time was the 6th century De Consolatione Philosophiæ by Boethius...

I read much of De Consolatione Philosophiæ in the original Latin back during college, but don't recall anything about God being outside of time from then. That part I remember only from listening to a Librivox recording of an English translation a few months ago. It is harder to find the exact passage in an audio book, or check to see how biased the translators might have been.

I do remember thinking that the argument did not seem all that strong, and that he was using terms in ways very different from the ordinary meanings of the Greek terms that either our English or his Latin vocabulary had been used to translate. Boethius could speak Greek, yet relied heavily on the authority of Augustine who could not.

You can see Boethius' argument here. However, Boethius certainly did not invent the idea that God is timeless. As you can see in that passage, he states that everyone believes this doctrine, and he is merely articulating what it means. His definition is that God's timelessness is "the complete possession of an endless life enjoyed as one simultaneous whole". The key idea here is simultaneity, so in God there is no progression from past to future.

However, the idea of divine timelessness was far older than Boethius. Consider the following from Plutarch's On the E at Delphi:

But the God IS, we are bound to assert, he is, with reference to no time but to that age wherein is no movement, or time, or duration; to which nothing is prior or subsequent; no future, no past, no elder, no younger, which by one long “now” has made the “always” perfect. Only with reference to this that really is, is; it has not come into being, it is not yet to be, it did not begin, it will not cease. Thus then we ought to hail him in worship, and thus to address him as “Thou Art”, aye, or in the very words of some of the old people, “Ei Hen”, “Thou art one thing”.

Or even more strikingly, Philo of Alexandria in On the Unchangeableness of God:

In truth, he is the father, and creator, and governor of all things in heaven and in the whole world. And indeed, future events are overshadowed by the distance of future time, which is sometimes a short way off and sometimes a long way off – but God is also the creator of time, for he is the father of its father, and the father of time is the world… So there is nothing future to God, who has the very boundaries of time subject to him… and in eternity nothing is past and nothing is future, but everything is present only.

That idea seems very similar to what Boethius was getting at some five centuries later. And of course you can find similar ideas in Neoplatonists such as Plotinus and, after him, Augustine.

I believe that Thomas Aquinas based his ideas on the timelessness fo God on the work of Boethius. When it comes to authorities that Aquinas liked to quote to support his position, Boethius is a close second behind Augustine. (Pseudo-)Dionysus is a distant third, followed by Justin Martyr. Of course, my knowledge of Aquinas is mostly limited to an English translation of Part 1 of the Summa Theologiae, which was all that was on Librivox back in the spring.

I don't think Aquinas quotes Justin Martyr very often! I'd say that of Christian authorities, the most important after Augustine and Boethius is probably John of Damascus, whom Aquinas quotes surprisingly often. Obviously Aristotle is also a major authority, whom Aquinas thinks is literally never wrong except when contradicted by divine revelation (e.g. on the eternity of the world, and even then, Aristotle was apparently only rejecting false understandings of creation).

Hm. I wonder during what time God is watching the universe. The universe being everything we know to exist. Since time basically is another dimension of space, God exists outside time and space, i.e outside our universe.* But outside our universe there is nothing known to exist. If God exists outside of time and space we cannot know God to exist. I wonder if this can be reduced to a paradox or that it is simply a contradiction.

It's a contradiction, but only because you've defined it that way. If you define the universe as "everything that exists" then God will be part of the universe, but you lose the ability to assert that everything in the universe is spatial and temporal, because God isn't (or at least might not be). But your original definition seems off, because people can talk meaningfully of the possibility of multiple universes, as you rightly point out - but it does make a big difference to your argument. "Universe" on this view might mean something like everything that forms a spatial and temporal continuum with each other. There could be more than one such continuum, having no spatial or temporal relations to each other. Even if there's only one in fact, there would still be the conceptual possibility of something existing outside it. And there would be no particular reason to assume that that thing had to be temporal or spatial, unless one had reason to think that, necessarily, anything that exists must be temporal or spatial.

Anyways, as for the idea that God is outside of time I don't find it that compelling to my argument. It seems to me that if God does exist outside of time, there are two options:
1. God has his own sort of super-time that exists beyond ours (think of super-time versus regular time as analogous to the timeline of an author to the timeline inside his novel), to which my line of argument would seem to still apply.
2. God does not have any sort of timelike character. In that case it seems to me that we cannot describe Him as doing things (watching, creating, thinking, etc.) because those don't really make sense without causality.

(2) is the traditional view. However, in rejecting it here, you're assuming that causality is necessarily temporal. I don't see any reason to think that. To say that X is the cause of Y is, perhaps, to say that X is the explanation for why there is Y. I don't see a good reason to think that that requires X to be temporal.

There was a time when people thought that the notion of causation necessarily implied spatial contiguity, such that action at a distance was a conceptual impossibility. This was one reason why there was opposition to Newton's view of gravity, which operates at a distance. We now know that this notion of causation was faulty and that Newton was correct - action at a distance is possible. People still retain the idea that causation requires temporal contiguity, but I see no reason to think this. We don't even know what causation really is in the first place, as Hume showed, so how can we claim to know under what circumstances it can happen?

What is the contemporary opinion on whether a timeless God can perform actions within the universe?

A lot of people seem to think that he couldn't, because an atemporal being couldn't relate to temporal beings in the requisite way. I think that this is a major motivation behind the view of many theologians today that God is not timeless at all but exists within time, everlastingly. (There are other motivations for this view too.) I'm of the opinion that this view makes little sense and is unnecessary. I don't have any problem at all with the idea that God is timeless and that his unlimited power allows him to be the cause both of the temporal universe and of particular events within that universe. I really don't see why he shouldn't be.

A famous defence of divine timelessness is Stump, Eleonore and Kretzmann, Norman, (1981) "Eternity", Journal of Philosophy 78(8): 429–458. Stump and Kretzmann argue that a timeless God could have a sort of pseudo-simultaneity with events within time, allowing him to cause them or interact with them in other ways. Even this seems to me over-kill as I don't see why he'd need to be simultaneous with them in any sense.

I just want to hear your comments on the "Ancient Examples of concept" part of the article.
http://www.lamblion.com/articles/articles_rapture6.php

I don't really have any comments on this - I don't know enough about the Shepherd of Hermas or Ephraim to say.

 

[_random_]

So that David Mason fellow will be teaching a class called "Religion is Theater" next semester. I think this page gets at the gist of his perspective.

My research wanders around in the overlap of theatre and religion. Broadly, I think theatre and religion operate similarly and accomplish similar aims. While doing other things, as well, both develop the conditions out of which emerges heightened experience, or what psychologist Abraham Maslow called “peak experience”. A shared device by which both phenomena make heightened experiences available is role-play. Theatre and religion offer adjunct identities, through the playing of which people bring ideal realities into existence. By playing the “Hamlet” role, or by playing the devotee role, a person may come to experience Hamlet’s world, or the world imagined by Christianity or Hinduism or What-have-you-ism.

Which is not to say that my work argues that religion is fake. My correlation of theatre and religion does not accept that theatre is fake. Aristotle felt that he had to reduce theatre to mimesis in order to rescue the art from Plato, who thought we’d be better off without theatre. But Aristotle was wrong. Playing roles does transform people, and theatre does throw the world into confusion. Plato, in fact, was right, and we should be afraid of theatre. Very afraid.

Currently my work is concerned with theatre audiences and with private devotion. I would argue that theatre audiences that do have some kind of heightened experience—and if you cried at the end of Old Yeller, you know what I mean—approach that experience by taking on and playing a role that anticipates the materialization of that experience. To some extent, I am following Hjalmar Sundén’s “role theory of religious experience”, here. But I would add that elements of cognitive theory, narrative theories of personal identity, and existentialism contribute significantly to understanding how we experience reality as something other (or more) than what reality should be.

Is this a common way of thinking about religion? What sorts of flaws or strengths do you see to this approach? What exactly is the role theory of religious experience, and what other theories are there?

 

[timtofly]

Even broadcast newsism.

 

[Agent327]

You can see Boethius' argument here. However, Boethius certainly did not invent the idea that God is timeless. As you can see in that passage, he states that everyone believes this doctrine, and he is merely articulating what it means. His definition is that God's timelessness is "the complete possession of an endless life enjoyed as one simultaneous whole". The key idea here is simultaneity, so in God there is no progression from past to future.

However, the idea of divine timelessness was far older than Boethius.

[edited because quotes do not show in quote]

It's a contradiction, but only because you've defined it that way. If you define the universe as "everything that exists" then God will be part of the universe, but you lose the ability to assert that everything in the universe is spatial and temporal, because God isn't (or at least might not be). But your original definition seems off, because people can talk meaningfully of the possibility of multiple universes, as you rightly point out - but it does make a big difference to your argument. "Universe" on this view might mean something like everything that forms a spatial and temporal continuum with each other. There could be more than one such continuum, having no spatial or temporal relations to each other. Even if there's only one in fact, there would still be the conceptual possibility of something existing outside it. And there would be no particular reason to assume that that thing had to be temporal or spatial, unless one had reason to think that, necessarily, anything that exists must be temporal or spatial.

(2) is the traditional view. However, in rejecting it here, you're assuming that causality is necessarily temporal. I don't see any reason to think that. To say that X is the cause of Y is, perhaps, to say that X is the explanation for why there is Y. I don't see a good reason to think that that requires X to be temporal.

There was a time when people thought that the notion of causation necessarily implied spatial contiguity, such that action at a distance was a conceptual impossibility. This was one reason why there was opposition to Newton's view of gravity, which operates at a distance. We now know that this notion of causation was faulty and that Newton was correct - action at a distance is possible. People still retain the idea that causation requires temporal contiguity, but I see no reason to think this. We don't even know what causation really is in the first place, as Hume showed, so how can we claim to know under what circumstances it can happen?

There is a simple mathematical formula for that: X -> Y (i.e. X causes Y, or Y follows from X). The beauty of it is that neither time nor space are necessary: it simply states in a mathematical form that X causes Y.

Now, going back to the physical definition of universe (everything that is known to exist), it makes no difference in principle if there be one universe or a multiverse. However, practically speaking the example is clearer in 'the universe'. (Technically, multiverse can't even be used since we do not know if there be a multiverse; that's why it is a theory, and for now we speak of 'universe'.)

So, the universe being everything known to exist, that does not necessarily exclude God, but indeed it does necessarily include God.

Now to the following:

A lot of people seem to think that he couldn't, because an atemporal being couldn't relate to temporal beings in the requisite way. I think that this is a major motivation behind the view of many theologians today that God is not timeless at all but exists within time, everlastingly. (There are other motivations for this view too.) I'm of the opinion that this view makes little sense and is unnecessary. I don't have any problem at all with the idea that God is timeless and that his unlimited power allows him to be the cause both of the temporal universe and of particular events within that universe. I really don't see why he shouldn't be.

You might be correct, but an atemporal being would be unnoticeable to temporal beings. However, countless records claim that God is very noticeable. If that is true, then the premiss is wrong, i.e. God is not atemporal.

Going back to the original statement: the universe is everything known to exist (which would necessarily include God), we see that, surprisingly, it is not a contradiction, but in effect a paradox. The apparent contradiction comes from the common concept of time. So, assuming everything we know is also true, God is a timeless being affecting the temporal universe. That is the contradiction. (Not, as you state, my definition.)

A famous defence of divine timelessness is Stump, Eleonore and Kretzmann, Norman, (1981) "Eternity", Journal of Philosophy 78(8): 429–458. Stump and Kretzmann argue that a timeless God could have a sort of pseudo-simultaneity with events within time, allowing him to cause them or interact with them in other ways. Even this seems to me over-kill as I don't see why he'd need to be simultaneous with them in any sense.

Correct. In your earlier example gravity is not simultaneous at all (it works at a distance), but we know it to exist regardless.

 

[caketastydelish]

1. I got a lot of heat in my "gay-friendly churches" thread from Evangelicals here when I mentioned my church allows gay members, saying any church that doesn't recognize homosexuality as a sin is 'not real Christians. Would you consider my church, the Disciples of Christ to be 'real' Christians (you won't offend me if you say no). Either way, what would you say is the official cutoff point for someone to be a 'real' christian, or not?

2. Should/do Christians get offended when popular culture such as books, movies, video games etc has characters or plotlines with vague Christian influence without anything direct? Or even direct. Should we be offended by movies such as 'Bruce Almighty'?

3. I've seen arguments back and forth that either the Bible/christians defend the institution of slavery or bash it. Could you settle this both in the biblical case, and how it's relevant to the American south?

4. let's say someone who has completely lost base with reality (hallucinating/under psychosis, and this isn't drug related, just something naturally wrong with them) commits a crime such as murder or whatever. Would they have sinned or would it be excused?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

1. I got a lot of heat in my "gay-friendly churches" thread from Evangelicals here when I mentioned my church allows gay members, saying any church that doesn't recognize homosexuality as a sin is 'not real Christians. Would you consider my church, the Disciples of Christ to be 'real' Christians (you won't offend me if you say no). Either way, what would you say is the official cutoff point for someone to be a 'real' christian, or not?

I'm no theologian, and my church treats same-sex activity as a sin, but I will throw in my two cents:

I don't think a church's views on homosexuality has any bearing on whether it is Christian or not. Sure, if you claim to strictly follow the Bible, you can't really justify allowing same-sex activity, but "strictly following the Bible" isn't a defining aspect of Christianity either. Allowing gay people in relationships to be full members of your church, or forbidding such, are both consistent with being Christian, and frankly saying that one group or the other are not "real Christians" is kind of missing the point. Now, one side or the other is right or wrong on what Jesus really wanted, maybe, but that has no bearing on whether they are actually following Christ as they understand him.