Silly Shellfish Argument Alert

(siren alarm playing in the background, a horn blaring most annoyingly, and then we hear a shrill, yet tiny, non-human voice(obviously coming through an underwater megaphone)

Shrimp here: Silly human people, when will you stop these words, words, words about what God said or never said! Too many human words about Divine Word! Stop it!

We have warning that there was yet another foul attempt at using the Shellfish argument.

I will answer one more time: Paul said Christians can eat whatever they want, and Jesus said it is not what goes into a body but what comes out that makes one unclean. OK. That is the answer. That's as much unfolding Truth as you get! No more question, OK?

However, some human people just do not read very widely, I guess.

OK, one more time but that's it.

So, look at fresh offense, look at classic answer, and then look back to a world series classic exchange of both sides arguing but good.

First, fresh offense in NY Times (hello!):

5/15/2005

Liberal Bible-Thumping
by Nicholas Kristof

“Bishop Spong particularly denounces preachers who selectively quote Scripture against homosexuality. He also cites various textual reasons for concluding (not very persuasively) that St. Paul was “a frightened gay man condemning other gay people so that he can keep his own homosexuality inside the rigid discipline of his faith.”

The bishop also tries to cast doubt on the idea that Judas betrayed Jesus. He notes that the earliest New Testament writings, of Paul and the source known as Q, don’t mention a betrayal by Judas. Bishop Spong contends that after the destruction of Jewish Jerusalem in A.D. 70, early Christians curried favor with Roman gentiles by blaming the Crucifixion on Jewish authorities - nurturing two millennia of anti-Semitism that bigots insisted was biblically sanctioned.

Some of the bishop’s ideas strike me as more provocative than persuasive, but at least he’s engaged in the debate. When liberals take on conservative Christians, it tends to be with insults - by deriding them as jihadists and fleeing the field. That’s a mistake. It’s entirely possible to honor Christian conservatives for their first-rate humanitarian work treating the sick in Africa or fighting sex trafficking in Asia, and still do battle with them over issues like gay rights.

Liberals can and should confront Bible-thumping preachers on their own terms, for the scriptural emphasis on justice and compassion gives the left plenty of ammunition. After all, the Bible depicts Jesus as healing lepers, not slashing Medicaid.”

Entire article

So here's the classic answer: "Because the Church from apostolic times has taught that gentile Christians were not obliged to receive circumcision or to observe the dietary laws, the conclusion is drawn that we are at liberty to discard other requirements in Leviticus. Seeing as the commandment to love neighbor which the gospels cite as one of the two great commandments comes from the book of Leviticus, I gather that that one is up for grabs as well.

The apostolic Jerusalem council seems to have been able to draw a distinction between circumcision and dietary laws (which it did not apply to gentile Christians) and moral law (which it did require of gentile Christians).

And of course, the first promise made in the baptismal covenant is the promise to continue in the apostles’ teaching, which would seem to require that we not only teach that the circumcision and kosher are not required, but that morality, including the biblical notion that sexual intimacy is appropriate only between a man and a woman in the context of their marriage to each other, is expected."

Read the whole thread and get up to speed on your favorite human words!