This is a response to the following posting, which I think summarizes
a common fundamentalist critique of "liberal" Christianity:

>One of the things that distresses me the most about American Christianity
>is the influence of what I call cafeteria Christians.  These are Christians
>who have decided to pick and choose from the Bible what beliefs to follow.
>They are very sophisticated in their methodology for choosing, using
>elitist scholasticism to explain away painful portions of the word of God.
>They usually pick things to believe which are agreeable to their immediate
>situation or personal proclivities, while discarding those commands in the
>Bible that they feel are either too hard to follow, out-dated, provincial,
>or just plain silly.  They set themselves up as judge and jury of God and
>His law-word.

This argument is ad hominem.  As we'll see in a moment, the claim is
demonstrably false.  But I'd like to clear away the ad hominem first,
because as long as it survives, nobody is going to be listening to
anybody else anyway.  Normally I do not leave ad hominem attacks in
the FAQ's, because they are faulty rhetorical devices that are
irrelevant to the real issues.  However every time I've seen the
"picking and choosing critique", it has been associated with a similar
ad hominem attack.  This leads me to believe that the judgemental
feelings leading to the ad hominem are intrinsically tied to this
critique.

The author assumes that because I favor female pastors and adopt a
somewhat open attitude towards homosexual Christians, that this
implies something about my personal proclivities.  I will not
speculate what combination of personal vices it would take to come up
with this set of views.  But applying a similar procedure on my side,
it's clear that the author is a narrow-minded bigot.

Wonderful.  Now we've each explained away the other as unworthy of
serious attention, so we don't need to look at what the other is
saying.  Until we get past this, the situation is hopeless.  I don't
know how to convince others that I'm just as dedicated to following
the teachings of Christ as they are.  Possibly it's impossible without
human contact between us.  But if we don't find a way, everything else
is hopeless.  If he reads everything I say convinced that I'm just
trying to justify my own sin, then we're stuck.  If you're convinced
enough about somebody's evil, it's possible to explain away absolutely
anything they say.  It's like a paranoid, who can explain any possible
evidence as part of his imagined plot.

As for the substance of the argument, it's based on the central error
of the inerrantist position: that it's possible to adopt the Bible
without any interpretation or human judgement, and that they have done
so, but everybody else is coming up with interpretations to justify
views they are imposing on the text.  In fact interpretation is
inevitable.  So is "picking and choosing" in ethics.  Jesus chose to
teach in parables and stories, not in laws.  His teaching style, and
the cultural and religious distance between us and him, guarantees
that we will have to go through some process of interpretation.

The situation in regard to the Law is particularly clear.  In fact the
traditional conservative approach to the Law is exactly the sort of
"cafeteria" approach the author claims he disapproves of.  We can't
obey the entire Law, because we've got explicit NT abolition of the
kosher laws, circumcision and (unless you are SDA) the Sabbath.  So
now what?  The usual claim is that the Law comes in two pieces: moral
and ceremonial.  The first is still binding, but the second is not.
Unfortunately, they aren't labelled that way, and there are no clear
criteria to judge which are which.  This does not necessarily
invalidate the distinction between moral and ceremonial Law -- it may
in fact be the best way to make sense of the NT evidence.  But it does
mean that a good deal of judgement is needed.

That judgement ("picking and choosing" if you like) is necessary can
be seen by looking at the history of ethics.  Until fairly recently
(in historical terms) the Church obeyed the clear Biblical prohibition
against charging interest.  This was part of the Law, and was just as
obvious to them as the prohibition of homosexuality is to this author.
But now it's recognized that this wasn't part of the moral law -- it
was just some economic rules that happened to get mixed in with the
moral laws.  How about restoring all property that has been sold every
seventh year?  The Church never even tried this one.  The underlying
concept was that every family should own their own land, and religious
law should protect this situation.  This would have made the whole
feudal system impossible.  Then look at the change in status of
slavery.  Until recently, the Church believed it was an institution
endorsed by the Bible.  Now we say that Paul wasn't endorsing slavery
-- he was just taking it as a given, and telling Christians how best
to live with it.

The point of this is that the Church -- even conservative Protestants
-- always has to decide where the Bible is giving us something of
eternal significance and where it is describing an approach that is
conditioned on the economics or social structure of the time.  Unless
you advocate prohibition of interest, slavery, and all the rest of the
things one can find in the Bible, you are also "picking and choosing".
I don't criticize you for doing it.  But I do criticize you for doing
it without admitting it, and then condemning other Christians for
doing what you are doing yourself.

I wish I could give a clear recipe for deciding what principles are
eternal and what ones are culturally-bound.  Unfortunately I can't.
There are certainly some things we can look at.  For example, there
seems to be a clear distinction between principles that underlie many
other judgements, and applications to specific circumstances.  The
commandment to love our neighbors underlies everything else in
Christian ethics.  It's intrinsic to Christianity in a way that Paul's
advice on eating meat that has been dedicated to a pagan god is not.

However there's an intermediate ground where one can argue that either
that we're dealing with a general principle or with applications in
specific circumstances.  One can argue that there are specific
relationships, such as the family and the ruler, which are sanctioned
by God.  In this interpretation, the role of women is seen as part of
a basic principle.  Or one can argue that these roles are part of
society.  The Bible tells people how to exist within the social roles
current at the time, but this isn't an endorsement of those roles.
Clearly slavery has moved from one category to the other: it used to
be seen as a divinely-endorsed institution.  Paul's advice to slaves
and slaver-owners is now seen as advice on how to live within that
institution, but not as endorsement of it.  So what determines which
side of the line things fall on?

I think in most cases we make judgements based on the long-term
consequences of things.  Slavery was finally rejected because it
became clear that it was impossible to carry out Paul's commandments
for slave-owners.  If it could be viewed as a simple economic
arrangement, and have no effect on personal relationships, it might
have no Christian implications.  But in practice, slavery stunts the
personal development of the slaves, and corrupts the slave-master.
Only if both slave and owner are saints could it be done without this
effect.

The history of Christian ethics should serve to create a certain level
of humility.  It's amazing how things move from the category of being
"obviously" one way to being "obviously" the other.  Until the last
few hundred years, no one even considered that taking interest might
be simply an economic issue.  It was clearly banned in the Bible, and
was obviously against God's law.  But once our economic system
changed, around the 16th Cent, people's perceptions changed.  Now if
you suggest to people that bankers are immoral, they'll just give you
a blank stare.  No one sees how anyone could take those portions of
the Bible literally.  The same thing has happened with any number of
other issues: slavery, tax collectors (it would seem absurd to think
that IRS agents had the moral status given to tax collectors in the
NT), saying of oaths (when I asked why Christians don't object to
swearing oaths in court, most people thought I was some kind of wierdo
-- but it's one of the clearest prohibitions in the NT).  The
situation changes, and Biblical prohibitions are no longer seen as
being relevant.

I think what's going on is that Christians ultimately make their
judgements based on the consequences of actions for people.  Slavery,
taxes, oaths, etc., changed because Christians came to see that
slavery was harmful to people, that tax collectors operating under an
honest and democratic government were helping serve people, and that
oaths in a proper judicial context served to remind people of the
seriousness of bearing false witness.  I think this is all to the
good.  Christianity is not about Law.  It's about loving God and our
neighbors.