As impure and wicked behaviour, homosexuality will not found in the new heaven and the new earth…

I do not regard homosexuality as ‘wicked’ behaviour. Romans 1:24-27 puts homosexual activity in the ‘impure’ category: it has to do with the dishonouring of their own bodies whereas the term ‘wickedness’ appears to be reserved essentially for offences against others (1:29-30). Since honour and shame are in many respects social constructs, the argument could perhaps be made that homosexual behaviour is dishonourable or shameless relative to prevailing social mores - I think something like this applies in respect of Paul’s argument in 1 Cor.11:2-11 that a woman is the ‘glory’ of the man. Would this mean that where there is no strong public sense of shame, the situation is different? This needs more thought.

This view of the Bible has landed Evangelicals in enormous difficulties with, for example, evolution; and the position on homosexuality is not dissimilar.

I don’t have a problem with evolution and I think the homosexuality issue is different. My view (influenced no doubt by my evangelical background) is that the problems often arise simply because we don’t think hard enough about what scripture is saying. Our interpretation of the Bible has been too much under the sway of dogmatic interests - on both sides of the liberal / conservative faultline. Before we decide whether to accept a text as authoritative or not, we need to make sure we have understood it properly. Of course, that’s a rather open-ended task, and I guess these are just tensions that we will have to live with.

Andrew says there will be no homosexuality in the new heaven and new earth. Is it not rather the case that there will be no sexuality of any sort - Matthew 22.29.

That may be the case, but I’m not sure. It may be necessary to allow for a distinction here between ‘heaven’ and ‘new creation’ - they are not the same thing. God is in heaven with his angels, etc. Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. In my view the NT also speaks of a group, the ‘saints of the Most High’, who have been raised and vindicated and now reign with Christ in heaven, and because they are like angels, there is no marriage. But if the new creation consists of both a new heaven and a new earth, and if it is anything like the old creation, it will be populated by men and women in relationships. But that could be reading too much into John’s vision.