February 19, 2005
Dear Ken:
I’ve received your letter today concerning the Senate vote and the Jerusalem Council.
Let me first say that I’m getting the impression that you are not happy about the way the council process is going. My hunch is that it is proceeding in a way you didn’t envision when you suggested the idea to Kate. I personally can’t speak to any of that. My region hasn’t had their council meeting yet, and I didn’t serve on the Senate commission that designed the process. Personally I’m trying to approach the council process with an open mind, and until I go through it, I can’t really affirm or deny what appear to be criticisms of the process.
There are a couple of things I would like to say in response. This is lengthy, but you did ask, and I feel the time has come to discuss the issues in depth. Let me begin with your statement that Baptist polity and tradition are secondary. For me, they are actually the primary issues, and personally, the most important ones. Please indulge me as I explain why.
I joined the ABC family as a junior in college when I joined the ABC church I had been attending as a student at Rutgers University. I didn’t really understand Baptist principles until I took the polity course while in seminary. At that point I had been interning at a Methodist church, and seriously considered going that route. I certainly would have been supported by the church I was serving at that time. However, as I understood soul liberty, local church autonomy, and the insistence that the practice of faith should be free from governmental interference, I felt a resonance within my spirit that told me I could choose no other denominational home than the ABC.
To be honest, Ken, part of what is angering me about the way this whole debate is proceeding is that Baptist principles are being pitted against Biblical authority. For me Baptist principles allow the Bible speak freely. In my library I have a pretty thick book on the shelves entitled “The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach” by Jack Rogers and Donald McKim; perhaps you are familiar with it. One thing I learned reading through that book is that many who hold to “Biblical authority” use that to make their own opinions look more “objective” than they are. The slavery issue is a clear case in point. Only because of the freedom of religion we have in this country could another side issue a challenge to those using their idea of Biblical authority to justify this practice. We would not have been able to look through those “open doors” in the Scripture, as you put it, if the freedom of interpretation were prohibited.
Well-meaning people often use their profession of Biblical authority to justify their own opinion, and many times they are in the majority. Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all tried to suppress the Anabaptist challenge of their views. If the Bible is to have authority at all, there must be freedom of interpretation. Otherwise human beliefs, dressed in the mantle of Biblical authority, may well control things. The Spirit has used the minority opinion to reveal God’s will on more than one occasion. Twelve people who viewed the Hebrew Scriptures differently than the vast majority of their Jewish brothers and sisters ended up convincing an empire that Jesus was Lord. So for me these two issues are more than related, they are essential, and it is essential that both are to be affirmed and respected.
As far as I am concerned the American Baptist Churches of the West has and continues to disregard Baptist principles. It, along with the other regions and national boards, has agreed to live and minister in accordance with the Covenant of Relationships which provides the only foundation for our life together that we have. That covenant makes it clear that each church interprets the Bible for itself as Christ, its only head, directs it through the presence of his Spirit. Can a church reach a conclusion that is wrong? Of course, but that is for Christ to judge, not other churches, not the state, and for American Baptists, not regional or national mission organizations. Additionally, this covenant makes it clear that there are limits to this freedom on a national level. A church must keep common criteria which concerns its support of the wider mission, not theological or ethical questions. Additionally, the General Board has the right to pass a resolution which is binding on national staff, but not binding on churches.
I realize that a colleague like yourself knows these things, but I feel I must reiterate them to make this point: I simply do not understand why many of us are not as outraged by the fact that the ABC of the West clearly broke the covenant when they disfellowshipped churches as we are that some of our churches are Welcoming and Affirming. The Covenant makes it clear that if any covenanting party is not in agreement with the covenant, they can attempt to change it or leave it. The ABC of the West has done neither. Biblical authority is sure invoked when gay people want to live together; why it isn’t invoked when a covenant is broken escapes me.
Ken I want to now directly, honestly, and with all due respect say that the side which supports the actions of the West, and that includes your region while it might not include you as an individual, will simply not be happy until they change the covenant either explicitly (by actually getting the family to re-write it) or implicitly (by leaving it as is but still not following it, the present situation) to forbid a local church to reach any other conclusion than gays should not marry, be ordained, or engage in any other lifestyle except for celibacy. That’s why I have to keep an open mind about this council process. I hope against hope that somehow we will find a way to work together despite the severe differences we have. I hope I have made it clear to you, though, that my disagreement is not over homosexuality per se. It’s the fact that our Baptist freedoms are being treated as if they are annoyances rather than as foundational precepts.
Ken, you are right in that we are not really taking the time to debate this issue as it needs to be debated. I would expand your own words to say that it will take more than a two-minute presentation, a 500 word essay, or a week long meeting of 50 some-odd people to get at the bottom of this issue. However, your region forced this vote. I myself gave Bill Godwin an earful concerning this at the last Senate meeting. I asked via e-mail before we met that your senators let the Executive Committee take the time to look at this issue in depth before any hasty action was taken. They would have none of it. So we are debating this issue under the gun, and we are all going to have to live with it no matter how it comes out.
Your letter seems to say that we must all be on the same page with Biblical authority if we are to continue as a denomination, so we must resolve this homosexuality issue on that level. If you are saying this, I couldn’t disagree more. If the Covenant of Relationships had been respected in the first place we wouldn’t be here. The covenant does not require that we all hold to the same idea of Biblical authority; it leaves that to the churches. Many of us aren’t happy with that idea, and I understand that, but that is the idea expressed in the covenant. The side that is unhappy with that simply doesn’t want to live under that covenant anymore, and for me that means it wants to change what the ABC is in its very nature. They are more than welcome to try. I am willing to concede that they may succeed, which will be bad news for me and others, but these Baptist principles are important to me, so I have to accept where affirming them takes me.
Now one last thought in this lengthy e-mail. One thing that has made thinking about homosexuality very complex for me is that once upon a time I decided I would never do a remarriage of divorced people because it was unscriptural. At that time I was certainly in a minority. My own pastor, evangelical as he was, took me to task on it. It didn’t matter. As far as I was concerned cultural pressures made people put aside the clear teaching of Jesus that only those divorced because their spouses had cheated on them were legitimately divorced. By implication that must mean they can remarry, but it actually doesn’t say that either.
I have come to understand Biblical interpretation differently now, so I now view the remarriage of the divorced in a different light. However, you have to stretch quite a bit to find any Scripture that affirms this position, and yet, no one is going to defrock me for this. So when you ask for scriptural doors for the approval of the practice of homosexuality, I see that as a very problematic question to posit. There might be a door in Scripture that says that women are equal to men in Christ, but it still says this side of the kingdom they are to be second-class. Mary Magdalene might have gotten to tell the twelve about the resurrection, but she still didn’t get to be an apostle, even when they had an job opening available with Judas Iscariot’s death. Again, slaves are equal to the free in Christ, but in the book of Titus they are told to be good slaves and like it. It is clear that with all of these issues we have allowed culture to inform our interpretations over the years. So for me, the Biblical issue is simply not authority, it is interpretation, and in particular, the role culture plays in informing one’s interpretation. Some people might not want contemporary culture informing our views of homosexuality, and that is their right, but when they clearly allow culture do so in other areas (and of course they have proof texts from the Bible that make it appear that they are not doing this—but hey, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck), I can’t help feeling that they are being arbitrary and inconsistent in their handling of what is admittedly a very complex topic. I apologize if that last statement offends you; I don’t know where you yourself are at with any of this. The time has come, though, to get the issues out in the open, as you say, and that’s how I really feel.
Phineas Marr
Senator from Wisconsin
February 23, 2005
Dear Phineas,
Thank you for your prompt response to my letter. Your willingness to interact is what I had hoped for. I have talked to Kate and she is cool about what is developing. Thank you for being so personal. A letter exchange is not nearly as satisfying as a bull session, but we're stuck with what we have.
You and the other letters I am getting raise many issues that need to be addressed, and I hope they will be in turn. I would like to focus on one issue and hope for your response.
In my letter I said, "unless we find a common denominator in THE BASIS FOR AND THE NATURE OF BIBLICAL AUTHORITY we will talk past each other. .." Until we identify what we are talking about it can remain a scary thing. Kate in her letter to me that she sent out (I wrote an answer to that, too) said that the issue hasn't been discussed because of "lack of trust and fear." Let me try to explain what I understand by Biblical authority and see if it is still something to be afraid of.
The New Testament is the deposit of the Apostolic message which is about Jesus as Messiah, Son of God, Savior and Lord which was confirmed to them by the resurrection of which they were witnesses. The response to that core message as given in Acts 2 and elsewhere brought the Church into being. This spread orally as Acts records until there was a need to preserve the original from teachings that would change it back to Judaism or forward to gnosticism or a mystery religion. Letters from Apostles were circulated and Gospels were written.
These were recognized early on as a standard to preserve the message of Christ. We believe the Apostles got it right--Jews do not. The writers (Gospels, John, Paul, Peter) were theologians in their own right and each gave his own "angle" for the message. The church approved the writings that reflected the apostolic deposit and rejected those that were "sub-apostolic" or Gnostic like the Gospel of Thomas. The basic canon was agreed to early on with a few undecideds later included. With the acceptance of these as a standard the promise was fulfilled that the "Spirit would remind them of everything I have said to you." The Holy Spirit will not "speak on his own" (Jn. 16:6) by adding a different message but will increasingly enlighten with new insights from Scripture. Examples are that the Kingdom of God is not a theocracy, women, slaves, method of creation, etc.
So, what I mean by "Biblical authority" is that the New Testament is a record of the continuation of God's covenant with Israel which is now transposed to Jesus Christ who fulfills the law and becomes the Light to the Nations that Isaiah spoke of and by his redemption has called a new people who are children of Abraham by faith. This is our founding document to which our faith and practices must relate.
The Supreme Court in its relation to the Constitution is an example of this. Whatever the Court decides must be related to that authoritative document. To make sure it does they hear arguments and argue among themselves. There must be some constitutional justification for what is decided.
My problem with those of you who say that it is our Baptist tradition of freedom that guards the Scripture is that you have placed tradition above Scripture. I believe the Scripture is self-authenticating and does not need that protection. If tradition, whether Roman Catholic of Baptist, guards Scripture, then you can only get to Scripture through that tradition. To me, that puts you on the wrong side of the Reformation.
I would like to ask two things of you. First, how does your concept of Biblical authority differ from mine?
Second, what is your interpretation of what the Scriptures teach about homosexual practices? I will not feel imposed upon by your answer. I will be glad to do the same for you, but I asked first.
In Christ,
Ken Savage
Senator from PSW
March 10, 2005
Ken
The debate is NOT about the Bible. Our views of the Bible have been different since the Modernist-Fundamentalist debate began. Rather, the debate is about whether or not we are going to stick with the Covenant of Relationships as it is currently written or change it. Those of us who do not want to let local churches have their own views of the gay issue, whatever they may be, simply do not want to live together under that covenant any longer, but want to instead impose the will of the majority on all.
Biblical authority isn’t the object of people’s fear or mistrust. People are afraid to respond because they are afraid of repercussions to themselves and/or their churches if they make their beliefs known. I’m not accusing anyone of anything, I’m just stating things I’ve seen and heard myself as this issue has been dealt with in Wisconsin.
It’s my belief that there isn’t a human being alive who claims to believe in Biblical authority who doesn’t interpret that document through the filters of some kind of tradition. None of us come to Christian faith in a vacuum. Christianity is transmitted to us by others, a Biblical doctrine in and of itself. Our personal backgrounds also provide such filters. A person who grew up with a really good and strong family behind them is going to have trouble with Jesus’ statements that they must love him more than their family. A person who grew up in an estranged family may very well welcome the idea. Psychologists have shown that our brains are wired by our social contexts very early in life, and it provides the framework for how we see things. So I think there’s basically two groups of people out there: those who admit they interpret the Bible through the lenses of their own traditions, biases, etc., and those who like to think that they are completely objective when it comes to that issue. Both camps may claim they believe in Biblical authority, but that second camp may pass off their interpretations as objective truth because of the way they wrap themselves in that mantle.
A clear example is the prevalence of dispensational premillenialism in this religious culture. Dispensationalism is based on the idea that Israel and the church are separate entities, have always been, and will be until the millenium ends. This idea is as novel a one as the ones on which the Mormons base their faith and on which the Jehovah’s Witnesses base theirs.
It is not found in the Reformers. It is not found in the early premillenialist church fathers. It appears with J. N. Darby in this country around 1864. So Dispensationalism is only about 150 years old. This idea that the church is not the new Israel directly contradicts Romans and Ephesians. Yet, these ideas are passed off as being fundamental religious truth. If you don’t believe in the rapture the way they define it, you are theologically suspect. What’s even more interesting is the fact that those folks who were first called Fundamentalist were Old Princeton School Presbyterians, who were amillenialist or perhaps postmillenialist and certainly didn’t’ believe these things. However, they became strange bedfellows with the Dispensationists because both of them upheld and wrapped themselves in the mantle of--you guessed it--Biblical authority.
They both believed in the fully verbally inspired inerrant Scripture even though each camp interpreted it differently. However, because the Dispensationalists were affirmed as being believers in the fundamental truths of the faith as that camp defined them, people now assume that believing Dispensationalist statements is part of affirming the historic faith of the church. So the Left Behind series of books is seen as being orthodox by many, when in fact it is religious fiction in more ways than one. As far as I’m concerned it’s seriously erroneous teaching with dangerous implications. The way the U.S. supports Israel has a lot to do with the Religious Right insisting Israel must be protected so that prophecy can be fulfilled and they can catch the Rapture train.
However, I’m not heading up a movement to get Dispensationalists kicked out of the ABC even though I obviously disagree with them vehemently. That’s because of the fact that I believe in religious liberty and the right to interpret as one is lead. It’s also because I know that I interpret the Bible in my own subjective ways, and I am as convinced that I’ve got it right as the Dispensationalists are that they have it right. Who’s to judge between us? Christ, and Christ alone.
All of us who affirm Biblical authority interpret by a set of principles we have adopted in some fashion. Dispensationalism is one, Old Princeton School theology another. Some of us affirm women in ministry because we feel that Paul’s statement in Galatians that there is no male or female in Christ takes precedence over his later statement that women should shouldn’t have authority over men in 1 Timothy. The W & A movement thinks that John’s belief that God is love takes precedence over Paul’s condemnation in Romans.
Of course if someone doesn’t like the particular set of principles I use, they will insist I’m placing my tradition over the “clear teachings of the Bible,” which is supposedly a clear betrayal of Reformation principles. But is that so clear? Martin Luther was the first one to place Scripture ahead of tradition, at least according to him. All he did though, was to place his view of Scripture over the traditions of Roman Catholicism at the time.
This is clear when you read his opinion on the books of James and Revelation. He considered James to be a “straw” epistle, and Revelation to not teach Christ. Why did he say that? Because Luther had an interpretive key he used. For him the statement found in Romans that the righteous are justified by faith was the core belief of the Bible, so he judged James and Revelation as inferior because they did not support that view. So Martin Luther simply gave birth to a new Protestant tradition that then became the interpretive key for his followers. It was a tradition he defended against the Anabaptists when they accused him of being too Roman Catholic in his views of infant baptism. Luther had a way of rationalizing that one, all the while insisting that his only authority was the Scriptures, which is just hogwash. He was influenced by the politics and culture of his day just as much as any of us are. Further, while supposedly rejecting tradition, his beliefs were controlled by his reverence for Augustine just as much as we may be controlled by those we follow. Never mind the facts--as long as you repeat Sola Scriptura long enough people will assume that what you say comes straight from the Bible. My mother used to quote Scofield’s notes from memory, but when she did so she would preface it by saying “the Bible says…” Her Fundamentalist church taught her well.
So for me coming up with a definition of Biblical authority isn’t going to help. We may define that differently. We will do so according to our own filters. For me, I don’t wish to offer any definition of Biblical authority. I used to offer definitions of all kinds of things, but my faith journey has brought me to a place at which I feel such statements put God into a box and make the Scriptures a static rather than dynamic entity. The Bible is my authority when I understand that Christ is teaching me to work for less human suffering, more equity, and the well-being of all on a corporate and personal level. I know that’s not what a lot want to hear in this debate but it’s where I’m at right now, and under our current polity I can be at this place. That may change. Stay tuned.
As for where I’m at with the homosexual Scriptures, here goes.
Leviticus forbids us to wear cloth woven of two fabrics, so unless I find a New Testament equivalent for any Old Testament teaching, I put such teaching under the Old Covenent along with the dietary laws. In the New Testament the one text that is clearly condemning is the Romans passage.
The others have Greek words whose meaning isn’t clear. However, Paul is plenty clear in Romans so you really don’t need other support. I’m not one to say that because the references are few they are therefore not important.
The Romans text assumes that people engage in homosexual behavior because they have become idolatrous and lovers of pleasure and of themselves. As such it’s lumped in with all excesses of the flesh. To me the idea is that these people liked the sexual experience and needed variation in their sexual diets, so they decided to give it a go with whoever however. Paul thinks that they have turned against nature when they’ve done so. The very fact that they can engage in such behavior is evidence to him that God has given them over to a depraved, or “not natural”, mind. To put it bluntly, they are very horny, and need it so much that they don’t care who they use.
Clearly they do not love God or others. So as punishment God lets them have their way, with the result that they do all kinds of shameful things with each other, things which make them look non-human.
That’s how I think Paul sees it. So I completely agree with the W & A movement that Paul never discusses homosexual orientation in the context of loving, monogamous relationships. Paul doesn’t even think that’s a possibility. Sometimes, though, I think that when the W & A family implies that if Paul knew of those born gay who want to commit to one partner in a nurturing and loving manner, he’d say something like, “Oh. Well that’s different then.” I seriously doubt it.
However, Paul says a lot of things we wouldn’t consider applicable to us today. He says that women should have their heads covered in churches. The standard way around that these days is to offer the view that Paul didn’t want women to look like the prostitutes of that day. However that isn’t the defense Paul gives. He says it’s because of the angels. He is referring to the Rabbinic belief that the angels were seduced by the beauty of women back in the early chapters of Genesis, came down to earth, made love to them, and thereby spawned the Rephilim who were responsible for the spread of violence that God washed away with the Great Flood.
I assume that angels are the same today as they were then, but what Gospel preacher in his or her right mind would say such a thing from a pulpit? Who would say, “You ladies better get a hat on. Right now the angels are saying ‘hubba hubba’ as they are looking down at you women this morning.” We have obviously allowed the critical thinking of the Modern period to let us modify the teaching of this text. No conflict there, though, even though we are reversing the teaching of what some say is fully verbally inspired inerrant Scripture.
Again, I bring up the divorce issue. I do this again and again because for me the homosexuality issue is parallel to it, at least for me. There’s simply no Scriptural warrant for remarriage after any circumstances of divorce save cheating. Jesus says no in Mark to all circumstances of divorce. In Matthew it’s modified, but not as an exception, only as a clarification. A woman who commits adultery has already divorced her husband, so why should the husband be limited? Note that only the woman’s adultery is mentioned, and that the text never says it’s acceptable for a divorced woman to get remarried under any circumstances. Paul says a believing spouse should let their unbelieving spouse leave the union if they wish. He doesn’t say that either one can marry again. He wouldn’t, because he didn’t think marriage was a real great idea in the first place.
Today, however, it’s accepted in the majority of churches, evangelical included, that remarriage can take place after divorce. In the few churches that have pastors who won’t do it, they will still let a remarried couple join the church if they get remarried elsewhere. Clearly, again, culture has lead us to a modification of the teachings of Scripture. So to echo the words of my last response, the issue before us is the place culture has in our interpretation of Scripture. One camp says culture can allow us to see that naked heads on women probably doesn’t bother the angels all that much, but it can’t allow gays to get married. Another camp says that culture has shown us that gays are born that way and can express themselves sexually in ways that are loving and not lustful.
People are people, and people are different in background, education, exposure to other ideas, style of reasoning, etc. It’s not amazing that we will differ on things. Our Baptist polity has allowed for this in the past, even when we differed as to whether or not Jesus had a virgin birth.
I agree with Alice. No matter how you put it, the two camps have reached an impasse. We have and will continue to debate these specifics until we are blue in the face. We are not going to agree on the interpretation on this matter. The issue is whether or not we can agree to let individual churches decide these matters for themselves, or force them to accept some collective determination of the matter. I reiterate that right now under the covenants that are in effect the former is the reality, and that right now those covenants have been broken by those who agreed to live by them.
Phineas Marr
Senator from Wisconsin
March 15, 2005
Phineas:
You are the first one to actually share your Biblical interpretation. To me it is not dialogue as long as you are told what other people believe. I can read Martin's Chaos of the Cults but I am not in dialogue with a J. W. until I stand at the door for an hour trying to understand why Leviticus 17:11 tells us why we should not have blood transfusions. And this touches Biblical authority because he will not hear me unless I build my case from the Bible. To be real, dialogue must be in good faith. To me that means that I will listen and interact and be willing to be challenged by what I hear. If my categories are inadequate I will consider changing.
Several whom I respect and who have had various experiences with the current issue have told me that I will experience this to be a total waste of time because everyone's position is hardened and no one will listen. That's what you seemed to say at the end of your letter. I am still naive enough to think that if we challenge each other's assumptions we can get somewhere. I'm not cynical yet.
Let me speak to some of the issues I hear you raising. What I am hearing from you and others is that we agree on authority but since interpretation is so diverse we will never get anywhere. You gave good instances of diverse interpretation. My reaction is just the opposite. The more we believe in authority the more we are driven to interpretation in order to get it right. I am puzzled that up to now no one seems to want to go there. Didn't we go to seminary and take Greek so we could get it as right as possible?
If the boss gives you a project you really need to know what he has in mind.
The Bible is a complex book. Much of its meaning is readily apparent, but parts are not. I apply the 80-20 rule to most communication, that we usually get only 80%. The rest we need to work at.
My college physics text needed interpretation and the prof really tried. On the tests his answers were better than mine. I didn't consider him arrogant.
On a recent trip to the Getty Art Museum I was glad that each painting had some interpretation at the bottom because I am art challenged.
In the military the Abu Ghraib prison situation is an example of interpretation failure--or did they really get their orders right?
The answer to diverse interpretation is better interpretation, not backing off.
I agree with your rejection of dispensationalism as an adequate unifying principle for the Bible. But the answers to it are within the Bible itself.
Christian Zionism which claims that God gave Israel the land unconditionally is answered by many scriptures that say that their continuation in the land is conditioned by their righteousness and even how they treat the sojourners in their midst.
"Women with their heads covered because of the angels" is an example of Paul using a rabbinic style of argument which doesn't appeal to us who are conditioned by Greek logic. His method of arguing is cultural and not inspired. Hebrews is based on allegorical interpretations that are wonderful illustrations but not proof that would convince me, but I rejoice in the conclusions.
Jesus on divorce. Jesus pointed to "in the beginning" as the basis of this hard saying. Based on his answer it would be hard to picture him responding to gay marriage by saying that it's O.K. since they love each other. Divorce is always a tragic moral choice. I am sure that no one in Christian leadership is proud of his divorce. I know of no one in leadership whose spouse did not leave him. Jesus dealt in absolutes and left the "what ifs" to the hardness of our hearts.
Now to your basic point that you start with and keep coming back to: "It's all about the Covenant Relationship." Covenants are serious business and not to be broken lightly. But there are situations that are not changed until what is in place is challenged. The covenant when drawn up was not faced with the issue now before us. In order to be consistent with your position:
You would never drive over the speed limit because our laws are part of the social contract that we live within.
Divorce would never be appropriate even if the spouse turns out to be an alcoholic abuser.
The whole civil disobedience expressions of the sixties would be wrong and you would argue that with Dr. Martin Luther King.
You speak of the majority imposing its will on the minority. Isn't that called democracy? Democracy doesn't always make the right decisions but the minority can continue to make its case and may ultimately prevail. Under democracy the minority has a chance to finally be right. The answer is not for them to impose their will.
I agree with all you say about filters and lenses, but I don't come to the same conclusions. My letter to Kate discusses that. Please respond after it is posted.
In Christ,
Ken Savage
Senator from PSW
March 17, 2005
Ken--
Your statements are in italics.
Several whom I respect and who have had various experiences with the current issue have told me that I will experience this to be a total waste of time because everyone's position is hardened and no one will listen. That's what you seemed to say at the end of your letter. I am still naive enough to think that if we challenge each other's assumptions we can get somewhere.
Fair enough. However, this is precisely why I don't like the idea of kicking churches out of regions. The challenge we get from each other is necessary if we are indeed going to get anywhere. When you remove a challenge you don't like you increase the risk of becoming hardened in erroneous views. The dispensationalists are pros at this; they make it easier to convince those who follow them that they are right by limiting what those followers hear.
The other issue is where the somewhere is that you hope to get. If you are hoping that one side will convince the other, that's not going to happen. If we are having this debate to see whether or not we can continue to live and work together despite our differences, that may happen. The term "Biblical authority" itself is understood very differently throughout Christendom. Both Jerry Falwell and John Spong affirm it, but it means vastly different things to them. For some the Bible has authority in scientific and historiographic matters; for others its authority is limited to spiritual matters. Luther and Calvin themselves were in the latter group. Calvin believed that Scripture was God's Word communicated by the Holy Spirit through accommodated human speech. For him God's Word could not be understood by its immediate audience if God did not take into account the pre-scientific understanding of the world our spiritual forefathers and foremothers had. So he didn't necessarily expect to find scientifically correct statements in the Scriptures.
The debate we are having has to do with whether or not one thinks the Bible contains ethically accommodated material, and if it does, what material exactly? In other words, is the Word of God also communicated taking into account the ethical understandings of the time? Your statements on Paul's head-covering texts would indicate that you think so, at least in this one instance. We've come to view the slavery texts in the same light; slavery was part of the world at the time, and not really challenged as an institution a whole lot, but the underlying idea that God is love and that his will is expressed in the commandment to love others as one's self gradually changed our minds.
I agree with you that Paul's reasoning was cultural, but I doubt he thought that. He was making statements about the nature of angels. One has to say he had the right idea about angels or he didn't. For me, his ideas about angels were part of his understanding of that time, and we don't think that way about angels today, so we are not bound by that. From what you say you would agree. However, some who are supportive of covenanted homosexuality use the exact same argument. Paul is speaking from his limited ethical standpoint, so they would say, not to mention the fact that he believes gays are not born that way. Those who use this argument feel that we have learned new things about being gay which has changed things.
So the issue becomes this: how does one determine what is culturally-bound and what is not? Again, you and I are on the same page with divorce. I don't disagree with a single thing you've said. However, the text does not support this accepting view of it. Jesus didn't say it's okay as long as you regret it. He said Moses allowed for hardness of heart, but didn't give any indication that he did. Why would he? Jesus' words in the gospels have to be viewed with the idea that the end of the age would come in the lifetimes of the readers. Paul uses exactly the same argument for staying single himself. We didn't come to this view of divorce through Scriptural study alone, Ken, and I'm sure you realize that. The only reason the church went back and looked at those texts in a new light was because of the challenge that came from the culture, from the large number people who were going to get divorced and remarried whether the church liked it or not. Unfortunately for them the gays don't have those kinds of numbers, so they can't mount a cultural challenge that's as effective.
It must be said that many people use the same argument you use for a more accepting view of divorce when it comes to accepting gays in the church. You are basically using the argument that Jesus is lifting up the ideal situation, but we all know that people fall short of the ideal, and practically speaking, the best of all possible worlds given the realities of the society in which we live is to allow them to make a fresh start with a new partner. I completely agree. However, those who believe that being gay is not a choice think that given those same realities that the best of all possible worlds, not the ideal world mind you, is to allow them to live in covenanted relationships. This is the argument that has the most force for me; I didn't say I affirm it 100%, for I am still struggling in many ways with this issue.
Now Ken, despite all this, if this conversation goes anything like the many others I've had along these lines, you are going to write me back and tell me how Paul's statements about the angels were culturally-bound but his statements in Romans are not. You may also go on to tell me why it's okay to accept the divorced but not okay to accept the gays. That's where the impasse occurs. In the past it's gone something like this:
Divorce is different.
Is not.
Is too.
Is not.
Is too.
I accept that fact that in your mind it may be different. You have the right to believe that. I've never said you don't. However, I don't see it. The reason I became open to viewing homosexuality in a new light has to do with the fact that I became open to viewing divorce in a new light. That's my own story, though, and I realize that. This brings me to my next point.
What I am hearing from you and others is that we agree on authority but since interpretation is so diverse we will never get anywhere. You gave good instances of diverse interpretation. My reaction is just the opposite. The more we believe in authority the more we are driven to interpretation in order to get it right. I am puzzled that up to now no one seems to want to go there. Didn't we go to seminary and take Greek so we could get it as right as possible?
Sure, but the problem lies in your last two words. None of us will ever get to the absolutely correct interpretation as long as we remain limited human beings, no matter how much Greek we know . It just isn't possible. This is why I'm not willing to say "I'm right" even if I have the majority with me. It's also why I'm not willing to impose a majority view on the minority. I disagree with a lot Martin Luther said, but I think he was right about the sale of indulgences, even if he was just one person saying it. Eventually the Roman Catholic Church agreed with him too, but their first reaction probably went something like "Who does this one monk think he is? We are the authorities, and the majority of us are in agreement." We in the majority could theoretically be 99% correct in our interpretation (although how we could know that I'm not really sure) and that tiny minority might be only 1% correct, but it just might be that 1% we happen to be missing.
This is why I bring up the covenant again and again. Our covenant allows for the fact that any of us, the majority or the minority on any issue, might just be wrong because we're not God, and only God is right 100% of the time. Sincerity has nothing to do with it. Humans think erroneous things with the best of intentions. They also think erroneous things when it appears to them that they are obviously correct. Furthermore, the number of votes doesn't have anything to do with it. The majority of the people may certainly be wrong, as you pointed out.
Democracy doesn't always make the right decisions but the minority can continue to make its case and may ultimately prevail. Under democracy the minority has a chance to finally be right.
How in the world can they do this, Ken, if you kick them out? When you remove them from the fellowship they lose their voice. This leaves the erroneous majority completely able to stay erroneous.
Even in our democracy the majority can't overturn the constitution by a simple majority vote of Congress. The Bill of Rights was included precisely to guard against the whim of a majority who may be exhibiting mob behavior more so than clear thinking. That's why it's so hard to change the constitution, and it should be.
Covenants are serious business and not to be broken lightly. But there are situations that are not changed until what is in place is challenged. The covenant when drawn up was not faced with the issue now before us. In order to be consistent with your position: You would never drive over the speed limit because our laws are part of the social contract that we live within.
Thank you for being the first person who has ever admitted to me that the covenants were broken and that this is a serious matter. Up to this point those folks more conservative with whom I have dealt have acted as if what they are doing is perfectly consistent with ABC polity and identity. It is not. You are also admitting that the conservatives want to change the nature of the ABC. They have every right to do this, as I've repeatedly stated. I really don't get where you are going with the business about driving the speed limit and such though. If by bringing all that up you were trying to get me to admit that sometimes covenants need to be broken, I don't have any argument with you there. My main purpose in bringing it up was to get that fact that it is broken out on the table. You seem to feel that breaking it was justified, and you are entitled to think so. I don't agree with you, but at least we know where we stand. The covenant is gone, and this whole discussion is about what's going to take its place. I hold out hope that we can all reaffirm it, but maybe it's time to be re-negotiated. I think, though, that this conversation has to take place on a national level, and that every church in the ABC has to understand fully what has happened, what is happening, and what it will mean for every one of us. I don't think that's the case right now for a lot of reasons. The Ministers Council may be able to help make that a reality. A similar thing just happened in the Episcopal Church; for details go to http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_60016_ENG_HTM.htm
Ken, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think you would identify with the conservatives on this issue, and I'm not ashamed to say I'm with the liberals. That's fine by me, and always has been. I'm also willing to live with the fact that most of our family may be conservative on this issue. That's fine with me as well. I never expected a Welcoming & Affirming statement to be passed as a General Board resolution. I'm not surprised that a General Board resolution against homosexuality has been recorded (it didn't get the votes a resolution needs to pass, though). The way I understand our polity to work is the national agencies must abide by the resolutions (NOT the local churches necessarily), and again, I have no problem with this. It's when the ABC of the West felt it had the right to kick out of its region churches who fully complied with the Common Criteria that I got my hackles up. It is still my belief that the Covenant of Relationships expresses the freedom of spirit God created all his children to have, and for me that is not an issue to be put up against Biblical authority, but as I stated in my first post, freedom insures that the Bible can always speak freely. I will still continue to live by the covenant and support it, and I will vote against the proposed bylaws amendments because I believe that denominational agencies should be solely advisory in nature as the covenant affirms. I'm sorry so many of you don't think that anymore, but that's the reality, and we have to figure out where we want to go next. Again, though, ALL parts of our family should be in the conversation at the SAME TIME. No more of this stuff in which something is happening in the Ministers Council, something else is going on in West Virginia, something's up in the Northwest, someone's being denied ordination in the Twin Cities, etc. and so on.
Everyone.
On the same page.
At the same time.
Talking about the same specific issues.
I'd like to "reach across the aisle," as it were, to see if together we might possibly initiate a process that will help make that happen.
Perhaps now I'm the one being naïve. We'll see. Off we go.
Phineas Marr
Senator from Wisconsin
March 23, 2005
Phineas,
It is good to have someone that will seriously go back and forth. Let me follow your pattern of commenting on some of your statements. I will paraphrase the issue rather than quote in some cases.
The other issue is where is the somewhere you want to get? If you are hoping that one side will convince the other, that's not going to happen."
I agree with you that it is not my job to convince you or others to my way of thinking. What I can do is to bear witness to the truth as I understand it. I risk putting it out there so you and others can respond or critique in hopes your search will be helped or challenged by mine. I believe it was Bonhoffer who said that we always keep the Holy Spirit between us as a Mediator, and if he doesn't convince it won't be done.
My ultimate goal is expressed by Paul in Eph. 1:10: ". . .to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ," There are various penultimate goals leading to that. I believe that our skirmishes both within the church and with the world will be incorporated in that final victory. And even if we are "wrong" as was Pharaoh, we will be turned to God's glory. I continue to believe that sharing our convictions is the path to dialogue, not just defending the rights of others to believe what they choose. You are the one so far who has been willing to do that.
A great model for dialogue is the book, "How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation" by Craig Blomberg of Denver Seminary and Stephen Robinson of BYU. (IVP) They present their position on five key doctrines and then critique each other. They conclude that the divide is real, but not as great as either had assumed. But they didn't find this out until they did the work. The issue before us is a major fault line between two approaches to Biblical understanding (authority, if you please). We can only know if rapprochement is possible if we do the kind of work we are trying to do. But we can't know until we do it.
"The challenge we get from each other is necessary if we are indeed going to get anywhere." You assume that the challenge must be internally within our American Baptist fellowship. First, the challenge is within every mainline denomination and we hear it all over the place. I don't have to be Episcopalian to know what John Spong is claiming. His statement over churches leaving the L.A Diocese that "Jesus loved everybody and didn't turn anyone away, and neither should we," makes me wonder what gospel he read. This is an example of taking the concept of "Christ" and separating it from the gospel record and making him be anything we choose. Second, who is it in our denomination has blocked the discussion and been in denial that there is "an elephant in the living room?" If we had not proposed the by law change we would not be having this discussion now. The "its a polity issue" was a way of cutting off discussion of interpretation at the pass. Further, is the Brauch-Hertzog video the basis of further dialogue or a way to say it is a "he said, she said situation" and therefore no conclusion can be reached? I question the attitude on both sides that "we have done this before and gotten nowhere." I blame both sides for their unwillingness to enter dialogue in good faith. It may be too late. I hope not.
The term "Biblical authority" itself is understood very differently throughout Christendom.." That's exactly what I tried to say at the beginning and it proved to be true when everyone claimed Biblical authority but would not go on to what that authority teaches. That told me we are talking about different things. The difference between Falwell and Spong (is it their theology or their politics?) is that Falwell and the dispensationalists perceive that their beliefs are based on the Bible and its teaching. If you are going to "reach" them you must show them from the Bible that their beliefs are inconsistent with the larger Biblical message. Actually, that's where I am coming from. Spong is coming form a different direction where he looks at the Bible through the lens of current culture and can dismiss whatever he chooses.
"Slavery and culture" This is what I have called the trajectory of Scripture that was like a time bomb that would eventually destroy slavery. It was not just that God is love but more specifically Paul's advice in 1 Cor. was for slaves to gain their freedom if they could and I would suggest that the main reason the book of Philemon is in the canon was to make a statement about the relationship of masters to slaves as brothers in Christ. For the record, it was William Wilberforce the Evangelical who fought the battle in England to abolish slavery.
"In the presence of angels. . . . ." In my world view I have no problem with the presence of angels. There is much Biblical teaching that indicate their reality. If they are present in worship I would suppose they would not be happy over something that would distract from worship. They would probably feel the same over a congregation that was emotional over whether worship is contemporary or traditional.
". . .not to mention the fact that [Paul] believes gays are not born that way. Those who use this argument feel that we have learned new things about being gay which has changed things." Now I am hearing assumptions that I wonder about. I am with Paul until someone explains it to me. What new things have we learned about being gay that has so changed things? How did being gay move from an orientation to an identity? How much of being gay is pre natal and how much is due to a spectrum of causes? How is being gay different from alcoholism or obesity? If being gay is an identity, what is a bisexual identity? I have other questions, but let's stop here.
Christ's words about divorce applied to gays: Let me be clear what I mean by a tragic moral choice. It is a choice between a lesser and a greater sin. Both represent sin, but there situations where the consequences of one is greater than the other and the choice must be made accordingly. Therefore divorce is sin. We could not expect less from Jesus who never gave permission to sin. He pointed to God's original intention for marriage which I trust we would agree to. Culturally we are caught up in the chaos of the sexual revolution brought about by the pill (now condoms) and abortion that separated sexual intercourse from disease and pregnancy (really?). Has that changed the moral equation? Not if we believe that God's purpose was expressed in the original relationship of man and woman in the Garden. Let me take this a step further. A friend who shares my position agreed with me that if gays would consider their committed relationship also to be a tragic moral choice and not a "right" based on their identity, there might be Biblical grounds to consider their position. But there is no reason to consider it unless it is proposed.
Regarding being 100 per cent right: We speak with conviction according to what we believe. I hope you preach that way. We hold our beliefs until we are challenged to consider an inconsistency or a new reality. If we are secure in our beliefs we can listen to others or read their columns and compare it with our own understanding. Not to be able to do that is insecurity, not arrogance. Apply your open mindedness to the political realm where we have to make a decision on parties and propositions we are ambivalent on. Once we decide, we are emotionally 100 per cent certain even if the decision was 55-45 per cent. And if you don't think people can be 100 per cent committed politically, you should talk to my in laws. There is truth in every way of thinking. Why am I reminded that "Mussolini made the trains run on time." Boy, that dates me! I suggest that arrogance happens when we keep our thoughts to ourselves and refuse to put them on the table for critique. That way we retain our arrogant certainty.
Conservative or liberal? These are political labels and can be helpful or not. It must always be in relation to what? I like to identify myself as "Biblical" and by that I admit to the priority of the Scriptures in the sense I have defined as the lens through which I view reality. Let me give one example. If I view the Bible through the lens of feminism I will see it as a patriarchial document and Paul as a chauvanist. If I believe there is something to be learned from all of the Bible I can see the harmony of Eden with no power struggle but each fulfilling the complementary role to the other. With sin came a different situation where the curse is not the way it is meant to be but the power struggle between the sexes. Galatians 3:28 calls us back to the way God intended it when we are "in Christ." Feminism addresses the issue by trying to equalize the power struggle by bringing women up to are or even surpassing men. While necessary in the early stages to raise our consciousnesses over the problem, the answer of feminism is not the final Biblical answer. Which is God's way, and which is best?
If there is no way to keep our churches on the Apostolic foundation because of our polity, then which is more important? Through my Biblical lens I see that the Apostolic church with all of its diversity had some boundaries of belief and moral standards. There were early liturgical creedal statements such as 1 Timothy 3:16. Judaizers, incipient gnostics and antinomians were rejected by the church as not representing the "faith once delivered to the saints." If Ihave to choose between traditional American Baptist polity and the New Testament model of the church, which should it be? I am in a bind.
In Christ,
Ken Savage
Senator from PSW
March 24, 2005
Ken,
The Conservative/Liberal Thing--I agree with you here, but for the sake of ease of discussion I’ve used these labels. I realize that they have limits, and I’m not trying to pigeon-hole either of us by using them. If you’d rather I’d not use them, fine.
You assume that the challenge must be internally within our American Baptist fellowship. Actually I don’t. I just prefer it be that way. I also agree with you that despite statements to the contrary, we have not dealt with this fact thoroughly.
We speak with conviction according to what we believe. I hope you preach that way. We hold our beliefs until we are challenged to consider an inconsistency or a new reality. If we are secure in our beliefs we can listen to others or read their columns and compare it with our own understanding. I agree with you, and I do preach this way. However, I also know that while I am preaching with as much conviction as I can, I affirm that I am not right in 100% of what I’m saying. Knowing that I’m a limited human being I just can’t say I am.. Now, if I knew exactly what parts weren’t correct I’d be ahead. I don’t though--that’s part of my human limitation. I also agree with you that serious dialogue like we’re having is good because it helps us both uncover incorrect thinking. Right now I am comfortable with the W & A’s at the table of dialogue as well. I don’t think you are, but that may be an incorrect assumption on my part.
The Divorce Issue--Most remarried couples I know do not live their lives in the awareness that they have made a tragic moral choice in getting remarried. Nor do I see many pastors rushing to tell them so, even if they believe it. We bless those unions the same we do a first-time married couple. My point is that we let the remarried participate fully in the church even if we think their situation is not ideal. The remarried may or may not share our view that their situation is not ideal, but that doesn’t enter into our acceptance of them. So why do gays have to affirm that they are living in a tragic moral situation in order for us to accept them? You can still believe that they are in such a state even if they do not affirm this, because that’s exactly how many of us deal with the remarried. For me it comes down to being consistent in dealing with groups who may not fit Biblical ideals. The remarried are just as much outside the literal Biblical ideal as gay people are.
The Bible and Culture--My point in discussing Paul’s feelings about women wearing head coverings and the slavery issue is to say that no matter what view of Biblical authority one takes, every one of us applies interpretive principles to the text. What makes us different is the set of principles we use. The question is whether or not the homosexuality texts are as culturally bound as we’ve come to agree these others are. One set of principles will say yes; another will say no. The polity issue is who gets to decide what principles we use?
Is Gay An Orientation?--I can only say that I believe it is. I can’t prove it is. It’s a conviction I have largely because of the gay people I’ve come to know. For me, that makes a difference. Paul says that homosexual behavior is the result of God giving up idolaters to unnatural passions. I think there are people who engage in homosexual behavior who aren’t homosexual in orientation (prison inmates for instance), so I think there's a difference between engaging in homosexual behavior and homosexaul orientation. I further do not think that in Paul’s world view one could be homosexual by orientation. I believe that many were; I just don’t think Paul thought that way. As such I therefore think these texts are culturally-bound in the sense that they do not deal with orientation. This is all I’m prepared to say about this issue due to my limited knowledge of the topic. This has been a journey for me, and I am still on that journey. If you want more information about this, you’re going to have to try and dialogue with someone in the W & A camp. Suffice it to say that I’m comfortable with the W & A’s remaining in the family for these reasons.
In an effort to try and gather together the loose ends of this discussion, let me sum up:
1. There are various views of Biblical authority and interpretation present in the ABC family. I feel that has to be admitted. We are not all on the same page with either of these issues. The homosexuality issue has brought this to light more than any other issue to date.
2. That fact does not bother some of us (including myself), but really bothers others, to the point where they feel freedom of interpretation and local church autonomy need to be limited. They have every right to feel this way; many in Christendom agree with them.
3. To do so would be a change in the way our American Baptist family has understood itself for many years, and many of us do not want this change, and we have a right to feel this way as well.
I think that’s as simple as I can put it. The ball right now is in the court of those who want limits. We are all waiting to see what they will do next. You have enjoyed this dialogue with me, and I’ve been pretty honest about my feelings, but is your side going to eventually silence my voice too? Or will just disfellowshipping only those who openly affiliate with W & A be enough?
We can have a wonderful discussion about the nature of Biblical authority and the interpretation of texts, but that really isn’t the issue. The issue is this: if you end up getting out of your bind, as you put it, by deciding that American Baptist polity doesn’t fit your idea of the New Testament church, you and those who support you are going to have to put something that limits freedom into the Covenant of Relationships to bring it more in line with what you think is the New Testament model of the church. What’s that going to be? I really want an answer to that Ken. You’ve wanted honest answers from me, and I’ve given them. I’ve not dodged any of the issues. I want to know just how far those of you who want limits want to go, and I want this to be clearly and openly communicated to all parts of the ABC family. I’ve tried very hard to say that as far as I’m concerned this is about what one side considers to be culturally-bound and what the other side considers to be culturally-bound. I’ve tried to support this by citing concrete examples of the fact that we all, no matter what view of Biblical authority we take, decide some material is culturally-bound and some isn’t. Each of us only brings forward those elements of the New Testament church that we think apply to today. Their view of divorce, for example is not something we bring forward. There’s no uniform set of principles which all Christians everywhere use in making this determination. We make these decisions differently. Our current covenant allows for this difference, in humble concession to the fact that any of us may be wrong and only Christ can judge between us. To change the covenant will come down to simple politics--whose view of what is culturally-bound and what isn’t has the most votes? For me, I can’t affirm a system in which the majority block has the power to limit conscience and dictate policy. Their views may in fact be Biblical some of the time, but once that mechanism is in place, there’s no guarantee they always will be. What can be guaranteed is that the majority will get to say what is and isn’t Biblical whether they are right or not, simply because they are more powerful. That’s simply not the way of Christ for me. It may be for others, but it isn’t for me.
Phineas Marr
Senator from Wisconsin
April 1, 2005
Dear Phineas:
I have been away for a week. I tried to phone you just to let you know there was a real voice on the other end of these e mails, but apparently the number in the directory I had was for a business. I do have a real voice.
The fact that I was a part of offering the by law change should tell you that I have a position on the issue we are discussing. I want to hear the best presentation that will challenge my position so I can consider it. I feel that I have chosen many of my beliefs and not just accepted them uncritically. I still have choices if I can see where I am wrong.
The issue of assumptions or lenses, if you please, applies in all directions. No one can doubt everything at the same time. We all have to stand somewhere in order to doubt. I have tried to be explicit on my view of Biblical authority. I don't think you have yet.
Biblical scholars following the Enlightenment rewrote the Bible eliminating the supernatural from it.
Schleiermacher's response was to recast the Bible as a record of religious experience, thus changing the nature of the "truth" it contained. The resurrection of Jesus following this line became the experience of resurrection apart from the reality expressed in the "Apostle's Creed." The same words could be used but with different meanings. This has continued.
In the last century J.G. Machen said that the way to tell a Modernist was to ask if he believed in the Virgin Birth. This was an issue of belief. The issue before us carries the same function, but now in the realm of morals. Does the Bible shape your moral perspective or is it shaped by current culture? The way you respond to homosexual practices and gay marriage is a good test of where you are coming from and what Biblical authority means to you.
I think the frustration I feel is that you are not defending your position, but the right to a position you do not hold. That's not the same thing. I think I have heard most of the Biblical explanations from the other side, and my response is that they are unpersuasive. I think they are to you, too, from what you have said. For example, you admit that you believe Paul condemned homosexual practices in Romans 1, but you say that he was wrong in that he didn't have the current information we have about gays. First, if Paul got it wrong, how do we know that Jesus didn't get it wrong in what he taught on any number of issues? If you set Jesus and Paul apart, then you forget that it was the message of the early church that approved both gospels and epistles as Scripture. In fact, Paul's earliest letters were written before the earliest canonical gospel. Second, I need to hear this new evidence based on scientific studies and not just anecdotal evidence. More on that below. Your position seems like Saul who did not throw a stone at Stephen but held the coats of those who did.
Casuistry is taking a general ethical principle and applying it to a specific situation. The 17th century Jesuits developed their "doctrine of probability" whereby if an explanation could be given that was even in the least probable, then that could be justified whatever evidence there was otherwise.Their opponents, the Jansenists, called this the "doctrine of laxibility." The second dictionary definition for casuistry is "a specious argument." Those who say that the Scripture doesn't condemn homosexual practices would make good 17th century Jesuits.
As I have said, I believe that God's truth is one whole whether from revelation from Scripture or from discovery by the scientific method. Science cannot tell us about God's character or purposes. But Scripture itself leaves room for a natural theology that will correlate with Scripture. Most apparent conflicts will be settled if you determine what genre of Scripture you are understanding. For example, Genesis 1 and 2 is a cosmology and not a scientific account. Revelation is apocalyptic. The truth is according to the kind of literature it is.
You, and others, are claiming that there is now an understanding of homosexuality that changes the Biblical equation. Before I can accept that, I need to hear your evidence. Is there really hard scientific evidence that homosexuality is genetic, or as I would prefer, prenatal?
And, if true, does that make it an orientation that can be changed or an identity that cannot be changed and should be celebrated? And what is the evidence from the soft sciences (sociology, anthropology, psychology) about a spectrum of other causes that lead to a homosexual orientation?
What do they tell us about gay practices that I would hope we would all consider to be immoral and the statistical realities of such practices?
What about numerous studies about marriage? We can all site anecdotal evidences on all sides, but these are not real studies that might challenge our thinking. We must all deal with the law of unintended consequences. I believe that God allows us far more freedom than we should claim just to let us see what life is like apart from him. When we get sick and tired of the consequences of sin we finally turn to him.
In many ways I believe the pendulum is swinging back in God's direction.
Why is the position we take on this critical? The acceptance of gay identity that justifies homosexual practices crosses the line between whether culture determines morality or whether there is an objective standard which judges a moral issue according to God's will upon the foundation of the Apostolic witness deposited in Scripture. Whatever you believe about Paul in Romans 1, he was profoundly right in the description of moral decay, and yes, the decay has affected the church and its leadership. Previously I brought up the sexual revolution. How much of it would you approve, and where would you try to draw a line and say, "enough." Would Biblical teaching be a part of your answer? I believe that our dialogue with fellow Christians should be first Biblical and theological, as in "it's true because the Bible teaches it." With those who do not accept Biblical authority our dialogue should be about the results of their position as in, "it's in the Bible because it is true." As Christians we are to hold ourselves to a higher moral standard than society at large if we are to be salt and light. Christians leaders must be even more careful because we are judged more strictly (James 3:1). And I am not referring to the Roman Catholic "counsels of perfection." I do not drink or gamble, but these are in the area of Christian liberty, and that does not make me a Pharisee.
It seems to me that a major problem with the position you are defending is that it is so accepting of culture that it is unclear where the line is drawn that puts you in tension with culture. The people I talk to assume that if you are "affirming" and that you accept gay marriage you have bought into the gay agenda. Whatever you claim and why, you really have to answer this. It is one thing to disagree with where I draw the line and another to defend your own position. It has to be defended not only by the likes of me, but even more threatening, from the gay agenda side. The gay movement is of course complex, and the acceptance of gay marriage is only a small step in the direction many would like to take the movement. The very term "gay" connotes an uninhibited sexual freedom as though they can have more fun than the rest of us straights. This is only a part of the larger sexual revolution that was given momentum by Kinsey and Heffner that separated sex from commitment and responsibility and made it recreational. Society is reaping the results of this "law of unintended consequences". It is one thing to criticize where one like me takes a stand, but where do you take a defensible stand? It would help our discussion a whole lot if you or someone would do that.
In Christ,
Ken Savage
Senator from PSW
April 21, 2005
Ken--
I have attempted to give thoughtful and prayerful consideration to what you’ve said in your last letter. I have done so because by comparing me to coat-holding Saul while others throw rocks I hear you saying that I’m unwilling to take on these issues directly. You’ve also said that I have not been clear as to where I stand. I may, of course, not be making myself clear, but communication goes both ways. There are many cases in which the receiver claims that they “just don’t understand what is being said” when in fact all they are doing is dodging the reality of what they don’t want to hear. You may be doing this; you may not be. I don’t know you so I can’t be sure. What it does mean, though, is that I am only going to go so far in my attempts to clarify myself. I say this because like all people I have limited time, energy, and resources. If at the end of my best attempts you still feel like you don’t understand my position, we will both have to live with that.
I also feel that you have repeatedly ignored some of my questions, and in the spirit of fairness I want to make sure that I have answered all of your questions thoroughly and to the best of my ability. However please understand that “I don’t know” means that I really don’t at the moment. Also, the statement that “I am still thinking this out” means that I, in fact, am still thinking it out. Lastly, when I state “that’s all I care to say at the moment” I mean that is all I am prepared to say at the moment. You don’t have to believe me, and you don’t have to like the fact that I haven’t given a definitive answer, but at this point in time I am not obligated to you or anyone else to answer questions to your satisfaction. Whether or not you find my arguments or the arguments of the W & A camp as persuasive is really your business. I’m not trying to persuade you of anything. You have the right to your views. Further, as to whether or not I need to have a defensible position, I am not trying to defend myself to you or anyone else. The ABC-USA does not have a Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, or at least it doesn’t yet. Until that time, as a free American and a free Baptist, I only need to defend myself to the people who hired me and to whom I belong--my local church.
Let me be clear on this: I am engaging in this dialogue with you because I want to do so, not because I feel I have to do so. It’s this very freedom to hold to my own religious views without any coercion from any human authority whatsoever which I want to protect and which others seem to want to take away. That’s what is motivating me to take the time to engage in this, not some desire to convince others that I am right.
That being said, onward.
The Epistemological Question
How do we know anything to be true? This is a subject that has been debated for centuries. In an effort to simplify the situation, there are three broad camps: we know something is true because an authority we recognize has told us it is; or, we know something is true because our own critical thinking has proved to us that it is; or, we know something to be true because some power of intuitive thinking tells us it is.
These three methods have been in tension with each other since people discovered their own consciousness. Every individual who lives has to decide how they will accept what is true or not based on the way they value these methods. Broadly speaking the Middle Ages valued authority. Broadly speaking the Enlightenment valued critical thinking.
I believe in critical thinking. I say that without shame. I value and use the other methods as well, but I think the Enlightenment needs a little bit of defending today. People seem to think free rational thought leads to evil. On the contrary, I believe that God wanted the Enlightenment to occur. I think Jesus called us to critical thinking when he told his followers to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. What a statement that was. The Pharisees presented themselves to be the God-given interpreters of the Law. You were to believe them because they said it was so. Yet being human, they were quite wrong despite such claims. So I don’t think critical thinking is evil. I think it is good, and I think God wants us to use it.
I therefore do not accept authoritative tradition simply because someone told me it is authoritative tradition. My first question when encountering such a supposed body of sacred tradition is: is it really tradition?. For example, the Dispensationalists have made Scofield’s notes part of their tradition, when in fact they are a product of relatively recent reflection. Our Roman Catholic friends accept as tradition the doctrine of one man that Mary was taken into heaven without seeing physical death. Pope Pius XII came out with that in the lifetime of my mother. Nevertheless, he is infallible to them (another relatively recent idea), so they have to then promote this as the tradition of the church. Both camps do this by making their ideas somewhat retroactive--this has always been true, each says, we are only the ones making it clear. OK, if you say so.
You can see that I don’t buy it. That’s the critical thinker in me. I hold to the idea that the only traditions that I KNOW for sure exist are the ones I see develop in my own lifetime. Everything else comes from the word of others. It may be true; it may not be. People make up traditions all the time that they expect others to believe uncritically. Kids are told Santa comes to the house, for example. I want to look at history, experience (both mine and others), and yes, use logic to examine such statements.
I don’t accept your word or the word of anyone else as to what is and what is not orthodox. What is orthodox was determined by a bunch of people who got together and voted. They then said that the apostles taught what they just wrote. I’m sure they believed that, but that doesn’t make it so.
Whether or not one can know that God hates homosexual behavior in all shapes and forms is something that for me must be examined. I realize that people have said that the apostles thought that, and that therefore God thinks that, but I’m not going to believe that just because they say so. Therefore, in my own life, I have entered into a critical examination of said topic. I think God wants me to do so. I think it’s a way I can avoid being fooled by those who disguise themselves in religiosity for their own ends. I think by doing so I can beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.
The Inspiration of the Bible
I start with the Bible. What do I believe about it? I believe that it is inspired. By that I believe that the people who wrote it were influenced by the Holy Spirit. Peter and Paul say the Scriptures are inspired within the Scriptures themselves. Does that makes it so simply because they said it?
I don’t have to just take their word for it, though. First of all, the Scriptures are inspirational to me. They always have been. They take me to a place in my mind, heart, and spirit that nothing else I have ever read does. Secondly, Christian history tells me that the church, over a period of about 400 years or so, came to regard the books we have as being useful for them; that is to say, they spoke to them as they attempted to live lives of faith. Third, I know others who are inspired the same way by these books. So I believe Peter and Paul about the inspiration of the books they had. I believe what the later Christian family said about the books they added. They inspire me the same way they inspired them.
For me, though, that does not mean they were dictated word for word. Even if they were God has not seen fit to preserve those words over the course of textual transmission. Inspiration is a mystery. The people who wrote these words didn’t always seem to think God was speaking through them. Further, mystery is not a bad word for me. It means that God has or is doing something that is non-rational. Notice that I did not say irrational but NON-rational. Human minds cannot apprehend all of the ways of God. This doesn’t make for a defensible position, I realize, but it’s what I believe nonetheless. God had a hand in these writings. I believe that as much as I believe my fingers are touching these keys right now. I don’t quite grasp how God pulled that off, but that’s OK. I can live with the mystery.
The Authority of the Scriptures
It’s because they are inspired that they have authority. It would be ridiculous for me to consider something that inspires me so much to have no authority over my life. They certainly do. The question is what kind of authority?
Since I do not believe that inspiration was dictation, I believe that these words written for us are God’s communication in accommodated human speech. I am with Luther and Calvin on this. God communicates to us in the Scriptures the way parents speak to their toddlers, that is to say in baby talk. Toddlers do not have the intellectual capabilities to grasp all that their parents know. We do not have such capabilities either. If we are going to talk of the divine at all we must accept this fact. The words we use are representations and metaphors. They are used to help us believe in God. They are not God.
The people who wrote these words were bound by their understanding of the universe at the time. The earth goes around the sun. The people of that day could not accept such a thing. God’s purpose in inspiring them was not to correct their view of astronomy. It was to tell them how they could find their way back to an intimate relationship with him. It would blow their minds to the point that they would question what they were thinking altogether if God tried to get them to see their universe that way. We may see Genesis as cosmological myth and accept that, but they thought it was history. That’s no big deal though. The inspiration of the Scriptures guarantees that God speaks through them despite such scientific inaccuracies.
The apostles used typological interpretation because they believed there was another meaning present in the Scriptures besides the one immediately present to the minds of the writers. Peter wanted to make it clear that God is talking about Jesus in the Old Testament. Isaiah wrote about the nation of Israel as a Suffering Servant, but God’s inspiration means there’s something else going on there that was beyond Isaiah’s comprehension at the time. The early fathers used allegorical interpretation for the same reason. This method helped them get at the meaning they felt God wanted to communicate, a meaning the human writers weren’t necessarily trying to communicate themselves.
The Scriptures do not have to be scientifically or historiographically accurate for them to be true. Matthew says that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on two animals; the other gospels only cite one animal. John says Jesus cleansed the temple earlier than the time reported by the other gospels. The writers of that day did not hold to the same ideas about writing history that we do. No big deal. They are inspired. God’s truth about how to have an intimate relationship with him comes through nonetheless.
This idea that the Scriptures have always been held to be inerrant in all matters is just balderdash. Neither the early church fathers or the Reformers thought that. That’s another example of an intellectual invention by one group of people that got put in the mouths of those who went before them. Reading the plain words of Luther and Calvin will demonstrate this quickly.
To sum up: the Scriptures do not have scientific or historiographic authority for me. I don’t go to them for advice on animal breeding [Jacob bred striped cows by putting striped sticks in front of them when they mated. I have a bachelor’s in Animal Science and I can tell you without hesitation that this will not happen if you try it at home.] or for a factually complete story on how Judas Iscariot died. I do go to them when I want to know how I can be reconciled to God and to my fellow human being. Their authority for me is spiritual.
Ethics
That brings up the big bugaboo. I have said the Scriptures are scientifically and historiographically accommodated to the mindsets of their writers. They had to be for these folks to write about God at all and understand what they were writing. The question is this: are they also ethically-accommodated as well? In other words, do they reflect ethical and moral statements that are not true?
My answer is this: some of them absolutely do. It is not right to own slaves. It is not God’s desire for us to take up arms and wipe out the entire race of our enemy, man, woman, child. Angels are not looking at women’s hairdos and getting hot and bothered, so it’s perfectly fine and moral for ladies to get their hair done or to not wear a hat in church. It is not wrong to do to get a divorce if your husband is beating the tar out of you. ALL of these statements are contradicted by verses of Scripture. Every single one of them. Yet we affirm these ethical and moral statements and take them for granted, evangelical and liberal protestant alike. I can’t include catholics; they are still hung up on the divorce thing. They think their view is apostolic teaching and therefore shouldn’t be changed. Imagine that.
Luckily for us Scriptural ethics are much deeper than a few verses (or one verse, which is all the anti-gay camp really has). There’s the ultimate ethical statement in the Gospels that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbors as our ourselves. This is what God wants us to do. God inspired Scripture to show us how to do just this.
This statement is reinforced by Mosaic law, by the prophets, by James the Lord’s brother, by Paul the Apostle who finally found his way back to God despite his religious upbringing, and by Peter who calls us to sincere mutual love (I personally think Peter wrote the first letter, just so you know). I’m not sure it’s reinforced by John of Patmos, but those who do not love this way are sure taken to task in Revelation, so I think it is.
This idea of love is what you call the projected trajectory of Scripture. I use another metaphor for it--the pebble dropped in the lake. When a pebble is dropped into water the ripples around the pebble itself are small--but as they travel away from the where the pebble was dropped, they get larger. So it is with this wonderful ethical idea of love. It’s immediate effects were small. Slavery was not abolished, but Paul insisted that it be transformed, and he made doggone sure Philemon understood that. Women were not permitted to lead or speak, but he did let them be taught, a right they did not have previously.
As the ripples of love expanded in human history, they got larger. Slavery was abolished. In many parts of the world women got the right to vote. And the ripples continue to expand. Remarriage is now considered a good thing for divorced men AND women. The ripples of love have caused us to re-evaluate Jesus’ words on divorce in the context of his commandment to love. We now see that his words on divorce must be understood in a context in which divorce was administered in an unjust and abusive manner, while being perfectly legal in what was considered to be the inspired and inerrant law of Moses. We take them as being contextual now. We let the ripples of love change our own view of divorce.
The ripples have now hit the feet of our gay brothers and sisters. Hoo boy. Some of us just don’t want to wade in these waters.
The Parallel Issue: Divorce in the Scriptures
Because the ripples have hit their feet, I believe the time is right to re-evaluate the Scriptures on homosexuality THE SAME WAY we did with Scriptures on divorce. No, Ken, you don’t look like a Pharisee because you don’t gamble or drink but allow others to do so. You look like one because you are not willing to do for gays what you do for the divorced. I am not saying you are a hypocrite; I am saying this position of yours looks hypocritical. You simply don’t realize how incredibly inconsistent you and those who think like you appear. You look like you are willing to re-evaluate Scripture when there’s a whole lot of folks who want you to do so, but if the population demanding such a re-evaluation is smaller numerically, like the W & A folks, you won’t.
I think you know what I’m saying. Let’s not be coy. I’m 43. I remember when, suddenly, lots of people in my home town were getting divorces. I remember all the divorce songs coming out on the country music radio station listened to by my parents. The church resisted it initially. Eventually, though, grandparents went to their pastors begging them to do a remarriage for their divorced granddaughter. People were telling the church that despite what it said they were going to get divorces and remarry anyway. Recent studies suggest that born-again Christians get as many divorces as do secular people. Christian bookstores full of anti-gay books feature books on ministry to the divorced and remarried. The commentaries on Mark and Matthew changed so that Jesus’ words could be understood differently.
What we have done in the church is revised the ethical teaching on divorce. We have looked at the Scriptures on divorce--which are clear in what they state, and you have not denied this--and interpreted them in light of Scripture as a whole, in light of history, using reason, and yes, taking cues from the culture. It’s called critical thinking, and despite the current right-wing mood of our country and church, I still like it.
Homosexuality
In regards to the Romans passage, I don’t think Paul “got it wrong” when he describes what he sees. What he sees are people who are doing what he feels is not natural for them to do. That can happen. Straight people can have gay sex. That gay sex is occurring in a certain context--just like divorce as Jesus describes it is occurring in a certain context. And context is everything.
In the context of Romans these people are idolatrous. They worship the things of this world and the flesh. They worship pleasure and comfort. They live for it. They want to be gratified. They love sex. It makes them feel good. So they do it as much as they can. Soon they get bored and want variety, so they expand their horizons, as it were. The sex they are having has to do with using other people for their own selfish physical gratification. For Paul, God lets them indulge in these shameful homosexual behaviors (according to him and his rabbinic training) because of their idolatrous ways. That’s an important point for me. The idolatry leads to their sexual excesses, which I’m sure also included sex with people of opposite gender as well. It’s very important to note that Paul also says the following about this group of people:
They do not glorify God.
They do not give thanks to God.
They have been filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.
They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice.
They are gossips, slanderers, Godhaters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful.
They also approve of others who are the same way.
They invent ways of doing evil.
They disobey their parents.
They are senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless.
Now you can certainly say that this passage implies that all homosexual behavior is sinful because it is sinful in this context. That’s the traditional position. However, that would be like saying that all heterosexual sex is sinful because it’s sinful in some contexts.
We simply do not know what Paul would say about gay sex in the context of a committed relationship. These people he is describing are NOT pursuing loving intimate relationship of any kind. They are having all kinds of sex for recreational purposes only, and besides that, they’ve got other moral problems as well that stem from their hatred of God and their view of others as tools to be used for their own selfish purposes. Paul also seems to think they are straight by nature, so we don’t know what Paul might say if it could be proved to him that some folks are gay by nature. I think that some are, but as I already stated, I can’t prove this. The science is suggestive to me, but not conclusive. Most of my opinion on this comes from meeting gay Christians and the gay folks I have known in my own circle of friends and family. That evidence is enough for me. It doesn’t have to be enough for you, but it is enough for me.
Ken, if you really can’t see with your own eyes how gay Christian couples are with each other in a completely different context that the one described in Romans there is nothing else I can say to you about this topic. The gay Christians I have met are loving people, to God, to each other, and to other people. They are not what can be called idolatrous. They do glorify and give thanks to God. They are not Godhaters. They do not fit the total moral profile he outlines above. When I look at what Paul is describing and picture it in my mind’s eye, and then look at the gay Christians I know, they simply do not match. They display the fruits of the Spirit of love, joy, peace, faithfulness, kindness, etc. and so on just as much as straight Christians do, sometimes more if you compare couples to couples. They just happen to be gay, meaning they want to share a life with a person of their own gender. It’s not just about physical gratification.
As a side note, the fact that you seem to think that gays just want to have more fun than us straights is puzzling. Do you feel that your commitment to Christ limits the fun you can have? You almost sound like the jealous older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the one who sucks it up and follows the rules but is mad because his law-breaking brother got away with wasting his inheritance on wild-living. I thought we were supposed to do what we do as Christians because we know it’s a better way of life. You seem to think it unfair that the gays get to play around while you can’t, and by gosh, we’re not going to let them have their freedom while we’ve been obedient and repressed all these years.
How is gay behavior inherently sinful? It’s certainly sinful in the context in which Paul describes it. How is it in the context of a committed relationship? You stated in your last letter that with those who do not accept Biblical authority we ought say that “it’s in the Bible because it’s true.” How would you convince such people that gay sex is immoral by its very nature? How does it harm them directly? How does it actually harm society? I realize that many think it’s harmful to them because of the life they must lead, but that is because of the prejudice they face. I also realize that many think it’s harmful to society because we have to look at them together in public, but that just offends our sensibilities. You also think that if we let them have their way with this it’s going to lead to all kinds of license. I would remind you that gay Christians do not promote having sex for strictly recreational purposes with physical gratification as its only goal with whomever whenever. They do not believe in such unrestricted license any more than you do.
Another reason the Biblical writers condemned the homosexual behavior in their time was because they thought men carried the entire person in their sperm. They therefore thought wasted sperm was murder in a sense. The women were just seed beds. Women couldn’t have sex with other women because it was believed that wives were the property of their men and could not do what they wanted with their bodies because that hampered the rights of men. Their ideas about the morality of gay sex were influenced by these presuppositions, and we accept neither to be true today. By the way, the Bible can still tell you how to be reconciled to God and each other despite this.
Being gay in a committed relationship is simply not the same thing as what Paul is describing. That passage from Romans does not say anything about gay Christians wanting to share a life together. One has to postulate what Paul MIGHT say about that. You can do that all you want. We’ll never know this side of the ultimate.
I have one other thing to add.
In Matthew 16 Christ gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and told him that what was bound on earth was bound in heaven, and that what was loosed on earth was loosed in heaven. In Matthew 18 he seems to expand this privilege to his followers as a whole. This statement refers to something well understood by his Jewish audience--the methods by which the rabbis constantly adapted Scriptural teaching to changing conditions. They could bind the law up tighter or loosen it accordingly. It’s the whole idea behind their deliberations recorded in rabbinic literature. Jesus is literally telling his followers that times will change and their ethical deliberations can allow for that change.
This is nothing new or radical. As the ripples of love have expanded the church has adapted accordingly. We have been re-applying and re-interpreting Scripture to slavery, divorce, the rights of women, the divine right of kings, peace, economic justice, etc. We have changed our understanding of all these things. The fact that we do is this is not what this debate is about. We do it. Jesus told us we could do it.
The real debate we are having is who gets to do the binding and the loosing.
If you are Roman Catholic the only people who get to do that are bishops. Among them the guy who gets to do it first is the pope.
If you are Methodist the conference gets to do it. If you are Presbyterian, it’s the synod.
If you are an American Baptist it’s the local church. It’s not the region, not the association, not anybody but the local church. Ken, you sound like you don’t want to be a Baptist anymore, and that you’d rather follow what you believe is the apostolic tradition instead. You have that right. I want to be a Baptist, though. That means I don’t want you or the Ministers Council Senate or the Executive Minister or anyone to do my binding and loosing for me. I want to do it with the people I see on Sunday morning and with no one else.
And Yes, Just Because I Still Believe In It and Like It, Baptist Freedom
There are limits to Baptist freedom. We have common criteria to which all churches must accept. Should it be limited to exclude gays? Based on the fact that gay Christians are not gay in the same context as Paul describes, and being as how I do think they are oriented this way, I would say no. They do not demonstrate to me that they are ignoring Biblical authority, a disregard for the mission of Christ, or a lack of love for their brothers and sisters.
You alluded to the fact that you believe God lets people wander away from him so they can learn by their own misery that they need him. If you believe that, and if you believe the gays are wandering off from him, why don’t you just leave them alone and let them learn? Why must they be removed? Don't you trust God to teach them the way you've said he willl?
I believe God wants people to be responsible, not just compliant. They can only be responsible if they are free to choose to follow or not follow. Threatening them with ex-communication and threatening the rest of us by withholding mission money is coercive. You can make people back down and shut up by using coercion (maybe), but you can not make them responsible.
Some Personal Notes
I hope I have finally answered your questions. In nine pages I really hope I have. Now I want to say a couple of personal things.
The gay people in my life are not mere anecdotes, and I take exception to you saying that they are. They are people. They are people with faces. They have mothers and fathers and others who love them. They have contributed to the well-being of others. You don’t have to accept the testimony of their lives. However, I will not let you minimize their lives by calling such testimony anecdotal without a challenge. Consider one made.
I have repeatedly asked you how far you and those who are with you want to take this debate. Will you be content with just excluding the openly W & A camp, or are you also going to exclude others, like myself, who don’t want to exclude them as well? You have not answered any of these questions, and since I have taken great pains to answer yours, I call on you in the spirit of fairness to finally answer these questions openly and honestly.
Phineas Marr
Senator from Wisconsin
May 4, 2005
Phineas,
Before getting involved with this, I talked to a friend whom I consider theologically perceptive about using this issue to get at the whole area of differences between those of liberal and fundamentalist heritage. He said that would be foolish, resulting in a morass that has not been dealt with for two hundred years. I think you see I have not taken his advice as I have tried to link this to the larger picture and believe this is why we talk past each other. I am not naive enough to think I can point the way, but anyone can raise issues that need to be considered. I think you and the other side have been reluctant to consider the larger perspective as you have tried to limit the discussion to the freedom issue while my side tries to limit it to the scripture issue. Incidentally, it also won't work to limit it to traditions that have developed since 1960. You, too, are the inheritor of a tradition of liberalism and a Baptist heritage that also must be interpreted.
I have said all along that both sides must reconsider their assumptions, and I suggest that our Baptist heritage be looked at. Let's be prepared to revisit the Apostolic church, the Reformation, the development of English congregationalism, Roger Williams, early associations and statements of faith, the 1845 division over the refusal to appoint slave holders as missionaries, the Enlightenment and its impact on the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy and its aftermath up to this date including the divisions that are also part of our Baptist heritage. In the military the advantage goes to the side that chooses the battlefield. In the name of being evenhanded the Jerusalem Council process was set up to give a distinct advantage to those who claim, "We are not here to interpret the Bible." That comes from a certain tradition that needs to be acknowledged. Some other assumptions that we all need to look at are: what the Bible actually teaches, what is the spectrum of causes for gayness, what can be changed and what not and what is the impact on society.
The position you presented in your letter gives me hope. Your interpretation of Romans 1 represents to me a valid position for consideration. It correlates with my position on Jesus and divorce that he did not deal with the whole issue but answered the question at hand. You also separated yourself from the rest of the gay agenda. If you and others would do that from the git-go it would save a lot of jockeying. I find it hard to take some other attempts at interpretation seriously. I am not clear on what the W & A's actually affirm. If it is just gay marriage, how does their stand hold against the rest of the gay movement which has no intention of stopping there? If it is perceived as a civil rights issue, then where do they draw a moral line against other gay practices? I haven't been in on that part of the dialogue. And if the issue is limited to freedom of belief, there is no reason to go there.
I hope you recognize that I have repositioned Biblical authority by not justifying it with a doctrine of inspiration as many would do. I will mention later why I think this is the key point of division and the point of possible rapprochement. My position answers the straw men you set up and knocked over. I have no problem with the synoptic problem or that John put the temple cleansing at the beginning for theological purposes.
I even have no problem with an authentic search for the historic Jesus. The Scriptures were written while the oral tradition was fresh, and the message of the resurrection and call to repentance was there from the beginning. The church chose for the canon of Scripture those writings that preserved the apostolic message and we are to be in continuity with them. The authority of the early councils is because they correctly divined the teaching of Scripture for the particular issue involved. Athanasius was right and Arius was wrong. My conversations with my J. W. friend make me feel more than ever that the orthodox definition of the Trinity answers to the unity and complexity of God. Chalcedon provided the best answer to the relationship of the two natures in Christ if he is to be our true mediator. After that, council decisions became fuzzier in relationship to Scripture and thus are diminished in their authority. In every area of life we use our critical faculties to choose our authority. I choose a doctor, or even a plumber, because he knows more than I do, and I will ask for recommendations from those who should know. I bought my car based on the authority of Consumer Reports.
I was surprised that you do not distinguish between anecdotal evidence and statistical evidence which expresses probabilities. When my wife, Juanita, had ovarian cancer twenty one years ago, a friend tried to persuade her to use a seaweed extract that she was selling instead of chemotherapy since she knew of several wonderful cures from this "natural" product. Thank God we did not go with her anecdotal evidence.
When we consider what the Bible teaches there are two levels. First is the exegesis of the text, and second is the Biblical theology that unifies the message of the Bible as a whole. We both agree that Dispensationalism is an inadequate Biblical theology. How we relate the Torah to the gospel is a Biblical theology issue. Whether the vision of the peaceable kingdom of Isaiah tells you how to get there, or if love as a summary of the commandments means that you no longer need the commandments are Biblical theology issues. Good Biblical theology integrates the whole from all of its diversity.
Regarding the Bible and history, I agree that the Bible is primarily a book about theology and not history. But its message is embedded in a historical framework. Any history is an interpretation of some kind since even the "facts" selected represent a point of view. The Bible is a record of the "acts of God" or as some would say, salvation history. The sequence is that there is an act of God (Exodus, for eg.), an interpretation (redemption of a covenant people), and at some point a recording--and various editing--which becomes recognized as Scripture. Since a supernatural event like the resurrection is not the subject of secular history, that doesn't mean it didn't happen as historical reality. It simply means that secular history doesn't go there.
Here is what I perceive to be the key difference between two approaches to Scripture. Whether a bridge can be built is problematic. In response to the challenges of the Enlightenment which in the name of naturalism excluded divine intervention (miracles), the authority of the Bible was repositioned to be that of religious experience which was an objective reality that science could deal with. Thus William James as a pragmatist could write his classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience. He wrote equally of conversions based on revivalism (he observed that most of them stuck), and mysticism without judging the "truth" of either. Here is the real difference: does our experience validate the Bible or does the message of the Bible lead to our experience? Does it stand as "God breathed" whether it inspires me or not? Read your own letter and see which side you are on. I sense an ambivalence from you because you really have interacted with Biblical content. But your interpretation is that the message is valid because it inspires you. See the difference? This is an issue of epistemology--why we believe what we do, and your epistemology comes from a tradition. Your authority sounds like Schleiermacher to me.
Now to the hoo boy issue. You ask, "What is the harm?"
A systems approach says that if you alter any part of a system it will affect the whole, and that works both positively and negatively. I have used that regularly in counseling, that if you choose to change one thing it will have a ripple effect on the whole. A negative example was the failure of the O-ring on Challenger. There is the "law of unintended consequences," where a change has unexpected results. We usually hold people, especially politicians, to consider this and be accountable. It certainly has been applied to President Bush and Iraq. The consequences of the sexual revolution backed by the pill and legalized abortion and promoted by Kinsey and Heffner illustrate the point. What is the projected impact on society of gay marriage, and is there anything to suggest where it might go?
There is the personal stake in marriage and society's stake. The personal stake is intimacy as most don't get married to have children, but the pill and abortion have changed things since you can have sexual intimacy without consequences if you do it safely. This has diminished the traditional reason for society's stake in marriage which is for a couple to be committed to each other to raise children to adulthood. The sexual revolution has interfered with the bonding process where a permanent pair bond is far more likely if sexual intercourse is the culmination of the bonding process. The most likely way for this to happen is when it follows the sequence validated by traditional morality. The gay movement has flowed from the sexual revolution and the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King connected social justice and civil rights on a Biblical foundation, but it slipped off that with a life of its own. Now there is confusion over what is a person's rights and what is the right thing to do. What is legal and what is moral is not congruent.
Gay marriage may be fine for individual intimacy, but its impact on society with its stake in marriage is to further diminish its meaning which is already at a sadly low ebb. Here is where I would challenge you to look at the studies that give clear indications where this is going. (These would be statistical probabilities and not anecdotal.) Cohabitation has a negative correlation with a permanent marriage. In countries that permit gay marriage, fewer people are getting married since the concept is losing its meaning. If you take away the meaning of a specific term, the concept behind it gets lots. I thing George Orwell made this point in 1984. This is also true regarding "family." If "family" can mean anything, it eventually means nothing specific. Remember the flap over Murphy Brown and Dan Quayle? It turns out that studies show that children raised by biological parents are better served than with step parents, single parents, or same sex parents. The reason is probably that father and mother bring a healthy polarity to parenting that the other situations do not. This doesn't mean that it can't work, but it shows where the probabilities are. Should the church take its stand on this confluence of Biblical morality and an abundance of sociological studies? I would hope so. Children have become such a burden in our society that our demographics show that we are not reproducing ourselves, and any society that does that is on its way out. Europe is ahead of us in this. We, and Europe, are being replaced by those societies that do reproduce themselves--from Hispanic and Muslim countries. This is an example of the law of unintended consequences, and who is to be answerable?
You ask from my statement that God gives people freedom to mess up their lives, so why don't we just let God do that if they are wrong? We do not apply that thinking to any area of life. We are not laissez faire in parenting, politics, economics or in any area where we think we have learned something.
This will leave me vulnerable in both directions, but I could see the acceptance of some who are homosexual in a committed relationship based on pre natal causes (an important distinction and assuming there are such) as long as they are perceived as representing a tragic moral choice as in divorce, or an "exception that proves the rule." This would separate them from an extension of the civil rights movement, nor would it be a cause for celebration of their identity as in the gay movement. In this sense, the public schools system is not threatened by special education children with autism because they are obviously an exception.
I am surprised that you would psychologize me based on my questioning the term "gay." I asked why the gay movement chose that term. It ruined a lot of poetry. If you see Freudian implications in me for asking the question, what can I say?
In Christ,
Ken Savage
Senator from PSW
June 9, 2005
Ken:
First of all, we had a discussion as to the usefulness of labels. You objected to my using them, and because of that I haven’t. I see you are now using them despite your own objections.
You couldn’t be more wrong about the tradition I inherited. The conclusions I am coming to now are not those I inherited as a child. Here’s some highlights of the version of Fundamentalism I was taught at a very young age and to which I attempted to subscribe well into my twenties:
--The end of the world is just around the corner. I have lived through at least three impending ends of the world that I can remember.
--The Bible is literally true in every detail. If you believe in evolution, you can’t be a believer in Christ, and you are going to hell, where you will burn in agony forever.
--Sex is bad and dirty. It’s particularly bad and dirty if you like it.
--Catholics are idolaters who worship statutes. They also worship a man, the Pope. They don’t believe in the true Gospel. They are going to hell with the evolutionists.
My family broke from their church when I was young. My mother had a friend who was divorced (because her husband cheated on her, mind you), and she wanted to get remarried in my mother’s church. The minister refused to do this marriage but hoped the lady would come and join the church after she got married civilly. This was the first time my mother’s Fundamentalism was really challenged. She began to think it hypocritical that her best friend was good enough to join the church but not good enough to get married in it. This degree of hypocrisy angered my mother, so she left. I didn’t have a Christian community to help me think through some of the things I was taught, so I brought these beliefs with me into the church I joined in college and into the seminary I attended. To say the least, my journey has been interesting. I am in no way an inheritor of liberalism. I’ve just learned to become somewhat more open-minded, and no longer believe that if I read a book by Paul Tillich and like some of the things he said that I’ve started going down a slippery-slope into hell. I used to think that, though.
What I think now is just that: What “I” think now. I like to read widely, and I don’t get all hung up if conservatives don’t like the fact that I quote Spong if I think he’s got something good to say. That’s not to say I think everything he says is worth quoting. I have referred to myself as liberal, but to me that means willing to think critically about all traditions, and that includes the so-called Protestant liberal tradition. My current feelings about homosexuality have been most influenced by the change in my beliefs about divorce and remarriage that I made as a conservative evangelical and encouraged to make by those colleagues. As I’ve alluded to many times, I don’t see why this issue is so different than that one. That’s the main thing for me, not what Schleiermacher says about theology and accommodation to culture (if he says anything about it; I really haven’t read him all that much).
It seem like we’ve reached somewhat of a end to our Scriptural debate, so I want to now take up the issues about “anecdotal” evidence vs. the hard science of statistics.
Ken, you and I can throw statistics at each other forever if we want. Statistics are pieces of evidence that are highly subject to manipulation. Just today on Yahoo News there was an article concerning the fact that many scientists have admitted to doing just that, even to the point of throwing out data altogether, if their research wasn’t going to back up what they wanted to prove. In college I took a course in Animal Science Research, and did a study on the use of statistics. It’s very easy to see how any one can bend data to fit what they want it to say, or more importantly, what the folks who funded the study wanted them to find.
I’m sure I can find statistics that point to the fact that a good percentage of teen suicides occur because some teens discover the are gay and can’t face societal prejudice. I can use these statistics to “prove” that homophobia has a negative impact on society. You may then counter this assertion with any of a number of legitimate responses. And so it will go. I’m sure the studies you want me to examine say something. I’ve looked at some that back up what I think as well. I have no doubt that the sexual revolution has contributed to a falling marriage rate. I just don’t think that the 5-7% of the folks who are gay by orientation have anything to do with that. Our own country is experiencing a falling marriage rate and it doesn’t allow gay marriage. Personally I think that has do with the prevalence of divorce. It may also have something to do with the changing role of women over the years. Do you want to turn back the clock on both of those things as well? It may also have to do with educational levels and economic prospects. In those European countries you cite, did the marriage rate start falling the minute gay marriage was allowed? Of course those who have embraced the sexual revolution are more accepting of gays. That doesn’t mean that the sexual revolution gave birth to homosexuals. You keep forgetting that there are many gay folks out there who consider the excesses of the sexual revolution to be just as objectionable as you do. You are lumping these folks in with everyone else you think is a sexual deviant, and this is perhaps the key difference between you and me. You seem to think that by allowing gays to marry it will create more gays and destroy society’s foundations even further. That’s because you don’t differentiate between orientation and behavior.
Next, I don’t affirm your belief that marriage is primarily about procreation and child-raising. That statement invalidates every couple who is childless, whether for reasons of biology or choice. It also invalidates those who lead a single lifestyle for any of a number of reasons. You seem to be saying that Christians need to feel obligated to reproduce. For me it’s a call just like the other calls on a person’s life. I think Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians. Paul is certainly no proponent of marriage; for him the only reason to do it is to control your lust. This is why I always find it curious when the anti-gay camp claims Scriptural authority and then launches into the “married-with-kids is the proper Christian lifestyle” bit. You’re really going against Paul here, and I’m sure you’ve got some real interesting interpretive way around that. Of course, though, that begs the question as to why you think others can’t interpret the Romans passage in a way that disagrees with you.
At any rate I’m not a social scientist, and I realize that my above statements could be countered by any of a number of studies. I don’t take studies at face value, though, and to be honest, I simply will not have the time to look critically at all of them before the Senate meeting. So I go with my supposed “anecdotal” evidence. The reason why I object to you calling it that is because of the definition of an anecdote: “a short narrative concerning an interesting or amusing event (Random House College Dictionary).” The experiences of my friends, family, and those other gays about whose lives I read in contemporary society and throughout history are not short narratives and they are certainly not amusing. They are not interesting in the sense the definition implies. They are full of pain. That’s why I think you minimize them by referring to them in this fashion. While statistics are questionable, to me their experience is not. Call me Kid Schleiermacher all you want.
What’s amazing to me is that the basis for this discussion is the Jerusalem Council. In that council Peter did not offer any Scriptural basis for his statement that the Gentiles should be accepted without circumcision. What he offers for evidence is the fact that in his experience the Gentiles believers received the same Spirit he himself did. So I guess Peter’s a Schleiermachian too. The rest of the church affirmed that experience as well.
Speaking of the council, I found ours in Wisconsin quite interesting. It showed me something about the original Jerusalem Council that I've not noticed previously. You’ve been complaining that these council sessions are not following the pattern in Scripture in that they are not designed to reach one conclusion under which all must abide or get out. I think you need to reread that passage. The original council came up with four things that the Gentile church “would do well to avoid.” That’s not a mandate, that’s an advisory statement. Further, those four things were that they avoid sexual immorality, avoid food sacrificed to idols, abstain from eating blood, and abstain from food that came from strangled animals. After this very council Paul allowed some people to eat food sacrificed to idols if it was fine by their conscience and as long as they didn’t do it in front of those with weak consciences. Also, I’m sure there have been Polish Christians who have eaten blood sausages and English Christians who have eaten blood pudding. I don’t see a movement afoot to disfellowship them over it. I also know of folks who strangle chickens before they cut their heads off, just to make it easier to do. I don’t think that if they are Christian they are in danger of hell, or if they became Christian someone would tell them to stop this. In short, that council was not in the spirit of the later ecumenical councils that did enforce their decisions. This council did lay down some guidelines but obviously did not enforce any of them. So if this text is your basis for disfellowshipping, you are on shaky ground.
At this point I must say I think I’m at the end of our dialogue. If I do not respond to any response you may offer, don’t be surprised. I have begun debating social science with you, and I’m really not qualified to do that. I entered into this debate to address one question: is there any basis in Scriptural study to warrant disfellowshipping the W & A churches from the ABC? You have admitted my analysis of Romans is valid even if you don’t agree with it, so my answer at this point is no. The other issues we’ve brought up certainly need to be studied, and I hope we as a church family can do that, but that will take time, and a better forum than this one.
Here’s a few other things I need to say.
First, I have repeatedly asked you questions which you have not even acknowledged I’ve asked. I have asked you them for a reason. I want to know how far you and your colleagues want to go with drawing lines in the sand. You have repeatedly ignored these requests of mine, and so I really don’t feel obligated to take what has become a huge amount of time and energy to continue this dialogue with you any further.
Second, I have wanted to say that I understand the Rev. Dale Salico, your executive minister out there in the Pacific Southwest, has been using the term “regional autonomy” to describe what he and your region apparently feels is your right to disfellowship who you want and raise and spend funds the way you want. I find it absolutely objectionable that your region wants a right they won’t allow others to have. If your region wants to be free to do these things, you should have no objection to letting the Massachusetts Ministers Council send whoever they want to Senate. Or is it only the PSW and the West that gets to have this regional autonomy? I don’t expect an answer since you haven’t been forthcoming with any information along these lines. I wanted to say this to you in the context of discussing how far you folks want to take this movement to exclude, but because you have not responded to that, I have not been given the opportunity to do so. I think it’s a point to be made nonetheless.
Lastly, Ken, you need to ask yourself this: what would it take to prove to me that homosexuality is not a matter of choice? Proof is very hard to establish these days. We will probably not discover that there is a single gene that determines this orientation. My guess, and it is just a guess, is that the homosexual orientation is the result of several biological factors that may or may not be influenced by environmental factors. For me, though, looking at all the evidence, including the experiences of gay Christians and non-Christians I’ve known, it is not a choice (I quickly add that heterosexual people can choose to engage in homosexual behavior, but I hope by this time you understand that this is not the same thing as a homosexual orientation). Further, when meeting gay Christians, I have felt like Peter when he received the vision of the sheet full of unclean animals in Acts. He saw the Spirit in the Gentile converts and understood he should not exclude those whom God clearly accepted when he blessed them with the Spirit. I have seen that Spirit in Christians who also happen to be gay. I really don’t understand it all yet, and I may never. The experience has been powerful enough, though, to say to me that they should still have a place in our family and at our table, even if they are different
Phineas Marr
Senator from Wisconsin
June 14, 2005
Phineas,
Our faith paths have paralleled each other. I gathered that you had come from an extreme fundamentalist-legalist background--they aren't exactly the same thing. Mine was fundamental-dispensational like yours but with a loving, supportive family and a church that was not extreme like the one you described. In state college I wrestled with faith issues along with other Christian friends who participated in I.V.C.F. Seminary helped provide a firmer faith platform on which I have continued to build with adjustments along the way. Like you, I have continued to read widely believing that all truth is God's truth. Some things I have incorporated into my faith world view and some things are bracketed until more light comes.
You kept pressing me for a final, bottom line answer and are still unhappy with me over that. I became involved with this as a faith experience not knowing where it would lead. I wanted to rethink my position considering the best information others would give me. In other words, I wanted to be inductive rather than deductive. The things you have reacted against I feel that I have considered and moved on. I think current evangelical scholarship has dealt with many of the problems with Scripture that you have raised. I said that I hesitate to use the conservative-liberal label because of its political connotations. I used the term "liberal tradition" which can be traced. Labels are helpful if they show what is truly there. I used the term "straw man" in my last letter because you were projecting positions that I do not hold. I do not lump you with some of the other correspondents because I see a difference. I am trying not to give a final answer until I have heard the best thinking on the other side, and I hope to carry that with me to the Senate in August. You refer to my "colleagues." I do not know who they are, so I do not know their intentions.
Since this may be our last exchange, let me try to describe how close we are on some things and where we still seem to differ.
Regarding anecdotal evidence, you give a dictionary definition for "anecdote," (noun) as an unpublished, amusing incident. Meaning #2 of "anecdotal" (adj.) is "based on reports or observations of unscientific observers." The example given is "anecdotal evidence." This is the way I used the term. My illustration of my wife's bout with cancer was not an amusing incident. I agree with everything you said about how statistics can be manipulated. In the popular mind it has been scientifically proved that gayness is inherited. I have read a book challenging the methodology of those studies that were widely circulated. The most obvious example is Kinsey's report that 10% of men are gay. His sample came from prison. At the Richmond Biennial delegates were wearing 10% Tee Shirts. Other samples have come from ads placed in gay magazines which certainly affects the results. I would be most happy to keep the discussion on a theological basis. There is such a thing as natural theology, and since all truth is God's truth, then if there is something we need to hear, then let's hear it. When it comes to cancer research I will still go with the studies.
I do separate orientation from behavior. I have tried to always say "homosexual practice" to make sure it is clear that homosexual orientation is not a sin. I would agree that one does not change his prenatal orientation. There many genetic orientations out there including obesity, alcoholism and possibly even violence. One's behavior is not bound by these orientations. Orientation is not a matter of choice, but behavior is. My heterosexuality was very much in play before I was married, but by God's grace I was able to reserve sexual intercourse for marriage. I object to calling homosexuality an "identity." That is something to be celebrated, and I disagree.
You misunderstood or misconstrued my distinction between society's stake in marriage and the individual's stake. Society is concerned about raising children. Marriage as a social institution is about making the relationship strong enough for that to happen. I said that individuals marry for intimacy, and that's a good enough reason. I repeat that the sexual revolution has debased marriage and we are paying the consequences. The gay movement is a part of this larger sexual revolution and not the cause as you seem to think I said.
Regarding the original Jerusalem Council, the main issue that called the Council together was settled. They made the decision that Gentiles were not required to be circumcised. You are right that the advisory suggestions were not a mandate but were out of consideration for Jewish sensibilities. You are right also that the Council did not kick out those who disagreed. The excommunication option was not enforced until later councils. But those who continued to demand circumcision as an authentic part of Christianity were dealt with by Paul in Galatians 1 and 2. That surely was the "another gospel" he condemned in 1:8 in no uncertain terms. It is true that Peter did not quote scripture, but James did (15:16-18).
Regarding Dr. Salico and the P.S.W., I am not in the loop to know what all is going on. You probably know more than I do. It seems to me that the concept of regional autonomy developed over the very example you give. If Massachusetts can do it and Wisconsin can accept churches dropped by other regions, then regional autonomy is off and running. It is my understanding that new agreements have been worked out over designated giving.
Regarding homosexuality as a choice, what makes sense to me is what Thomas Schmidt in Straight and Narrow? calls a combined causation theory. There are biological, cultural, environmental, moral, behavioral and volitional issues with each having a positive or negative impact. An infinite variety of causes is possible, as is an equal number of responses. This describes the complexity of the issue which both sides want to oversimplify. You mention that heterosexuals can have homosexual sex and this is not an orientation. Right. I am curious as to how you label "bisexuality." Is this an orientation? Is the practice of bisexuality sin? Something that has been hinted at but not clearly stated is whether gays are to be held to the same traditional (Biblical?) standards of sexual ethics in their practice of homosexuality as others. What Christian rules apply to them, and where do those rules come from?
I also expect this to be my last letter. I hope the effort and energy has been worthwhile for both you and me. I will leave next week for an Alaska cruise with our five grandchildren. I look forward to meeting you in person at the August Senate.
In Christ,
Ken Savage
Senator from PSW