Jesus, Paul & The Torah:
Something Old, Something New
Lev. 18:22; 20:13
(Deut. 23:17-18)
Leviticus 18:22 forbids homosexual acts between males. “With a male, you shall not lie (shakov) the lyings of a woman; it is an abomination.” The penalty for this abomination (toevah) is given in 20:13., “if a man lies with a man the lyings of a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” Now we know what the Bible says in Leviticus, but as my Old Testament mentor of blessed memory, Bob Laurin, used to say, it is one thing to know what the Bible says but quite another thing to know what it means. Indeed, the greatest barrier to learning what the Bible means may be knowing what the Bible says.
These two injunctions are found in the Holiness Code of Leviticus (17-26), a treasure trove of many admonitions, most of which we ignore. In this same code, we are forbidden to wear garments made of two kinds of cloth, to breed hybrid animals, to sow fields with mixed seeds (19:19), to sleep in the same bed with a menstruating woman, to eat pork and meat with the blood in it (19:26) and so forth. We also find admonitions against bestiality (18:23), adultery and incest (18:1-23), all positions with which we would readily agree. In other words, we appropriate Leviticus selectively. This situation poses three pertinent questions about our biblical interpretation.
Why does the Holiness Code say the things it does? Because it expresses the purity ideology of the priestly class that formulated it, a cultic class interested in protecting its power and interests during the exilic and post-exilic period of Israel’s history. But just what is a purity ideology? Purity ideology begins with a theological conviction, “You shall be hold, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2), with an ethical exhortation, “you shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt” (18:3), and with an understanding of creation. To the framers of the purity codes, morality is purity, and immorality is impurity. They cannot be separated.
Two fundamental convictions shape the purity codes of the Torah. First, God’s holiness means that God created everything to be whole and complete in and of itself. Each created thing was to be unblemished and complete. All blemishes were, therefore, considered aberrant. So even if one were born into a priestly family, one could not be a priest if one had any blemish or physical defect. No animal could be sacrificed if it were blemished in any way. To be clean, holy and pure was to be whole, wholly unblemished, untouched by contagion and unpolluted in any way.
The second conviction, closely related to the first, is that there should be no mixing of kinds. This conviction leads to boundary drawing that covers all aspects of life. It separated Judeans and gentiles as incompatible pairs never to be mixed, men and beasts, clean and unclean, Sabbath and weekday, life and death and so forth. Purity means that there is “a place for everything and everything must be kept in its proper place.” Any mixing or crossing of boundaries was considered dangerous because it exposed the holy to the contagion of pollution.
Behind the purity codes is a conception of Israel as a pure space. As Below (1981, 41) puts it, “at issue, then, is the purity of the inhabited space; the symbolic field takes the form of a pure space, from which everything impure is cut off and cast forth.” Its purity is to contrast with the defiling practices of the nations surrounding it. The purpose of the Torah and oral Torah alike was to draw the lines separating pure from impure so that everyone’s orientation could be secure.
In this context, forbidden boundary crossing is called toevah, translated abomination, because it creates confusion of kinds and pollutes the wholeness of each created kind. As Countryman puts it, “it is equally polluting if things which do not belong together are mixed with each other.. because it is ‘confusion’ (not ‘perversion’ as in RSV)… This is the reason for the condemnation of homosexual acts…… The male who fulfills the ‘female’ role is a combination of kinds and therefore unclean, like cloth composed of both linen and wool.” (1988, 26-27)
Jesus ministered in a world dominated by the purity codes of the Torah, as they were interpreted by the oral Torah perpetuated by the Pharisees in support of the Temple hierarchy in Jerusalem. In Jesus’ time, the purity codes ere used to draw lines of exclusion, lest toll collectors, prostitutes and sinners by confused with members of the congregation of Israel, and the priestly class supported by their Pharisaic biblical interpreters disfellowshipped any who failed to meet their purity criteria. To be labeled unclean was to be banished from the worship of God through Temple and Torah. The purity codes also served as a convenient way to dispose of the victims of systemic oppression by identifying them as the cause of Judea’s problems. They were poor, marginalized and degraded because they were unclean. If they would just pull themselves up by their purity straps…
Jesus broke down the dividing walls of hostility, declaring the search for food on the Sabbath clean and thereby abolishing the purity boundary between Sabbath and weekday. (Mark 2:23-28) He sat at table with toll collectors and sinners, refusing to cleanse himself after contact with them (Mark 2:15-17), even though by eating with them, he contracted their uncleanness. But Jesus recognized no such uncleanness, and he rejected the power of the Temple and the Pharisees to control life by proscribing and prescribing human behavior. Because of his opposition, Jesus himself was banished, driven out of and disfellowshipped from many synagogues because he dared to cross a forbidden boundary without cleansing himself and subjecting himself to temple rituals of recleansing.
Jesus said that he came to fulfill the law and the prophets, but by fulfilling them, he did not mean leaving them as they were. No sooner had he said this than he redefined the very law he had come to fulfill, “you have heard it said… but I say to you.” He argued the oral Torah with the scribal Pharisees (Mark 7:1-23 and //s), exactly on the issue of cleanness and purity, but Jesus argued that the heart was the source of contagion not contact with external pollution. Jesus knew that the equation of morality with purity led to disaster, so he changed the meaning of morality by separating morality from purity as defined by Pharisaic scribe and temple priest. Morality was a matter of debt and the heart. (See Belo, 1981) The threat was from within, not without.
Jesus reached out to touch, embrace and include the outcasts and despised, the blind, lame and maimed, those who had been disfellowshipped by the purists of his day, those who wrapped themselves in the mantle of Scripture (the Torah) and declared their reading of it unchallengeable and accurate.
When Jesus disagreed over the interpretation of Torah, he was accused of undermining the authority of Scripture (Torah). “Why don’t your disciples keep the tradition of the elders,” read the true interpretation of the Bible. But Jesus never gave ground on the basic question; he knew the difference between debating the interpretation of the Bible and undermining its authority. So should we.
Paul was no less bold where the Torah was concerned. In fact, he was even more drastic. In Galatians 3, he argues that the Torah is kaput, done, finished. “Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the Torah until faith would be revealed. Therefore the Torah was our disciplinarian (paidogogos) until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.” (Ga. 3:23-25) To those gentiles who wanted to return to circumcision and Torah obedience, Paul replied, “for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” (5:1)
Why was Paul so ready to ditch the Torah, including the Holiness Code, as a guide for the gentiles? Because he believed that Christ had broken down the boundary between Judean and gentile, slave and free, male and female. As long as Torah stood as a way of salvation, Judean and gentile could not share their common inheritance as heirs of the righteousness of God revealed apart from the Torah. Nor could they eat together at table in common koinonia.
In light of the ministries of Jesus and Paul, I don’t find any appeal to Leviticus either compelling or binding. It is a return to a new form of slavery, slavery to purity codes, or more accurately, the dangerous illusion of purity that leads us to discredit, dismiss, dehumanize, demonize and disfellowship others who fail to fit our definitions of purity and therefore threaten the contagion of pollution. These views eliminate from the body of Christ the very people Jesus and Paul labored to include and embrace.
The truth is that the people of God, like the Israel’s day, are more of a mixed bag than that. We need to recognize our own sinfulness rather than projecting our fears onto scapegoats and driving them from the land.
What am I saying? That ethics don’t matter? Of course not. The lifestyle of the people of God, what we are to embrace and what we are to avoid, is spelled out very nicely in Galatians 5:16-21, the lists of the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. In terms of sexual ethics, we are urged to shun “fornication, impurity and licentiousness” and to embody love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
I think we should ask whether sexual relationships measure up to the touchstones provided here. If any couple, heterosexual or homosexual, embodied these virtues and values, I would honor their commitment and celebrate their bodying forth in their mutual love the way of Christ in intimate human relationships.
I would also apply these touchstones to the disrupters in our midst, the zealots for the purity codes who abandon love, joy, peace, kindness, generosity and goodness to foment enmities, strife, anger, quarrels, dissensions and factions. I would argue that they are doing what is unnatural, not caring couples of whatever configuration.
The Three “Exchanges” and Their
Consequences in Romans I
In 1:23-32 Paul now proceeds to identify three “exchanges” and their consequences (therefore). Diagrammed, they appear as follows:
1.0 |
Glory for Idols
|
|
A1 |
1:23 |
They exchanged (ellaxan) the glory of God for images (idols)
|
B1 |
1:24 |
Therefore, God gave them up/over (paredoken) to lust, impurity and degrading of their bodies
|
2.0 |
Truth for a Lie
|
|
A2 |
1:25 |
They exchanged truth for a lie and worshipped the creature
|
B2 |
1:26a |
God gave them up to dishonorable passions,
|
3.0 |
Natural for Unnatural
|
|
A3 |
1:26b-27 |
Therefore women exchanged natural use for unnatural; men gave up natural for unnatural use
|
B3 |
1:28 |
God gave them over to debased mind and improper conduct, so vice list, 1:29-32
|
4.0 |
Consequence: Judgment
|
|
|
1.32 |
Conclusion: deserved judgment
|
Each repetition intensifies and elaborates the pattern spelled out in 1:23-24. Note that human behavior is not the cause of God’s judgment but the result of God’s wrath in letting humans do whatever they wish after they have abandoned God’s creative wisdom.
Idolatry and Creation
Romans 1:18-3:20
The attempt to treat Romans I as a major text addressing homosexuality reminds me of a story of a tourist group that was taken on a guided tour of one of the great museums of Europe, say the Altapinakothek or the Uffici Palace. After viewing masterpieces by Rembrandt, Leonardo, Rubens, Michelangelo, Picasso and many others, the tour was over. “Do you have any questions?” the docent asked. “Yes,” said a tourist, “what kind of wax do you use to keep these floors so shiny. They are remarkable.”
Romans 1:18-3:30 is a museum filled with theological masterpieces, a treasure store of insight into the ways of God and the human condition. The passing comments in 1:26-27 are little more than wax on the floor of the intricately related galleries of Paul’s argument, yet we have fixated on it, so desperate are we to condemn gay and lesbian people. Yet, as I will argue, Romans I has nothing to do with the homosexuality that our Christian brothers and sisters are asking us to understand and accept.
We will focus most fully on Romans 1:18-32. Paul begins with his “creation” account in 1:18-22. Here Paul declares that, in creation, God has clearly and lucidly made known God’s own eternal and divine nature, the very power and nature that have been revealed in the gospel itself (1:16-17). So, “invisible though they are, “God’s nature and power are so evident as to be palpable to all. (1:19-20) This means that everyone has been given a fair chance to know God and God’s ways and is, therefore, without excuse if they depart from them. In this trial of Judeans and gentiles before the gospel, there can be no appeal to ignorance of the laws of creation. (1:20d)
And yet, Judeans and gentiles alike have ignored God’s self-revealing love which has led to the darkening of their senseless minds because they refused to honor the God who revealed the truth to them. The result is plain to see. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” (1:22) Wisdom itself became an expression of idolatrous and dishonorable folly.
In 1:23-32, Paul now proceeds to identify three “exchanges” and their consequences. Diagrammed, they appear as follows:
A1 |
1:23 |
They exchanged (ellaxan) the glory of God for images (idols)
|
B1 |
1:24 |
Therefore, God gave them up/over (paredoken) to lust, impurity and degrading of their bodies
|
A2 |
1:25 |
They exchanged truth for a lie and worshipped the creature
|
B2 |
1:26a |
God gave them up to dishonorable passions,
|
A3 |
1:26b-27 |
Therefore women exchanged natural use for unnatural; men gave up natural for unnatural use
|
B3 |
1:28 |
God gave them over to debased mind and improper conduct, so vice list, 1:29-32
|
|
1.32 |
Conclusion: deserved judgment
|
Each repetition intensifies and elaborates the pattern spelled out in 1:23-24. Note that the three sections labeled A1, A2, and A3 parallel each other. Paul thereby equates idolatry with living a lie and both with sexual abuse. Note also that human behavior is not the cause of God’s judgment but the result of God’s wrath in letting humans do whatever they wish after they have abandoned God’s creative wisdom.
It is generally agreed that Romans 1:18-3:20 divides into two major sections, a section addressed to gentiles, 1:18-2:16, and a section addressed to Judeans, 2:17-3:20. This means that the material we are examining is addressed to the gentiles as a group and will seek to stigmatize their whole culture by one of its most distinctive practices just as he will later stigmatize Judean culture by its opportunistic and often bad faith efforts to live out the Torah. But what evil in gentile culture will Paul select? What practices are both obviously sinful and powerfully pervasive? When Paul looks at gentile culture as a whole, he finds the culture of sexual abuse the most obvious and widely prevalent characteristic that points to the wrath of God.
During the lifetime of Paul, the Roman Empire still revered the ideals of Greek culture, and one of the central values of that culture was pederasty, the sexual abuse of pre-pubescent male children by adult males. Pederasty assumed at least four forms in Roman culture: (1) it could be sublimated into an ideal of Platonic love; (2) it could be practiced as so-called voluntary sexual encounters between tutor and pupil in the gymnasia as part of the search for wisdom; (3) it could be forced on slaves as part of their degradation; or (4) it could appear in the form of effeminate call boys who practiced pederasty for money and apparently for pleasure.
Before, during and after Paul’s time, there was a lively and continuing debate in Roman culture about pederasty. Its defenders promoted three basic arguments in its defense. They argued that pederasty (1) contributed to a youth’s growing wisdom, (2) was more masculine than heterosexuality and (3) reflected practice more in accord with nature (kata physin). The opponents of pederasty argued that (1) the appeal to Platonic love was a cover-up for sexual abuse and humiliation as the laws against it revealed. (2) They also argued that pederasty was effeminate and lacked the mutuality appropriate to mature love between a man and a woman. (3) Pederastic relations were impermanent, ending inevitably with the onset of puberty, (4) encouraged greed in the youth so used because they came to expect gifts from their lovers for the services they performed and (5) led to jealous conflicts which demeaned all parties involved. (6) Finally, they argued pederasty was contrary to nature (para physin).
By any token, pederasty was a major characteristic of gentile culture, and as the writings of the rabbis of Palestinian Judaism and the writers of Hellenistic Judaism (Philo and Josephus) indicate, it was seen as a distinguishing evil of gentile culture. Therefore, when Paul turns his attention to gentile culture for the purpose of identifying a primal sin to stigmatize that culture, he turns to sexual abuse. Let’s look at his language more closely.
Paul indicts both men and women in his brief. “Their (the gentiles’) women exchanged the natural sexual use/function (physiken) for that use/function which is contrary to nature (ten para physin). Although this is commonly understood as a reference to lesbianism, it may not be at all. Miller (NovT XXXVII.I: 1-11. Jan 1995) has argued convincingly that the reference here is to heterosexual practices, in particular to forms of non-coital intercourse practiced in Roman orgies, that is anal and oral heterosexual intercourse. Given the general Roman silence about lesbian relations, this makes more sense than the proposal that the reference is to lesbian relations. It also signals that Paul’s concern is sexual abuse in both its heterosexual and homosexual forms.
The second indictment (1:27) refers to males exchanging the natural sexual function with women and being consumed with lust for one another, committing shameful acts with each other. Here the reference is clear. Heterosexual males abandon their natural sexuality to cross over and commit same gender sexual acts. This activity was found in the context of the Roman orgy, and perhaps in temple prostitution as well. More importantly, it was, as already noted, also a standard feature of pederasty in which heterosexual married men enlisted the services of pre-pubescent boys, abandoning their natural sexual orientation to indulge their lust.
To illustrate his theological point, namely, that idolatry leads to cultural decay, Paul has selected what was, to his mind, most typical of Roman culture, one of its signatures, to condemn the whole in light of the gospel. In order to be rhetorically convincing, his illustration has to be obvious and conceded by all. He is saying, in effect, that gentiles exchanged their knowledge of God to worship idols, with the result that they revel in sexual abuse and exploitation, a sure and certain sign of God’s wrath being worked out in gentile cultural patterns. As examples of this abuse, he takes women’s heterosexual excesses and men’s homosexual excesses.
The phrase para physin is critical. It means against nature but in the sense of “in excess of” or “beyond the bounds of” nature or one’s nature. Just as idolators exceeded their nature as creatures and sought to become creators of the gods by fashioning idols, so in their cultural patterns idolators exceed the bounds of their nature in their sexual relationships, producing distorted, abusive and exploitive patterns of life, no less destructive than idolatry is to genuine worship of the Creator.
But it needs to be said that, in none of this, has Paul spoken against homosexuality as it is known today. Paul speaks of heterosexuals abandoning their own sexual orientation to engage in homosexual acts, in the context of sexual abuse and misuse. Who wouldn’t condemn such behavior? As Hultgren says so clearly, “Paul is speaking here of something beyond normal sexual desire; it is a lust that destroys the self and ends in abusive behavior.” (Hultgren, Word & World. XIV.3:315-325. Summer 1994)
Our mistake is to equate these abusive and dehumanizing sexual practices with homosexuality. There are no doubt abusive forms of homosexuality, just as there are abusive forms of heterosexuality. Romans 1 condemns them both as the consequences of abandoning God for idols. It is a profound theological analysis of human behavior and culture. But to use Romans 1 to condemn homosexuality is as perverse a use of this text as the practices to which it refers.
Why do we read Romans 1:26-27, without regard for its context, and assume that it is condemning all same-sex relationships? Why do we equate same-sex loving intimacy in covenant partnership with bestial lust and unnatural love? In part because we are convinced that the Scriptures condemn all such unions. But if, as I have argued, the Scriptures do not condemn such relationships, then neither should we. The only context in which Paul saw same-gender sex was in abusive and exploitive contexts. He never spoke to the matter of monogamous fidelity in the context of same-gender sexual relationships.
Our task then is to infer not from what the Bible says but from what the Bible means how we are to relate to such unions. I will make a proposal about that matter at the close of my last study. The purpose of this study was preliminary, to show that Romans 1 is not condemning what we assume it is.
The Three Lists of Vices
In I Corinthians 5-6
& I Timothy 1
The list in I Cor. 6:9 is the third of three lists used in close proximity. Each list is longer than its predecessor. I have noted in bold type the new vices that appear in each list.
I Cor 5:10 |
I Cor 5:11 |
I Cor 6:9 |
Immoral |
Immoral |
Immoral |
Greedy |
Greedy |
Idolators |
Robbers |
Idolators |
Adulterers |
Idolators |
Revilers |
Malakoi |
|
Drunkards |
Arsenokoitai |
|
Robbers |
Thieves |
|
|
Greedy |
|
|
Drunkards |
|
|
Revilers |
|
|
Robbers |
The increasing length of the lists builds toward a rhetorical climax. Sin is more pervasive and assumes more forms than one may have assumed.
The list in I Timothy is more susceptible to being organized. Scroggs (1983, 118-121) thinks the vices cluster into five groups. They are as follows:
Lawless, rebellious
Impious, sinner, unholy, profane
Patricide, matricide, murder
Pornoi, arsenokoitai
Liar, perjurer
Our attention will be focused on the fourth group. Pornos refers to the male prostitutes, usually slaves forced into sexual servitude; arsenokoitai to the client who uses and abuses the male prostitute; and andrapodistai to the slave dealer who procures the slaves who are forced into the degrading forms of prostitution.
What’s in a Word?
I Cor. 6:9; I Tim. 1:10
Each of the three Bible studies has raised a larger hermeneutical question. The study of Leviticus raised the question of the status of the Torah (and the Old Testament) in relationship to the New Testament (Jesus and Paul), a canonical question. The second raised the question of the social and cultural contexts within which biblical texts were composed, specifically what did Paul have in mind when he condemned same gender sexual acts. Today the issue is the value and limits of word studies.
Perhaps the first interpretive exercise many of us were assigned when learning Greek and Hebrew as a word study. But of what value is a word study when one may not know the meaning of the word or the larger semantic fields and symbolic or cultural worlds of which it is a part. This is especially crucial since the word is not the basic unit of meaning. Something like the sentence or even the paragraph carries that weight.
Both I Cor. 6:9-10 and I Timothy 1:9-10 use lists of vices, a common form of moral discourse in the ancient world. The lists may be traditional and used in a general way to condemn unacceptable behaviors or may be tailored to the situation in which they are used. In specific instances, interpreters will vary in their estimate of which approach is being used. Each context will have to be examined.
The list in I Cor. 6:9-10 and I Timothy 1:9-10 use lists of vices, a common form of moral discourse in the ancient world. The lists may be traditional used in a general way to condemn unacceptable behaviors or may be tailored to the situation in which they are used. In specific instances, interpreters will vary in their estimate of which approach is being used. Each context will have to be examined.
The list in I Cor 6:9 is the third of three lists used in close proximity. Each list is longer than its predecessor. I have noted in bold type the new vices that appear in each list.
I Cor 5:10 |
I Cor 5:11 |
I Cor 6:9 |
Immoral |
Immoral |
Immoral |
Greedy |
Greedy |
Idolators |
Robbers |
Idolators |
Adulterers |
Idolators |
Revilers |
Malakoi |
|
Drunkards |
Arsenokoitai |
|
Robbers |
Thieves |
|
|
Greedy |
|
|
Drunkards |
|
|
Revilers |
|
|
robbers |
The increasing length of the lists builds toward a rhetorical climax. Sin is more pervasive and assumes more forms than one may have realized. But a pattern within the lists is hard to discern.
The list in I Timothy is more susceptible to being organized. Scroggs (1983, 118-121) thinks the vices cluster into five groups. They are as follows:
Lawless, rebellious
Impious, sinner, unholy, profane
Patricide, matricide, murder
Pornoi, arsenokoitai, andrapodistai
Liar, perjurer
Our attention will be focused on the fourth group. Pornoi refers to male prostitutes, usually slaves forced into sexual servitude; arsenokoitai, to the clients who use and abuse the male prostitutes, and andrapodistai, to the slave dealers who procure the slaves who are forced into such degrading forms of prostitution. In other words, the three words, taken together, describe in short hand a social system, an oppressive and exploitive system in which some human beings enslave and degrade others.
Unfortunately, the one word that the two lists share in common, arsenokoitai, is also the most obscure. It cannot be found in use prior to Paul, which leads some to believe that he coined the phrase. Scoggs (1983, 86) believes that Paul created the compound out of the Greek translation of the Old Testament (LXX) text from Lev 18:22, “with a male (arsen) you shall not lie the intercourse (koite) of a woman, both have done an abomination; they shall be put to death; they are guilty.”
In I Cor 6:9, arsenokoitai is paired with malakoi, a word that literally means “soft,” but was used widely, though not exclusively, of the passive partners in pederastic sexual acts. The difference between pornos and malakos is that the latter need not have been a prostitute but could refer to a pre-pubescent boy who submitted to sexual intercourse with an adult male tutor.
Once again, the context in which same gender sexual acts is discussed is the context of sexual abuse, the exploitation of boys by men and the even more severe abuse of slaves as sexual objects of lust. As Tiede (Word & World. X.2:147-155. Spring 1990) notes, “the whole list is speaking of abusive acts and perverted relationships. Paul is not condemning all same-sex intimacy alike. His attack is directed at adulterous and perverse practices, sins against the righteousness of God which enslave their victims.”
In this list, we have the distinct impression that Paul is speaking about individuals in the house church at Corinth, because, upon completing his final list, he adds emphatically, “this is what some of you used to be.” He is writing to former prostitutes and fornicators, abusers and abused, and he wants them to repent of their past life and place it in the light of the reign of God and the Lordship of Christ. But the sin is abuse of sexuality, heterosexuality (fornicating or screwing around and adultery) as well as homosexuality (pederasty, exploitation of boys and abuse of slaves).
It is interesting to note that when Philo of Alexandria, an older contemporary of Paul, discusses Lev 18:22 and 20:13, he focuses his entire discussion on the practice of pederasty (Special Laws III.37). It is self-evident to him that this is what Moses was condemning. This instance could be duplicated for Greek, Roman, rabbinic and Hellenistic Jewish authors. All of this is to say that what Paul is most likely condemning in his vice list in I Cor 6:9 is an abusive form of same gender sexuality, but that cannot be taken as a warrant for condemning all same gender sexuality any more than the condemnation of greed can be taken to invalidate all of capitalism, or the condemnation of drunkenness can be taken to eliminate all uses of wine, sacramental and social, or anymore than fornication invalidates loving and caring heterosexuality.
What does all of this mean? It is clear that none of the texts commonly used to condemn gay and lesbian people can be responsibly used for that purpose. The kind of sexual relations they have in view are promiscuous, exploitive, impermanent and abusive. They lack the mutuality and intimacy that is the hallmark of true sexual love. Paul clearly views monogamous marriage as the appropriate and proper context for human sexual intimacy. He saw that possibility lived out by heterosexual couples, but he never saw that reality lived out by couples of the same gender. So he spoke what his experience, his reading of Scripture and knowledge of Christ had shown him to be true.
We are now in a different situation. Thanks to gay and lesbian Christian brothers and sisters, we now know of same gender couples who wish to live together in the same relationship of mutuality, intimacy, caring and respect that marks heterosexual love at its best. It is here that we need to learn from the Wisdom literature of the Bible, for the wisdom writers know that the story of creation was not fully told in the creation stories in Genesis 1-3. As Choon-Leong Seow puts it, “{there are many truths about creation that people may discern through observation of life and the world…Here in the wisdom tradition of the Bible is scriptural authority for human beings to make ethical decisions by paying attention to science and human experiences.” (Seow, 1996, 17-34)
Besides the meaning of “canon” in Greek is measuring rod, and what good is a measuring rod if it is only measuring itself. The purpose of a canon is to enable us to measure what is outside of the canon, such as we are attempting to do here.
There is another scriptural warrant for letting our experience change our reading of scripture, and it comes from Isaiah 56:1-8. Gaiser (Word & World. XIV.3:280-293. Summer 1994) has noted that Isaiah 56:4-5 speaks a new word, “For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths…and who keep my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” This word runs directly counter to the Torah which excludes all who have crushed or damaged testicles and eunuchs from the house of the Lord.
Why did God so act? When the royal house of Israel was taken into captivity, the king of Babylon castrated all the male members of the royal family in an attempt to destroy Israel’s future. When the people did return the question was raised anew, “didn’t Babylon succeed after all?” If the royal line is cut off and barren, how can there be a future? Gaiser notes, “The situation drips with poignant irony. God (through God’s law) becomes the barrier to God’s deliverance (in the promise).” Such a dilemma calls for a drastic solution, and Yahweh offers it by overturning His own law in order to keep His promise.
But there is another example of this very approach to Scripture closer to hand in the apostle Paul himself. Jesus spoke forcefully against divorce in Mark 10:2-12 and Luke 16:18. It was congruent with his concern for the vulnerable, in this case women and children in a patriarchal society where dead-beat dads could divorce at will. But when Paul comes to give advice to the married in the church at Corinth, he advocates acceptance of divorce if an unbelieving partner seeks to dissolve the bond of marriage. (I Cor 7:15) Although his preference is for the marriage to continue, Paul modifies his inherited tradition, no, even contradicts it in fact, in order to accommodate his experience, thus living out the wisdom tradition.
This is what we are called to do today, in relationship both to the Old and the New Testament texts that have been put to such mean use. When we condemn loving, intimate, mutual relationships, we are condemning what is natural, not what is unnatural. The time has come to turn our attention to the true forms of unnatural sex in our society, the kind that issue forth in domestic abuse, violence and exploitation. Now that’s unnatural.
Then we need to welcome and affirm any couples that are seeking to live responsibly and respectfully in long term monogamous relationships. If we do, we will be closer to fulfilling the meaning of the Scriptures we have wrestled with so much today.
If this seems to threaten our theology, I offer the words of another mentor of blessed memory, Dr. Bernard Ramm, who was fond of saying to his theology classes, “when we stand before the mercy seat, God will have to forgive our theologies as well as our sins.” To which I would add, God will have to forgive our biblical interpretations as well.
August 1996