A committed monogamous homosexual versus a slave owner

Consider two people, Jack and Fred. Jack is in a committed monogamous homosexual relationship of 10 years while Fred owns 10 slaves.

As is the custom at the time, Fred works his slaves in chain gangs and houses them in workhouses which are so low the slaves cannot stand up. Any children of the slaves became Fred’s property (these details are taken from The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters)

According to St Paul in Romans 1, Jack incurs the anger of God and is depraved; but about Fred, St Paul has nothing to say.

In the situation described, does it not seem morally more opprobrious to own slaves than to live in a homosexual relationship? Was Paul wrong about both?

Homosexuality and new creation

I would like this website to model a way of doing theological reflection and debate that gets beyond the old trench warfare manner of disputation. This is not going to be at all easy to do. As soon as we try to pick our way across these bloody, mangled battlefields, we risk becoming antagonists and victims in a war that is still going on. It’s very difficult not to feel that we are under attack, very difficult not to fall into one trench or another - and then someone thrusts a gun into our hands and tells us to start shooting. The debate over homosexuality is one of these battlefields. Somehow we need to turn it into something else - or at least create a reasonably safe space where we don’t have to behave like combatants in a mindless and probably futile war of attrition.

What I want to explore here in outline is the possibility that the sort of approach to eschatology that we have been discussing elsewhere might open up some new ways of framing the debate about homosexuality. It is also, obviously, a partial response to the ‘committed monogamous homosexual versus slave owner’ thread.

Homosexual behaviour, as Paul understands it, is a consequence of not properly worshipping the creator God - the God whose ‘invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made’ (Rom.1:20). This appears to take us right back to the fall - a fundamental human rebellion against the Creator in favour of the worship of created things (1:25), the result of which was that God gave humanity up both to impurity, including homosexual behaviour (1:26-27), and to wickedness (1:28-31). Those who do these things deserve to die - because the wages of sin is death (1:32; cf. 6:23; Gen.2:17). In effect, this is Paul’s version of the fall.

Paul lists ‘catamites’ and ‘homosexuals’ among those who ‘will not inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor.6:9). He also includes in his black book of those who are disqualified from the kingdom people who are guilty of ‘enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions’ (Gal.5:20-21). This would seem to me to rule out a significant number of those who are currently engaged in the war over gays in the church, on both sides.

But what does he mean by ‘inherit the kingdom of God’? He clearly does not mean by this ‘be part of the church’: on the one hand, it is a future event for Paul (‘will not inherit’); on the other, ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor.15:50). Since there is also a strong link between inheriting the kingdom of God and suffering (cf. 2 Thess.1:5), I am inclined to think that the strong exclusivist language is used because Paul is thinking of that group which will be raised (or transformed) and reign with Christ when he is vindicated as the Son of man and given the kingdom. These strict standards apply because he anticipates, in effect, a judgment on the church at the parousia (cf. 1 Thess.3:13; 5:23), which I would suggest is closely tied up with the transition from second temple Judaism, though confrontation with Rome, to multiracial, Spirit-filled church. This argument obviously raises a lot of questions, some of which were addressed in the discussion referred to above.

The list of those excluded from the new creation in Revelation does not explicitly mention those who practise homosexuality, but it is naturally included (along with other departures from the ideal of woman and man as ‘one flesh’) in terms like ‘abominable’ and ‘unclean’ (Rev.21:8, 27). The point of this again is that homosexuality is one of a whole range of ‘impure’ and ‘wicked’ behaviours that are the product of the fall from true worship of the creator God. They therefore have no place in a new creation in which the kings of the earth will properly honour God.

The church, I think, is to be regarded as being in itself a sign of the ultimate renewal of humanity and must somehow represent in its life and message what that new creation will be like: we are called to embody this hope for a world that is subject to evil, decay and death. I think, in that case, that we have to say that homosexuality will not be part of that new creation. But the church must also be a sign of the grace of God - not least because it can only ever be a very imperfect, sin-ridden sign of the new creation. If we accept the argument about inheriting the kingdom of God, then perhaps we have room biblically to shift the balance in the direction of grace and acceptance. It seems to me that homosexuality is an inescapable element in fallen humanity - whether we explain it biologically or culturally - and we should probably, therefore, expect to see it within the body of Christ’s followers - just as we see (and tolerate) other inescapable signs of our fallenness, including conflict, divisiveness, greed, sickness and death.

But if we are the people of the creator God, who have been entrusted with the hope of a new heaven and a new earth, we cannot afford to lose the clarity of that vision of a new creation which will be free from the distortions that have come about because of the fundamental human departure from God. That presents a problem for those who practise homosexuality, as it does for those who abuse their spouses, or who lust after other women, or who lie, or who get angry with their brothers and sisters, or who participate in unjust political and economic systems, who despise the poor, or who pollute and destroy the earth. It’s all there. It’s all very ‘natural’. So we must all come to the task of embodying and living from this hope with humility, in need of grace and forgiveness, willing to change where we can, willing to respect and honour one another, willing to recognize that we carry things deep within us that will not be part of the new creation.

The Rainbow Community and the Emerging Church

I’ve recently read the thread about sex before marriage and I’m interested in pursuing a slightly different question. The relationship of romantic and sexual relationships to covenant is, it seems to me, a key understanding; one can even make a strong point for “the Divine Romance” as part of the Scriptures. I’m also working my way through ost material on the nature and use of Scripture in the emerging Church. Again, commitment to the mission and person of Jesus should drive and inform our commitment to the story told through Jewish and Christian sacred writings using a ‘critical-realist’ hermeneutic.

In light of these two factors, how does the emerging church propose to welcome/deal with/evangelize gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, or sexually questioning people? What issues of biblical interpretation, sin, holiness, covenant, healing, and justice are involved?

1. Biblical interpretation. Is “homogenitality” (Daniel Helminiak, 2004) condemned by Scripture in all contexts? What are the cultural contexts of the “homosexuality texts”? Is the conclusion of the text to be simply applied cross-temporally and culturally?

2. Holiness. Is it proper to use the sacred text to condemn covenant or even legal relationships between same-gender persons? What does holiness mean in terms of the OT holiness code? How do glbtq Christians and truth seekers live holy sexual lives?

3. Covenant. How do we define covenant? Marriage? Should homosexual relationships be blessed by the Church? For what reasons would/would not same-gender relationships embody covenant?

4. Healing. Do glbtq people need healing? of wounds from prejudice? from their sexual orientation? In what ways can the Church support these persons in their journey to be more like Jesus and their Kingdom-living? How does the emerging church plan to present and live the gospel for glbtq people?

5. Justice. What are the social implications of the first four aspects? Does the emerging church need to repent of homophobia, not being committed to the “gospel of healing” (which I understand NT Wright believes was programmatic for Jesus), or something else? How should the emergent church work politically to address civil rights, etc. for glbtq individuals? How do we grow our position into a Kingdom-justice perspective, rather than simply being a soap-box or political point of orthodoxy?

Hopefully I’ll be able to post my own perspective and questions soon, but of course this is ost: have at it, comments would be helpful!

Summary - and a surprising conclusion?

I’d appreciate some sort of summary of the arguments put forward so far on this forum topic (Homosexuality and the new creation).

1. As I see it, Andrew began by advocating an acceptance of practising homosexuals in the church. The church is a ‘sign’ of the kingdom, but not its full expression, and as such will continue to contain some/much of the ‘fallenness’ of creation - homosexuality being a ‘fallen’ sexuality.

The forum thread has seen views develop which call this proposition strongly into question, not least by Andrew himself.

2. Elsewhere, Andrew has argued with ingenuity and insight for a traditional biblical stance towards homosexuality. The parallels between Romans 1:18-27 and Genesis 1-3 point to a much more broadly based argument by Paul than a merely anti-gentile Jewish polemic. The rolling out of the same theme (creation fruitfulness/barrenness in their widest sense) elsewhere in Romans suggests that the passage is a major plank in a theology which integrates not just O.T. but God’s creation purposes - in the old as well as the new creation.

3. The coining of the word ‘arsenokoitai’ in the 1 Corinthian and 1 Timothy passages as a compound of ‘arsenos’ and ‘koites’ found in the Leviticus passages (18:22 and 20:13) suggests something more than merely a contemporary culturally conditioned phenomenon. And I would appreciate if Andrew could perhaps spell out for the non-Greek linguists how the sentences look in Septuagint Greek Leviticus - to see how the words might be elided together to form the new compound.

4. The viewpoint as developed then also concurs with the strongest possible condemnations called down upon homosexual expression, especially in the Romans passage.

5. It is difficult then to see how any acceptance of homosexual practice would be possible in the church. Andrew argues that there are many ways in which we perhaps unwittingly condone sin or are even in collusion with it, (but not as free moral agents) and I can think of others. Eg by being part of the EU we collude with restrictive trade practices which affect the developing world.

I’m not sure that I agree with this point, however. Our relation to sin as moral agents changes drastically as soon as we become aware of sin. We have a responsibility to act in relation to unfair trade practices (or the plight of the poor, or injustice) in whatever ways it is within our ability to do so, eg by purchasing ‘fairtrade’ products in our supermarkets, or casting votes in European elections or referendums. In the same way, we have a reponsibility to act in relation to personal moral behaviour.

And herein lies the issue. The few gay people that I know did not, to the best of their knowledge, choose their disposition, nor was it a psychosis which arose from childhood experiences. Neither are they monsters who wish, by promiscuity and self-indulgence, to live a lifestyle of promiscuity and overthrowing the moral order. There is a gap between their experience and perception of who they are, and what the bible appears to say about them. If they take the bible seriously, and the explorations on this thread suggest it should be taken seriously, they will naturally want to explore alternative interpretations of the biblical passages. The essence of the revisionist position is that what the bible describes is not related to homosexuality as it is currently understood and experienced.

And herein lies my problem. The arguments on this site present some formidable obstacles to revisionist interpretations. There are formidable obstacles to Andrew’s proposals. So are we to revert to the old cliche, God ‘hates the sin, but loves the sinner’ - thus condemning the individual to a private prison of torment - in which the slightest sign of outward expression of what they are unable to avoid feeling inwardly draws down the strongest of God’s judgements? Are we to believe that Ivan is the true voice of the church’s moral conscience (and the voice of Jesus) after all?

Or is it just possible that at the (post?)eschatological parties thrown by Jesus, the guest-list would include amongst the notorious tax-collectors and prostitutes, some contemporary notable sinners - heterosexual and homosexual - paedophiles, even? Where would the line be drawn? And of those who came, many who thought they were sinners and weren’t, and those who thought they were righteous and weren’t? And am I here sketching a vision of a post-eschatological party which is Andrew’s vision of the church? And if so, how does it agree with the theological argument that has been developing so far? Would there have been any notorious sex offenders in Paul’s church? Maybe there were.

Maybe Paul’s whole argument in Romans 1:18ff is intended to say that this is indeed a scripturally based and understood perspective on the practices of the gentile world - in which Jews might well feel revulsion, personal superiority, and rightly identify with the righteous judgments which the argument leads to.

But maybe by the latter part of verse 29 they were becoming slightly uneasy. Maybe by the latter part of verse 31 they were distinctly uncomfortable : ‘unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful …’; maybe by the first verse of Chapter 2 they were on their knees crying for mercy for themselves, and forgiveness for the judgementalism they had shown towards their gentile neighbours and neighbouring culture.

Is it just possible, and especially if we take out the chapter break between Romans 1 and 2, and we let the argument flow to its natural conclusion - is it possible that Paul is leading us to a place which, whilst not denying the theology of his argument so far, is quite different from where we had expected it to go - and leads to very different conclusions from those commonly assumed?

(I am indebted to James Allison for this perspective on Romans 1:18ff, and also for the information on the interpretation of Romans 1:26 by the early church fathers, about which I think, I am somewhat less convinced)

The discussion of homosexuality; summary and conclusions

INTRODUCTION

In the following I have taken up where Peter Wilkinson left off and I have tried to summarise the debate on homosexuality. The posts and comments are now very extensive and some of the argument has been subtle and nuanced. While I hope I have accurately captured the main lines of argument, I may have inadvertently omitted some relevant comment and I may not have understood all that has been said. However, I thought it was worthwhile to try get an overview of what has been for me a very interesting and lively discussion in which the participants have by and large worked very hard at understanding other points of view and responding to them.

SUMMARY

In the original post, Paul Hartigan imagined two people, Jack and Fred. Jack was in a committed monogamous homosexual relationship of 10 years while Fred owned 10 slaves. According to St Paul in Romans 1, Jack incurs the anger of God and is depraved; but about Fred, St Paul has nothing to say.

The case of Jack and Fred poses a dilemma

• Paul condemns homosexuality but does not condemn slavery.
• But we in the 21st century are strongly inclined to say that in any comparison, the slaver is more morally opprobrious than the homosexual.
• Paul’s moral compass does not therefore appear to have been infallible; and if he could be wrong about slavery, perhaps he could have been wrong about homosexuality.

The dilemma is this: either our strong moral intuition about the relative morality of slavery and homosexuality is wrong or St Paul is wrong

The greater part of the ensuing responses has been to deny the stated form of the major premise

DID PAUL REALLY NOT CONDEMN SLAVERY?

Erlenmeyer suggests that Paul condemned both homosexuality and slavery but only explicitly referred to homosexuality because that conformed with the views of the time whereas there was no similar opposition to slavery and he did not want his message mixed up in politics. Alario says says slavery of those days was not as bad as it was to be in later times. Several people lament Paul’s silence on social issues.

Conclusion

Overall, it seems to be accepted that Paul did not condemn slavery and this implies some moral obtuseness on his part.

DID PAUL REALLY CONDEMN HOMOSEXUALITY?

Alario questions whether there are any committed monogamous homosexual relationships and asks about a homosexual lifestyle of indiscriminate, unprotected sex that has as many as hundreds of different partners in a year. Paul Hartigan responds that homosexual men may be more promiscuous than heterosexual men but lesbians are not more promiscuous than heterosexual women. The difference, is the institution of marriage which socialises the indiscriminate sexual appetite of the male. If there were no such constraint, would heterosexual men be any less promiscuous than homosexual men?

Ivan Latham says the scriptures are clear that all homosexual relationships are barred and that if the scriptures are not observed on this point then the floodgates will open and any behaviour will be licenced. Erlenmeyer says the preponderance of churches consider the bible to condemn the homosexual lifestyle and there are no positive references in the bible to homosexuality. The onus of proof is on those who would condone homosexuality to explain this silence.

SBryan says the over-riding principal of Christianity is love and if homosexual relationships are loving ones they do not fall under the Pauline condemnation. Asserhead does not disagree about love but says that does not deal with sex…The scriptures make clear that sex may only take place within heterosexual union. Ivan Latham says it is too readily assumed that divine love is unconditional.

Erlenmeyer suggests that celibacy is just as unnatural as homosexuality (if persisted in mankind would die out) but Paul is in favour of it.

Peter Wilkinson refers to NT scholars who suggest that Paul is thinking only about pederasty-there was no other form of male homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world which could come to mind ie he would not have objected to ‘a committed monogamous homosexual relationship’. However Ericboemer notes that just such a relationship’ is described in Plato.

Peter Wilkinson also notes that that sexual identity goes to the root of my sense of who I am. Tell me that I must not be a homosexual, and you may be telling me that I cannot be who I am, the person that I never chose to be in the first place, and over whom I have no power to be anything different. How does the church deal with that?

What do the texts really say?

Andrew says it is important to understand what the texts really say and his general position seems to be

• In Romans 1, Paul says that because people have wilfully decided to worship idols rather than God, God has given them over to all sorts of wickedness and wrongdoing, one such example of wrongdoing being homosexuality.
• This is not just an invention of Paul’s but flows from the creation narrative found in Genesis. God’s reference in Gen 1.26 to human beings being in his image is essentially about men and women being procreative and thus echoing God’s own creative power-obviously only possible for heterosexual union. And Gen 2.24 says that because woman is made of man’s flesh, then when a man leaves his parents, it is to cleave to his wife and become one flesh with her. This suggests that heterosexual union is (at least) the ideal for sexual relationship

Andrew says he is looking for a way to understand homosexuality that recognizes:

i) that it is contrary to creation, as indicated above

ii) that it is (apparently) an unavoidable element of a fallen creation and for many gay people the only way of expressing a long-term intimate commitment to another

iii) that it is not ‘wickedness’, it is not intrinsically harmful to others.

Andrew suggests that while homosexuality will not be found in the new heaven and the new earth, the church is the sign but not the actuality of the new heaven and new earth. As such it contains many who are fallen eg those who abuse their spouses or lie or who get angry or who are unjust, despise the poor- and those who practice homosexuality. The conclusion is that homosexuals should not be denied Christian fellowship. A number of other participants are at one with Andrew on this.

Paul Hartigan questions the cogency of the scriptures quoted by Andrew.

• The argument in Romans 1.18-32 does not seem persuasive. There are all sorts of explanations why people might end up worshipping idols but the suggestion that they have done so deliberately seems one of the least likely. Secondly, Paul’s ascription of the immorality of such people to their worship of idols only makes sense if the behaviour of those who worship the one true God is better. Is there any basis for such a statement- can we say that Christians, Moslems and Jews, all strict monotheists, are morally superior to animists or popular forms of Hinduism?
• Nor do the Genesis arguments seem strong enough to sustain a charge that homosexuality is wrong (or, possibly, even morally superior to homosexuality). Procreative capacity is primarily a capacity of the human race and not of individual human beings- that is, the human race can be very fertile even though much sexual activity of individuals takes place with no chance of procreation. Hence if procreation is an image of God’s creative power it is an image attributable to the human race not to individuals or individual segments (such as heterosexuals) within it. Also if human creative power is an image of God what do we make of an artist like Michaelangelo who was homosexual. As regards the ‘one flesh’ argument, this seems a precarious basis for condemning homosexuality, in particular since it is a metaphor based on a myth.

Conclusion

The suggestion that Paul was not thinking of committed monogamous homosexuals in his Romans 1 and other references to homosexuals did not appear convincing to most participants; nor the idea that the love ethic of the NT over-rides the condemnation of homosexuality (though thisidea has not been explored as fully as it might). Nearly all the participants accept that scripture condemns homosexuality, although they interpret the condemnation differently. Some would say homosexual behaviour is wrong and forbidden; but some are ambiguous about this (Andrew?). A number of participants are at pains to understand the situation of the homosexual and do not believe that homosexuals should be denied church fellowship.

SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY VERSUS MORAL INTUITION

Paul Hartigan is inclined to think that Paul’s condemnation would include homosexuals in a committed monogamous relationship but his attitude to the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality does not necessarily depend on what the scriptures say. In Paul Hartigan’s view, St Paul was wrong about homosexuals and equally, he was, at the very least, morally obtuse about the institution of slavery. For Paul Hartigan, this does not pose the dilemma of either rejecting the NT or rejecting his judgement about homosexuality: in his view reverence for the NT does not require it to be inerrant or morally infallible.

Ivan Latham says that once we go down the route of picking and choosing what we believe as authoritative in the Biblical text, then anyone, from thief to psychopath could justify their behaviour by such an arbitrary analysis of the Bible.

Peter Wilkinson suggests that Paul Hartigan’s approach seems to depend on subjective or vague notions of modern thinking.

Paul Hartigan responds that his reasons are neither subjective nor vague and include considerations such as the following

• that mainstream modern psychiatry finds no psychopathology associated with homosexuality;
• that homosexuality is now recognised as having occurred in every age and culture;
• that homosexuality is widespread among other species;
• that there is no understanding of nature or of natural law that leads to the conclusion that homosexuality is wrong or an evil;
• that modern secular society after thousands of years of proscribing homosexuality has changed its mind.

Conclusion

The original post about Fred and Jack essentially asked this question: how do we deal with a collision between

• a view of the scriptures which hold them as inerrant or moral infallibile

and

• our deepest moral intuitions.

Very little of the discussion has addressed this issue- most of it has focussed on the scriptures and whether there is any understanding of them which in some way acknowledges the position of a homosexuals in a committed monogamous relationship.

Hence I regard the major issue posed in the original post as unanswered. It seems to me that all of us feel the moral force of the proposal that a homosexual in a committed monogamous relationship is more morally opprobrious than a slave-owner. This seems to imply at least moral obtuseness on St Paul’s part because he condemned homosexuals and made no similar remarks about slave owners.