HOMOSEXUALITY - A BIBLICAL VIEW.
1. Homosexuality
in the Church - A New Situation
Israelite-Jewish traditions, together with an almost unanimous Christian
voice, have for millenia judged homosexual behavior to be contrary to
the will of God, and destructive to human community. At times they did
so against pervasive cultural trends in societies where homosexuality
was an accepted practice, at other times they succeeded in molding public
attitudes and social mores and laws. The situation today is radically
different. The Gay/Lesbian campaign for public recognition of homosexuality
as a morally and legally legitimate lifestyle has not only made deep inroads
into the media and into cultural institutions, but it has produced an
advocacy in the Church which calls for a new reformation in which homosexuality
is affirmed as a Christian form of life, demanded by the Gospel and infused
with God's spirit.
Some examples can illustrate the new situation. In a statement of January
22-23, 1993, the Synod of the Northeast expressed the belief that the
Presbyterian Church USA "should repent its already identified sin of homophobia"
implying in this statement that the church's opposition to homosexuality,
which had informed christian teaching and practice for centuries, was
not only wrong, but sinful. At the same period, in one of our student
publications at Princeton Theological Seminary, issue after issue contained
letters by students who said they were coming out of the closet, that
they had found homosexuality to be a gift of God which they were celebrating
with thanksgiving, and that they were charging anybody who would question
their sexual orientation with hypocrisy and with disobedience to the spirit
of the Gospel, which offers God's all-inclusive grace to everyone without
distinction.
The debate
has reached the point at which the defense of the traditional stance of
the church regarding homosexuality is declared morally reprehensible.
A group organized in January 1995 which calls itself "Semper Reformanda"
identifies advocacy for the Gay/Lesbian movement with the pursuit of justice
which is mandated by the Gospel. The group's founder stated in a telephone
interview their concern for justice and peace: "whether it be justice
on behalf of women or other marginalized people - gay and lesbian people.
It's part of our obedience to Jesus Christ to bring justice in the life
of the world, and that that's an essential part of the mission of the
church" (The Presbyterian Outlook, July 10, 1995, p. 3). With all due
respect to fellow Christians who hold different opinions, it has become
impossible to avoid the problem whether a self-assertive and open homosexual
lifestyle is a form of confessing and living the Gospel, whether it is
a denial of the Gospel, or whether it is a neutral question which has
nothing to do with the Gospel one way or another.
2. Unambiguous Biblical Condemnations of Homosexuality
There is virtual agreement among all who participate today in the homosexuality
debate that Old and New Testament contain some unequivocal condemnations
of homosexual practice. These sentences are:
"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination"
(Lev 18:22).
"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed
an abomination: they shall be put to death: their blood is upon them"
(Lev 20:13).
"God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural
intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up
natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.
Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons
the due penalty for their error" (Rom 1:26-27).
"Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes,
sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers - none of
these will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:9-10).
The condemnation of the law applies for those "who kill their father or
mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers"
( 1 Tim 1:9-10).
It is debated which precise social behavior is meant by "male-prostitutes"
and "sodomites" in the last two quotes but it is not controversial that
they include homogenital activity.
Other passages in Old and New Testament are often understood to incriminate
homosexuality also: the gang-rapes told in Gen 19:1-11 and Judg 19-21
may not see the homosexuality involved in the narratives to be the crime
deserving punishment, although Jude 7 is evidence that in New Testament
times the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was read as prime illustration of
"sexual immorality" and "unnatural lust". We will omit discussion of any
ambiguous passages.
3. The Ethos of Human Sexuality in the Bible
The few unambiguous condemnations of homosexuality in the Bible are surrounded
by a fairly broad stream of texts which speak of a very high evaluation
of human sexuality. There is an ethos of sexual life in Old and New Testament
which must not be left out of consideration when the issue of homosexuality
is discussed. The terribly dark shadow cast over homosexual activity in
the Bible can only be understood as the contrast of the great light which
is shed on the creation of male and female which elicits the judgment
"very good" by its Creator (Gen 1:31). It is my contention that a great
many discussions of the issue of Gay and Lesbian claims in relation to
the Biblical message suffer from the virtual isolation of this problem
from the positive sexual ethos in Scripture. We shall, therefore, first
sketch this positive ethos which is the necessary backdrop for the Biblical
judgments of homosexuality.
There are four passages in the New Testament which deal with important
aspects of the relation between men and women by appealing to the creation
stories in Gen 1 and 2. The four passages are: Mark 10:2-9 and Matthew
19:3-9; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; Ephesians 5:21-33.
a) Mark 10:2-9 and Matthew 19:3-9: Pharisees challenge Jesus with the
question whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife. Jesus' answer
goes over the head of Mosaic legislation back to the creation stories.
He says, "from the beginning of creation `God made them male and female'
(Gen 1:27). `For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and
be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'" (Gen 2:24).
Jesus' answer recalls an order of sexuality older and more pristine than
later law. "From the beginning" alludes not only to a distant past but
to the bedrock of human sexuality as God's creation. The drive which causes
a man to leave behind his old family unit to form with his wife a new
union of life (Gen 2:24) is grounded in an antecedent act of divine creation,
the calling into being of a single human being in the two different forms
of male and female (Gen 1:27). As God's creation there is only one human
being who exists in two separate, distinct, and different forms of male
and female; and vice versa, they are in their separateness, distinction,
and difference one single human being. In this simultaneous oneness and
duality, male and female together are the image of God, receive the blessing
of God and the unrestricted approval of their Creator to be "very good"
(Gen 1:28, 31).
b) In 1 Cor 6:12-20 Paul has to contend with a group in the Christian
community that considers it perfectly legitimate for a man to hire the
services of a prostitute. Paul's uncompromising "no" to prostitution is,
again, grounded in an appeal to the creation of Adam and Eve: "Do you
not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with
her? For it is said, `The two shall be one flesh' (Gen 2:24). But anyone
united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him" (v. 16). In contrast to
the Corinthian party which considers genital activity to be a purely biological
function, comparable to the digestive process (v. 13), Paul argues with
the creation narrative that the physical union of a man and a woman establishes
a bond in which their very selves, their personhood are involved, analogous
to the bond between a member of Christ and the Lord himself.
c) 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. This section deals with a question of hair-style
and head-dress during communal worship. The circumstances addressed in
this passage are obscure and all reconstructions are hypothetical. I follow
one such hypothesis which sees the issue in an attempt of some Corinthian
women to pray and prophecy in public worship (v. 4) in a manner demonstrating
that the difference between male and female is done away with if one lives
in the Spirit of God. Therefore, they cut their hair in a fashion usual
for men and they discard a head-dress identifying them as women. Paul
argues for a retention of the custom, not in order to endorse a hair-style
and a dress-fashion, but to counter the claim that the difference between
male and female is no longer valid in the new creation. To that end he
appeals extensively to the creation story: Man brings glory to God, as
the female brings glory to the male (v. 7 alluding to Gen 1:27); woman
was made from man and in order to complement man who, without woman, would
be utterly alone and helpless (vs. 7-8, referring to Gen 2:18-24), but
man and woman are co-dependent on each other, woman coming out of man
but man also coming out of woman (vs. 11-12). The point of the argument
is the insistence that faith in Christ, the new being in God's spirit,
does not eliminate God's good creation of human life in the essential
difference of male and female.
d) Ephesians 5:21-33 goes as far as to say that the love and care which
husbands and wives exercise for each other are a mystery which embodies
in the form of actual, mundane history the transcendent love and care
which unite Christ and his Church. And again this is said to give final
validity to God's creation of male and female as partners because "for
this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his
wife, and the two shall become one." (Eph 5:31 citing Gen 2:24).
The mystery of seeing in the union of an earthly marriage, understood
as the unity of two who are essentially different, an image of the union
of Christ and the Church, picks up on the frequent use of marriage metaphors
for the relation which unites God and God's people both in Old and New
Testament. For the prophet Hosea, the infidelity of Israel toward her
god is expressed in the image of a divorce: God as husband is divorced
from Israel as wife (Hosea 1-3). The very marriage of the prophet is to
be an enactment of the loathsome union between a faithful husband and
a faithless wife as the palpable earthly reflection of the history through
which God suffers with his people, and the restoration of God's covenant
with Israel is presented as a new betrothal (Hosea 2:16-20). Jeremiah
compares the positive relation of Yahweh and Israel's youth in the wilderness
to the devotion and love of a bride to her bridegroom (Jer 2:2) and Ezekiel
likens God's totally unmerited mercy toward Israel to the rescue of an
abandoned baby girl by a man, and their subsequent marriage (Ezek 16 and
in different form and expanded to two women in Ezek 23).
The New Testament
has inherited, expanded, and enriched this imagery. Paul can say that
he has betrothed the Corinthian Christian community to Christ as a chaste
virgin to her one husband (2 Cor 11:2). The new heaven and the new earth
in Rev 21 are cast into the picture of the coming down from heaven of
a new Jerusalem as the bride of Christ. In Jesus' parables and sayings,
the image of the wedding feast is used to describe the arrival of the
kingdom of God in the world. Jesus's coming is the entry of the bridegroom
at the wedding feast (Mark 2:19). People invited to enter into the kingdom
of God are presented as guests invited to the nuptials of the King's son
(Matt 22:1-10), and the story of the virgins, (Matt 25:1-13) uses the
same imagery.
Of course, in all these texts, in Old and New Testament alike, the figures
of bride and bridegroom, husband and wife, of wedding feast and wedding
guests, together with their negatives faithlessness, divorce, and harlotry
are images. We are dealing with metaphors, similes, parables which are
not directly identified with the reality to which they refer. But this
cautionary sentence must, at the same time, be put positively. The sexual
images, metaphors, similes, and parables in Old and New Testaments have
the power to express in words a truth which without these words would
forever remain mute and unknown. The language of God and God's people
as bridegroom and bride, as husband and wife, is creative in the extreme.
It calls into being a vista in which the existence of a marriage, and
in it the confirmation of the prior dignity of human life in the polarity
of male and female, is elevated to become a reflection of the wonders
of God's relationship with us, of God's fidelity to us, of God's destiny
for us.
This produces
an ethic in which human sexuality is enabled to be an imprint of God's
covenant with his people. But this ethic is predicated on the unalterable
polarity of male and female. In the covenant God remains forever clearly
and unalterably distinct from us as our creator, as our Lord, and as our
redeemer. The union between God and humans in the covenant is a bond between
two clearly and eternally distinct partners. Exactly for this reason can
God's covenant with the world be mirrored and expressed only through a
human bond in which the unity of the partners preserves and honors the
essential polarity between them.
4. Homosexuality in Rom 1:26-27
Homosexuality is not much of a problem in Old and New Testament. The positive
ethos of the divine creation of the human as male and female is so strong
that only a few and isolated judgments of homosexual practices are needed.
Only at one point has the issue been drawn into a theological argumentation,
but at that point homogenital practice becomes no less than the showcase
for the ills of a world which has rejected the knowledge and praise of
God the Creator. The passage is Rom 1:26-27 and, here again, the appeal
to the creation story in Gen 1 and 2 is crucial.
Rom 1:18-3:20
offers a long indictment of human failing which leads to the conclusion
that, in the light of the revelation of God's power of salvation in the
Gospel (1:16-17), no human being is justified by their own accomplishments
in God's sight (3:20). The opening section, 1:18-32, deals with Gentile
religion and morality. Gentile religion is foolishness (1:22) because
it imagines God in the likeness of created beings (1:23). The first lie
of idolatry is immediately followed by moral degradation. "Therefore God
gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading
of their bodies among themselves" (1:24). Religion and ethics belong together,
but for Paul they are yoked in a way that ethics is outcome and consequence
of religion. In the case of Gentile religion the primal error of substituting
the honor of the immortal and invisible God with images of creation is
followed by its necessary consequence in the degradation of morality.
The very showpiece of this moral degradation is homosexual activity (1:26-27).
The indictment
of homosexuality in Rom 1:26-27 is linked to the preceding argument against
idolatry through the repetition of the word "exchange" which is used three
times. Paul states, first of all, as a general principle the Jewish conviction
that Gentile religion is corrupt because it substitutes ("exchanges")
the glory of God for the veneration of images of mortal beings. Gentile
religion "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling
a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles" (1:23).
The sequence "human being, birds, four-footed animals and reptiles" echoes
Gen 1:26 which says that the human being will have dominion over the fish
of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over the reptiles.
The appeal to Gen 1:26 serves Paul to emphasize that in the fatal substitute
of the true God for images, the human being idolizes the very animals
which in the story of creation were to be subject to human dominion.
The first "exchange" of legitimate for illegitimate worship is followed
by a second in which the moral implications are also introduced. Gentiles
"exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the
creature rather than the Creator" (1:25) which is the reason that God
gives them up to their own desire leading to the degrading of their bodies
(1:24).
The phrase
"degrading of their bodies" in the second mention of the "exchange" is
not specific. In the third step involving the "exchange", however, the
specificity is palpable: "Women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural,
and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women,
were consumed with passion for one another" (1:26-27). Paul uses words
for "men" (arsenes) and "women" (thleiai) in these verses which are otherwise
not used in his letters (except in Gal 3:28). The words derive from the
vocabulary of the creation story in Gen 1:27 where the one human being
(anthropos) is said to exist in the form of the union of two, male and
female (arsen kai thly). The three uses of the phrase "exchange" coordinate
idolatrous religion and homosexual activity. Idolatrous religion substitutes
the worship of the only true God for objects unworthy of veneration, and
homosexuality substitutes the relationship established by the Creator
with a relationship that has no foundation in God's creation. There is
a precise analogy between the exchange of the Creator for creatures, and
the exchange of the Creator's act in ordaining the union of male and female
for the union of members of the same sex.
5. The Modern Debate about Bible and Homosexuality
The unambiguous condemnation of homosexual practice in some Biblical passages
is not disputed today. But its implications for modern Christian ethics,
and for the practice of pastoral care and the ordinances of the churches,
is sharply controversial. I conclude by offering some theses about Biblical
teaching on homosexuality in the modern context.
a) Homosexuality and the Sexual Ethos of the Bible
It is a fundamental mistake, in my view, to discuss Biblical statements
on homosexuality in isolation from the positive ethos of human sexuality
in Scripture. As bits and pieces of Old Testament legislation, and of
Jewish heritage in the New Testament, the sparse references to homosexuality
could well be attributed to the social conditions of a distant past. But
seen against the foil of the extremely high valuation given to the counterpoint
of maleness and femaleness in God's creation in the Bible, the sole attribution
to time-bound modes of social norms cannot be maintained. On the background
of the positive ethos of human sexuality in Old and New Testament, homosexuality
becomes inescapably a denial of the goodness of God's creation.
b) Love-Ethic and Sexual Ethos
It is said in the debate today that the New Testament insists on an ethic
of love to which everything else is subordinate. Love embodying the Gospel,
it is argued, breaks down legalistic barriers and reaches out particularly
to the disadvantaged and the oppressed. The validity of this insistence
must be recognized without reservation. But it does not at all follow
from it that Christian ethical thought, and ethical practice, must be
restricted to the bare injunction to love without consideration of the
concrete forms of exercising love which correspond to the Gospel. Love
is the fulfillment of the law, but this love is not without its embodiment
in actual concrete areas of human life. "Love is the fulfilling of the
law" ... but this love fans out into the concrete forms of commandments
"you shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal;
your shall not covet" (Rom 13:9-10). Neither Old nor New Testament assume
that human common sense, or a natural goodness of moral sensibilities,
lead everybody to a universal understanding of what it means to love.
Rather, love must be thought through and practiced in accordance with
the act and word of God in which love receives its distinctive form. And
in this context - it must be stated with unambiguous harshness - sexual
relations between male and female are not comparable in kind or in value
to relations between same-sex partners. Heterosexual unions are an emanation
of God's creation: homosexual unions practice the denial of it.
c) Call for a New Reformation
The modern dispute about homosexuality in the Church has produced the
argument that we must be open to changes. The history of the Church demonstrates
that it is necessary, from time to time, to re-evaluate time-honored traditions
and to alter accustomed positions. It is often said that the abolition
of slavery and the recognition of women as fully equal partners with men
are issues in which Bible-supported positions had to be given up. Against
this claim it must be kept in mind that, first, nowhere in Old or New
Testament is it indicated that being a member of a given race, or being
a woman, is in conflict with being a part of God's good creation, but
homosexuality is said to be in that conflict. And, second, while both
slavery and a patriarchal society are presuppositions in much Biblical
literature, they are counterbalanced by other aspects of Biblical teaching
which have been used successfully by advocates of the abolition of slavery
and of women's rights; but no such counterbalance exists in the Bible
concerning homosexuality. In regard to homosexual activity there is no
Biblical evidence which might soften the unambiguous stand adopted in
the Bible.
d) Homophobia versus Heterophobia
Defenders of the heterosexual norm today find themselves accused with
regularity of homophobia, an attitude that has lately been elevated to
the rank of a deadly sin. But the overused word "homophobia" has caused
a blindness to a whole set of other factors in our society which could
well be characterized as heterophobia. There is among us a spirit, and
very much so in the midst of our Christian communities, which makes men
and women distrustful and antagonistic toward each other. Males advocate
"male bonding" as their recipe for salvation and women seek refuge in
the idea of a "women's church" in which a special feminist theology based
on genuinely feminine experiences ought to be established. There is, in
my assessment, a massive outbreak of heterophobia among us today, and
the cry for the recognition of homosexuality in the church is one manifestation
of it. One illustration, a quote from a statement by Kate Millett in 1970:
"Women's liberation and homosexual liberation are both struggling toward
a common goal: a society free from defining and categorizing people by
virtue of gender and/or sexual preference. `Lesbianism' is a label used
as a psychic weapon to keep women locked into their male-defined `feminine
role'. The essence of that role is that a woman is defined in terms of
her relationship to men. A woman is called lesbian when she functions
autonomously. Women's autonomy is what women's liberation is all about."
(From Mary A. Kassian, The Feminist Gospel, Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1992,
pp. 84f.)
e) Grace and Forgiveness
It is said very often today that the exclusion of homosexual practices
from permissible forms of sexual activity in the church amounts to a contradiction
of the free and unmerited grace of God, and constitutes therefore a denial
of the all-inclusive claims of the gospel. But the dynamics of New Testament
ethics drive toward the sanctification of human life, not to the indiscriminate
approval of any form of conduct. Why have all New Testament authors, who
are after all the very origin and source for our knowledge of God's mercy
and grace, insisted that there are necessary boundaries to Christian freedom
outside of which freedom turns into enslavement? The Jesus who turns to
sinful people is also the great healer who restores sick life to health
and as the healer he has also instructed his community with a conduct
becoming to discipleship. None of us can claim freedom from sin, and none
of us has the right to hurl condemnations at sinners as though he or she
had any ground for faith but the sheer mercy of God. But the healing community
of the great healer would abandon the mission if it did not diagnose sickness
for what it is, and call for the rejuvenation, indeed the regeneration,
of life in the discipline of faith.
f) Modern Psychosexual Theory and the Bible
A point often made in the modern debate about homosexuality in the Church
is the observation that Old and New Testament had no knowledge of the
difference between a homosexual orientation and homosexual acts engaged
in by heterosexually oriented people. The observation is correct but it
misses the point for two reasons. First, Paul in Rom 1:26-27 does not
speak of individual Gentile life- stories but of a dominant orientation,
which establishes a characteristic pattern for a whole community. Comparable
would be the dominance of the theory of the superiority of Aryan people
over German history between 1933 and 1945. Without the domination of that
racial theory German history in that period cannot be understood. But
that does not mean that all individual Germans during that period adopted
the Aryan theory. Second, the notion of sexual orientation, or sexual
preference, is based on the individualistic idea that sexuality is determined
by personal inclination or choice: what individual desire dictates is
the decisive norm for sexual conduct. Biblical sexual ethos is irreconcilable
with this individualistic approach. The Biblical view of human sexuality
as the union between male and female posits a relationship with all its
consequences as the core of sexual relations. Part of these consequences
is the lifelong acceptance of the gift and the challenge of the other,
the procreation and rearing of children and the care for the family. All
of that involves that human sexuality is, as God's creation of male and
female, bound up with community and, therefore, with unselfish service,
with discipline, and with the will to subordinate individual desires,
including sexual urges, to the well-being of others.
g) Ordination and Civil Rights
The ordination of a person to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament is not
a civil right. Therefore, the question of the ordination of self-affirming
and practicing homosexual persons cannot be made a civil rights issue.
The Church reserves the right to establish requirements for ordination,
which have nothing to do with civil rights. One such requirement is the
achievement of a theological degree as a prerequisite of ordination. The
setting of a boundary, which excludes some persons from ordination, is,
for that reason, no infringement of a civil right.
h) The Grace of God and Homosexuality
The prohibition of the ordination of self-affirming and practicing homosexual
persons is not tantamount to their exclusion from the Christian community.
Christian congregations are communities in which sinners of all different
kinds are invited to receive forgiveness, healing, and purpose. I have
myself knowingly and willingly handed out the bread and wine of communion
to persons whom I knew to be homosexuals. I have every intention to continue
that practice. Ministers of the Church have no right to restrict the grace
of God. But that does not mean that the ministry of the Church endorses
the attempt of the Gay/Lesbian movement to promote homosexual practices
as an alternative life-style. The grace of God is the power, which makes
creative choices possible, which affirm life as God's creation. Far from
eliminating human responsibility, it is the free grace of God, which alone
enables heterosexual and homosexual sinners to make decisions in favor
of life. That includes homosexual persons who, by the grace of God, can
find new avenues of personal choices through which they can enrich the
life of the Christian community in ways possible only for them.
(Copyright:2002. Probe Ministries)
Ulrich Mauser, educated in Germany and Professor of New Testament at Princeton
Seminary, has taught at three theological schools during his career, serving
as academic dean at one of them. All along he has focused on the meaning
of the scriptures for what we actually believe and do as a people of faith.
His books and articles focus not on texts by themselves but on their theological
meaning, often in relation to real world issues. His most recent book,
for instance, is The Gospel of Peace: A Scriptural Message For Today's
World. During the last two years, Professor Mauser has joined some of
his colleagues at Princeton to issue public statements on burning issues
in the church: one of these focused on the ordination of homosexuals.
He is not the sort of Bible scholar who hides in the library.
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