Engaging the Text: Ethics and Romans 1

At this point in our investigation of Romans 1, we're standing at the crossroads of theology and ethics. Previously, we asked what this chapter had to say about the nature and preferences of God ... now we would like to know how this passage should inform our day-to-day behavior.

Frankly, the crossroads of theology and ethics is a confusing place to be. Stretching off in one direction, you have millennia of speculation, argument, and perhaps revelation about the divine. In the other direction, you have millennia of theory, argument, and perhaps revelation about the nature of the good. One of the most difficult questions to be found at this intersection is the question of who gets to say what's good: is God good because God knows the good and does the good, or is God good by definition, so that everything that God does or commands is the good thing to do, and ethics are thereby created ex nihilo.

While some choose the latter definition, I think that this makes it meaningless to say "God is good". As C.S. Lewis writes in one of his last letters*:

Things are not good because God commands them; God commands certain things because he sees them to be good. (In other words, the Divine Will is the obedient servant to the Divine Reason.) The opposite view (Ockham's, Paley's) leads to an absurdity. If "good" means "what God wills" then to say "God is good" can mean only "God wills what he wills." Which is equally true of you or me or Judas or Satan.

I think the need for the goodness of God to mean something is my primary motivation for believing that we should define "goodness" as something other than simply what God does or wills. Lewis speaks directly to this issue again in the same letter:

The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scriptures is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.

While I think we could argue about whether the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain doctrine, it seems very clear that this is the most critical doctrine for justifying our worship of God (as opposed to, say, Satan).

So I am going to assert that God's commands don't create the good, although it's possible that they will always align with the good.

Now we run into another troublesome question, which is: "How do we extract moral imperatives from the text of the Bible?" Remember, first, that I am not supposing the Bible to be the source of all moral instruction. I am assuming that people have some notion of good and evil, and the Bible's moral teachings are primarily useful for honing or enlightening that moral sense. Furthermore, I am also assuming that the Bible contains some passages that are ethically questionable: the flood, the conquest of Canaan, God's command to keep the virgins but kill everybody else, any of David's darker episodes, Jesus' commands to reject your family:Passages that are easily interpreted as endorsing evil. **

For these reasons, we can expect to find two types of moral injunctions in the Bible: first, those that resonate with our moral sense, and second, those that scrape against it. It would be nice if we could just accept the injunctions that sound right, and reject the ones that don't ... but this won't work, because we would like to preserve the possiblity that the Bible can teach us something we don't already know. "Love your enemies" sounds pretty iffy to me, but I expect that if everyone practiced this, the world would be significantly better.

Consequently, I'm just going to kind of punt here, and proclaim, "it is difficult to extract moral instruction from the Bible." It is difficult to understand which scriptures should directly apply to modern-day readers, know their background, examine them in context, consider the biases of the writers, attempt to set aside one's prejudices, and so on. Maybe when I read The Moral Vision of the New Testament, I'll be able to suggest a more systematic and reliable approach. But until then, my advice is: Mistrust anyone who says that they can draw a clear and universal moral injunction from the clear meaning of any single chapter or verse. It's just not that simple.

So what do we do with this passage in Romans?

With regard to homoerotic behavior in this passage, it seems to me that we have to consider two opinions. First is the opinion of God, which I've argued is not clear. As I said in the previous post, Romans 1 is merely a setup for Paul's larger point about the mercy of God, and so its theological implications should be limited to:

Because the Gentile culture was rebellious, God allowed it to become even more rebellious and corrupt.

On the other hand, we also need to consider the opinion of Paul. Granted, it's not very explicitly stated, but I think Scoots is right when he says that Paul is presenting a set of behaviors as "the epitome of fallenness and wickedness." (Or at least the things that his audience will think are the epitome of fallenness and wickedness. It's a set-up, remember?)

So what should we do with this negative portrayal of homoerotic behavior? Should we elevate it to a moral imperative? I don't think so, and briefly, here are some reasons why. I've mentioned some of them in previous posts, but I'll try to gather them together here.

First: Homoeroticism is a gender issue, and Paul has a track record of going contrary to the gospel on gender issues. Some speculate that this is because Paul had to walk a middle line in order to get the church going, and had to give up certain issues (women, slaves) to work on the toughest issue of the day (Jews and Gentiles).

Second: The Bible as a whole has kind of a shady reputation with regard to sex and gender issues. Take, for example, the aforementioned virgins, or the treatment of victims of rape, or the double-standard for adultery (it's OK for men as long as the woman isn't married, but for women it's never OK), or Old Testament polygamy, or the notable lack of guidance with regard to premarital sex. Until Christians can come up with a coherent sexual ethic, we need to be very careful about the parts of the Bible we elevate to rules for other people.

Third: The passage only speaks to homosexual lust, not committed homoerotic behavior. Some scholars think that it really only applied to the odd sexual practices and self-mutilation involved in Roman cultic worship, and to make it an all-encompassing prohibition would be to overextend.
(a link from Crystal has the best discussion of this perspective that I've read, as well as some very interesting Catholic insights).

Fourth: We've tried the anti-gay interpretation, and it has had bad results for homosexual people. It has pushed them out of the church, and resulted in violence and hate against them. It seems that we're incapable of "separating the sinner from the sin", and the moral imperative to love the alien and stranger simply trumps any moral imperative we might be able to derive from this text. As far as I can see, telling gay people "we think God thinks you should get married" can't make their situation any worse, and it may make it a whole lot better.

So there you have it: so far as I can tell, there is no compelling reason to interpret this passage as saying "all homoerotic behavior is evil." If there is a moral prescription to be drawn from this text, I think the best we can do is, "don't mess around with cult prostitution."

And so this completes our round of the major scriptures that seem to touch on homoerotic behavior. In my opinion, these scriptures -- whether taken individually or together -- should not be interpreted as communicating God's displeasure with homoerotic behavior per se, or as constituting other evidence that might convince us that homoerotic behavior is inherently evil. As a result, we as Christians are free to affirm the value of the scriptures, while also saying that they do not require condemnation of homoerotic behavior in a consensual, committed relationship.

----

For more (and much better) reading on this topic, I'm going to post three PDFs excerpted from books. These were provided to some faculty members at ACU before the SoulForce ride. If someone who owns the rights to these documents complains, I will take them down. (In other words, get 'em while they're hot.) I'm also going to repeat the link to the Catholic theologian that Crystal referenced, just because I think his argument communicates well.

Also, because I'm lazy, I have decided not to take my own snarky notes out of the PDFs. Read them at your peril.

1. "Awaiting the Redemption of our bodies: The Witness of Scripture Concerning Homosexuality", by Richard B. Hays


2. "The Bible and Homosexuality: Reading the Texts in Context", by Victor Paul Furnish


3. "The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Theology, Analogies and Genes", by Robert A.J. Gagnon


4. "Six Perspectives on the Homosexuality Controversy", by Theodore Grimsrud


5. "'But the Bible says...?' A Catholic Reading of Romans 1" by James Alison

I remember finding the Gagnon piece to be fairly repugnant, but I wanted to include all the PDFs, so there you go.

----

*Quoted in a letter from C.S. Lewis to John Beversluis July 3, 1963. The letter can be found in C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, and portions are quoted in Biblical v. Secular Ethics: The Conflict ed. R Joseph Hoffman.

** I'm pretty sure that I'm not using the words "morally" and "ethically" correctly. Any insight would be appreciated.

Back to Capitalism

A rehash of my conversation with Timothy Sandefur about the justice of Capitalism, for the benefit of folks from Kendallball.net.

• Thief or Oppressor


• Ante Up


• In the Meantime


• Going Fishing


• Put Down Yer Dukes

Engaging the Text: What Romans 1 Says About God

In the previous post, I asked what the Romans passage says about the nature and preferences of God. While we did talk about the issue a bit, I don't think we really came down on this question. So I'm going to answer it. Obviously, much more about this passage has been said elsewhere, and my arguments are far from perfect. Feel free to disagree.

I think the Romans passage says this, and not much more, about God:

Because the Gentile culture was rebellious, God allowed it to become even more rebellious and corrupt.

To review, here's the passage in question:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

First, let's observe that throughout this bit of Romans, Paul is talking about groups of people. In other words, the things that he says are about God's interaction with cultures -- Jewish and Gentile --not about God's interaction with Peter and Mary. For example, in a passage that's particularly troublesome for free-will theists, Paul speculates that God has created some vessels "for destruction". While this passage has been used to argue for predestination (basically, the idea that God has planned out precisely who will go to heaven and who won't), this is probably not what Paul intends. Instead, Paul is probably trying to figure out why the Jews, as a people, won't accept Jesus as the messiah. So any theological conclusions drawn from this argument have to be drawn about God's interaction with cultures, not God's interaction with individuals.

Second, let's observe that Paul's intent in this passage is diagnostic, and not morally prescriptive. He's trying to investigate and describe what's wrong with humanity, not prescribe a moral code that will fix the problem. Particularly telling is the order of events that Paul describes: First the pagans turned away from God, and as a result, God allowed them to slide into "unnatural" behavior. As Richard B. Hays writes*:

Homosexual activity will not incur God's punishment: it is its own punishment, an "anti-reward." Paul here simply echoes a traditional Jewish idea. The Wisdom of Solomon, an intertestamental writing that has surely influenced Paul's thinking in Romans 1, puts it like this: "Therefore those who in folly of life lived unrighteously [God] tormented through their own abominations" (Wisd. Sol. 12:1).

Paul does muddle the issue a bit by saying that men who commit indecent acts with other men "received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion". The use of the word "penalty" would seem to suggest that the indecent acts themselves are worthy of punishment. But I suspect the confusion here is just indicative of our larger confusion about free will, determinism, or whatever it is that motivates our behavior. When we step back to view Paul's whole argument, we can easily see that it is not setting out to establish a moral code. Instead, it assumes a moral code and attempts to show how the rejection of God has lead people to reject the code.

Third, although we have labeled Paul's argument in Romans "theological", this section is much more about people than it is about God. Notice that God's only action in this passage is actually inaction, as God "allows" or "gives people over" to various behaviors. In retrospect, It may have been a mistake for me to expect any firm statements about God's actions and preferences to come out of this passage in Romans.

Consequently, I think that it is problematic to portray this passage as a clear communication of what God thinks about homosexual behavior. We might be justified in doing so if we had more support from other scriptures, but as we have seen in previous posts, that support is flimsy at best. The strongest statement about homosexuality that we might be able to affirm is the narrower statement: "God disapproves of homosexual lust", but even this statement would get most of its support from other scriptures about how God views lust, homosexual or otherwise.

The only argument I can see for a broader statement would come from the adjective "unnatural", but to support such an argument one would have to show first that homoerotic behavior is indeed unnatural, and second that Paul is implying something true about God: namely, that God disapproves of all unnatural behavior. Based on Scott's earlier comments regarding the moral neutrality of our natural inclinations, I think such an argument would be very difficult to defend.

Instead, I think it's best to interpret this passage fairly conservatively: to read it as simply saying that God allowed the rebellious Gentile culture to degrade into wicked behavior. Perhaps we can even extend this as a way of understanding past and current events: if people reject the goodness of God, they slide downward into wickedness. But we are in no way obligated to affirm that all homoerotic behavior is contrary to the will of God, particularly when that behavior occurs in a committed, loving relationship.

Finally, I think it's worthwhile to note that as we have approached Paul's theology, we have been assuming that everything he says about God must be true. As a few of us have been discussing on Scott's blog (and also, here, and perpetually, on Darius's blog), this assumption is by no means universal, and it may not even be correct. If God allowed some simple numerical errors and other contradictions into the Bible, isn't it possible that there might be some incomplete or imperfect theology in there as well? Sure, it may be scary to suppose that some of the things that the Bible says about God are wrong, but as Darius suggests in earlier comments, perhaps we would be best served by admitting what seem to be errors in the text, and trusting the Holy Spirit's ability to use even this flawed text to lead us to a better understanding of God.

So. I think we're about done here. Interest on this topic seems to be waning a bit, and we're coming to the last of my original questions about the Romans passage, which was, what are the moral implications of this statement?

Feel free to discuss the theology question, and then we'll finish up in the next post.

* "Awaiting the Redemption of our Bodies", in Homosexuality in the Church, Both Sides of the Debate. Jeffrey S. Siker, ed.

Happy 6-6-6!

Just wanted to wish you all a happy 6/6/6.

If you're worried about bad things happening today, you might feel a little bit better if I let you in on a little DaVinci-code type secret: The number of the beast is really 616, and we got through January just fine.

As an interesting side note, I think this papyrus was found after Southern Hills church of Christ changed their address from 666 Buffalo Gap Rd. Oh, the waste of letterhead!

So Much Irony

Church Leader Says He Was Lured into Abramoff Web

(Don't miss the response from DeLay's PR guy. It's guaranteed to make you chuckle.)

Engaging the Text: Stuff about God

Well, I think Scoots gave a good answer to our first question: How do Paul's comments about homosexuality fit into his argument in Romans? I'll reproduce his answer here:

As I understand Romans, Paul uses 1:18 thru 3:20 to establish that all of humanity – both Jew and Gentile – stands sinful and helpless before God. The idea is that humans are simply unable to be righteous on their own, which sets up Paul's proclamation of justification of both Jew and Gentile through faith (3:30).

Roughly speaking, the section consists of three moves.

The first move (which Matt has quoted) describes the thorough sinfulness of Gentiles. The idea is probably to catch the Jews in the audience thinking, "Yeah, those Gentiles really are awful."

But Paul goes on, in his second move (2:1ff), to say that those standing in judgment (perhaps Jews) are sinful as well. Finally, in a third move, (3:9ff) Paul throws out a litany of verses claiming that all of humanity is helplessly sinful.

Scoots' summary, up to this point, jives with every commentary I've ever read.

Consequently, one reaction to the passage in question could be to dismiss it out of hand, as something particularly Pauline, or at least Jewish, perhaps purely rhetorical, and in any case, incidental to Paul's real point: Jew and Gentile are both justified through faith.

However, this passage is a bit different than the vice lists we looked at earlier, because in Romans, Paul is doing some heavy-duty theological work. Rather than simply giving a list of do's and don'ts to particular congregations in Asia Minor, Paul claims to actually be telling us something about God. And this, of course, is the question that most of us care about – we may not trust Paul's patriarchal proclamations about sex and gender, but it sure would be nice to know what God thinks about the whole business.

Now it may be that we can still short-circuit this whole discussion, and I'll provide a couple of ways that we might do so.

First, it may be that Paul's statements about homosexuality here are universally applicable and universally understandable. Regardless of our worldview, the translation that we're reading, the connotation we might apply to different words, and the ineffable nature of God, it may be that these few verses represent a capsule of real live Truth, and that once we read them, we immediately have the option of receiving God's clear truth, or rejecting it.

The nice thing about this answer is that it's simple: Paul means I understand him to say and says what I understand him to mean. The nature of God is inherently simple, there are no mysteries, there are simply the things we ought to do, and the things we ought to avoid. The bad thing about this answer is that it's ... well ... too simple. It makes no allowance for the complexities of God, much less the complexities of human existence.

Second, it may be that Paul's statements about homosexuality conflict with our experience of the world, and must simply be judged inaccurate. This is a good approach for those who don't accept scripture as normative, or who mistrust Paul in particular, or who can't accept traditional interpretations of these parts of Romans.

The benefit of this approach is that we can be honest about our experience of the world without abandoning our faith in God. Problematic scriptures can be discarded, and edifying scriptures can be accepted on the basis of their self-evident truthfulness. But the problems with this second approach mirror the problems of the first. It becomes more difficult to allow scripture to convict us and teach us new ways to behave, plus it becomes very hard to explain how Paul's other theological statements – and likewise, any biblical statements about the nature and preferences of God – can be understood to be true.

But if we expect that Paul's statements about God are true in some general sense, we should probably spend a bit of time trying to figure out the sense in which his statements are true. Here are some possibilities.

The gentile culture worshiped other gods, so God allowed the introduction of homoeroticism.

In general, when cultures worship other gods, God allows the introduction of homoeroticism.

In general, when individuals worship other gods, God allows them to become homosexual.

In general, when individuals are rebellious, God allows them to corrupt their own bodies.

In general, rebellion against God tends to lead to the corruption of one's own body.

God disapproves of homoerotic behavior.

God disapproves of homoerotic lust.

God views heterosexuality as "natural", and homosexuality as "unnatural".

God approves of anything "natural", and disapproves of anything "unnatural".

Feel free to mix and match, or add your own.

Charity

Several blogs I frequent have been hosting heated discussions about charity. Seeing as how I'm going to spend entirely too much time writing comments for these discussions, I figured I may as well cross-post to my own blog. This is something I've been meaning to address, anyway.

One fellow said:
American and European consumption is part of what will gradually help end poverty.

While capitalistic nations have historically provided a higher standard of living to their citizens, this outcome is by no means guaranteed with capitalism on a global scale. One of the nasty side effects of capitalism is a gradual trend toward a wealth gap, where the rich get richer because they have the resources to do so, and the poor get poorer because they don't. Nobody really seems to know where this trend stops ... whether, for example, a global capitalism would produce food and shelter for everyone, or simply preserve current standards of living, and funnel more resources to the extremely rich.

We should keep in mind that we are talking about economic models here, not well-established scientific facts. And in light of that uncertainty, Christians are absolutely justified in trusting the simplicity of Jesus over the claims of capitalism, and rejecting the seductively convenient theory that we can best help the poor by buying whatever it is we want. Faith that capitalism will solve all our problems is kind of like "pie in the sky by and by" theology ... it sounds nice, but it does little to help the people who are starving today.

Another fellow said:
Jesus tells the rich young ruler, after he kept all the commandments, to sell all that he had, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus. Are we doing the same as we read these meaningless posts on our high dollar computers, wasting our valuble time at our overpaid jobs? I would say no!

Speaking of waste, this is a huge waste of the story of the rich young ruler. Obviously, none of us live up to what Jesus asks from this pitiful rich kid. None of us ever live up to the absurd ideals that Jesus presents. But in my opinion, that's what makes the point.

The rich young ruler is out to negotiate his salvation. He's playing the game of "how much do I have to do before you'll love me?" And in response, Jesus smacks the crap out of him. Jesus shows us that he can never give enough -- that we can never give enough -- that the lexus guy is doing the wrong thing, and so is the go-out-to-eat guy, and so is the two-pairs-of-pants guy. We all hold something back, so we're all sinners. Thanks for the info, Jesus. We'll just go on our way feeling guilty.

But I think we can do better than that. Because if Jesus' absurd demand teaches us anything, it teaches us that we're pretty stupid to suppose that God is concerned with what percentage of our income goes into a collection plate. That we're kind of crass to suppose that -- in this situation -- God is terribly concerned with "the condition of our hearts". God is concerned with people. And people are starving to death. So many people are starving that even the wealth of a rich young ruler won't feed them.

So instead of feeling guilty, or worrying about whether God approves, I expect we'd be better off giving as much as we can possibly make ourselves give. And next week, maybe we'll be able to give a little more. Because giving a little today is better than giving nothing as we tie ourselves in knots trying to figure out how much we have to give before God loves us.

So get after it. People are starving, remember?

Hooray for OC!

Just thought it was amusing to look at Wikipedia's list of Most Vandalized Pages and find dear old Oklahoma Christian right up at the top.


The summary is particularly amusing:

Vandalized a lot given nondescript nature of the school. Students there vandalize page, employees there revert it.

Call for Papers

Confession: About a month ago, I put a hidden statcounter on this blog to see how many of you were visiting but not leaving comments. I was a little surprised by the results:

Over the last 30 days, statcounter.com has counted:

1,046 page loads
751 unique visitors
331 returning visitors

Frankly, this makes me a little embarassed. You folks keep visiting, and I'm only posting once every couple of weeks, and I still haven't finished the "engaging the text" series.

Sorry.

In light of this new information, I'm going do do two things. First, I'm going to hustle up and finish this series of posts on the biblical texts about homosexuality.

Second, I'm going to request that you give me a hand. Every once in a while, I get busy or lazy, and it would be nice to have some guest posts saved up for those occasions. So if you have some interesting thoughts or questions that fit with the subject matter of Liberal Jesus, please let me know. And just to clarify, you don't have to be theologically or economically or socially liberal: opposing viewpoints are welcome as well.

To submit a guest post, please send email to this address: diablog.pop@gmail.com

Song Leader Revolution

If you're looking for yet another reason to love Shane, look no further: he's linked us to this *excellent* XBOX game.


I wish I knew the people responsible for this, because I want to kiss them.

Visit the site, or watch the commerical in Windows Media format. (Other formats are available on the Song Leader Revolution site.)

Engaging the Text: Paul's Theology in Romans

Ok, I've discovered that if I don't try to do this simply, I'm going to just continue to sit here and gape at the difficult questions that will be dredged up by a discussion of the Romans passage. So here we go. Let's start with a snippet of the text in question, beginning in Romans 1:18:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.



Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment?

I call this a snippet because it's just a part of Paul's larger discussion of the Jews and Gentiles in Romans.

Now it's fairly obvious which part of this text lights up the sin-o-meter (and, not incidentally, the sex-o-meter):

God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

As we read this text within our discussion, I think that we need to separate the questions that need answering.

The first question is, how does this comment fit into Paul's argument in Romans? Given the surrounding context and what we know about Paul (accepting at face value that this letter, and other letters, were actually written by Paul), what did he mean to communicate when he wrote the previous paragraph? What did he not mean to communicate?

The second question is, what are the theological implications of this statement? In other words, does it teach us anything about God? And if so, what?

The third question is, what are the moral implications of this statement? Once we understand what Paul meant, and what it tells us about God, how do we apply it to ourselves? Should this passage affect our behavior? And if so, how?

And He Looks Good On TV

Well, we know who Larry James will be rooting for in the 2008 democratic primary.

Romans, Shmomans

I'm having trouble finding time to write about the Romans passage. In the interim, if you're hankering for some interesting biblical stuff, you should visit Scoots's blog. Scoots is very smart and entirely too educated, and those two things combine to produce interesting and fun things like his latest post:

The difficultly for the reader in accepting the parable is accepting that both of these facts are true: the money we handle is not our own, and our access to managing it will soon come to an abrupt end.

The post has some jucier bits, but I don't want to give away too much of the punchline, so I'll just leave it at that.

I'm looking forward to more from Scoots: I expect his blog will have a fairly high signal-to-noise ratio. And that's pretty important to me, because I don't really like that other kind of blog ... you know, the kind that has a post a day telling me all about what the author had for lunch, punctuated with little emoticons that tell me how he is feeling?

Anyhow, click your way over to "Sccoots" and check it out.

Right now I'm feeling: all verklempt.

I Was Just Joking About the Scientific Study

After our brief discussion about intercessory prayer, it was kind of creepy to hear this on Day to Day yesterday:

Study of Heart Patients Sees No Power in Prayer

JEFFERY DUSEK: So in fact the knowledge of receiving prayer seemed to result in a modest level of increase in complications in that group.

ALEX CHADWICK: If you knew you were having this intercessory prayer - strangers you didn't know praying for you - somehow that complicated your recovery in some way.

JEFFERY DUSEK: It did, and essentially within one small complication, which was rapid heartbeat essentially.

Not that this odd little study offers much proof of anything at all. It was just kind of creepy to turn on the radio and hear Alex Chadwick using the words "congregation" and "intercessory prayer".

The Latest

The Equality Riders have made their visit to ACU and are now on their way to A&M. While I wasn't allowed to attend any of yesterday's sessions, I did get to have breakfast with Rebecca and a few others.

Within the next week, I'm hoping to have guest posts from a few Equality Riders, evaluating their visit. I'd also like to have posts from some of you ACU folks, so if you were there in the thick of the discussion, please volunteer.

Finally, a few visitors have commented on the earlier Equality Ride posts, and those are kind of buried now, so I'm going to pull their posts up here so that you can read them. (By the way, frenchpress, it's fabulous to hear from you. I'll be perusing your constellation of links as soon as I get the chance.)

frenchpress said...

according to this initial release seems it was a positive experience. i hope so.

thanks for all the info!

~t

anonymous said...

Soulforce has come and gone. And from my perspective both "sides" were blessed in an unexpected way. During a session called "Letters to Mel," students talked about what they'd learned from the visit. The Soulforce riders focused on the goodness/kindness of the people they'd met. They'd discussions with people who disagreed with them on a fundamental issue affecting their lives; yet, the discussions were conducted in a such a way that they felt affirmed as people. "I've made new friends." was one riders comment. "I didn't think that could happen here." On the ACU side, for those who cared enough to listen, they learned just how much pain has been piled on these young men and women. And for some of them, it's a lot of emotional pain. As I listened, I thought of Jeremiah and wondered, do our hearts break? Do we grieve for the struggles and sins of others? Are we content to watch from a cynical, safe distance in a critique of another's struggle - - never noticing that our own struggles will overwhelm us. Sorry, that really was preachy.

May He Zane Forever

OK, I know you're all excited to get to Romans, but you're just going to have to hold your horses.

Some of you know Zane Williams, who graduated from ACU 5 or so years ago. He's been trying to make it in Nashville singing songs, and now he has a song competing in the annual John Lennon Song Contest.

Zane's song Hurry Home, is one of two finalists in the Country music category. You can go to the song contest site, listen to both songs, and then vote on the one you like best.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE NOW
You can also go to Zane's site and read about the contest. I'm not sure, but I think this puts me at two degrees from Kevin Bacon.

Oh, and if you're a blogger and you like Zane's music, consider yourself tagged. Go post the links for the contest so all your readers can vote for Zane too.

Oh, and if you get a chance, I also recommend "Blues on Sunday" by Cadence (Jazz) and "Turn up the Faders" by Nathan Asher & The Infantry (Electronica). And both the hip hop entries are good. However, I do NOT recommend either of the gospel songs. I guess they're not terrible, just extraordinarily mediocre.

Engaging The Text: The Vice Lists

At Connor's suggestion, I'm going to skip ahead to the Vice Lists. But before we do, let me apologize for coming from such a boring direction on the last post. I think that the issue of biblical interpretation is critical to how we continue this discussion, and if we don't agree on some rules about interpreting the text, I'm constantly going to get anonymous commenters accusing me of "bending over backwards to read the meaning I want", or of "ignoring the plain meaning of the scripture." But that last post was kind of a blah way to raise the issue, so maybe we can just deal with it as we go.

As an update, let's look again at the scriptures that may address homoerotic behavior, and mark off Sodom and Gomorrah, because it just doesn't have any answers to our questions.

Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19)
The Creation Accounts (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2)
The Holiness Code (Leviticus 18 and 20)
Paul's Theology of Idolatry (Romans 1)
Vice List (1 Corinthians 6)
Vice List (1 Timothy 1)

Today I want to look at the Vice Lists in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy.

Most scholars agree that 1 Corinthians was written by Paul. 1 Corinthians wasn't the first letter from Paul to the young church in Corinth; he mentions a previous letter in Chapter 5. Paul spends a lot of time in the letter responding to his Corinthian opponents and discussing how to deal with divisions in the church. The vice list that we're concerned with appears in Chapter 6, where Paul is talking about how to deal with conflicts among church members. Here's an excerpt:

If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother goes to law against another — and this in front of unbelievers!

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Ok, let's immediately notice that the first part of the passage is not about homosexual sex, or sex at all. Paul's telling the Corinthians that they need to solve their own disputes rather than take one another to court, and in the kicker of the passage, tells them:

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

Then he reminds them that they are no longer sinners, but saints, and need to start acting like it. He reminds them to be sexually moral, and in the next chapter talks a bit about marriage and what people ought to do about it, because Jesus is obviously coming back in the next couple of years, if not weeks.

First, let's observe that this passage is not about homosexuality; it merely gets an offhand mention. Several authors, including the author of the article I mentioned in the post on Sodom and Gomorrah (Furnish), note that this list of naughty things is a common rhetorical device in period writing. So if this is a standard vice list, we shouldn't assume that Paul is referring to any specific behaviors of any specific person in the Corinthian church. Instead, Paul is simply listing a bunch of things that he thinks are self-evidently bad, as a means of getting to his point, which is, "you shouldn't be doing bad things".

On the other hand, it's possible that Paul is referring to a particular Corinthian behavior. If so, the Greek terms in the passage make it likely that this behavior is sex between men and adolescent male prostitutes. Even scholars who argue that homosexual behavior is sinful recognize this interpretation of the text.

The word malakoi is not a technical term meaning "homosexuals" (no such term existed either in Greek or in Hebrew),but it appears often in Hellenistic Greek as pejorative slang to describe the "passive" partners -- often young boys -- in homosexual activity.
Richard B. Hays, "Awaiting the Redemption of Our bodies: The Witness of Scripture Concerning Homosexuality", in John Carey, ed, The Homosexuality Debate in North American Churches.

In this case, the sinful activity described would include pederasty and prostitution, not consensual homoerotic behavior between committed adult partners. And the vice list in Timothy is even more parenthetical and vague ... the NIV does not even use the word "homosexual".

But no matter whether Paul is being specific or general, it seems clear that the point of these passages is not not the condemnation of consensual homosexual sex. Subsequent chapters in Corinthians talk extensively about morality and marriage -- a place some modern preachers would find perfect for a diatribe against "homosexuality" -- but Paul never mentions it again. And expanding his vague condemnation of gender-bending into a divine fiat against all homoerotic behavior seems to be stepping over some hermeneutical line.

Consequently, I'm going to reach the same conclusion about the Vice Lists that I reached about Sodom and Gomorrah: these passages contain no guidance regarding the morality of consensual homosexual sex. While I think we should at least consider Paul's (Paul's, not the Lord's) opinion about homoerotic behavior, this passge doesn't provide that opinion. Instead, we'll have to look at the passage in Romans, which we'll engage to in a future post.

Examining the Text: An Interlude

OK, Scott and Connor say that no one is going to argue with the previous post, so I'm going to chalk that one up as a perfect interpretation of Genesis 19. Let's say it together one more time,

"The Sodom and Gomorrah story has NOTHING to say about the morality of consensual homosexual sex."

From here, I had intended to proceed to the vice lists or Leviticus, but before I do that I first need to answer a nagging question. Because I think we can arrive at similar answers regarding what the text has to say about homosexuality, but only if we can agree on what we expect the text to say in general.

So my question is, how do we expect the Bible to inform our ethics?

This isn't a rhetorical question; I want to know what you all think. I'll go first and suggest some possibilities.

First, we could expect the Bible to act as a God-given rulebook, the perfect source of negative ethical guidance, telling us every single thing we should not do -- explicitly or by inference -- and possibly, but not necessarily, providing some helpful guidance on what we should do.

Second, we could expect the Bible to function the other way, as a God-given playbook, the perfect source of positive ethical guidance, telling us all the good things we should do, and possibly indicating a few things that we should not do.

Third, we could expect the Bible to be a storybook, containing tales that don't carry any normative moral weight, but may be helpful in honing our moral reasoning so that we can more accurately tell for ourselves what's right and wrong.

Or it could be none of those. Or it could be all of those, in bits. Personally, I'm not satisfied with any of those three approaches, and I'm hoping you'll give me something better.

(Also, Mike Cope posted another few bits on the B-I-B-L-E. They kind of tie in, I guess.)

Engaging The Text: Sodom and Gomorrah

OK, Connor, we'll eventually get to the Vice Lists, but in deference to our anonymous commenter, let's start with the account of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.

Most of us know this story: two angels come to visit Lot in Sodom, and Lot invites them to stay with him in his house. The angels agree. While they are there, the men of the city come to Lot's door and demand that he send out his guests so that they can rape them. Lot tries to send out his two daughters to protect his guests, but the men scoff at him and demand the visitors. The angels pull lot back into the house, close the door, and blind everyone in the crowd. Then they warn Lot to hightail it out of Sodom, because they're going to nuke it.

Lots of people seem to think this story is a condemnation of homosexuality. In many of our churches, we have interpreted God's later destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as a dramatic judgment on this behavior, and the modern word "sodomy" even implies that the characteristic sin of Sodom was aberrant sexual behavior. But if you read the story slowly, and with an eye to ancient custom, it becomes painfully obvious that the story is not about homosexuality. It's about hospitality. About what you do with the strangers who are among you.

Go ahead, read the story if you haven't read it lately.

As you read the story, I hope it became immediately obvious what the theme is. If it wasn't obvious, let's rehash: Lot meets strangers at the gate of the city and is the very model of hospitable behavior.

The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning."

"No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square."

But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate.

Then, in contrast with Lot, the men of Sodom show up to abuse the guests. In particular, they're going to insult their manhood by raping them. Lot tries to protect his guests.

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."

Notice that Lot's need to protect the strangers comes even before the protection of his own family. But those lustful men of Sodom respond as expected:

"Get out of our way!" they replied. "We are overcome with homoxsexual lust, like vampires who need to feed! We know that it is wicked, but we must have homosexual sex!"

Oh, wait, that's not right.

"Get out of our way," they replied. And they said, "This fellow came here as an alien, and now he wants to play the judge! We'll treat you worse than them." They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

Again, more abuse for the stranger and alien, and this time the alien is Lot. But those wiley angels pull him back into the house and blind the attackers. Then they hustle Lot out of Sodom and set it ablaze. The end.

Now if you didn't go back and read the story earlier, please go back and read the whole thing. You won't realize how much the story focuses on hospitality until you read it. Victor Paul Furnish summarizes it well in an article I read recently:

This is not a story about homosexual behavior in general -- and certainly not a story about homosexual acts performed by consenting adults. It is a story about the intent to do violence to strangers, who ought rather to have been accorded protection. It is only incidental to the story that, had the attack succeeded, it would have meant the rape of Lot's two male visitors by a mob of other males.
Victor Paul Furnish, "The Bible and Homosexuality: Reading the Texts in Context", in John Carey, ed, The Homosexuality Debate in North American Churches..

In other words, if the angels had ... um ... manifested themselves as females, and the story would read exactly the same. If we're going to read into this story a condemnation on homosexual sex, we might as well say that the story of Rahab the harlot shows God's approval of prostitution. So say it with me now...

"The Sodom and Gomorrah story has NOTHING to say about the morality of consensual homosexual sex."

And if you're still not convinced, let's look to A.Lo's recent comment, which echoes another bit of the Furnish article. Furnish gives a brief mention to a passage in Ezekiel 16, which quotes God as saying the following:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

I'm a little bit reluctant to accept A.Lo's argument ... as a rule, I try not to take a scripture from one book and make it apply to a story from another book, even if the passages seem to be talking about similar things. In this passage, Ezekiel isn't really concerned about completing a rap sheet for Sodom; instead, he's making a comparison between Sodom and Israel. But Ezekiel's focus on the poor and needy may be helpful if we take it as an antidote to what our culture has taught us about the Sodom story -- that it's about homosexuality.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, "the stranger and alien among you" are often lumped into a category with the poor and needy. So when Ezekiel makes reference to the poor and needy, we may infer that he interprets the Sodom story as a story about the men of Sodom abusing this category of people. And across the entire Bible, protecting the stranger is a much bigger theme than the wickedness of homoerotic behavior. The hebrew prophets are constantly saying things like, "God wants you to love those who are outsiders, and protect those who are defenseless."

So maybe the lesson that today's church needs to learn from the Sodom story is not, "God will rain fire on you if you're gay", but "God will rain fire on you if you don't stand up for those people among you who are strangers, those who are different, those who are, perhaps, a bit queer."

By the way...

In news that's somewhat related to the post below, I haven't had much luck finding ACU alumni who are interested in greeting the Equality Riders once they get to Abilene. The contact for the ride says everything is being taken care of by ACU, and the president of the Big Country chapter of PFLAG says that he's letting the ACU coordinator take the lead.

I hope this doesn't mean that the riders will be restricted to talking to a handful of staff and faculty members, or that obnoxious anti-gay people will be the only ones to show up when the riders arrive.

Enh.