3 More Things and 5 More Things: Toward an Integrative Perspective on Same-Sex Sexuality (VIII)

Occasionally when I am working through an issue in theology or ministry that requires a careful interpretation of some passage of the Bible or another, I use a little thought-experiment to help me test my hypotheses. It’s not the first step in my hermeneutical method, by any means, nor do I use it in any conclusive way. After I’ve sifted the evidence, however, and done enough exegetical and hermeneutical “heavy-lifting” that I feel I’m ready to draw some conclusions, I’ll sometimes give this mental exercise a try.

I call it the “Time Machine Test.”

Essentially, you imagine yourself stepping into a time machine and teleporting back to the first century AD, to the Apostle Paul’s study, let’s say, or to John the Evangelist’s drawing room (with full acknowledgement that both these locales are stylistic anachronisms for the sake of vividness). Once there, however, you have the opportunity to float your interpretation past the author himself (the time machine in question also happens to give you a supernatural ability to speak Koine Greek, 1st Century Aramaic, or whatever language is necessary to communicate). Sometimes the thought experiment works even better the other way around: you bring the author forward to your time and place, to get his take on how you’re teaching, implementing or otherwise putting into practice his ideas.

Given the author’s very particular way of viewing the world, shaped by his cultural schema and historical provenance, what would they think of the way you’ve come to understand what they wrote?

I freely admit that this thought experiment can be problematic. Stepping into the mind-set of a First Century Messianic Jew so completely that you could accurately guess how they would view a 21st Century Christian’s approach to matters of faith and practice is far easier said than done. On its own, the “Time Machine Test” is just as likely to generate biases in our interpretations as it is to dispel them.

After all the other necessary steps have been taken, however, including a careful study of the original uses of the original words and honest efforts understand what they’re saying in their immediate context, and then testing that against the wider teaching of the Scripture and holding it all up to the light of our theological first-principles—after all that’s been done—I find the Time Machine Test can be a helpful way of weighing your conclusions.

What would Paul, the first century messianic Jew really say, for instance, if he witnessed the modern-day phenomenon of speaking in tongues? What would he really tell us, if we asked him whether or not women should be ordained as ministers in the church?

Not that this post is attempting to settle either of those two questions. I’m only telling you about my “Time Machine Test” by way of explaining—given all I’ve said so far in this series on same-sex sexuality—why I am not, in the end affirming.

After I’ve done the kind of careful exegetical work described above on the relevant biblical data—sorting through the passages that refer to same-sex sex as best I can, researching the way the relevant words were used (or not used) in the ancient world, doing my darndest to understand what first Century Christians thought was actually happening when two people of the same-sex had sex, and trying to fit all this in to the wider witness of the Bible, taken as a whole, and sounded against my most deeply-held theological principles—after all that—when I get into my imaginary time-machine and ask someone like Paul, “But what about same-sex marriage?” I have great difficulty imagining them saying, “Yeah, that’s okay.”

In saying this, I am not suggesting that the church should reject LGBTQ people, or try to convert them into being straight, or denounce same-sex marriage, or shame same-sex couples by teaching them that their relationships are abhorrent to God, or any of the things I see happening in non-affirming circles (even the kindest of them). I am only saying that I do not believe the Bible provides us a clear warrant for being affirming, and that, if we want to respond wisely to the phenomenon of same-sex sexuality as it is experienced in the modern world, we will have to do something to integrate the witness of Scripture with our understanding of what it means to be LGBTQ+.

In an early post in this series, I attempted to explain what I mean by the second half of that sentence: “our understanding of what it means to be LGBTQ+.” In that post, I proposed the “three things” that inform my own understanding of what it means to be gay, bi, and/or trans: that it’s (1) not chosen, it’s (2) not changeable, and it’s (3) harmful to people if they are not able to accept it and embrace it as being true of themselves in some meaningful way. You can read my thoughts on that point here.

In this post I’d like to begin exploring the first half of the sentence: what really is “the witness of Scripture” on this matter?

In the spirit of my previous post, I’d like to suggest that just like there are “3 Things” and “5 Things” that are true of the LGBTQ+ experience, there are also “3 Things” and “5 Things” that are true when it comes to the Bible’s teaching about same-sex sexuality.

It seems that nothing anyone says about “same-sex sex and the Bible” is without some controversy, but at the very least, here are “3 things” about the relevant biblical data that I find nearly indisputable.

1. The Bible is exclusively oriented toward procreative, opposite-sex sex.

That is to say, whenever the Bible talks approvingly about sex, it seems to have procreative, heterosexual sex in mind. When it enjoins people to do it, it is clearly enjoining them to do it with members of the opposite sex. Likewise, there is no instance where the Bible presents a same-sex sexual relationship positively, as an example of the kind of thing people might consider pursing.

2. Whenever the Bible does talk about same-sex sex, it always speaks about it negatively.

On whether or not the Bible has mutual, exclusive, same-sex covenant relationships in mind when it speaks so negatively about same-sex-sex, see point 3 below. Even so, it is indisputable, I think, that every time the question of same-sex sex comes up, the witness of the Scripture is exclusively disapproving.

3. When the Bible does speak about same-sex sex, it is describing something very different from the same-sex covenant relationships that occur in the modern world.

This is a point that very few non-affirming thinkers will admit, but it is, in my view, as indisputable as the previous 2 points. I intend to dedicate an entire post to showing why I believe this to be true. For now, however, suffice it to say that same-sex sex in the ancient world always occurred in the context of an exploitative power dynamic (amounting to what we would call sexual abuse today), or, if not that, it was viewed as a sign of inordinate sexual desire (what we would call “lust”). Extensive research into Greco-Roman cultural practices and ancient languages show this to be true, but even a close reading of the relevant biblical passages themselves point you to this conclusion. It’s clear, for instance, that Paul is talking about men who are “inflamed with lust” in Romans 1:27, and whatever he’s thinking about in 1 Timothy 9 or 1 Corinthians 6, it’s clearly grouped with fornicators and human-traffickers, suggesting that we are dealing with some form of exploitative or abusive sex.

Those, then, are the “3 Things”: the Bible speaks positively only about opposite-sex sex; the Bible only speaks negatively about same-sex sex; the Bible never has same-sex “marriage” relationships in mind when the question of same-sex sex comes up.

The “5 things,” in response to these 3 things, are the 5 ways that Christians can try to implement these basic facts.

A Christian could conclude that:

1. The desire for same-sex sex is sinful; that even the attractions themselves are a sign of one’s sinfulness, and that having them makes one an object of God’s wrath. The solution here is to change the sinner by helping them no longer have their LGBTQ “urges.”

2. All forms of same-sex sex are inherently sinful, but it is not a sin to be tempted, only to act on one’s temptations. Therefore, having same-sex sexual desire does not make a Christian sinful, but same-sex attracted Christians must redirect, suppress or otherwise control their sexual desires and not act on them.

3. Though the Bible meant what it says when it prohibits same-sex sexuality, those prohibitions “no longer apply” today. Sometimes this takes the form of an argument that the Holy Spirit is leading us into new interpretations and applications of Scripture, like he did on the question of the Mosaic Law. Other times it appears as a more nuanced argument about the “trajectory” of the Scripture pointing us toward being affirming even though the warrant for it is not found explicitly in Scripture.

4. Because the biblical authors are not talking about same-sex covenant relationships as they occur in our world, and could not have even conceived of them in their world, the Bible simply does not address a question like same-sex marriage. In the same way that the Bible’s prohibition (let’s say) of heterosexual adultery does not mean that every form of heterosexual sex is prohibited, the Bible’s prohibition of male-male rape (for example) does not mean that all forms of male-male sex should be denounced. LGBTQ Christians should be encouraged, then, to pursue mutual, exclusive, monogamous same-sex relationships similar to the type of relationships heterosexual Christians are encouraged in.

5. Though the Bible does not approve of same-sex sex (in any form), there are other biblical principles that must also inform our response to LGBTQ+ people. These include things like: compassion for the vulnerable, mercy for the sinner, agape love, hospitality, and so on. These principles out-weigh the prohibitions against same-sex sex, and direct us to make accommodations for LGBTQ+ people. Often arguments in this regard will frame the whole question as a “disputable matter,” an issue which cannot be settled by simple “chapter and verse” references to the Bible alone, and about which people with different views can make different appeals to different verses in the Bible to make an equal convincing case.

There is a lot of variation within those five views, in terms of how people hold their perspectives and what implications they draw from them, but in essence they sum up the main approaches you will find in the church these days: 1) it’s wrong even to want it; 2) it’s wrong only to do it; 3) it was wrong then, but it’s not wrong now; 4) it’s not wrong (and never was); 5) it’s still wrong, but there are worse things, so it’s not so bad.

I like to think that the integrative view I’ve been arguing for in this series is a new “6th” way forward, because it does not really fit any of these 5 conclusions. It is a bit like “thing 5,” only it does not use the language of “sin” to describe same-sex sex. I would suggest it’s far better to talk about God’s “intention” for sex, and the ways in which different sexual practices obtain or fail to obtain to that intention. The integrative approach is a bit like “thing 4,” in that it agrees that the Bible is not speaking about monogamous, exclusive, same-sex covenant unions when it prohibits homosexual sex, only it does not conclude from this fact that the biblical authors would see nothing wrong in such relationships if they could see them as they occur in the world today. The integrative view is a bit like “thing 3,” only I think it’s very problematic to talk about the Holy Spirit “leading us into something new,” or “trajectories of Scripture” that were not previously evident. My preference is to hold the witness of Scripture in tension with our experience in the world as it is, integrating the two as wisely and compassionately as possible.

Up to this point, I have argued that we do something like this on all sorts of issues, from pacifism to contraception. From this point on, I will start to suggest what I think the boundaries of such an approach are: where do we draw the line? How do we live together with Christians who see it differently? And so on.

At this very point, however, let me try to put my argument in a nutshell: the witness of the Scripture is clear that same-sex sex does not fulfill the creator’s intention for sex when he created people as sexual beings, and it offers no explicit warrant for approving of same-sex marriage; at the same time, we know that it causes many LGBTQ people profound psychological harm and/or religious trauma if they come to believe that their deepest experience of their selves—an experience they did not chose and cannot change—makes them fundamentally abhorrent to God. Because of this, wise Christians should appeal to the full breadth of the biblical witness in responding to LGBTQ+ people, remembering that God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13), that the Lord has compassion on all things he has made (Psalm 145:8-9), and that agape love is the most excellent way (1 Corinthians 13). These principles suggest that we can graciously embrace LGBTQ+ people, as LGBTQ+ people, honoring and respecting any mutual, exclusive, covenant relationships they may enter into, and leaving the decision about how they can best express their sexuality as Christians between them and God (Rom 14:4).

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