Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church by Jack Rogers (Westminster/John Knox, 2006) 169 pp.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Today, the Religious Right warns of “activist judges” who act as the 1954 Supreme Court did in ruling racial segregation in American public schools unconstitutional. Jerry Falwell then argued: If “Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word,” the Brown ruling “would never have been made.” Also incensed, W. A. Criswell, then the Southern Baptists’ leading preacher, raged that the justices in Brown “are all a bunch of infidels!” and he added: “Don’t force me to cross over in those intimate things where I don’t want to go.” Anxiety over integrated sexuality lurked behind the anger over integrated schools and Bible verses propped it all up. Indeed, in the 1967 Loving decision, the Warren Court knocked down Virginia’s “God created” law against interracial marriage.
The South’s fundamentalist/segregationist/anti-miscegenation preachers, caught up in unstoppable social change, eventually changed their rhetoric – and, in some cases, even their minds. Yet, as historian Paul Harvey points out: “[T]he standard biblical arguments against racial equality, now looked upon as an embarrassment from a bygone age, have found their way rather easily into the contemporary religious right’s stance on the family.” And once again, “biblical” arguments threaten the welfare of millions. This time the other are gay men and lesbians.
The parallel is lucidly drawn by Jack Rogers, long-time Fuller Seminary professor, more recently at San Francisco Seminary, and in 2001, moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA. A soundly evangelical Christian scholar, Rogers states: “I am not gay. No one in my family is gay. That is why I was able to stay on the sidelines for so long.” Saddened by the “great wound in the body of Christ” over homosexuality, he recalls a line from his “favorite seminary professor”: “If Christ is divided, who bleeds?” (Addison Leitch)
Rogers finds “people fail to apply Jesus’ gospel to the issue of homosexuality [by] once again using a [harmfully naive] ‘common sense’ method of biblical interpretation.” He notes that they fail to follow abolitionists, for example, who applied a “Christ-centered approach [using] the whole Bible.”
It’s been long established that the devil can quote Scripture. On even slavery, scholars argue that the South had the better “biblical” argument, sticking to the letter rather than resorting to the spirit, i.e., neighbor love. (See: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview). And, of course, all those “pro-slavery” verses are still in the Bible. Rogers comments on all the allegedly antigay Bible verses and notes that even Marion Soards, who “opposes homosexuality on other grounds,” agrees that “it is impossible to declare the necessary relevance of these verses for our world today” and grants: “[O]nly indirectly may we derive information regarding homosexuality from this material.”
Rogers outlines seven guidelines for sound biblical interpretation, footnoted by Calvin’s commentaries and by various Confessions from the 16th through the 20th centuries. 1: “Recognize that Jesus Christ, the redeemer, is the center of Scripture.” He asks: “Can you imagine Jesus turning away someone who is despised, discriminated against, and distraught to the point of attempting suicide? I cannot. Yet some in the church have done just that to Christians who are homosexual.” 2: “Let the focus be on the plain text of Scripture, to the grammatical and historical context, rather than to allegory or subjective fantasy.” He notes: “The Bible, in its original Hebrew and Greek, has no concept like our present understanding of a person with a homosexual orientation” and he cites New Testament scholar Richard Hays’ saying that there’s no “exact equivalent for ‘homosexual’ in either Greek or Hebrew.” 3: “Depend on the guidance of the Holy Spirit in interpreting and applying God’s message.” He observes: “It seems that the Holy Spirit is once again working to change our church – making us restless, challenging us to give up our culturally conditioned prejudices.” 4: “Be guided by the doctrinal consensus of the church, which is the rule of faith.” Here he notes: “The Reformed confessions, properly translated, say nothing about homosexuality. In fact, they say very little about sexuality itself.” 5: “Let all interpretations be in accord with the rule of love, the two-fold commandment to love God and to love our neighbor.” 6: “Remember that interpretation of the Bible requires earnest study in order to establish the best text and to interpret the influence of the historical and cultural context in which the divine message has come.” He grants that “the assumption of male gender superiority is a significant aspect of the historical and cultural context of the biblical passages that seem to discuss homosexuality.” 7: “Seek to interpret a particular passage of the Bible in light of all the Bible.” He comments: “When we recognize that all of us, of whatever sexual orientation, are created by God, that we are all fallen sinners, and that we can all be redeemed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, homosexuality will no longer be a divisive issue.”
Rogers’ deep understanding of both Reformed and natural law theology yields a brilliant rebuttal to the crucial misuse of natural law as a fallback argument in Robert Gagnon’s rambling reductionism of sexuality to body parts.
But even if antigay Christians convince themselves that their biblical or natural law arguments are on target, they’ve missed the mark. As Paul reminded Corinthians, mere knowledge – even when right – is wrong. Instead of building up; it only “puffs up.” To Paul, the one who truly knows is the one who truly loves. Love does not demand that others bear burdens one refuses to bear oneself – and least of all simply because one finds oneself heterosexually, rather than homosexually, oriented. Love does not reserve a right to sexual intimacy for oneself while refusing that right for neighbors.
Up against traditional interpretations of the first Christians’ Bible, the Council of Jerusalem listened to the testimony of Peter, Paul and others who had witnessed God’s Spirit moving in those unclean “by nature,” just as He was moving in them. Rogers calls this “a relevant biblical analogy” for today’s homosexual issues in the church. He’s absolutely right.