Gay/Lesbian Liberation: A Biblical Perspective by George R. Edwards (Pilgrim Press, 1984, 153 pp.) Foreword by Norman K. Gottwald.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
With its subtitle, an enthusiastic foreword by a leading Old Testament scholar, and Edwards’ own acumen as a veteran professor of New Testament (at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary), one would expect that this book would help to untie knotty questions of biblical concern with which many Christians come to issues of gay and lesbian liberation, reciting oft-repeated Bible “clobber passages”. But sadly, I doubt that many of their problems will be unraveled by Edwards’ effort since they themselves seem so tied up in knots when it comes to sex and serious Bible study. The basic problem of biblical interpretation regarding homosexuality or any other topic, as Edwards acknowledges (citing Rudolf Bultmann and Robert McAfee Brown), is that of the “hermeneutical circle” in which “a text is not understood without a preunderstanding brought by the interpreter to the text”. Evangelicals who may be uncomfortable with the footnoting of Bultmann and Brown should recognize that no less a presuppositional apologist than the Reformed scholar, Cornelius Van Til, could as easily conclude with Edwards’ words: “exegesis without presuppositions is impossible”. But too much Bible interpretation done by conservatives proceeds as though the Bible is clearly understood directly, without its having to pass though the cultures of ancient writers and original recipients and into and through their “life settings” today. Indeed, even translation is interpretation. Like those who, as Edwards notes, diminished biblical authority while attempting to enhance it by repressing Galileo, many conservatives still are resistant to anything progressive in the general revelation of God (e.g., detected through science), arrogantly preferring their old assumptions and exhausted conclusions. These latter-day Bildads have no vision for revision. They certainly believe that God has nothing new to teach anyone through a “faggot-lover” of a New Testament professor. But for those who are willing to work their way through “a blockbuster of a book” (Gottwald’s words) that’s not unencumbered with some rambling theological jargon which perhaps will put all but the most avid theological reader to sleep, there are rewards for both readers and their neighbors.
Edwards returns repeatedly to the theme that since “gay and lesbian persons sense in a special way the politics of repression, they have a particular potentiality for perceiving the original sense in which the liberating love of God manifests itself on the human scene”. Accordingly, “The irreligion or atheism of many homosexuals roots in their refusal to accept the misdirected moral condemnation by which biblical pietists, instructed by what they perceive to be the wrath of God, seek the psychological, legal, and social incindration of lesbians and gays. Like Job, the prophets or Jesus himself, who learned by bitter experience to distinguish God from sanctimonious misrepresentations, the liberated homosexual may well renew for us once again the power of prayer and the significance of believing”. (It should be remembered that a hundred years ago, D. L. Moody and Frances Willard were saying the same about the distaste of Robert Ingersoll and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for the “ecclesiasticism and not Christianity” that, quoting their Savior, oppresses others with “burdens grievous to be borne”.) Edwards goes so far as to suggest: “The false piety of the church is so alienating that secular forms of love may, in some settings, become the necessary manifestation of the love of God”. While this may be overstated – after all, Job, the prophets and Jesus trusted in God in spite of the hypocrites – Edwards (with the Apostle Paul) “refuses to dilute God’s justification as gift (or grace) by allowing it to become a human or political achievement”. Thus, Paul’s gospel pervades this book, but fundamentalist knees may nonetheless jerk further to the right with so many appeals to “liberation theology”.
The author’s best contribution is his placing of specific biblical passages in their own best context, i.e., the Bible itself and its grand thrust of the even sensual agape of God. Edwards’ treatment of the ancient interchangeable use of eros and agape is helpful in the face of modern Gnostics who pretend an eternal chasm between the two. In discussion of phallic aggression, the destruction of Sodom, the Holiness Code, cultic prostitution and Pauline lexicography, he handles the plain sense of the “clobber passages” which many minds confuse with homosexuality today. For example, his dealing with Romans 1:26f in the context of the whole of Romans is especially adroit, demonstrating that Paul’s “rhetorical function” was the very opposite of fundamentalists’ use of this first chapter as a bludgeon against people with whom they refuse to identify, “looking out in boastful disdain on the lawless goyim”.
The bibliography lists over 200 entries including a spectrum of biblical scholars, theologians, historians, sexologists, clinicians and gay liberationists from whom Edwards has learned and with whom he agrees and disagrees. His working knowledge of their contribution sets this book, published by the United Church of Christ press, apart from evangelical press publications that show little or no acquaintance with the necessary scope of the literature.
Edwards’ study is a very valuable addition to the contemporary Christian debate about homosexuality, but it will probably be neglected by those who need most to read it and understand it: gay-maligning Christians who will dismiss it as “sloppy agape” and Christian-maligned gays who will dismiss it because they know darn well that abusive Christians are dismissing it anyway.