Andrew Goddard writes: There has been much heat surrounding the announcement of a new book on sexuality by Richard Hays and Christopher Hays. What follows attempts to shed some light on what is going on.
After introducing Richard Hays and his major past contributions in this area, the range of instant responses are sketched as sadly illuminating of much of the current state of play among Christians.
Drawing on the limited evidence available about the book’s content, I then highlight five key elements in its argument and offer some initial reflections on each of them. These are then set in the context of Hays’ earlier work on sexuality and in particular his discussions concerning experience (and its authority and relationship to Scripture) and the possible usefulness of appealing to the inclusion of the Gentiles as a paradigm for the inclusion of LGBTQ people.
The conclusion argues that until the book finally appears later this year it is best to “wait and see” and considers how it might then be evaluated and how we might respond to its contribution.
The recent announcement of yet another forthcoming book on Scripture and sexuality arguing for an “affirming” (“Side A”) perspective is already causing major waves even though relatively little is known about it. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, a 272 page academic volume, will appear from Yale University Press in late September (Amazon US) or November (Amazon UK & Yale UP). Its significance arises because of its two biblical scholar authors: Christopher B. Hays; and Richard B. Hays. Christopher Hays is the D. Wilson Moore Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the leading evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary where he has been on the faculty since 2008. He is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA). His work can be explored on his Academia page. Most excitement has however focussed on the fact that the co-author is his father, Richard B. Hays, who is George Washington Ivey Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Duke Divinity School. He is ordained in the United Methodist Church.
Introducing Richard Hays
In the words of Tom Wright,
When the history of biblical scholarship in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries comes to be written, a strong case will be made for seeing Richard B. Hays as the leading American New Testament scholar of his generation (Foreword to A Scribe Trained for the Kingdom of Heaven: Essays on Christology and Ethics in Honor of Richard B. Hays).
His co-authoring of this volume is significant in part because it was widely thought that (at the age of 75 and following retirement in 2018 after diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2015) he had decided not to publish further—but more because his previous work on sexuality has been a major scholarly contribution supporting traditional (“Side B”) teaching.
The most famous of these contributions was his chapter on “Homosexuality” in his 1996 classic Moral Vision of the New Testament which remains, over 25 years later, one of the best, short defences of a “Side B” view. It opens with the story of Gary, his best friend from his undergraduate days at Yale. What follows is described as “an act of keeping covenant with a beloved brother in Christ who will not speak again on this side of the resurrection” as Gary died of AIDS in May 1990 before being able to fulfil his plan “to write an article about his own experience, reflecting on his struggle to live as a faithful Christian wracked by a sexual orientation that he believed to be incommensurate with the teaching of the Scripture”. Hays was going to respond to this as a New Testament scholar “concerned about certain questionable exegetical and theological strategies of the gay apologists” (380). This account largely reproduces an earlier influential short article in Sojourners from 1991, entitled “Awaiting the Redemption of our Bodies”, which was revised for inclusion in Jeffrey S. Siker’s 1994 anthology Homosexuality in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate.
A decade before The Moral Vision, back in 1986, Hays had written a major scholarly rebuttal of the work of John Boswell focussed on Romans 1 in which he argued, in the words of the abstract:
John Boswell’s influential interpretation of Rom 1:26-27 is seriously misleading in several important particulars. A careful exegesis of the passage shows that Paul unambiguously describes homosexual behavior as a violation of God’s intention for humankind. Responsible interpretation must first recognize that Paul condemns homosexuality and then ask how that condemnation bears upon the formation of normative ethical judgments.
His concluding paragraphs (pp. 210-11) are worth quoting in full:
Certainly any discussion of the normative application of Romans 1 must not neglect the powerful impact of Paul’s rhetorical reversal in Rom 2:1: all of us stand “without excuse” (anapologêtos) before God, Jews and Gentiles alike, heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. Thus, Romans 1 should decisively undercut any self-righteous condemnation of homosexual behavior. Those who follow the church’s tradition by upholding the authority of Paul’s teaching against the morality of homosexual acts must do so with due humility (cf. the pertinent teaching of Gal 6:1-5).
Likewise, those who decide that the authority of Paul’s judgment against homosexuality is finally outweighed by other considerations ought to do so with a due sense of the gravity of their choice. The theological structure in which Paul places his indictment of relations “contrary to nature” is a weighty one indeed, and it is not explicitly counterbalanced by anything in Scripture or in Christian tradition. Arguments in favor of acceptance of homosexual relations find their strongest warrants in empirical investigations and in contemporary experience. Those who defend the morality of homosexual relationships within the church may do so only by conferring upon these warrants an authority greater than the direct authority of Scripture and tradition, at least with respect to this question.
Only when the issue is posed in these terms does the painful difficulty of the decision become clear. Boswell’s interpretation of Rom 1:26–27, inadvertently blurring the distinction between exegesis and hermeneutics, falsifies the choice by making it appear too easy. We must forthrightly recognize that in Romans 1 Paul portrays homosexual activity as a vivid and shameful sign of humanity’s confusion and rebellion against God; then we must form our moral choices soberly in light of that portrayal.
In 2003, an adaptation of his chapter from The Moral Vision appeared in a volume of essays (Staying the Course: Supporting the Church’s Position on Homosexuality) defending the then traditional stance of his United Methodist Church.
Since then, in the last twenty years he has continued to contribute extensively in the area of biblical interpretation (following on from his role in The Scripture Project) encouraging Christians to “read with the grain of Scripture” (the title of his recently published collection of essays). In particular, he has focussed on the relationship of the New Testament to the Old Testament, turning his focus from echoes of the Old Testament in Paul’s writings (his 1989 Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul) to the Gospels (Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness, 2016, and Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 2018). He has, however, not written further in the ongoing debates on sexuality, although in August 2014 his public articulation as Dean of Divinity of the UMC’s then clearly conservative Discipline led to controversy and some confusion, and a public letter of explanation. His stance has therefore been thought to remain much as set out in his earlier writings. The announcement of this new book shows that this is not the case and, lest there is any doubt about that, the publisher’s blurb includes the statement that the book “closes with Richard Hays’s epilogue reflecting on his own change of heart and mind”. The reaction has been instant and strong and once again reveals the powerful negative emotions and judgments found across the spectrum of views.
Reactions to the Book
I became aware of the new book from a Facebook and Twitter comment from Robert Gagnon who has consistently and extensively argued for the traditional position since his major book appeared in 2001. His assessment was clear from the start – “Sadly, Richard Hays (professor emeritus of Duke Divinity School) has backslidden into heresy, reneging on his decades-old published rejection of homosexual practice as immoral” (bold original). It proceeded to summarise his critique of the book’s apparent stance, ending
God hasn’t changed his mind. Hays and son have. They are now swimming in the sea of heresy, rejecting the clear and overwhelming witness of Scripture (including Jesus) for its antithesis in today’s misguided world, and in the process encouraging the embrace of behavior that leads to exclusion from the Kingdom of God.
That can’t be loving by any stretch of the imagination.
Responses on the Gagnon thread include Douglas Groothuis warning “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” and stating that “bad hermeneutics, driven by culture, and not grammar and context, will sink institutions”. Another leading conservative, Denny Burk wrote more in sorrow than anger:
I am deeply grieved by this. Richard Hays had penned one of the most important New Testament ethics books ever written and had held the line on what the Bible teaches concerning sexuality. Apparently, that is over.
Other lay conservative voices on social media have been even more strident and dismissive with statements showing the visceral gut-responses of some conservatives such as
- that the authors “affirm sin as they decide #Christianity isn’t for us. This book is a full bore rejection of #JesusChrist Complete and total rebellion against God”
- that “If Richard Hays can change his mind on homosexuality after his incomparable analysis in The Moral Vision of the New Testament, then I think we are one step closer to a form of Christianity where doctrine doesn’t matter, and where the entire concept of “repent and be saved” is utterly foreign. In short, we are one step closer to a fully paganized Church: one where Jesus is merely one among many gods, and his teachings a canon amongst many canons”
- that “Looks like Dr Richard Hays has gone the way of David Gushee and others: apostasy at the end of the rainbow! It’s heartbreaking to see once sound theologians, ethicists, and pastors get sucked in by the false religion of the rainbow mafia. I pray for their repentance!”
Several younger fellow New Testament scholars expressed surprise with Matthew Thiessen commenting, “Apparently, Richard Hays and Christopher Hays have a book coming out that argues for the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church. Will wonders never cease?” and Emily Gathergood noting that “this will certainly ruffle feathers”.
Thiessen was also among those who could not simply celebrate the change. When David W. Congdon commented that “I’ll take the W whenever it happens, but wow did his earlier work do a lot of damage. I know a number of people who based their positions solely on Hays’s book”. Thiessen responded, “Ya, I have similar thoughts. And I keep wondering what repenting and repairing, to steal Rabbi Ruttenberg’s phrase, look like in this case”.
Others were even starker with statements such as
Different Take: It’s disgusting that Richard Hays will get positive attention for *finally* NOT promoting homophobia anymore after decades of doing incredible damage to LGBTQ people. This is like, “The man finally stopped beating his wife. Let’s celebrate that he came around!”
Some similar critical responses went beyond tweets with a number of instant articles expressing rage at the effect of his previous work and being clear that “I cannot congratulate Richard Hays for finally getting to where we needed him to be long ago. Moral Vision’s homosexuality chapter has done untold harm these past 30 years, and such harm calls for the most explicit and contrite repentance one can muster”.
Others, however, were more welcoming with Charlie Bell tweeting “Well here is some good news!”. That spirit is also seen in the two quoted commendations for the book from David Gushee (who went on a similar journey a decade ago which he has written and spoken about regularly since and summed up in terms of 10 reasons) and Eugene Rogers (author of Sexuality and the Christian Body (1999) and the 2002 reader Theology and Sexuality):
This book is an event of historic significance. Senior New Testament scholar Richard Hays here renounces his very widely-quoted (and exploited) non-inclusive treatment of human sexuality from thirty years ago. His son, Old Testament scholar Christopher Hays, of Fuller Theological Seminary (!), here clearly and boldly embraces LGBT+ inclusion, surely at the risk of his employment. Their case is made based on biblical materials, notably a trajectory-type vision emphasizing the ever-widening range of God’s mercy across the canon. Traditionalists will not be convinced by the exegesis. Those who have been wounded by the church’s rejection, and their allies, will see this book as occasion for celebration. (David P. Gushee)
When I received an invitation to blurb a book by Richard Hays on the Bible and sexuality, my first reaction was to say, Absolutely not. But then I thought, just take a look. Twenty-five hours later, I’d read the whole thing. A distinctive argument that may help churches reconcile. (Eugene F. Rogers, Jr.)
Not everyone however jumped to instant strong reactions from their own established views. Two gay “Side B” Christians offered more careful reflections:
I feel complicated and a little sad to hear about Richard Hays changing his stance on the morality of same-sex sex; both the posts about him “ignoring the Bible” on one side or “finally affirming and including LGBTQ+ people” on the other frustrate me about the same (Grant Hartley)
I’m going to write something about the forthcoming Hays book on sexuality. Reading Richard’s infamous chapter in his Moral Vision book shaped the trajectory of my life. I can’t imagine my vocation w/o his work on Paul. I’m thankful for him and am praying for his health (Wesley Hill)
Such caution seems wise especially given how little is currently known about the book. Apart from the commendations noted above, all we have to go on is the 267-word blurb (almost exactly one word for each page!) and 10-word title.
What are Christopher Hays and Richard Hays claiming?
The specific claim is that the book is “developing a theological framework for the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in Christian communities”. While many on “Side B”, like Living Out, are refusing to let “Side A” have a monopoly on “inclusive” language (just as many on “Side A” are refusing to let “Side B” have a monopoly on “biblical” language) it would appear that this phraseology signals the rejection of the historic UMC position Richard Hays used to defend and quoted back in 2014 concerning “sexual conduct” i.e. “the church’s long-standing disapproval of same-sex relationships” and prohibition of clergy “performing same-sex unions”. It is unclear however what ethic replaces this and whether or not they advance an argument for same-sex marriage.
There appear to be five main elements to this framework:
First, as signalled in the title, we are promised “a fresh, deeply biblical account of God’s expanding grace and mercy”. God is “dynamic and gracious” and “consistently broadening his grace to include more and more people. Those who were once outsiders find themselves surprisingly embraced within the people of God, while those who sought to enforce exclusive boundaries are challenged to rethink their understanding of God’s ways”. Although not explicitly mentioned, there are clear signals in the description given here that the “inclusion of the Gentiles” argument based on Acts 10–15 may be an element in their argument.
The focus on the language of “mercy” (also a common theme in Pope Francis’ teaching and it may be that their position has the same nuance and pastoral generosity—or is it theological incoherence?—many see in his approach) is intriguing. Mercy speaks of God’s response to human sin and does not itself provide an account of the way of sexual holiness. There may here be echoes of some of the approach of a much earlier Fuller-based scholar who generated some controversy on these matters, ethicist Lewis Smedes. Initially developing some of the line of argument advanced by Helmut Thielicke back in his Ethics of Sex (1964), Smedes’ Sex in the Real World (1976, also published as Sex For Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living) was then developed much further in his important 1999 article which was, interestingly, entitled “Like the Wideness of the Sea?” (as PDF here) echoing the same hymn (“There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy”) that the book title echoes. His death in 2003 (aged 81) meant he did not further articulate his position but from the mid-1990s (when he was about the age Richard Hays is now) he identified with the vision of Evangelicals Concerned. His 1999 article generated considerable discussion at the time, David G. Myers re-engaged with it in 2010 in relation to the “Side A” position then advanced by Jack Rogers, and revealed in the same year that, in relation to his Sex For Christians, “Six months before his accidental death, he [Smedes] sent me an email, in which he said, “If I could rewrite that, I would add one more sentence today: It is a burden most obediently and creatively borne in a committed, love partnership with another.” It was revisited by the journal that published it fifteen years later in 2014 with four contributors engaging its arguments. As recently as 2022, Scott Hoezee again returned to it in the same journal.
Second, it is claimed that this “more expansive way of listening to the overarching story that scripture tells” is to be placed at the centre of the argument not “a scattered handful of specific passages” where it is claimed that “arguments about this same set of verses have reached an impasse” and “these debates are missing the forest for the trees”.
Hays was previously very clear about what he calls the “descriptive task” of good exegesis in relation to specific passages. It is not yet clear whether he now has a new approach to these “trees” or what he means by referring to “an impasse”. Is this simply a description of the apparent “stuckness” of the debate about how to interpret these passages within both church and academy or is he giving new weight to exegetical arguments (such as those of Boswell) that he previously rejected? It is also unclear what has changed in relation to the “the forest” as Hays was clear that the passages cohered within a biblical theology of sexuality:
no theological consideration of homosexuality can rest content, however, with a short list of passages that treat the matter explicitly. We must consider how Scripture frames the discussion more broadly: How is human sexuality portrayed in the canon as a whole, and how are the few explicit texts treating homosexuality to be read in relation to this larger canonical framework? (The Moral Vision, 389).
Again we have to wait and see if the book will articulate a different canonical account of the “forest” of human sexuality from that offered there around “God’s creative intention for human sexuality”, “The fallen human condition” and “The demythologizing of sex” all related to the focal images of community, cross and new creation.
Third, on the basis that “within the biblical story” we also discover a “God who is willing to change his mind” it is argued that “If the Bible shows us a God who changes his mind…perhaps today’s Christians should do the same”.
This clearly opens up significant theological questions about what it means to speak of God “changing his mind” and how we know that he has done so particularly if his mind is now contrary to what God consistently revealed in Scripture. It is a different claim from claims that either we now know God’s (unchanged) mind better than we did in the past or the teaching of Scripture properly interpreted does not reveal the mind of God but simply the (fallible) mind of earlier generations concerning the mind of God.
It opens up the possibility that the book accepts the previous readings of Scripture offered by Richard Hays but he now believes these no longer teach us God’s mind on these matters because God’s mind has changed. This would make the argument potentially similar to that of fellow New Testament scholar, Luke Timothy Johnson, who has honestly stated:
The task demands intellectual honesty. I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says…The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? We must state our grounds for standing in tension with the clear commands of Scripture, and include in those grounds some basis in Scripture itself…We do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us. (“Homosexuality and the Church”, Commonweal, 15th June, 2007)
Interestingly part of Johnson’s argument, though not talking of God “changing his mind”, is that
Implicit in an appeal to experience is also an appeal to the living God whose creative work never ceases, who continues to shape humans in his image every day, in ways that can surprise and even shock us. Equally important, such an appeal goes to the deepest truth revealed by Scripture itself—namely, that God does create the world anew at every moment, does call into being that which is not, and does raise the dead to new and greater forms of life.
It is clear that a key argument the authors must be making is that the church needs to change its mind (or at least be open to doing so) on matters of sexuality but it is not clear this is best advanced on the basis of claiming that God changes his mind. It certainly does not follow that even if God does in some sense change his mind on some matters (as might be argued to be the case from developments within Scripture as noted below) then this proves it is right for us to change our mind on some specific subject and/or obvious what we should change it to accept instead.
Fourth, the book points out “ongoing conversations within the Bible in which traditional rules, customs, and theologies are rethought”.
Here one of the major challenges the book faces is summed up in Richard Hays’ discussion of his “synthetic task” when faced with such “conversations” within Scripture:
Though only a few biblical texts speak of homoerotic activity, all that do mention it express unqualified disapproval. Thus, on this issue, there is no synthetic problem for New Testament ethics. In this respect, the issue of homosexuality differs significantly from matters such as slavery or the subordination of women, concerning which the Bible contains internal tensions and counterposed witnesses. The biblical witness against homosexual practice is univocal (The Moral Vision, 389).
Fifth, the authors claim that “God has already gone on ahead of our debates and expanded his grace to people of different sexualities”.
Here it is seems clear that the primary argument relates to God’s current and novel work in the life of individual Christians and the church. This looks like it is a form of the “trajectory” argument which goes beyond trajectories found within Scripture itself (William Webb’s Slaves, Women and Homosexuals explored many of those issues back in 2001 and showed the difficulty of such appeals within the canon in relation to sexuality) to embrace trajectories which are discerned and understood to be Spirit-led within the current life of the church.
Once again there are signs that the “inclusion of the Gentiles” paradigm will be in play but this faces a number of difficulties including the following two. First, is it really being suggested that God has only just “expanded his grace to people of different sexualities” having once withheld it and perhaps even that so doing is evidence he has “changed his mind”? The title’s use of “widening” is here surely at best misleading as God’s mercy has not widened further than its breadth in Christ and in the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit. Second, evidence that God has “expanded his grace” to include people does not reveal how he now calls them to live (a matter the Council of Jerusalem had to decide on and, as Hays notes in Moral Vision, thus prohibits porneia, sexual immorality, and perhaps on the basis of the Leviticus Holiness Code, Moral Vision, 383, 394).
This last point about Gentile inclusion may also help us to locate the book’s new approach within Richard Hays’ own previous work and influences upon him.
Setting the new book in context
One of the reasons the book’s announcement has caused such a stir is that it has come as such a surprise with seemingly no evidence suggesting a significant change of mind. Interestingly, one tweet, commented
I spoke with Richard about this in 2022 when he spoke at my FL parish. He said the matter was ‘adiaphora,’ but strongly defended the traditional perspective on marriage (in the context of a public lecture). So I don’t know how to make sense of this… will have to read his book.
One factor—and perhaps relevant given this intriguing reported “adiaphora” comment here (does the author of an excellent commentary on 1 Corinthians now believe that what we do sexually with our bodies is a matter of indifference?)—is the recent turmoil caused within his own UMC denomination over these matters. It may be that the book arises out of deciding not to join the reported over 7,500 congregations (about 25% of US UMC congregations) given permission to leave the UMC since 2019 and seeking instead to develop a new theological account in the light of that crisis.
There is also the interesting question of the influence on the two authors of former Fuller New Testament professor, J.R. Daniel Kirk. Kirk left Fuller back in 2015 in part over his thinking on sexuality developing in ways seemingly like those of Richard Hays (which Robert Gagnon strongly criticised, subsequently welcoming his departure; they would later debate with each other). An important element in Kirk reaching the conclusions he did has similarities with the arguments signalled above in the book’s blurb. He is clear that “I come to an affirming position on same-sex relations in the church by following biblical trajectories to conclusions that the biblical writers themselves do not draw” and a central biblical pattern for him is the inclusion of the Gentiles (see the arguments in “Embracing the Gentiles”, “Trajectories Toward Gay Inclusion?” and “Eschatological Trajectory of Gay Inclusion”). In the latter he explicitly refers to Richard Hays’ Moral Vision and its three focal images of Cross, Community and New Creation.
In 2021, in A Scribe Trained for the Kingdom of Heaven: Essays on Christology and Ethics in Honor of Richard B. Hays, he took this a stage further with a contribution (which I have only just discovered exists and am yet to find and read) entitled “The Moral Vision of LGBTQ Inclusion: Community, Cross, New Creation”. It would appear that Kirk here does what Brian Walsh did in his contribution to the Festschrift for Tom Wright (“Sex, Scripture and Improvisation”): take a central element of the honoree’s hermeneutics and argue that it should lead them away from their clear “Side B” conclusion to become supportive of “Side A”. Like Kirk, Walsh too appeals to the narrative of Gentile inclusion, drawing on the work of Sylvia Keesmaat in “Welcoming In The Gentiles” as well as telling the sort of stories of LGBTQ+ Christians that may now sit alongside Gary’s story for Richard Hays and be seen as evidence that “God has already gone on ahead of our debates and expanded his grace to people of different sexualities”.
It is these two aspects of appeal to experience and the biblical witness concerning Gentile inclusion which appear to be significant features of the new argument. It is noteworthy that the seeds of them both are present back in The Moral Vision though Hays was then clear that the seeds faced major challenges that he thought made it impossible for them to grow. They are both important elements in Hays’ hermeneutical task and he was already clear in The Moral Vision that this was where the real disagreements were to be found:
As the foregoing exegetical discussion has shown, the New Testament offers no loopholes or exception clauses that might allow for the acceptance of homosexual practice under some circumstances. Despite the efforts of some recent interpreters to explain away the evidence, the New Testament remains unambiguous and univocal in its condemnation of homosexual conduct. The difficult questions that the church must face are all hermeneutical questions. In what way are we to apply these texts to the issues that confront us at the end of the twentieth century… (394)
In relation to experience, in Chpt 13 (“How Shall We Use the Text?”) in Part 3 of The Moral Vision exploring the hermeneutical task, Hays looks at the role of experience and argues that it “can claim theological authority” but “only when it is an experience shared broadly by the community of faith” and “claims about experience as a theological authority must always be tested in light of Scripture and through the corporate discernment of the community of faith” (297). He then asks what may prove to be a key question raised by this new study given the emphasis on God changing his mind (a significantly different claim from the belief that God is “free to act in surprising ways”):
Are there cases, however, where the church as a whole might acknowledge some new experience as revelatory even against the apparent witness of Scripture? The paradigm case for such a possibility is found in the story of Peter’s preaching to the household of the Gentile Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11, and the church’s subsequent acknowledgement that God had given the Holy Spirit even to those who were “unclean” according to biblical norms….Such possibilities cannot be excluded a priori; God is, as Barth would insist, free to act in surprising ways. It must be stated as a theological guideline, however, that claims about divinely inspired experience that contradicts the witness of Scripture should be admitted to normative status in the church only after sustained and agonizing scrutiny by a consensus of the faithful. Far more often, our experience, ambiguous and sin-riddled, will need to be judged and corrected in light of Scripture, which teaches us again and again not to be conformed to this age but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may rightly discern the will of God (Rom. 12:2) (The Moral Vision, 297-8)
In his discussion on homosexuality, Hays returns directly to this question. After repeating the guideline in the passage above he writes:
It is by no means clear that the community of the church as a whole is prepared to credit the experientially based claims being made at present for normative acceptance of homosexuality. Furthermore, in its rush to be “inclusive,” the church must not overlook the experience reported by those Christians who, like Gary, struggle with homosexual desires and find them a hindrance to living lives committed to the service of God. This is a complex matter, and we have not heard the end of it. In any case, it is crucial to remember that experience must be treated as a hermeneutical lens for reading the New Testament rather than as an independent, counterbalancing authority (399, italics added).
The question perhaps is whether, in 2024 unlike in 1996, Richard Hays and his son now believe that “the community of the church as a whole is prepared to credit the experientially based claims being made at present for normative acceptance of homosexuality”. However, the history of churches that have attempted to make that move in the last three decades (not least the UMC and Anglicans in particular provinces and globally) warn against the consequences, in terms of unity and growth, of embracing that which the book argues for—“the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in Christian communities”, as that is usually understood.
Immediately prior to this passage, again referring to Gary (as one among “numerous homosexual Christians…whose lives show signs of the presence of God, whose work in ministry is genuine and effective” (398)), Hays asks the crucial question which this new book will need to answer if as a key part of its argument it is to appeal persuasively to God having clearly “expanded his grace to people of different sexualities” including sexually active and legally married same-sex couples:
Should we, like the earliest Jewish Christians who hesitated to accept “unclean” Gentiles into the community of faith, acknowledge the work of the Spirit and say, “Who are we to stand in the way of what God is doing?” (cf. Acts 10:1–11:18)? Or should we see this as one more instance of a truth that all of us in ministry know sadly about ourselves: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”? God gives the Spirit to broken people and ministers grace even through us sinners, without thereby endorsing our sin. (398–9, italics added).
Here once again, already in The Moral Vision, we are back in Acts 10–15 with the inclusion of the Gentiles and immediately following the previous passage quoted above concerning “experientially based claims” Hays wrote “This is the point at which the analogy to the early church’s acceptance of Gentiles fails decisively” (399).
Despite that strong conclusion, Hays was already recognising the potentially significant weight to be given to this argument in The Moral Vision. Writing earlier in the chapter about the different modes of hermeneutical appropriation (rules, principles, paradigms, symbolic world) where importantly “the paradigmatic mode has theological primacy” (310)) he was already clear that
A more sophisticated type of paradigmatic argument in defense of homosexuality is offered by those who propose that acceptance of gay Christians in the twentieth-century church is analogous to the acceptance of Gentile Christians in the first-century church. The stories in Acts 10 and 11 provide, so it is argued, a paradigm for the church to expand the boundaries of Christian fellowship by recognizing that God’s Spirit has been poured out upon those previously considered unclean. The analogy is richly suggestive, and it deserves careful consideration (395-6, italics added).
And yet, as we have seen, just three pages later he judges the analogy to be one which “fails decisively”. His reason for such a clear and strong conclusion is that
Only because the new experience of Gentile converts proved hermeneutically illuminating of Scripture was the church, over time, able to accept the decision to embrace Gentiles within the fellowship of God’s people. This is precisely the step that has not—or at least not yet—been taken by the advocates of homosexuality in the church. Is it possible for them to reread the New Testament and show how this development can be understood as a fulfillment of God’s design for human sexuality as previously revealed in Scripture? In view of the content of the biblical texts summarized above, it is difficult to imagine how such an argument could be made (399).
If this line of reasoning still stands the question is whether the “new experience” of gay-partnered converts and gay Christians entering partnerships and legal marriages can now be shown to be “hermeneutically illuminating”. It may be that the illumination that is now seen relates to the “widening of God’s mercy” but that is not all that The Moral Vision required. It also would require us to ask how the new book’s proposals “can be understood as a fulfilment of God’s design for human sexuality as previously revealed in Scripture”. A key test of the book’s argument, therefore, will be whether “in view of the content of the biblical texts” these two biblical scholars have now accomplished a convincing “integrative act of the imagination” (Moral Vision, 6) that Hays holds to be essential in “the use of the New Testament in normative ethics” (310).
Conclusion
It is clear from the instant reactions that many on “Side B”, on hearing of this new book, are where Richard Hays was in 1996 – “it is difficult to imagine how such an argument could be made”. Even David Gushee, among the few people to have read the text, in praising the book for reaching similar conclusions to those he has reached, is clear that “Traditionalists will not be convinced by the exegesis”.
One of the depressing aspects of many of the instant reactions is that on the basis of less than 300 words (aimed in part at increasing sales) people have rushed to judgment about the book and its arguments already. As so often, social media has again demonstrated that there are people found across the spectrum of views on matters of sexuality who act in unwise and ungodly ways. But there are also wise and godly people across the spectrum of views and all the evidence is that these two authors fall into that category (which is not to deny that, like all of us, they can also fall into error). Rather than (a) celebrate because we think they now agree with us (even though we don’t know even know for sure what they argue for let alone how they argue for it), (b) get angry because it took them so long to see the light and have done damage and led others to do damage to LGBTQ+ people, including Christians, for decades, or (c) be dismayed or denunciatory because of where we believe they now stand (even though we don’t know even know for sure what they argue for let alone how they argue for it), much better (d) to wait and see what exactly they are offering to the church.
If, as seems clear, they are now articulating more a “Side A” than a “Side B” perspective then this book is likely to overtake Brownson’s Bible, Gender and Sexuality (2013) as the best case from within biblical scholarship for such a stance. Brownson followed a similar personal journey away from a “moderate, traditionalist position” (Bible, Gender and Sexuality, 11; that earlier approach is set out here) which was triggered in his case by his son coming out. Despite some strengths, his book was, to my mind, ultimately unconvincing.
As I have sketched out above, I already have a number of major questions about the book’s apparent main lines of argument. In particular, I’m interested as to whether they have been able to present a more persuasive argument from the inclusion of the Gentiles than others have done. My earlier questions about this whole approach in a 2001 Grove booklet remain despite its increasing prominence and developments in its form since then. I am also intrigued as to how they connect up the wonderful wideness in God’s mercy which they highlight to “Sexuality within the Biblical Story” about which the book’s description tells us absolutely nothing as to its “moral vision”.
Among the many reasons The Moral Vision of the New Testament remains, for me, such a significant and helpful book, is that in it Richard Hays understands New Testament ethics as the pursuit of a “normative theological discipline” in order “to clarify how the church can read Scripture in a faithful and disciplined manner so that Scripture might come to shape the life of the church”. He is clear that this requires giving “a coherent account of our methods for moving between text and normative ethical judgments” (3). I find it hard to believe that fundamental vision of his calling has changed. There are already multiple ways in which those who reject the “Side B” view Hays defended in that book have sought to argue they are being faithful to Scripture. Given he has experienced a “change of heart and mind” (and seems to believe that God has in some sense done so too) I look forward to seeing:
- how he now argues—and in particular answers his own serious objections, cited earlier;
- how he wants “to shape the life of the church”;
- whether he is still recognisably reading Scripture “in a faithful and disciplined manner”;
- whether he has offered “a coherent account” of the developments in his thinking; and
- how he is now “moving between text and normative judgments”.
I hope and pray that if I and others who currently remain with the understanding he set out in The Moral Vision find that he and his son have achieved this where others have failed we will, like him, have the courage and humility to acknowledge this, admit our past errors, “repent and repair”, and trust ourselves to the wideness of God’s mercy.
But if ultimately the book’s argument fails it must, it seems, be judged as commending a form of sin so that God’s mercy may be thought to have widened. In that case, I hope and pray that I and others will, in response, find more and better ways to express and embody Scripture’s moral vision, aware that all of us, whatever our convictions, rely wholly on God’s mercy, are called to be merciful just as our Father is merciful, and are warned in Scripture that judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.
This is the grace and mercy expressed in my Bible app verse for today:
For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good (Titus 2:11-14).
Revd Dr Andrew Goddard is Assistant Minister, St James the Less, Pimlico, Tutor in Christian Ethics, Westminster Theological Centre (WTC) and Tutor in Ethics at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He is a member of the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) and was a member of the Co-Ordinating Group of LLF and the subgroup looking at Pastoral Guidance.
It is disconcerting when respected scholars (and institutions) appear to change positions. Thank you Andrew for the way you have sought to set the scene ahead of the release of this new book. And quite an achievement in the absence of the text!
But most of all, thank you for the measured tone as evinced by your final two paragraphs that call us to humble and merciful obedience. Amen to that prayer!
Or you could wait until the book is actually published?!
Yes—but what Andrew has done is set out from Hays’ own previous writing what that will need to achieve in order to be persuasive.
Seems perfectly fair to me.
Agree with PC1. The article is unnecessary speculation.
Fuller and the Methodists have precedents for step-change declension.
The argument of God changing his mind is far from new, from the Open/Process theology playbook.
All theologians will be called to account, more so than mere Christians. It is never merely academic.
It doesn’t contain speculation and I don’t see why it is unnecessary.
Andrew helpfully sets out the things that Richard Hays has previously stated—which in itself is a good resource—and then noted that the new book will need to work hard to counter this.
Seems fair.
Yes. I think Andrew has done an excellent job setting the scene.
I suspect in the end it will be determined by their approach to the text. As I use the terminology, a biblical theologian, although they might engage with tradition and experience, they do not see such as having any authority.
It is manifestly obvious that those who appeal to tradition and experience are appealing to their own tradition and chosen experience. Once you move away from a strict understanding of biblical theology you are in no man’s land and you can pluck anything you want out of Scripture.
Particularly odd is the repeated reference to the inclusion of the Gentiles as if God had changed his mind. That was always in his plan—the new covenant I suggest is a fulfilment of the Abrahamic promise (and in turn of the Genesis 3:15 protoevangelium) not as NT Wright and others see it as a modification to the Mosaic covenant—interpreted by some it seems as if God had changed his mind.
Thus I see the traditionalists appeal to tradition to support a ‘Side A’ position is fatally flawed.
And of course the hints throughout Isaiah that all peoples will come to God through Israel and the temple (Isaiah 2:2 etc). And what was the temple? Jesus of course. (John 2:21, Rev 21:22)
“Once you move away from a strict understanding of biblical theology you are in no man’s land and you can pluck anything you want out of Scripture.”
Quite agree – and of course, for us Anglicans, the question isn’t just ‘can this be justified from the Bible?’ but ‘can this be justified from the Bible within a framework which remains true to the formularies of the Anglican church?’, such as not expounding one piece of scripture contrary to another.
Colin, Does Tom Wright really pass over the Abrahamic covenant as you suggest…?
In common with the Presbyterians, Tom Wright sees one covenant of grace flowing from Abraham into the Mosaic covenant. The new covenant is a renewal of the Mosaic covenant and can now include the Gentiles.
Therefore, it can (it seems by some, I speculate) be seen as a change of mind—an afterthought —we need to include the Gentiles in the MC after all.
The ‘one covevant of grace’ concept I suggest is a significant theological point that impacts our understanding of the purpose of the Mosaic covenant, the nature of the new covenant, and the identity of Israel today.
Thank you Andrew for this reflection. I am with you. The Moral Vision has indeed been a significant book that has shaped my own approach to Christian ethics and I will also be committed to hearing how this new book will respond to his earlier work.
In terms of the ‘widening of mercy to Gentiles’ I whole heartedly recommend a recent book by John Harrigan called “Extending Mercy to the Gentiles: The Jewish Apocalyptic Trajectory of Pauline Discipleship”
Harrigan places the radical inclusion of the Gentiles into the covenant inheritance of Israel within the context of first century Jewish apocalyptic thought and highlights, not only how remarkable our inclusion is, but also how so much of the content of the New Testament arises out of discussions of the extent to which they have to change and adapt to become ‘children of God’ and how our adoption into the family, based on faith, finds appropriate expression in religious and ethical behaviour in light of this inclusion.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extending-Mercy-Gentiles-Apocalyptic-Discipleship/dp/B0CKL1GY5Q#:~:text=%22John%20Harrigan%27s%20Extending%20Mercy%20to,Paul%27s%20indigenous%20Jewish%20apocalyptic%20worldview.
We should of course wait to comment on the book – and on its author’s trajectory – until it comes out. But we are free right now to comment on any analogy between (1) widening from Israelites to gentiles and (2) widening from blessing marital heterosexual relations to blessing homosexual relations. The analogy is false, because God does not change his mind on matters of morality simply because his Son was crucified. What changed at the Crucifixion was how God dealt with what the Old Testament categorises as right and wrong. You need only glance at the Pentateuch to see the view of homosexual relations that is ascribed to God therein.
So we see in both these comments from Richard and Anton the concept of ‘widening the covenant from the Israelites to include the Gentiles’.
But it seems fairly clear to me and others that Galatians 3:15-25 is saying (and elsewhere) that the Abrahamic promise is separate from the Mosaic covenant. The Gentiles – and believing Jews – go directly into the Abrahamic promise. The Mosaic covenant is dead.
Colin,
I fully agree that the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant are distinct. Those who speak merely of the “New Covenant of Grace” in contrast with the “Old Covenant” miss a great deal. I like to make the point by asking them if they believe the covenant with Noah is superseded too, in which case they had better worry when it starts raining.
Why is “who you can marry” a moral issue, but “what you can eat” isn’t. And who gets to be the arbiter of what is and is not a moral question?
Read what Jesus said in Mark 7:15-23.
He declared all foodstuff ‘pure’ but did not do away with kosher laws. Purity and kashrut are different things and governed by different laws. Kosher foods can become impure.
Jews and Christians are generally agreed that the written Laws of Moses can be categorised into ceremonial, civil and moral laws. But if you wish to call into question 3000 years of faithful tradition in making this categorisation then let us get more specific and see what “man lying with man as with woman” (i.e. for sexual gratification) is described as in those Books of the Law. The community of faith would call that the opinion of God. People are free to dispute that, too, but then they are not part of the community of faith.
Because the dietary restrictions were not part of creation, but of the distinctive covenant with Israel.
We arbitrate by looking at the teaching of Jesus, and the place that these issues have in the canon of Scripture.
Yes.
The ‘law of Christ’ (Galatians 6:2) is clear enough in itself regarding sexual ethics.
Ian
But gay people exist right?
People who have a settled attraction to members of the same sex and describe themselves as ‘gay’ exist. You are one of them; I know (well) many others.
Whether the ideological and anthropological claims implicitly made in the label of ‘gay’ as an immutable identity comparable to ethnicity are true is another matter.
What’s the difference supposed to be between “settled” and “immutable”?
Ian
I thought that Lambeth 1.10 agreed that gay people exist and are a natural part of human diversity and that was the settled position of the entire Anglican communion?
Not so fast, some dietary laws (maintained by the apostles, at that) are part of the Noahide covenant. jews certainly do not Jews ‘agree that the written Laws of Moses can be categorised into ceremonial, civil and moral laws.’ Not at all.
Lorenzo, I looked in detail at how Jews categorise the written laws of Moses some time ago, and found that the mainstream view was happily the same as the Christian view of ceremonial, civil and moral laws. Of course you can find authors and minor schools who dissent from any categorisation.
When doing this it is also necessary to separate the written laws of Moses from the body of oral tradition which the rabbis grant equal authority.
1. Which Abrahamic covenant?
The one in which Abraham, didn’t, couldn’t take part: only God did, unilaterally; yet fulfilled unilaterally by God incarnate, the GodMan, Jesus the Christ, the true faithful Abraham-Jesus to which the first flawed and floundering Abraham pointed?
2. A separate point: It is also notable that Abram was called out by God, from Ur of the Chaldees – worshippers of false, local gods – forerunners of idolatry of gentiles, unbelievers. The distinction, biblically is reduced to belief/faith v unbelief/unfaithfulness.
Geoff,
Yes! The Abrahamic covenant is fulfilled in Christ with that ringing air of unconditionality about it.
The Pentateuch in contrast, regarding Israel’s relationship with God under the Mosaic covenant, is laden with that little word ‘if’ —if you keep my word I will bless you, etc. Try counting them.
If I’m not mistaken, Colin God’s covenants with Abram/ham were enclosed within the Pentateuch.
God’s covenant with Moses (post redemption) was also fulfilled by Jesus, God/man/Son in sinless/perfect/active/ righteous/ Holy/performative/obedience, which in our union with Christ is ours.
God’s coventants with Abram/ham and Moses are of a piece, in Christ.
Many Christians today, incl quite a few on this blog, strongly believe it’s still all about ‘if’. There seems to be little difference.
Well Peter, I trust that you and others will “measure up”, must try Harder.
Salvation by works.
But it is to be noticed that you have not addressed the points, I made in regard to to the covenants. Neither has Colin, who made the initial point.
All covenants, conditional or otherwise, have been fulfilled in Christ in our place, otherwise we are all sunk and there is no Good News. And without that there is no outworking of sanctification.
A serious error is inversion; to base our justification on our sanctification and even there how can we sinful people in our humanness, by human effort, be as Holy as God is Holy?
It is suggested only in our Union with Christ.
It’s necessary to agree with PC1 that there is still a bit of “if” in the New Covenant in Christ. For example: (a) Matt 6:15 “If you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” or (b) Romans 11:22 “Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God … kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness.”
Anton, I have in my hand the classic Jewish manual on the matter: The Mitzvot, by Abraham Chill, which every Jewish boy has to study at some point. The commandments are never, ever divided as you suggest; your division is found in the 39 Articles. If divided at all, rather than envisaged in the order they appear in the Torah, they’d be divided by rabbis according to their commentary in the Talmud: seeds, festivals, women, etc.
There is no reason for the laws to be partitioned in that way a teaching manual. I found it in Jewish analyses of God’s purposes in the written laws, and they all said the same.
Thank you! I’m very grateful the stage is set with such a balanced and fair assessment. For those unfamiliar with the historical trajectory of this ongoing debate, Goddard provides an immensely valuable post. I’m eager to see how things take shape.
Matt Redman has a new documentary out in which he alleges that Mike Pilavachi abused him from the age of 13. The documentary also says at least ten men have come forward to say he massaged them and wrestled them in their underwear on his bed. Elsewhere it’s alleged that senior leaders in the church knew about this and did nothing. Since this has been exposed Pilavachi has accepted quiet retirement without further discipline. Nobody else has faced any discipline at all. And a great many lives have been damaged. The abuse began for Redman after he confided in Pilavachi that he was being sexually assaulted by someone else.
The church of England isn’t interested. Pilavachi was hugely successful in getting bums on seats. That’s all that matters
This is the sexual sin in the church, not gay people being treated like human beings. Perhaps the two Hays men have realized this
Indeed; had the church accepted St Paul’s advice that congregation leaders should be men “of one woman” then that would not have happened.
That would not have happened? Really, Anton? It would be interesting to know how you work that out.
Because Mike Pilavachi has never been married, of course.
And most sexual abuse is carried out by heterosexual men. So being married means very little in this context.
PC1, there are a lot more heterosexual men than homosexual men. And my point was simple: If the church had kept Paul’s command that overseers be men “of one woman” then Pilavachi would not have been in church leadership.
I see. Unlike the Rt Rev. Victor Whitsey, late Bishop of Chester, or the Rev. Gordon Dickenson, former Vicar of Latchford, Warrington, to take a couple of examples.
You think St Paul was telling us that he himself should not be allowed to be part of Church leadership?
Paul was an apostle – in modern language an itinerant church planter – not an episkopos tied to one congregation.
If I’m following you correctly, you’re saying single men are more vulnerable to being abusers, and they should also be the Church leaders that are regularly moved from church to church.
I don’t think this is the sound safeguarding advice you think it is.
You are not following me corectly. I made the point that Mike Pilavachi has never been married and that Paul says episkopoi, overseers, should be men ‘of one woman’ because how they run their family is a good guide to how they will run God’s. You join the people who are trying to read more in my words than I actually said, which was about Pilavachi. Paul is an apostolos, an itinerant church planter, for which singlehood is better suited.
So neither Jesus nor Paul would have been qualified according to your understanding.
‘I hit my hand with a hammer, which shows that hammers are more dangerous than saws. So I shouldn’t worry about whether I use a saw safely—it was the hammer that did the damage.’
Can you see any flaws in this argument?
The saw that can be seen here is an old saw employed by PJ.
It cuts off the branch on which he sits.
Geoff
Marriage isn’t harmful though.
Sexual assault is
No-one has accused Mike P of ‘sexual assault’
Ian comments: “No-one has accused Mike P of ‘sexual assault’”
This is correct -otherwise there would be a police investigation. What he is accused of is not keeping to proper physical boundaries (as a responsible adult) with teenage boys but engaging in behaviour that suggests the homoerotic.
When I worked as a teacher I often saw teenage boys being very physical with each other (usually in mock fighting), but any teacher doing the same would be subject to discipline – today, at least. It wasn’t always like that, and that’s where abuse creeps in.
Ian Paul
Wrestling young boys in their underwear in his bed might not count as sexual assault in a legal sense, but it certainly is sexual in nature and an assault on these *children*.
But the cofe is OK with all this because he brought lots of young people into the church.
This is why I keep bringing up that just because a church is growing doesn’t mean it is genuinely Christian. We now know Soul Survivors success was based on bullying and other forms of abuse
‘Young boys’??
Your tactics are tabloidesque. The trouble is that the tabloids are generally thought of as the least honest.
Christopher
Matt Redman says he was 13 when MP first abused him
Ian
Not my point.
My point is the church is ignoring real harm and is tolerating sexual immorality so bad that it is near-universally condemned outside the church bubble.
How can you possibly claim to be experts on sexual morality when you behave like this?
I know heaps of people who are same sex married and I guarantee all of them would be appalled at middle age pastors wrestling little boys in their underwear.
It is not tolerating this in this case. Mike has lost his home, his income, his ministry, and his reputation.
I would agree that, at the moment, there is a serious question as to whether appropriate de jure discipline has happened.
But de facto he has been defrocked.
And no-one has claimed sexual assault or sexual abuse; so I am curious what more discipline people would like to see enacted.
I suppose it depends how you define sexual abuse. Matt Redman has said after Mike P got him to tell him all the lurid details of the sexual abuse by his step father, Mike P then quickly insisted they wrestle, going on for at least 20 mins. If he was getting a sexual thrill from the details and then the physicality of wrestling, then how would one describe that?
Ian
He got “early” retirement.
Nobody else has faced any discipline at all
Ian
As a minimum, the church should prohibit him from restoring his PTO (he chose to resign it), should commission an independent investigation into both his behavior and to uncover who else knew about it, possibly forwarding information to the police. They also should commission an independent panel to recommend policy changes.
He’s had less reprimand than if he’d married a man and had a stable relationship.
This isn’t a small thing. This was a person who was effectively in national youth leadership who was using his position to abuse children and vulnerable adults over decades *and* it’s at least alleged that senior leadership knew about it and continued to encourage young people, including myself and lots of people I know, to take part in his events.
As someone 90% outside of the church bubble it’s crazy to me that this has not been treated more seriously.
Sin is sin, even if it is denied and categorised into a heirarchy of manefestions and idolatries of desires.
Geoff
I agree totally.
How can we trust church leaders to be telling the truth about sin when they ignore behavior that is not only sinful, but causing obvious harm to vulnerable people in the community?
Peter, you still don’t get it do you? There are no ‘gay people’ because ‘gay’ is about things people DO and CHOOSE, not what they simply ‘are’. Sex is designed for male-with-female using complementary anatomy and with potential purposes way beyond just stimulating the sex organs. Sex was never designed for such absurdities as men shoving their male organs up other men’s bums. That men want to do such things is not ‘natural’ in a “God made it that way” sense but is part of the disorder resulting from ‘sin’, and therefore is to be discouraged.
There is no problem to men loving men or women loving women; as with David and Jonathan the love between two man can be ‘greater than the love of women’ ( = ‘better than sex’ ). But the attempt to do same-sex sex will always be inappropriate.
“Treated like human beings….” Well being a Christian is voluntary; it was always under the new covenant wrong that people who choose to do gay sex were criminalised. Christians accept that the surrounding world often disobeys God and we don’t have coercive authority over that; but we do have a mandate to teach God’s standards and persuade and invite people to join us in Jesus’ kingdom and voluntarily follow his ways.
Stephen – you still don’t get it do you? Are you gay? Do you have any idea what it feels like to be gay? How dare you be arrogant enough to say it is not who they “are”.
I hope you have your mandate in hand when you face Jesus and tell him that you tried to teach God’s standards with a loving and humble heart. He will see right through your judgmental ways and tell you that was always his job not yours.
I agree that it is his job. And his pretty clear teaching is that marriage is between one man and one woman. Even liberal, critical scholars believe this.
The real challenge here is that Jesus is the good shepherd who loves us and lays his life down for us. And yet he still calls us to this pattern of holy life.
So we need to do some work here to understand why male-female marriage is his loving pattern of life for all who are not single.
Ian
Takes a certain boldness to assert that even liberal scholars oppose same sex marriage on an article about two scholars bringing out a book in favor of same sex marriage.
Not everyone agrees with you
Peter, I find it so odd when you continue to misread and misinterpret what I say. I don’t understand why you do this so regularly.
I have never said ‘even liberal scholars oppose same-sex marriage’. I have repeatedly said the opposite. The vast majority of liberal, critical scholars are clear: all the relevant texts demonstrate that the Bible consistently and completely rejects same-sex sexual relations, regardless of what form they take.
Most of these scholars think the Bible (and I) are wrong.
Hays and Hays are trying to argue here (so it seems) that all these liberal scholars are wrong, and that it is possible to read the bible as affirming SSSR. Or they might actually be taking the liberal approach. We won’t know until the book is out.
Ian
There’s a big gap between “all” and “the vast majority of”.
Clearly there are lots of scholars who do not agree with you on this. I was pointing out the irony of claiming *again* that “eve. liberal scholars believe marriage is between one man and one woman” on an article about two scholars who apparently don’t believe that
Lisa
1) No, I’m not gay – but in the modern confusion it wasn’t easy to work that out especially as I started from a situation of suffering Asperger/mild-end-autism when that was little known; and it doesn’t half mess up one’s relationships. I very strongly believe in same-sex love (including that as per David and Jonathan it can be ‘greater than the love of women’, or the converse for women of course). I also strongly believe that same-sex SEX is inappropriate for the simple reason that God has not designed sex that way.
2) Gay propaganda depends heavily on a confusion about what and how people ‘are’ in this context. They try to make out that ‘gay’ is in the same category of ‘being’ as racial differences, and therefore cannot be challenged or seen as wrong. IF this comparison were valid I would totally agree that it would have to be accepted, and that it would be as improper to discriminate against ‘gayness’ as to discriminate against black skin, blue eyes, fair hair etc. Trouble is the comparison doesn’t hold up.
And the reason it doesn’t hold up is that it is rather the point of ‘gay’ that ‘gays’ want very much to DO things, not just to BE. They are trying in effect to claim that the complexities of urges and desires are ‘the same kind of thing’ as simply having ginger hair or whatever. And it’s not the same kind of thing. Put simply, nobody can ‘DO’ being black or having a particular eye colour, nor are there any meaningful urges and desires involved in ethnicity or things like hair colour. The issue is not about what people ‘are’, but very much about what it is appropriate and fitting to DO. And people do things because ‘urges and desires’ which cannot be assumed to be automatically ‘good’ – very much to the contrary and not just in sexual matters. That is, nobody can just say “I have such-and-such desires and therefore there can be no problem in me acting out/living out/satisfying those urges and desires”. Some urges and desires are of course good, even saintly; others indifferent – but many urges and desires, sexual or otherwise, are clearly bad and to be discouraged. Issues involving urges and desires to do things are absolutely a different moral category to things like ethnicity which people truly ‘just are’.
3) Note that if ‘gay’ is not the same kind of thing as ethnicity then the attempt to claim equality similar to racial equality is wrong; far from a legitimate claim to equality it is a claim to special privilege for the very different matter of their urges and desires – a serious threat to everybody else’s civil liberties…..
‘gay’ simply describes sexuality where one is sexually attracted to the same sex and not the opposite sex. As such, it is legitimate to describe someone as ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ if you are describing their sexuality.
You can be gay and not be in a sexual relationship.
PC1
I have explained that to Stephen several times in the past, but he seems either unable or unwilling to grasp it.
Not all those who are same-sex attracted would agree with you here.
Being ‘gay’ often assumes that this is an immutable, fixed, given identity akin to ethnicity. It is these philosophical and anthropological implicit claims that people reject.
Ian
Which people?
People can redefine words however they want, but fundamentally ‘gay’ describes a certain sexuality. But I agree that probably many, whether in the gay ‘community’ or in society at large, now view sexuality as ‘fixed’ and unlikely to change, whether that’s gay, straight or a having a penchant for buildings. But that view is based on the unproven assertion that one is ‘born gay’ even if genetics or other physical inputs may be important factors. Having said that, having such feelings for so long and no sense of change, I can understand why they hold that view.
Peter, many of those involved in Living Out are same-sex attracted, but reject the descriptor ‘gay’.
Ian
That wasn’t my question.
I’m asking who are the people who claim that orientation is changeable?
Stephen:
There are ‘gay people’ because there are people whose sexual attractions are only to (some) people of the same sex. Generally speaking, they know that they are ‘gay’ long before they engage in homosexual behaviour, and even if they never do, just as ‘straight’ people, i.e. those whose sexual attractions are to (some) people of the other sex, generally know that they are ‘straight’ long before they engage in heterosexual behaviour, and even if they never do.
Yes, both ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ people choose what they DO. No sensible person disputes that. They do not choose whether to be attracted to people of the other sex or of the same sex.
William – see my reply above to Lisa in which I expound the difference between ways of ‘being’, and how issues involving urges and desires are not simply comparable to issues of simple being like ethnicity.
Thing is, in a post-Fall sin affected world urges and desires can be very much ‘out of kilter’ and no matter how ‘natural’ or ‘irresistible’ the urges and desires appear, Christians will at least try to assess their urges and desires as God assesses them, and if necessary resist what is in real terms temptation. ‘Attraction’ is not a problem in itself – acting out the attraction via a parody of male-female sex is a problem.
Stephen, I am not comparing being ‘gay’ or homosexual urges and desires to ethnicity, any more than I am comparing being ‘straight’ or heterosexual urges and desires to ethnicity. That is just an irrelevant Aunt Sally with which you keep on clouding the issue (if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphors).
The great majority of people are heterosexual, or in colloquial parlance ‘straight’, whether they engage in heterosexual behaviour or not. A small minority are homosexual, or in colloquial parlance ‘gay’, whether they engage in homosexual behaviour or not. Both ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ people choose their sexual behaviour – if any. They do not choose their sexual orientation, i.e. their ongoing pattern of sexual attraction.
You are clearly of the opinion that ‘gay’ people should not form sexual relationships congruent with their sexual orientation. Some people will agree with you; some won’t. But that is a different matter.
William – you may not be “comparing being ‘gay’ or homosexual urges and desires to ethnicity”; but a lot of people do make that comparison and do make it a basis of legal actions in which people can be sued for thousands, threatened with criminal prosecution, and face massive legal fees. Those actions are only valid if ‘gayness’ is truly comparable to ethnicity. If as I’m suggesting and for the reasons I’m suggesting, that comparison does not ‘hold water’ then those actions are improper and constitute a major civil liberties problem with massive financial and societal costs – not least the current paralysis of Anglicanism and diversion of the CofE’s time and other resources to accommodate a misplaced idea.
As I have said, it is basic Christian theology that people have all kinds of ‘urges and desires’ sexual and otherwise, whichcan be ‘out of kilter’ in a post-Fall sin-affected world. The Christian response is to follow what God says is the ‘in kilter’ way, resisting the ‘out of kilter’ temptations.
In a plural society, there can be different opinions; again Christians should recognise that. But within the Christian community we follow God’s wishes and in those terms the ‘gay’ sexual orientation is ‘out of kilter’, not in love between people of the same sex but in the disordered desire to express that love by what in Christian terms is not real sex in the first place.
No, Stephen, I completely disagree. It is immoral to discriminate against a person because they are gay, i.e. sexually attracted to people of the same sex. Being gay does NOT need to be comparable to ethnicity for such discrimination to be immoral. And where such discrimination takes the form of maltreatment like, for example, depriving a person of their employment because they are gay, it is not only immoral, but in many countries, including the UK, it is now also illegal, and rightly so.
You mention legal actions in which people have sued for thousands. I take it, from what you have said on previous occasions, that you are referring to cases like that of the “gay cake” in Northern Ireland. I disagree as much as you do with such actions, not because anti-gay discrimination is legitimate – it’s not – but because the allegation of discrimination in such cases was not justified. In the case of the “gay cake”, for example, the baker was not refusing to provide a cake because the prospective customer was gay, but was refusing to decorate it with slogans which he found offensive. If I had been in his place, I too would have refused to decorate a cake with slogans which I found offensive. The ruling in favour of the complainant, who was clearly just a petty trouble-maker, set a highly dangerous precedent.
Let’s clear a few things up.
I’ve never engaged in anal sex. I’m gay. Plenty of male-female couples have engaged in (and say they enjoy) anal sex. They’re not gay.
Raise concerns about this particular sexual practice if you want, but if that is the sum total of your objection to people “being gay”, and you think that people can enter committed same-sex relationships including where those relationships have sexual expressions (other than anal sex) then I think you need to be more clear on that point.
AJB – I tend to the view that anal sex between ‘straight’ people is also part of the disorder in the world resulting from sin. As regards ‘gayness’ I’m making a broad point that God has designed sex as a male-with-female thing and that same-sex couples should not be indulging in what amounts to parodies of the heterosexual sex. That would be wider than just anal sex.
I can see no justification for a sexual same-sex relationship for Christians. I can see a possibility for a non-sexual partnership – but right now that would be open to all kinds of misunderstandings….
So there might be nothing wrong with same-sex partnerships, but we shouldn’t allow it anyway, at least not yet, because it might be misunderstood?
That would seem to epitomise the dire state of this conversation in the Church now. The current generation of gay people need to put their lives on hold and be sacrificed in order for someone else to score some points in theological debate club? There’s a real lack of seriousness to that.
AJ
Right…and we had already been told that the cofe was going to be able to answer these questions. What is it they’ve been doing for the last *decade* of navel gazing??!!
Peter,
It’s a good question.
There hasn’t been much re-reading of Issues in Human Sexuality, and thinking about what we’d write in its place. I’m probably in a minority on our “side of the aisle” in thinking large parts of Issues is good, especially for its time. It sharply rejects ex-gay efforts. The continual reference to us as “homophiles” is an effort to say this is about love and relationships, not simply sex. It has an important discussion on the reality of celibacy. But it’s conclusions don’t accord with the analysis, and it needs updating. You’d have thought that such a revision would have been the first order of business…
There also hasn’t been much thought about what current practice actually is. The CofE currently allows same-sex sexless but committed partnerships – the clergy are permitted to enter same-sex civil partnerships as long as there’s no sex.
Instead the focus has been twofold: from the Bishops it’s about holding two viewpoints together in the Church rather than trying to decide between them. From the partisan conservatives like CEEC it’s been to create a wedge issue to split the Church. So the Bishops issue their theological analysis entirely about handling disagreement within the Church, and CEEC and its outriders endlessly trumpet “marriage is between one man and one woman” as an ‘answer’. No one gives any time to considering whether, for all the harrumphing about Issues in Human Sexuality, Lambeth 1.10 and the rest, is it actually being followed? Despite Issues being decidedly against ex-gay arguments, the ex-gay movement marched proudly through conservative evangelical churches right up to its implosion in the 2010s. We still hear arguments today about whether gay people are really gay, whether they can be changed etc., despite Issues being clear on that point. We still get celibacy talked of as a minor thing, despite Issues being clear it’s not. We still get Lambeth 1.10 invoked by people who defend the Churches of Ghana and Uganda, despite their actions being incompatible with it.
And any questions about human sexuality and how God’s children are to respond are ignored.
AJ Bell
“So there might be nothing wrong with same-sex partnerships, but we shouldn’t allow it anyway, at least not yet, because it might be misunderstood?”
Not quite what I actually said. I wasn’t talking about ‘allowing it’ but simply registering that anyone entering such a partnership would need to be aware that at present it’s likely to be misunderstood as a different kind of relationship.
But Stephen, aren’t we talking about what the Church teaching should be? Shouldn’t people be adhering to the teaching, whether they personally agree or disagree with it? Or is “teaching” just an attempt to write down the average view within the Church with no expectation that anyone would be so foolish as to live their lives being guided by it?
‘Shouldn’t people be adhering to the teaching, whether they personally agree or disagree with it?’
Gosh what an interesting and novel idea! So how come we have both parish clergy and bishops clearly saying that they don’t believe or teach the doctrine of the Church they vowed to uphold? And even an archbishop?!
What do you think of that Adam?
Nobody wants to “split the church”. This is about expelling heretics.
Well Ian, if I think people should adhere to a Church teaching even when they personally disagree with it, then it must be possible to not believe a Church teaching and argue against it whilst adhering to it.
I struggle to understand your apparent insistence that nothing is even allowed to be discussed, because you think that would be a break in ordination vows. Well, how did the ordination of women, or the easing of the teaching on divorce come about? Were the Bishops and clergy who voted for those changes in Synod breaking their vows to do so? You’ve pointed out previously that there are some in the clergy who’d like to change the teaching on baptism, which strikes me as an extremely serious matter, but oddly there isn’t any suggestion I’ve seen that those guys ought to be removed from their offices.
Stephen
Gay means people with exclusive attraction to the same sex.
A majority of gay people do not have anal sex. A significant proportion of straight couples have anal sex.
Peter – putting it simply, if people of the same sex love one another but do not want to express it by an imitation of the heterosexual sex that God designed, then whatever terminology they use they are committing no sin.
It would unconfuse things considerably if we could confine the terminology ‘gay’ to those who do or want to do the sex….
Stephen
Unconfuse for who?
The definition I used is the standard meaning of the term.
People use MSM to mean men who have sex with men (not necessarily gay!)
Peter – unconfuse simply because there is confusion since Christian and ‘gay’ definitions are different here.
In Christianity men loving men is not problematic or sinful; what is problematic is when same-sex sex is attempted by those not divinely designed for it. Seems in ‘gay’ usage the word gay is applied to both situations.
Stephen
No, in common usage, “gay” means a person who is attracted to the same sex and not attracted to the opposite sex. It describes an innate personal characteristic, not behavior.
You are welcome to use other definitions, but it’s dishonest to do so if you don’t make it clear that you are departing from language as commonly understood
“A majority of gay people do not have anal sex.”
Well, gay people include lesbians. Are you claiming that this is true of gay *men*, and if so then on what basis?
Anton
From personal experience I’d reckon less than half of gay men have anal sex and maybe around a quarter do so fairly regularly.
A significant number of gay men are not engaging at all in same sex sex and many of those who are don’t enjoy anal or avoid it for health reasons or just find it too difficult
I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes, but if there is a criminal case to answer, that is for the police to decide, and any disciplinary action by the Church or critical comment would compromise any prosecution. Pilavachi’s conduct was clearly reprehensible but it may be that there is no criminal case to answer. As he is retired and doesn’t have PTO, there is nothing the Church of England can do to discipline him. The failure of others to act is another matter and it may be that CYA operation is under way. Thr hirarchy has form in this in safeguarding matters (Steven Croft, John Sentamu).
‘As he is retired and doesn’t have PTO, there is nothing the Church of England can do to discipline him’. Actually if he is still still ordained and therefore remains under episcopal authority.
David, what does that amount to in fact? How can he be episcopally disciplined if he doesn’t have (or seek) PTO?
Unless you think he can be expelled from the ordained ministry – which I haven’t see the C of E ever do – unlike The Episcopal Church in the USA, which defrocked over 700 clergy who left for ACNA etc – a clever move because it meant that TEC would no longer pay them clergy pensions when they retired. Manifestly unjust, of course.
James
They could at least clearly acknowledge what has happened, apologize to his victims and the millions(?) of people who they encouraged to attend his events and change their policy to stop this happening again.
A superior can’t *apologise* for another adult’s behaviour, only for his or her failure to intervene earlier if/when misconduct became known. Or should have been known. This is where endless wrangling takes place.
It looks to me that Pilavachi didn’t break any law of the land but he did act in a very unprofessional way and he is paying the consequences of it, personally and professionally.
How far did his line of command know and fail to act? I don’t know. Do you?
You probably know that the top hierarchy of the C of E has poor form in dealing with actual criminal sexual abuse, and fights very shy of admitting anything that will make them civilly liable.
Look up the story of Trevor Devanimakkan and complaints about him.
And in today’s world, if you do apologise for anything, you will find yourself sued to your last penny for ’emotional injuries’. If I were Pilavachi’s lawyer, I would advise him to say nothing.
James
MP has not paid any consequences for this except, perhaps, taking retirement slightly sooner than he might.
We don’t know who knew because the cofe has hushed it up and won’t allow an independent investigation. I would imagine that this is part of the reason the Redmans have put out their on documentary because the cofe is refusing to be open and honest
Peter JERMEY writes: “MP has not paid any consequences for this except, perhaps, taking retirement slightly sooner than he might.”
Losing your job, your home, your ministry and your reputation in your early 60s is pretty consequential, I would think.
James
It’s no different than if he had taken normal retirement. The people in his circle don’t care thar he abused young men and children so his reputation amongst his peers hasn’t even been damaged. He hasn’t even had his pto removed
One other harbinger of things to come in Richard Hays’ ‘Moral Vision of the NT’ was his rejection of a moral rules level in Christian ethics and an arbitrary preferencing of ‘focal images’ (cross, community, new creation). In a discussion with fellow adjunct professor at the International Baptist Theology Seminary, Glenn Stassen (a Fuller Seminary professor), twenty years ago, he warned that, as you move up the ladder of abstraction and then back down, sin easily enters in. ‘Focal images’ are abstract, and applied apart from concrete ethical teaching in Scripture, you can play all sorts of games. I recall a ghastly example of this from the early 1980s in the United Presbyterian Church (in America) that argued for abortion from a creation covenant perspective! I note, from the discussion of this book, that the arguments are all about inventing a hermeneutic that will change the way to play the game rather than interpreting the text. Still, Gushee apparently says that (orthodox Christians) will not be persuaded by the exegetical arguments. Maybe there is an attempt at exegesis–I await the book. The trend in recent years has been to give up the many attempts to come up with interpretations of the Biblical texts that could possibly favour a pro-homosexual perspective and to turn to hermeneutical arguments, including the outright rejection of Scripture’s authority in favour of the present community’s authority in matters of faith and practice. From the description of the book, this book is just another iteration of this game. Jesus had a go at the Pharisees for this, one might recall (Matthew 15.3). The problem with the Pharisees was not their legalism (following God’s Law) but their lawlessness (rejecting God’s law by means of their clever interpretations of the law–their hermeneutics).
Thanks, Andrew Goddard, for this very helpful and clear outline of the arguments so far as we know them. I’ve appreciated other insights from Richard Hays over the past forty years, so I’m sad to see him succumb to the pressures of his circles (which is what I think this is all about).
“that the arguments are all about inventing a hermeneutic that will change the way to play the game rather than interpreting the text.” Perceptive and I agree. I recall a Yale colleague saying, in answer to my query on this point–since I found the exegesis comprehensible and the hermeneutical morass unnecessary–he’s left of preaching and has started meddling. He meant it as a joke about methodism. And he meant it kindly. But there was something to it.
I also agree about lifting the biblical texts into abstractions that then govern the “way the words go” (to cite a patristic term). Allegory has its place and has been denigrated in modernity, often because misunderstood. But the danger being noted was just this. The “plain sense” and “extended senses” must rhyme. Dianoia, scopus, akolouthia were school terms that aided one in not slipping the mooring of the sensus literalis. “cross, community, new creation” why these and not “Creation, torah, promise, Jesus as Israel, gentile inclusion, Pentecost and Last Things”? At least in this way, OT and NT cooperate in delivering God’s providentially overseen word to the Church. (I am not proposing these, but tracking the concern with abstraction and selection).
Thankyou Rollin
For the clarity of your thoughts.
Hermeneutics is a minefield
Like gunpowder it has it’s beneficial and destructive elements
It should be used as a servant to exposition which was the way Jesus and the Apostles preached “What saith the scriptures”
“Search the Scriptures for in these you think you have eternal life”.
What was Paul’s authority? And I am not referring to Ian Paul!
The author of letters to the Romans, Galatians, etc never met Jesus.
He claimed a mystical relationship with “Christ”. In other words, he made it all up! And then claimed it was “according to the scriptures” – his interpretation of course.
Jesus was much more loving, more accepting, more forgiving of his fellow children of the Father than Paul ever was. Paul’s version of loving your enemies was in order to “heap coals on their heads!”
The persecution of people for their sexuality is immoral and contrary to the will of our Creator. Messrs Hays may be ready to repent but they have had to wrestle with the cognitive dissonance inherent in their scriptural frame of reference.
The world would be a more harmonious place without this worship of scripture written by men and claiming divine authority. I say, “Down with bibliolatry!”
Alastair – yet arguably the person who most strongly claims divine authority for the Bible is … er …Jesus….!!
Only according to the Bible! Actually, isn’t essentially everything we know about Jesus from the Bible?
Largely yes. Is that surprising?
Paul’s letters are attested by other apostles, contain the earliest preserved information about Jesus and the churches in the apostolic age and do not contradict the gospels. You cannot insert a wedge between Paul and Christ.
Exactly! I’m astonished at the occasional outburst which reveals quite an ignorance (technical) about the scripture even at an historical level.
Reminds me of the “verdict first, evidence later” approach. Queen of Hearts, I think it was…
“The persecution of people for their sexuality is immoral and contrary to the will of our Creator. ”
What is your basis for saying this? How do you establish the “will of our Creator”?
Do you consider all “sexualities” to be equally good? Or are there some expressions of sexual attraction and desire that are not good?
If there are sexualities which are not good, what is the right attitude towards those who practice them?
That is the right set of questions—and one which I find no ‘revisionist’ is willing to answer.
Well David,
I’d start with Mark 12 where Jesus rejects out of hand the suggestion of a great cosmic significance to people’s marriages – there is no marriage in the next world, and our earthly marriages are not recognised. They are inherently practical institutions for this world. Jesus then goes on to summarise the law as the commandments to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself.
Paul in Romans 13 expands on this Great Commandment to explain that because love does no harm to a neighbour, love is the fulfilment of the law. The harm principle is therefore very important. Prohibitions like, “do not commit adultery” are not merely an arbitrary list of forbidden actions with no particular rhyme or reason to them. They are expressions of this harm principle in practice. The law, as Jesus continually points out, has an underlying purpose and that purpose is what matters (hence, in Mark 2, he tells us the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath).
Mutuality, equality and respect are seen in Scripture as hugely important within sexual relationships. In 1 Corinthians 7 Paul goes into some detail about how marriages ought to work. In a text that’s quite revolutionary for the 1st century Greek-speaking Mediterranean world he that not only does the wife yield to her husband, but the husband yields his body to his wife. You can see the theme repeated in Ephesians 5 where spouses are told to submit to one another.
So if we’re ruling out the harmful, exploitative, and disrespectful, what are we ruling in? For that we have to go to the purpose of relationships.
In Genesis 2 we see the first marriage, Adam and Eve, instituted to combat the loneliness of Adam. It’s a sexual relationship based on companionship, not procreation (the children don’t come until after the Fall). We see that confirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19, when challenged about the purpose of marriage, he goes straight to sexual desire rather than procreation by referencing back to Genesis. And in so doing counsels against imposing a celibacy rule. So we have two things going on: providing close companionship and channelling sexual desire. We see this elsewhere in Scripture. Ecclesiastes 4 pushes the importance of companionship (“if two lie down together, they can keep warm. But who can keep warm alone?”). 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Timothy 5 have Paul pushing marriage as a way to channel sexual desire and avoid immorality or scandal.
Paul talks about doing no harm to others (Romans 13:10), but it is possible to do harm to oneself. That happens when one disobeys God. Is that not what the later part of Romans 1 is about?
The murderous and deceitful gossips and slanderers who invent ways of doing evil and have no love or mercy? I think it looks like there’s plenty of harm to others going on.
Determined to misunderstand? Not even Jesus could do anything about that.
It’s all there at the end of Romans 1.
Indeed it is! How much of Romans 1 would you like to quote?
“It’s a sexual relationship based on companionship, not procreation (the children don’t come until after the Fall).”
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” is prior to Eden.
Genesis 1 isn’t Adam and Eve, and the people aren’t married. Be fruitful and multiply is an instruction God also gives to the fish and the birds.
AJB writes: “Genesis 1 isn’t Adam and Eve, and the people aren’t married.”
That’s your error – you can’t read canonically but split texts up.
Jesus and the apostolic church (and al the church until the 19th century) read Genesis 1 and 2 together. Gen 1.27 *is about ‘man’ (adam) and Genesis 5.1-3 makes this clear. And they *are married in Gen 1.27 – because Jesus in Matthew 19.4-6 combines Gen 1.27 and Gen 2.24 as referring to the same couple.
Beware of the fallacy of atomising texts.
If you want to think as a Christian, read the texts *together, not atomistically or antagonistically.
I see you’ve lost none of your usual “charm”.
But a literalist would insist that the story of Adam and Eve is of the first human couple. And they must have had children only after the fall otherwise sin would not have been passed down to all humanity.
AJB The twin “aspects” of Genesis 1 are the ‘forming’ and then the ‘filling’ of the earth.
Genesis 1;26-28 precedes the Fall.
After forming male and female in God’s image, He blessed them. And said to them “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…Reproduction.
SSS is infertile an unable to reproduce.
The question of pain of childbirth, only experienced by females, woman.
Genesis 3:16
It’s curious though – Jesus does not repeat the fruitful and multiply part in Matthew 19. You might think it’s not actually an instruction to us, but rather part of the act of creation. And that would make sense, because if you really do think we are instructed to go and have children, then Jesus and Paul are failing to follow that, and telling us that it’s ok to ignore that particular instruction. Both warn, quite firmly, against imposing a rule of celibacy, but they’re also clear that there is no instruction to marry, and they don’t say that the purpose of marriage is to produce children.
I have to confess you have said the obvious. “Be fruitful and multiply.” AJB seems to hold the view that Genesis 2 operates outside this patently clear reference to procreation. The first couple’s bodies were companionship bodies and without any procreative anatomy. (That comes alongside nicely with another agenda…). Then, east of Eden, their bodies are altered and made to conform to the Creator’s design in 1:26-28. The “Fall” restores the intention of the Creator.
This view is so bizarre I confess I have struggled to understand it. Jesus clearly repeats the intention verse, “male and female He made them.” But now he is made to envision something like an non-procreative pair of companions.
I suppose one can understand how this might be useful in the context of the the same-sex climate for change. But it turns the scripture inside out, a la 2 Peter 16, and here without anything being particularly “hard to understand.”
Oh dear. Maybe it would be better to stick to what I actually argue, rather than make up straw men to pretend to confuse yourself with.
Why was Eve created? What was the purpose set out in Scripture? Genesis 2 seems clear: because God saw that it was not good for man to be alone. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” When Jesus in Matthew 19 is telling people they should marry, he doesn’t mention children and procreation. When Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 is telling people they should marry, he doesn’t mention children and procreation.
Children are a gift, not a purpose of marriage. If a marriage is not blessed with children we wouldn’t say that marriage has failed. We wouldn’t say that was grounds for divorce. By contrast if a couple marry, and then don’t live together, are estranged from each other, are not united with each other, are not submitting to one another, then we might think differently and have plenty of Scripture to back us up on that.
“the children don’t come until after the Fall”
Was procreation not part of the original plan for them? This seems rather close to children only being a result of the Fall… I’m unconvinced the timing the Fall is relevant.
We got married before Christmas, children came after Christmas. So Christmas, though significant in other ways, is irrelevant.
Or am I missing your point?
Eve doesn’t come along to have children. She’s created as a suitable helper for Adam because it is not good for man to be alone. All the talk of childbearing and offspring for Adam and Eve comes after they’ve eaten of the tree of knowledge, and are going to be cut off from the Garden of Eden and the tree of life.
AJB
That is one unique! account of the relationship of the unfolding Genesis accounts! The idea that Eve is given to Adam for companionship only and not procreation. Can you identify one place in Jewish or Christian tradition where this is held to be be true?
Do we have to abandon the Scriptures so quickly Christopher?
AJB, so the answer is No. Not in any place in Jewish and Christian reading of scripture, and no surprise there. Because it isn’t in scripture. I don’t know why you believe your idiosyncratic and personal view is ‘scriptural.’ It isn’t. Your reading would have us believe that procreation is some post Eden add-on, and not part of God’s obvious creational design, given in Genesis 1.
And that is one weird reading, I will give you that!
In Eden, we have companionship. After Eden, we have procreation. You won’t find it anywhere in the Tradition because it is your own idea.
The AJ Bell idea.
Really Christopher, how many children did Adam and Eve have in Eden?
Isn’t it interesting that when Jesus talked about marriage in Matthew 19, he omitted “be fruitful and multiply”. Do you think he just forgot? Or does it actually tell us something? Perhaps that when marriage is instituted in Genesis 2 it is, as it says because it is not good for man to be alone, and not (because it doesn’t say it) in order to have children.
Children are not the purpose of marriage. For example, the Roman Catholic catechism is quite careful to describe children instead as a “gift of marriage” and to make the point that marriages without children are not diminished and are full of meaning.
Sorry, Mr Seltz, but sex being a consequence of the Fall is a very widespread opinion among the Fathers of the Church. Here’s Gregory of Nysa’s De hominis opificio, for instance:
Now the resurrection promises us nothing else than the restoration of the fallen to their ancient state; for the grace we look for is a certain return to the first life, bringing back again to Paradise him who was cast out from it. If then the life of those restored is closely related to that of the angels, it is clear that the life before the transgression was a kind of angelic life, and hence also our return to the ancient condition of our life is compared to the angels. Yet while, as has been said, there is no marriage among them, the armies of the angels are in countless myriads; for so Daniel declared in his visions: so, in the same way, if there had not come upon us as the result of sin a change for the worse, and removal from equality with the angels, neither should we have needed marriage that we might multiply; but whatever the mode of increase in the angelic nature is (unspeakable and inconceivable by human conjectures, except that it assuredly exists), it would have operated also in the case of men, who were “made a little lower than the angels,” to increase mankind to the measure determined by its Maker.
Or Saint John Chrysostom, from his De virginitate
When he was created, Adam remained in paradise, and there was no question of marriage. He needed a helper and a helper was provided for him. But even then marriage did not seem to be necessary… Desire for sexual intercourse and conception and the pangs and childbirth and every form of corruption were alien to their soul.
There are many, many others. Yours is the minority reading.
There’s also, on the Jewish side, a midrash (Genesis rabba, I think, but cannot check) wherein Adam refuses to have sex after being expelled from Eden because he foresees that his descendants would have to go through Gehenna. He only agrees to sex with Eve once G-d promises that he would reveal the Torah after 26 generations.
AJB writes: “Eve doesn’t come along to have children.”
You might like to have a look at David Clines’ essay “What does Eve do to help?” – it is written with all of his usual “charm” – where he concludes her “help” is in bearing children. The clue is in the name Hawwa – “mother of all the living” – and Genesis 4.1, “With the help the Lord I have brought forth a man.”
was it not traditionally believed that Adam and Eve’s sinful natures following the fall were passed onto the rest of humanity? How else except through procreation. Otherwise you would have had other human beings co-existing who were not sinful.
AJB, you wrote “Eve doesn’t come along to have children. She’s created as a suitable helper for Adam because it is not good for man to be alone. All the talk of childbearing … comes after they’ve eaten of the tree of knowledge…”
As others have noted, in their canonical juxtaposition and in the history of interpretation, Genesis 1 and 2 are to be read together. In that case, the “help” provided by Eve relates not to some sense of abstract ‘loneliness’ or ‘companionship’ that the text never mentions, but rather the inability of Adam on his own to accomplish his created purpose. And for that purpose, we look back to God’s blessing of the original couple in verse 28 – “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule…” None of this can be accomplished without Eve, so her “help” is firstly related to childbearing as “mother of all living”.
But even to your point about childbearing only being mentioned (in chapters 2 and 3) after eating from the tree of knowledge, that is not in fact true. It is clearly understood in 2:24 – “a man shall leave his father and mother…” This “man” cannot refer to Adam who had no parents, so the “father and mother” must be Adam and Eve, and the “man” and “his wife” the children who will result from their “one flesh” union.
Furthermore, Jesus in Matthew 19:4-5 quotes two passages, the first of which (“made them male and female”) comes either from Genesis 1:27 or 5:2, both of which are directly followed by descriptions of childbirth. The second is Genesis 2:24, which Jesus treats as God’s own commentary on Adam meeting Eve (“He who created… made them… and said, ‘For this reason…'”). Given that NT quotations of the Scriptures consistently assume knowledge of the verses in context, it is disingenuous to suggest that Jesus did not associate marriage with childbirth.
None of this should be taken to imply that lack of children in any way invalidates a marriage, as indeed the examples of Abram and Sarai, and Zechariah and Elizabeth, testify. But childlessness is not the complete fulfilment of God’s creation purpose for marriage, and the ways He overcomes barrenness with childbirth is a frequent theme in Scripture. As such, God’s design for marriage fundamentally assumes at least the potential for procreation (with God’s help), which is one reason for the prohibition of sexual relations/marriages between those of different created kinds (Gen 2:18-20) or between those of the same sex – the “suitable helper” is a woman rather than another man (Gen 2:21-24).
James this is very helpful, thanks. I don’t think I had read the ‘not good to be alone’ in relation to the first creation account previously, but what you say certainly makes sense.
James P,
the text never mentions loneliness? You mean apart from God saying that is not good for the man to be alone? It’s not good for him to be alone, and I’m wrong to think that might suggest he’s lonely, and instead the correct interpretation is that he needs to impregnate someone? One of us is stretching the text, and I don’t think it’s me. You also have to consider what’s going on in the search for a suitable helper. If it’s about companionship you can draw an analogy with people getting some companionship, but it’s ultimately unsatisfactory, from animals. If it’s all about sex and procreation, what’s going on in the search?
Jesus in the quotes he draws from completely omits any reference to childbirth, and we are to take from that that he thinks childbirth is the purpose of marriage? Are there any other teachings of Jesus where he makes his central point by not speaking about it all and instead saying something else?
“None of this should be taken to imply that lack of children in any way invalidates a marriage”
Except that your argument very heavily implies that it should. If children are the purpose of marriage, then why would we not invalidate a childless marriage? If we don’t invalidate those marriages (and we don’t and we shouldn’t) then that would suggest to me that it’s disingenuous to pretend that children are the purpose of marriage. If it’s all about procreation, why does the Church allow post-menopausal women to get married? Why is Paul so silent about children being the purpose of marriage?
The church fathers know that children emerged after the Fall. They can read.
They do not hold that procreation is a consequence of the Fall. They hold that wrong desire is.
As for sex in the garden. rabbis also held that this was the cause of the envy of the snake. So there is no one position on this.
There is, however, no reading that holds that procreation is an East of Eden novum.
The would be the same Ecclesiastes that begins with Solomon’s account of his surfeit life — including lots of procreation, among other things.
As for chapter 4, surely you are seeing everything now through this one lens. If all you have is a companionship hammer, every text is a nail.
Lots of passages in the gospels say that 1) salvation is open to all categories of person and 2) people who have become Christians are not to lord it over others and are not better than others.
You may decide its preferable to have perfect vision to not having perfect vision, but that doesn’t justify you in murdering people who wear glasses.
Ian
1/2 Scripture and innate human morality
3 I’ve never thought about it. There are good and bad points about heterosexuality and homosexuality, but we have to play the cards we are dealt. I certainly don’t agree with executing people because they are the “wrong” sexuality.
4. Of course things like sexual assault and adultery are evil. The cofe seems not to know this.
5. Is this a question about orientation or behavior?
Not sure where this thread begins, but on the relationship between “the two creation accounts” traditionally taken to be P and J.
The magisterial purveyors of source and form criticism–Martin Noth and Gerhard von Rad–both would conclude with observing the genius of their present conjunction and of the necessity of grasping this. Noth spoke of the “sum greater than the parts” and of a level on intentionality that emerges when their intended conjunction is taken for what it is. Von Rad spoke of the Yahwist’s cycle of increasing sin, set off against the “very good” of P.
I have written on this “canonical appraisal of the underlying diachronic history” in several works. See also Paul Ricoeur and Paul Beauchamp. On my ear it sounds a bit quaint to have trotted out some major disjunction at the seam of two interrelated chapters. Thanks to the last contributor (4/13). I hope this comment falls in some place comprehensible…
Paul met with Jesus according to Acts 9
I have published at least 5-6 chapters in books aimed at the work of R Hays, when it comes to the character of Christian Scripture, and his developmentalist model, vis-av-is how the OT is Christian Scripture in its own inspired idiom. He was my colleague at Yale before he left after the tough appraisal of his book at that time, first to Princeton Seminary (the Presbyterian school unrelated to Princeton University) and then Duke Divinity School. I found the Moral Vision a tumble of exegetical confidence and hermeneutical confusion. I am not surprised at this outcome. His son denigrated quite publicly the work of the Yale School which was the context to which R Hays returned after doing his dissertation at Emory. I preached the funeral sermon for Leander Keck earlier this year, who died at 97. Lee was his doctoral supervisor at Emory. We now witness a full passing of the guard, never really honored by Hays except in a shadow, of Childs, Keck, Frei, Lindbeck and the other augustinian Christian stalwarts at Yale. I would like to say this saddens me, but I’d be honest to say: the OT-NT model of Hays was always headed here. It just needed some family push. Et voila. His work could not embrace the impact of the canon and the way the very idea of the NT as scripture was ‘on loan’ from the scriptures everywhere cited as authoritative and indeed as constitutive for what it means to speak of the NT as scripture as such.
This is a fascinating and provocative comment. Are you referring to your book ‘Word Without End’? I see you interact with Hays on pages 332 and 335. Are you saying Hays does not grasp the character of the OT as Christian Scripture itself?
Echoes of Scripture turns the OT into what the NT says about it. And how that latter thing is reconstructed using 20th-21st century critical tools. The Paul of R Hay’s making. I think my longer engagement is in The Character of Christian Scripture. The move from Echoes to God changing his mind is actually fairly easy to track. Throw that into the vortex of Methodist Church issues; a son who went full throttle into older historical-critical territory, eschewing the move toward evaluating the final form of Scripture as itself a final word concerning its coming-to-be; and a model for reading Christian Scripture in which the OT loses its constructive Christian voice (see, e.g., the different model of the early church, Ireneaus’ The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching). Now we have God changing his mind evolutionary overlay. Elder Testament, and Convergences, are my effort to show that the diachronic model of von Rad and Noth was always headed toward an evaluation of the creative genius of the final form — not the history-of-religion moves of people like Hays le fils.
What is at stake here, what is below the surface, is the hidden and unacknowledged undermining of the Person, the character, the attributes of God, the doctrine of God, which necessarily is seen at the surface level in the subsidence of scripture, even biblical scholarship and manifest in such collapses as Open Theism, which a couple of decades ago rose to some prominence in some theological circles, but which has not gone away, even if we have short memories.
I have in a book, not to hand, a citation from Walter Bruggerman in support of Open theism which is of a piece with a God who changes His mind.
Commenting on Genesis 22:10-12 Walter Brueggemann writes: “God genuinely does not know…The flow of the narrative accomplishes something in the awareness of God. He did not know. Now he knows.” Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox 1982.
While leaving aside the point that it was an Angel of the LORD (as I don’t know whether WB sees the angel as a Theo/Chistophany) it is a short step from there, God not knowing, to say that God changes his mind when he now knows, when it becomes know to Him.
It all seems to be creating God in our finite unknowing image, not knowing the future, not knowing the difference and distinction between good and evil, according to our standards of morality and ethics and when he finds out, thinks about it, changes his mind, having got it wrong.
For another day, maybe. But I hope not, not here, not now, even as it does needfully extend the scope, but not in the way the Hays appear to seek a limited yet ever mind-changing expansiveness.
Brueggemann was very popular in some circles when I was at Trinity Theological College, probably for his poetic style and edgy leftwingism, but already I sensed that B’s narrative approach was not canonical or grounded in systematic theology.
And it was a philosophical mess. Scripture has no ontological referent. It is just words evoking things in front of the text.
Sad, if predictable, to see such a hysterical reaction to a book that hasn’t even been published yet. Maybe it will be great. Maybe it will be disappointing. Who knows?
It is striking though, that if we are going to have a discussion about people modifying their views since 1996 we ought to acknowledge at least some of what’s happened. Hays Sr’s writings are informed by the experience of Gary – a gay man dying of AIDS in the late 80s and who espouses a fairly conservative view of the theology. And this is all written at the height of the ex-gay movement in the US, where we saw people casually asserting (as you’ll still hear sometimes today) that to be gay is to be promiscuous and anonymous with sexual partners. How much of the theological writings of the time, not to mention the understanding and expectations of ordinary people in the Church, were underpinned by the ex-gay movement’s assertions that people could “leave” homosexuality and be changed?
I think there’s something else going on as well. Why is Hays Sr’s original work from the mid-90s so important? Because it was concluding (or summarising if you prefer) a shift in the conservative position that had been going on since the 70s. Before then the “traditional” view was that gay men should just stop indulging in gay sex, and go back to their wives. It was that people were not really “gay”, and trying to work out relationships, we were instead talking about something inherently predatory – gay men corrupted younger men to effectively make them gay. Hence, you needed a lot of social and legal prohibitions to stop that corruption, and what we would now call homophobia was a justified response. From the 70s onwards that view got rejected, by people like Hays Sr, John Stott and others. Instead we recognised people were gay, and not only weren’t corrupted into it, but couldn’t be. So the teaching shifted, to condemn homophobia, and to endorse the lifting of legal prohibitions. But it also tried to reconfigure the old certainties: gay people were gay, not just sexually out of control, but being gay was something that could be changed, either through therapy or prayer. After 400 years of Protestants rejecting a celibacy rule, it’s suddenly back. Being gay is seen through the lens of gay liberation, and therefore as an alternative identity to faith, and consequently to be rejected. This teaching is a 40 year experiment. It’s advocates are entitled to consider whether it has worked out as expected, whether it has been useful, and whether seeing it at work in the world and the Church makes them reconsider.
AJ
Good points
I think it’s also worth noting that Hays SR was professor in a state where same sex sex is still illegal under state law. The Supreme Court declared such laws to be unconstitutional in 2003, but in the 90s it would have been an enforceable *crime* for a gay couple to sleep together.
Hays original position wasn’t speaking to a culture where gay people had rights and some measure of tolerance, but a culture where even self identifying as gay would bring criminal suspicion
You are talking of an era of which you have no experience, an era of Western culture of the tsumani of the sexual revolution, permissive society, hedonism, libertine sexuality all of which was and remains counter Christian, an anathema even as it has gained some some normative status and identity.
And where sex outside of marriage was commonly, widespreadly recognised as wrong as fornication, and living together was to be living in sin, even in the secular world. All of which are grounded in Christianity, Christian doctrine, the way of Christian living.
Geoff
The Christian way of living is to jail people for having same sex sex? To accuse them of the crime if they admit to being gay?
I don’t agree
Geoff
I’ve been an adult a long time…I was an adult in 2003.
A callow youth who deliberately ignores main points, which would be recognised by your parents, just to make you own point. It is a playground response.
I was converted to Christ as an atheist 47 year old who lived through those times, as part of the boomer generation.
The question of what is and isn’t a crime is not relevant to the points I made. And it ignores the classic debate between law and morals as exemplified by the “debate” between Prof Hart and Law Lord Devlin.
Which replacement, de facto, god, idol, do you worship, that you place above the Triune God of Christianity? Do you know Him? As saviour? As Lord over every area of your life, including sexuality?
You’ve never made known which God you believe, how and when you became converted.
It would be good to have your testimony.
Geoff
I think you think I’m a lot younger than I actually am!
And I’d add that some of hysteria we’ve seen about this unpublished book probably has to be seen in the light of recent developments in the US evangelical debate where we’ve seen the likes of Rosaria Butterfield and James White start to line up against folks like Preston Sprinkle and Greg Coles because Sprinkle and Coles (who are incidentally adamant that sex is only possible within male-female lifelong marriage) are too accepting of gay people, ought not to describe people as “gay”, ought to be telling folks that a gay sexual orientation is something sinful which can and should be to be changed.
Can’t shake the feeling that some people just need the hysteria.
One reason for the push-back on a yet unpublished and unread by the author of the aericle and commentators is the great esteem in which Richard B Hays is held by some Anglicans and evangelicals particularly through his books “Reading Backwards…” (NT Wright) and “Echoes of Scripture in th Gospels”, and “Exhoes of Scripture in the writings of Paul”.
Here is one review from Alistair Roberts, a one time commenter on this blog and a speaker at one of our host’s Festival of theology.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/review/echoes-of-scripture-in-the-gospels/
Roberts, from all he has written and recorded certainly wouldn’t go along with Rb Hays seeming about turn on ss matters.
Perhaps we are too reluctant to admit that someone can write some seriously good books (as these are), then go seriously wrong? Unfortunately, we just cancel all their work. I’ll be looking for the first, “Goodbye, Richard Hays.”
You know you guys are ridiculous!
You’ve already decided to totally condemn him before anyone has read what he has to say. It’s pathetic! Why can’t you just accept that not everyone agrees on thus issue?!
Because that is totally dishonest. It means that all stances are acceptable even BEFORE you look at the evidence.
Is that for real?
Are you content to side with that level of dishonesty? Joe Bloggs and Einstein are equal because both have a stance?
Honestly?
If evidence is nothing to you, then surely it follows that none of your opinions can be worth anything.
Christopher
These are respected scholars. They’re not Joe Bloggs. Before this announcement you’d have lauded them, but they aren’t saying what you want them to say so you condemn them without even listening to their evidence
I wasn’t talking about the book. I was talking about evidence. In citing Joe Bloggs I was not even thinking of this book or its authors.
They may be respected scholars, but I had heard of only one of them.
What he writes (they write) takes its place alongside everything else written by top scholars on these topics. You are speaking as though it should be taken in isolation!
As for condemning, I was not even thinking of them, much less condemning.
Hysteria? Must be in the eye of the beholder.
Or just going by the reactions set out by Andrew in his article.
Yes I dont understand that attitude towards Sprinkle. As you say he is very much on the ‘traditional’ side of understanding the biblical text, yet some ‘still’ like to criticise. He shows mercy and love, others just criticism and hatred. I know who will be 1st in the kingdom.
PC1
There’s a lot of money to be made from pretending being gay is a choice. People who have thrown their gay kids out of the home and cut off contact (which is still quite common in the US) know deep down their behavior is terrible and will pay for endless books and seminars to reassure them that they did the right thing.
Acknowledging the existence of gay people harms both the xgay ministries and the justifying negative treatment ministries
Acting on your attractions is alwas a choice.
Anton
Sprinkle agrees that same sex sex is a sin. Butterfield says admitting attraction to the same sex is a sin.
That’s the difference
I’d like the quote, please. Bear in mind that according to Jesus on the Mount, committing sins merely in your heart is also sinful. Of course it is possible to experience attraction and not fantasise – that would not be sinful.
“Have you ever heard that same sex attraction is a sinless temptation, and only a sin if you act on it? Or that people who experience same sex attraction are actually gay Christians called to lifelong celibacy? Or that people who experience same sex attraction rarely, if ever, change and should therefore never pursue heterosexual marriage? … I have heard all of these lies, and just in the last year from Christian ministries, and this is where I name names and I’m an English professor so I call this ‘citing my sources’: Revoice; Preston Sprinkle’s Exiles in Babylon conference sponsored by his heretical Center for Faith and Sexuality; and CRU.”
Rosaria Butterfield speaking at Liberty University’s 2023 Convocation
“Side B Christianity is a heresy… it is known heresy. It is semi-Pelagianism”
“A temptation for something that is sin… to desire something God calls sin, is sin.”
On Preston Sprinkle: “If someone has spent 10 years professing a heresy, is that a brother or is that a wolf?”
Rosaria Butterfield on the Alisa Childers podcast
“Do we think it’s good for Preston to lead others into a hellbound bondage?”
Rosaria Butterfield on The Becket Cook Show
Here is the link to Rosaria Butterfield’s talk, and the quote is from 27:51 (although to be exact it ends “Preston Sprinkle’s Exiles in Babylon conference sponsored by his heretical Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender; and CRU”):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc3cr8UtSos
Here is from Hebrews 4: “Jesus understands every weakness of ours, because he was tempted in every way that we are. But he did not sin”. So it is not a sin to be tempted. Yet one must not commit sin in one’s mind, i.e. one must not fantasise about doing that sin, even momentarily. It’s a fine line which is invisible to other persons, but the person knows, and God knows. I disagree with her that to be tempted is itself sinful – but she will be aware that every fallen human being, unlike Jesus Christ, is bound to cross that line in their mind. It is worth adding that she is speaking, in the previous seconds, about how Satan specialises in half-truths and verbal distortion.
I commend Rosaria Butterfield’s testimony to all who sin – that is, to every human being. She was a professor of literature, and she was prepared to give the Book a chance and found herself stolen by God.
Anton
Sorry but there’s no direct quote. You’d have to listen to these people talk about their opinions.
Peter,
I gave the time stamp and URL of the quote claimed by AJ Bell for Rosaria Butterfield. I would have been nice if he had given it, but it is substantially as he said. Please verify for yourself.
It is extraordinary that you, rather than traditionalists, are first to mention Rosaria Butterfield! Traitors are always hated, but should you not above all be glad that she shifted from atheism to Christianity?
Anton
I used to think RB was alright,but increasingly to me she seems to being pulled into the thoroughly dishonest world of ex gay ministry. And I do think she’s not honest about her own life experiences. She my avoid direct lying, but she’s certainly not telling the whole truth.
Anton
And of course she’s one of a Cadre of women preachers/teachers who say only men should be preachers/teachers
Whereas, Peter, I believe she was more willing to accept the authority of the Bible as God’s word and let it draw her towards him, than self-identifying Christians who act on their sexual preferences without seeing them as something to repent for. It is evident from another post that you have not heard her testimony on the YouTube clip I cited. Please view it.
“The Christian way of living is to jail people for having same sex sex? To accuse them of the crime if they admit to being gay?
I don’t agree”
Peter, I also don’t agree. Indeed I came in for some stick from fellow-Christians in the early 1970s for approving the then recent decriminalisation of homosexuality.
This is kind of a separate issue but also very ditectly connected to the issues around the CofE. From the late 300sCE, there has been a situation of “Christian states” in which effectively church and state were identified and so the state was using police powers to enforce Christianity, doctrines as in the infamous RC Inquisition, and morality as in sexual matters generally. Although the Anglicans still haven’t fully admitted it, this kind of church/state link is massively unbiblical and contrary to the way the NT presents relations between church and surrrounding world. We have fortunately mostly changed the situation in the UK though there are other countries which still see themselves as ‘Christian’ – Putin’s Russia for example.
A church separate from the state should not be having people jailed for gay sex. However, gay sex is clearly rejected in the Bible and therefore churches should discipline/exclude those who do gay sex in the same basic way that for example a sports club will exclude those who refuse to keep the sport’s rules.
In the current arguments the CofE is under conflicting pressures as the national church, which effectively means it is ‘serving two masters’ about sexuality – a state of affairs Jesus clearly warned would not work. They need ideally to put the sexuality issue on the back burner and get disconnected from the state.
The coe started on this downward spiral when its leadership turned a blind eye to clergy, ie other leaders, who were in gay sexual relationships. Noone should be surprised now.
PC1 – I have to agree. The legal advice that clergy could enter same-sex partnerships was catastrophically wrongheaded because it ignored the fundamental principle that clergy should not give the appearance of scandal in their personal lives. It was equivalent to saying clergy could be members of the National Front – which never would have been allowed.
James
Scandal according to who? I think very few people see it as scandalous for two people to be in a chaste relationship
“I think it’s also worth noting that Hays SR was professor in a state where same sex sex is still illegal under state law.”
Can you explain what you mean? Hays was in Connecticut and then New Jersey and then North Carolina. He was a Sr (tenured) Professor in all three states. His publication on Moral Vision emerged out of this multi-state context. Are you saying he was constrained in what he said–even at Duke University!–by state law?
I guess I don’t understand what your point here is.
Christopher S
I’m saying he was working in a culture and speaking to a culture where same sex relationships were a crime and even just self identifying as gay would have brought suspicion of a crime. That’s very different to today where same sex marriage is legal and widespread (and 70-80% of Americans agree it should be legal).
Same sex sex is illegal under NC law. Up until Lawrence V Texas in 2003 the police could enforce the law.
In Connecticut same sex sex was made legal in 1971, New Jersey 1978.
You need to do some more research on laws/culture in the US. This sounds like a view from a parochial Englishman. CT, NJ and Duke U. Hotbeds of anti-Gay stuff. You must be joking.
It’s like Southampton. Full of nudists who were attacked by drones from HTB.
For Hays to change his mind on this would be monumental. It would be almost as if someone like Gagnon reversed course.
I am not convinced that is true. From the conversations, it is clear that many people were already concerned with the direction of travel of Hays’ thinking in his ‘Echoes of Scripture’ approach. And it is far from clear that this book is going to offer any genuinely new arguments, though we will need to wait for publication to know.
What I value in Andrew’s analysis here is his setting out of the very significant challenges—in Hays’ own terms and his previous approach—to doing what this book is now trailed to do.
Hays himself has set a high bar for this book’s impact, and it will be fascinating to see whether it approaches that.
What Christopher Seitz said in ‘The Character of Christian Scripture’ (2011):
“It is my conviction that at the heart of the problem is a model of approaching the Bible in which the two Testaments of Christian Scripture have been reduced to phases in the history-of-religion, one improving upon the other, and then finally, a new religious phase improving on them both and giving us a new word to guide our sexual lives under God.” (p. 190).
In other words, the old liberal paradigm of relentless progress, no finality until we are absorbed in the infinite. Teilhardism?
I heard NT Wright as part of a two day teaching, on the Resurrection- I still have the cassettes- describe the Bible as being like a rocket, jettisoning sections in stages.
It sounded somewhat like dispensationism, mixed with replacement theology.
Not sure if the rocket is still in flight though it is doubted he’d see it that way with a closed canon.
You can’t really fire a rocket out of a closed canon!
I have used the word ‘trajectory’ myself in picturing the relationship between the testaments but I concede the word has a lot of uncertainty and subjectivism built into it. Biblical theology isn’t rocket science. It’s much harder!
I presume, that the closed canon is rocket destination touchdown.
Yes, and it is as though the second witness doesn’t everywhere ground its disclosures as “in accordance with the scriptures.” I would happily conclude that for the author of the 4th Gospel, it is precisely the piercing and the not breaking bones that disclose most powerfully who this man is: the giver of the water of baptism and the blood of his life for our New Life in Him. Zechariah and the Psalms are not booster rockets; they are the payload. They contain the great mystery now being disclosed, as Paul puts it. The same John even implies that the scriptures would declare the resurrection if the disciples would but believe. Luke has his own most powerful way of speaking about this. In Convergences I look closely at Paul Beauchamp’s “L’un et l’autre testament.” He has a penetrating section “Which Passover is First” where we see something of the way temporality — chronos — when it come to sacred scripture, is constantly toggling so as to help us understand both kairos and what the NT refers to with the verb plereo. I have sought to set forth the OT-NT relationship into this reciprocating mode, and one can see it prior to the rise of historicism in the 18th-19th century most resolutely. I think many NT scholars (NT Wright, e.g.) struggle to understand this conceptuality. So too, many working on the Scriptures of Israel. One-thing-after-another is an easy thing to understand — note the fascination of calling the Bible a Story in x number of acts, or a drama. This is an aspect to be sure. But it is a threshold aspect, meant to open onto the integrative way the two testaments function — just as Jesus teaches two disciples whose hearts then burn within them.
Returning to the specific issues around Hays (and apologies for letting myself be distracted by various side issues)
The suggestion seems to be that Hays is wanting to apply something like ‘redemptive arc/trajectory’ theory to claim a movement through scripture which we can as it were now fulfil by finally accepting gay sex as legitimate. A similar movement to how slavery is dealt with whereby God led people to reject slavery gradually, starting at a time when things like economic infrastructure made it difficult to just stop doing slavery, so initially God on the one hand puts down a marker against slavery by freeing Israel in the Exodus and then telling them they must treat slaves decently – eg by letting slaves share Sabbath rest. By NT times we see a bigger change starting in the church and trending to Christians at least freeing slaves.
I don’t think such an argument is workable in the case of homosexuality; not least because of the way Paul argues in Romans 1, which really leaves no room for a further change in the matter.
An analogy with the change in the view of slavery fails, in my view, because with slavery the change is from regarding it as OK to regarding it as bad. For same-sex activity, the direction is the opposite one. It is desired that what was regarded a bad is now regarded as good.
Nowhere does the New Testament regard human slavery (as opposed to being a ‘doulos tou Christou’) a good thing. The NT considers it something to leave if you can but not the first priority. Presumably because slavery in the Greco-Roman world covered a wide range of experiences, some better than others in s world where life was precarious. Some people even embraced slavery for survival.
The OT doesn’t exactly regard slavery as a good thing – but is practical about how easy it would be to simply scrap slavery in the different situation back then. Universal modern employment patterns would not have been easy. By the NT period it was a good deal more practical for at least some to abandon slavery and work towards a different pattern that could be commmended to society at large.
Arguably the anti-slavery movement suffered a set-back as one of many bad consequences of accepting ‘establishment’ of Christianity from the late 300s onward, with the church identified with worldly states rather than being an independent counterculture setting a different example to the surrounding world.
I think when we use the word ‘slavery’ we are reflexively thinking about chattel slavery. Kidnapping or conquering people and selling them as chattel.
The people of Israel did not engage in this conduct. Kidnapping is a capital offense.
In antiquity there was chattel slavery (big nations conquering smaller ones) and debt slavery.
‘Redemptive arcs’ can work either way – the key is that God wants a change whch is not initially easy and he brings about a willing change through gradual better understanding rather than just flatly coercively ruling for total instant change, which might be very difficult for people to accept (or easily do in very different economic circumstances).
As applied to homosexuality the general opinion of redemptive arc theologians has been that there is a pretty short one-way trajectory from wide pagan practice of homosexuality to God simply banning it for his people at an early time, and there is no reason to revise that ban; sex is clearly made heterosexual and same-sex sexual activity involves absurdity.
Bear in mind that to say God is OK with same-sex sex really requires saying that God made it so from creation; which requires the rather strange notion of a God who would make heterosexual sex and then deliberately deprive many people of the necessary urges and desires and instead, for example, positively make men with desires to shove their male members up other men’s back passages…. That such conduct is part of the disruption of human life by sin makes far better sense if one is to believe in theism at all. In other world views, eg atheism, such things may make acceptable sense.
Stephen
It seems obvious to me that Romans 1 is about the elite Romans who were persecuting the church.
We are told they practice statue worshipping. Gays don’t do this. 1st Century Roman elites did.
We are told they are in heterosexual marriages. Some times gay people do this, but it’s far from a majority, let alone a defining feature. Elite Romans married women.
We are told that because of the idolatry God gave them over to “shameful lusts”. This is in the wrong order for gay people since gay people discover they are gay as children and many spend years or decades trying everything they can to be straight.
The church fathers know that children emerged after the Fall. They can read.
They do not hold that procreation is a consequence of the Fall. They hold that wrong desire is.
As for sex in the garden. rabbis also held that this was the cause of the envy of the snake. So there is no one position on this.
There is, however, no reading that holds that procreation is an East of Eden novum.
Ian: Thank you for publishing this on your blog.
Nevertheless, something needs to be said that you probably are not going to like. The same type of “trajectory-type vision” that David Gushee says is present in the new Hays & Hays book is the same type of “trajectory-type vision” that has enabled the acceptance of egalitarianism so broadly in various quarters within evangelicalism. A revisionist view towards human sexuality is simply the next step taken by those who adopt such a “trajectory-type vision.”
I did not know David Gushee personally when he was an undergrad student at the College of William and Mary. But I know of others who knew him, and who now looking back can see how Gushee’s own transformation took place.
Granted, there are those like an Andrew Bartlett (and Terran Williams, presumably– haven’t read everything he has written) who come by egalitarianism honestly, based on their exegetical work, which carefully tries to avoid the temptation towards a “trajectory-type vision.” I am not persuaded yet by Bartlett (and Williams), but I appreciate their approach to the integrity of Scripture.
Having actually been a student at Fuller Seminary myself, where the younger Hays teaches at, I have seen where the “trajectory-type vision” has taken hold more broadly. So, I am not surprised that the younger Hays might be willing to risk his career at Fuller in writing this book. But wherever the “trajectory-type vision” to reject complementarianism in favor of egalitarianism has taken hold, it just seem inevitable that a revisionist approach to human sexuality is bound to follow.
This latest affair with the young Chris Hays at Fuller only supports this contention. Sorry, but we have seen this in the mess that the C of E is in currently, only some roughly 25 years since egalitarianism took hold in the C of E. I wish this was not the case, but apparently it is.
Clarke. Thanks for commenting.
‘The same type of “trajectory-type vision” that David Gushee says is present in the new Hays & Hays book is the same type of “trajectory-type vision” that has enabled the acceptance of egalitarianism so broadly in various quarters within evangelicalism. A revisionist view towards human sexuality is simply the next step taken by those who adopt such a “trajectory-type vision.”’
Actually, I think you are quite wrong here.
Women clearly exercise authority and leadership amongst the people of God. Paul says in 1 Cor 7.4 that women exercise authority over their husband’s bodies. Paul counts women as prophets (who in the early church exercise clear spiritual authority) and as apostles and church planters. He says he has learnt from their wisdom and gospel pioneers.
So agreeing to the ordination of women isn’t extrapolating from a trajectory; it is restoring what has been lost in a patriarchal church under the pressure from culture.
By contrast, there are no such affirmation of same-sex sexual relationships—in fact, the strictures grow clearer through the narrative of the Bible.
Does that make sense?
Ian
The only relationships approaching same sex relationships in scripture are Ruth and Naomi and David and Jonathan, both of which are described positively.
Peter, there are countless ‘same-sex relationships’ in scripture. None are depicted as sexual.
Ian
So we are agreed that the Bible does not depict any same sex relationships.
Yes, it does make sense, Ian. But I don’t understand why you think I am wrong (By the way, I am with you on 1 Corinthians and with Junia as an apostle…. the sticking point is in 1 Timothy, and to a lesser degree, Titus).
Like Andrew Bartlett, you are persuaded that egalitarianism is true based on a type of exegesis that does NOT draw on the “trajectory” argument. Fair enough. But not everyone who holds to egalitarianism is like you. Unlike you, many DO use a “trajectory” argument to advocate for egalitarianism. I heard this more than once at Fuller.
Paul K. Jewett in his _Man as Male and Female_ argued that Paul just could not shake loose from his Jewish tradition in making the argument in 1 Timothy that women should not serve as overseers/presbyters. Jewett is quite explicit. But he certainly was not the only one at Fuller to embrace a “trajectory” argument.
The “trajectory” argument once adopted enables further application. After his death, I learned that Jewett changed his view to adopt same-sex marriage. So, it comes as no surprise that Gushee concludes that Chris Hays is using the “trajectory” argument in favor of a revisionist view of marriage. It must be something in the Pasadena water.
Bro, the evidence is clear. I say all of this while still saying that my time at Fuller was one of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences in my life. Everyone who taught me at Fuller (with perhaps one or two exceptions) was fantastic, including those who tended to gravitate towards a “trajectory” hermeneutic. I have no regrets about my years at Fuller. But we live in an age quite different from the 20th century.
Of course, this is a slippery slope argument, which formally speaking is a logical fallacy. Nevertheless, some continue to roll down the slippery slope despite what logic tells us. I simply do not see how you can deny that.
You have a view of Fuller seminary that I do not share. I am happy to be corrected. C Hays model I would doubt risks anything. But I am ready to learn otherwise. The school is on the ropes.
Just caught up with this earlier comment from Peter Jermey which seems to have considerable possibility of confusion….
“Stephen
No, in common usage, “gay” means a person who is attracted to the same sex and not attracted to the opposite sex. It describes an innate personal characteristic, not behavior.
You are welcome to use other definitions, but it’s dishonest to do so if you don’t make it clear that you are departing from language as commonly understood”.
Now I must admit I had thought ‘gay’ was simply synonymous with ‘homosexual’, ie referring to people who do, or intend to do, sex with others of the same sex. I am aware that some, eg Stephen Fry, are unhappy about anal sex, but still are aiming to do explicitly sexual things together. Peter seems to be saying that ‘gay’ can mean ‘attracted to the same sex’ but not in fact wanting to do sex at all. This is going to make clear discussion difficult….
Thing is, the Christian position is that people are attracted to people in many kinds of ways. Attraction (non-sexual) to children, friendship, attraction to family – not just sexual attraction.
To the point that I would query if anyone is simply “is attracted to the same sex and not attracted to the opposite sex” – we all have much wider relationships than that….
And thus the Christian position draws a line between sexual and non-sexual; the actually sexual relationship is limited by (a) being heterosexual, and (b) being for married couples. Sex outside those limits being sinful. Christianity has no problem with people who are attracted in a non-sexual way and do not want or intend to do sex together. As I say if we use this broader definition of ‘gay’ things will get confusing.
Stephen
Gay people are no more defined by sexual activity than straight people are.
Gay means the same as homosexual, but neither means people who have sex with the same sex. It’s a category of personal characteristics, not behavior
Which still leaves us with the fact that biblically the behaviour – of same-sex sex – is sinful
Stephen
Most evangelicals and Roman Catholics believe the Bible says same sex sex is always a sin. I don’t agree with their interpretation. It sounds like Hays and Son don’t agree with this interpretation either
Perhaps we can all agree that ‘gay’ means being sexually attracted to the same sex and not to the opposite sex. Behaviour as in having actual sexual activities with others is irrelevant.
I am gay but am not in a sexual relationship with anyone (as Larry Grayson said ‘it frightens my dog’). But I am still gay.
Clear!
Yet others who are same-sex attracted reject the word gay with its ontological overtones.
that’s their issue not mine. Gay is an adjective describing sexuality.
Peter,
From what or from whom do you derived your unqualified, primary, identity as a Christian?
From whom did Jesus get his unchangeable, eternal, identity?
As with Christ, is it not so with you?
If not, why not?
Ian
They are free to identify how ever they wish. The only problem is when people claim to be no longer gay when what they mean is they have changed how they describe themselves, rather than changed their orientation. In most cases this is deliberately misleading and puts even more pressure on gay youths to enter harmful activities in certain communities
I think here we meet the impasse. For centuries before our own, there was no category of identity such as is now being proposed. That is surely uncontroverted. There were people who did things sexually that involved the same (males; females). I am open to correction, but the term “homosexual” emerged in legal contexts to speak of an activity done by said individual. It was not a category of identity, but of activity. And of course in Leviticus and its subsequent iterations, we are talking about activity, not identity. There is no word in antiquity corresponding to an identity absent activity.
We are being asked to rearrange and reconfigure that longstanding reality. By those wanting to do so, and so to claim an identity. (Leaving aside the fluctuations inherent in id desiring).
They will even go so far as to re-categorize pre-modern individuals. Jonathon was ‘gay’. David was ‘gay’ — his 100s of children are incidental when this idea is reified. Like Mormons baptizing dead people, everyone will become a Mormon regardless of the people they were and the convictions that obtained before Joseph Smith invented tablets in upstate NY.
If we can at least agree that an impasse exists, a lot of wasted ink and ship-passing would be avoided.
One side says this neologism is bomb-proof. The other says it is a (late modern, largely western and industrialized world) posited assertion. C’est tout. The former will sometimes turn the Bible this way and that and upside-down it.
But the more honest will say, “it is in a rear-view mirror world and we have exited that into a brave new world.”
The latter will say, No Thanks.
thanks—that is just it.
I would argue the very reason why the word ‘homosexual’ or an equivalent does not appear in the Bible is precisely because the relevant texts are only concerned with behaviour, not internal attractions. Instead the Bible describes behaviour, in some cases quite explicitly.
As for David and Jonathan, that’s simply a male fantasy to try to justify sexual behaviour between two men. Sadly, many gay men struggle to have genuinely loving male friendships (that’s my experience) and some will try to sexualise the closeness of other men.
So I will continue to understand ‘gay’ as an adjective describing one’s sexuality. Just as I understand ‘straight’. If others wish to change its meaning to suit their own agenda, there’s nothing much I can do about it. C’est ca.
Hopefully I will qualify for the Father’s loving embrace in due course.
I think your point about lack of deep friendships is very important.
Please see my questions asked of you @ 11:02 pm.
The term “homosexual” originally emerged in psychiatry.
The first person to coin was was Hungarian journalist Karl Kurtbeny describing inclinations and sexual drives that he argued were “innate and unchanging”. This was picked up and popularised by German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing when he used in his Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). Krafft-Ebing argued this was an innate sexual drive, although he diagnosed it as a neuropsychopathic disorder.
Ancient Greek indeed has no word for a homosexual; it had a verb but no noun, because the Greeks did not recognise ‘homosexual’ as an identity, what you are rather than what you do.
Yes. A neologism with no historical precedent, and arising in the context of psychiatric disorder evaluation. The age of medical classification is ramping up in the mid 19th century. Germans like constructs and orderly categories. A Jew who becomes a Christian remains a Jew.
Just watched an old film from 1955. In a hotel room a room service card said ‘Have you called for one of our Tastefully Gay Dinners’.
How times have changed!
And so, after a couple of hundred posts, it emerges that some folk just don’t think sexual orientation is actually real (or perhaps it’s real but essentially irrelevant in a discussion on sexuality and relationships).
Sigh.
Anton and Christopher (Seitz), could I have your persmission please to include your comments here in my (growing)) Encyclopaedia of Silly Things Said about Language? Thanks
Christopher Seitz
I agree centuries ago gay people were not widely acknowledged and the category of human experience was mostly not labeled, but gay people have always existed whether the world recognized it or not.
“but gay people have always existed whether the world recognized it or not.”
This is it. A perception of reality you experience, given the cultural realities shaping your place and time, govern all time and place. That is called egoism.
That is called wish-projection; not reality.
That fact that your saying so, is meant to be reality, without remainder, speaks volumes. And that you apparently don’t get that, as well.
I hold a smart phone in my hand. In ways they did not know, so too did generations down the ages. They were born smart phone people.
Historical and cultural differentiation lie as barren fields before this 2024 Obelisk of Truth.
I’m sorry, but this just doesn’t work.
AJB—the obvious question is, can you learn anything from this? Did you think your view of reality was unassailable? Are you unable to consider–as we on the side of the longstanding view of things, are asked, have been asked by you et al–that what you purport to be true, is not so?
The idea that an individual’s sense of themselves and their “identity” overrides all else is actually what is at issue.
I have a lot of strong views of myself and my identity. But in reality (here the magisterial work is A McIntyre’s Whose Justice, Which Rationality?), myself and my identity exist within a larger context of knowing and believing.
You have invented one for yourself that you believe can escape this kind of historical and social, long-term, scrutiny and context, and then ask us to ‘sigh.’
The sigh is the sigh of your own wish to escape and for us to follow. With charity, No.
Christopher Seitz
Sorry I know your question wasn’t to me, but I think it’s important for straight people to understand that orientation is a real thing, it’s not a chosen identity.
There are even physical differences, for example a lot of gay men have “gay voice”. That’s not an affectation. That’s their natural voice
Orientation is indeed in many ways a real thing. The issue is whether it is among the real things God always intended in his creation or whether it is part of the distortions which occur in a sin-affected world. There is also a question raised by David and Jonathan’s experiences – how far is an ‘orientation’ just actually the natural attraction between people plus some lack in the usual feelings for the opposite sex, again presumably due to said distortion. It would appear biblically clear that if the ‘orientation’ leads to a desire to do ‘sex’ on a same-sex basis, that tips from merely a relatively neutral problem from living in a sin-affected world, and becomes active sin.
I know you believe this. One may suppose that a particular cultural location and place in time can create the conditions for believing it.
But a universal throughout all times and cultures misunderstands the character of what you call “orientation” in your own. Moreover, by speaking this way, you eliminate another phenomenon — that sexual desiring belongs on a scale. It isn’t a fixed reality. This means it is also amenable to conditioning.
I think it is clear that we are living in a place and time where talk of fixed sexual identity, by one segment on the scale of desiring, has never been so pronounced. So, for example, it is something that never has anything like this character in the discourse of scripture. This is also why most proponents for thinking this way say the Bible condemns same-sex, and that one should simply set it aside.
My own view is that we are too close to a cultural novum adequately to understand the conditions for its arising. This wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened.
Makes you wonder though why the ex-gay movement imploded so spectacularly 10 years ago…
That too is part of the same cultural and historical context. To be ‘ex-Gay’ is to have been ‘Gay.’
Since this is the age in which we are all being asked to “hear my story” and then try to relate that to reality and the long view of God and Time.
https://firebrandmag.com/articles/when-heavyweights-change-their-minds-richard-b-hays-and-human-sexuality
Let’s throw this in the pile of personal testimony. Sounds neither “Gay” nor “Ex-Gay” but seeking to be a Christian obedient to the Word and Holy Spirit.
Sounds neither “Gay” nor “Ex-Gay”??
Except Pieter Vialk throughout refers to himself as a gay Christian, and is ferocious in his criticism of the ex-gay movement. He argues that the Church has for generations coddled homophobia. He is adamant that sexual orientation not changing is a fact. And whilst he believes that the Church ought to teach a celibacy rule for LGBT+ people, he believes this would mean, for the first time in the history of the Church, embodying God’s wisdom for LGBT+ people.
But he doesn’t really describe himself as anything other than a normal Christian following the teaching of Jesus.
He literally describes himself as a gay Christian and LGBT+ person.
Has all the fretting over identity been a red herring? Does it not matter as long as you toe the line on celibacy and opposite-sex marriage?
The final paragraph is decisive:
‘I encourage you not to plant the roots of your convictions in your own reasoning or the reasoning of one particular human’s interpretation, but instead plant them in the sturdy foundation of the significant consensus of the Apostles, the Early Church, the Church throughout history, the global consensus of Christians today, and the convictions of the three oldest denominations that represent 70% of modern Christians (Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and Anglicans). Each of those heavyweights affirm a historic sexual ethic that God’s best for Christians is either a lifetime vocation of abstinent singleness for the sake of kingdom work with undivided attention (vocational singleness) or a lifetime vocation of marriage between one Christian woman and one Christian man with an openness to raising children for the sake of the kingdom (Christian marriage). What’s the likelihood that all of those Christians are wrong and instead 2024 Richard Hays is right?
Unlikely.’
Disagree. I think this is the key paragraph:
“What if our churches learned from the thriving of these gay celibate Christians and, for the first time in the history of the Church, embodied God’s wisdom for LGBT+ people in ways that lead to the good and beautiful? We’ve only seen the fruit of pray-the-gay-away theology and revisionist sexual ethics. Perhaps for the first time, Christians have all of the ingredients we need to compassionately embody historic sexual ethics. We could try and see what happens. We could discover how gloriously good and beautiful a Church filled with LGBT+ Christians thriving according to God’s wisdom can actually be.”
Valk isn’t trying to take the Church back to a previous historical teaching. He is explicitly arguing for something new.
You have it right in your response. Small ‘g’ gay big ‘C’ Christian. He is first and foremost a Christian. He is living in our particular age in which certain people claim they are Gay — whether they are Christian or not. Gay is the category we are to attend to, not Christian.
He does not accept this. Being Christian is the ‘identity’ of highest claim.
Is this really the straw man we’ve landed on? Your objection is some unidentified people out there somewhere are describing themselves as Gay rather than gay?
AJB,
This is about primary identity as Christian.
It’s so very far from being a straw man, but being a new man/creation in Christ.
I ask you the same questions asked of PC1, above, to which he has not responded.
From whom what or from whom do you derive your unqualified, primary identity?
From whom did Jesus get his unchangeable, eternal identity?
As with Christ, is it not so with you?
If not, why not?
I am a child of God, made in His image. I am washed in the blood in the lamb.
I am wary of describing Jesus as “getting” his identity from anyone. That would seem to imply that Jesus is a created thing, rather than the co-eternal Son in the Trinity (and that, unlike someone saying that they’re gay, that would be an actual heresy). After all, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…
Agreed it is isn’t a strawan fallacy.
And this can now be moved onto the doctrine of God, God’s attributes, and the doctrine of scripture. And whether you subscribe to Open/Process theology as a revisionist.
Always, “keeping the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds…” C.S. Lewis in an introduction to Athanasius’s, “On the Incarnation”.
And ever mindful of the “chronological snobbery” of theological, scripture revisionism.
1) Complaining about people saying they are Gay Christians, and how it would be ok if they just said they were gay Christians, when those people do say they are gay Christians, is a straw man.
2) I’m not sure we can glide over so quickly whether you consider Jesus to be “getting” his identity from someone. Did God create the Son and give him an identity?
3) I am not here to be given the once over by the Inquisition from the Church of Geoff. That’s not a discussion.
AKB,
1.Being a new man/creation, born from above, by the Joly Spirit, in Christ with a new primary identity and transformed life is not a staw man.
2.Getting” was a shorthand way of making a point about primary identity as Christian.
3. It is not an inquisition, merely the essential rooting theological beliefs from which you seek to make revisions to scripture biblical anthropology.
4. Silence on these matters speaks volumes, sufficient to draw adverse conclusions such as, either you don’t have any answers or don’t want them to be known.
Bye.
Round and round we go. One day you’ll actually be honest about this…
When you raise the issue of a transformed life, are you trying to suggest in this context that a gay person should expect to see their sexual orientation be changed by being born again? Or something else?
For someone who gets so upset when others don’t answer your questions it’s quite something to see you dodge the question about whether God created the Son.
It is an Inquisition. You throw out theological questions to measure other commentators up against your standards, whether they’re relevant to the points under discussion or not. You condemn them out of hand when they don’t respond as you wish or follow your formulas. You won’t answer questions from others. When you’re called out on it, you run away.
You continue to misrepresent.
For avoidance of doubt. Jesus, God the Son co eternal not created, in Triunity.
To suggest as you do that god created Jesus without defining God is a misunderstanding of the Trinity.
I didn’t suggest God created Jesus. I corrected you that he is the co-eternal Son in the Trinity.
AJB,
Wrong, you didn’t correct me at all, merely, as is your wont, read into it what you wanted, and missed the the purpose of the comment, deliberately so,
Leaving aside the fact that he is the one using the word “gay” and not “Gay” his primary point is that his identity, which he strives to embrace, to which he is obedient, is Christian. He places that above the perception of identity that swirls around him, for which the neologism “gay” has arisen to do service. (This, inside a fluctuating spectrum, also of recent, and local vintage, known as LGBTI+ — one might think that inside this moving target terrain the idea of a fixed and certain “identity” rising up to beat away social construction, would not do it justice; but that’s another topic).
Frankly, what I do not understand is how you cannot hear his main point. Whatever “gay” may mean, it is not his primary, eternal identity given him in Christ. Therefore he will not choose–the word is his own–to go into that “gay” life. And, for the reasons he passionately gives, the shift of position of Hays et fils he must reject. I believe we will hear a similar position articulated by Wes Hill.
My point is, while we are listening to people’s stories, his main point needs to be heard alongside yours and others. There is no “objective” truth rising up from the ground. There is a disclosed love coming down from above. I hear him opting for that and seeing his real self there.
Who’s insisting on capital-G “Gay”? So far there’s you, and Pieter Valk (who you approve of) when he refers to “LGBT+ people”. The rest of us haven’t done that. It’s a straw man.
Valk is not arguing our sexuality is a minor thing, or something false, or removed by Christ. He forcefully rejects those sort of arguments associated with the ex-gay movement. Unlike someone like Rosaria Butterfield or James White (for example), he’s not an advocate for SSA being an inherently sinful desire to be cleansed away, or for people who are gay/SSA entering opposite-sex marriages. Rather Valk thinks that being gay means you are a lifelong celibate – the choices in front of you are very different to your straight brothers and sisters. He’s not playing down his gay identity; it seems to play a huge role in his life. It’s not minimised or dismissed, it’s leading to a rule of celibacy. Far from choosing not to go into a “gay” life, he’s embracing it as a celibate life.
OK, so you disagree with him about wanting the church to maintain its traditional beliefs. There are in fact traditional beliefs, as well, on his reckoning. These for him, override whatever else we might propose to say. For this follower of said traditional beliefs (Prof S), these override however we presently seek to describe or understand the aforementioned spectrum of desiring alphabet categories. If I hear you, you apparently like his seeming endorsement of them and want this to be the take-away. That isn’t the takeaway but something preliminary to it, obviously. He starts there. He wants the church to uphold traditional teaching because he believes this is the true path, and one he prefers to follow and grow in. In this, he disagrees with Hays pere et fils.
And just for clarity. He explicitly says he knows there is a gay lifestyle and he has decided it is not Christianly proper for him to enter it. But rather, to follow Jesus. He calls this the “romance” route. Not for him, he says.
I don’t know what you mean by straw men. Except at points it sounds like you are making him a bit of one. “He agrees with me on the alphabetic spectrum!” As though that rises to the same level as his own professed position, and the reason for his rejection of Hays.
Valk does not agree with me on “alphabetic spectrum”. He’s quite happy to say he’s an LGBT+ person. I’m not, and don’t. You seem to think it’s important whether someone is capital-G “Gay” or lower-g “gay”. Valk uses Gay (hence, LGBT+). I use gay. But you think Valk is the one you agree with…
You want to pretend that there is some great disagreement between me and Valk about people being gay as opposed to simply adopting gay behaviours. But Valk is clear: he’s gay, he’s a gay Christian, and that’s what he is, an orientation not a behaviour. What he doesn’t say, despite your protestations, is “I’m not gay. I don’t have a gay identity because I’m a Christian” or anything like it.
Where we disagree is with the implications of being gay as Christians. He thinks that being gay triggers a celibacy rule. I don’t.
He may say that. You may believe it. I dispute it.
I do NOT dispute where he ends up, which is the defense of the church as the Body of Christ where faithful adherence to his teachings guides us along the way.
You part company with him there. Resolutely.
And that point is his chief point. Doctors can disagree about symptoms. If they know the right medicine to prescribe, it won’t matter. He is taking that advice and that medicine.
I have said in print previously and for several decades. You and folk like Valk and others not claiming the gay identity need to be the main interlocutors in this matter.
Those of us watching this play out need to be sure that the faith of the church is guiding us, and that “all sorts and conditions” of people are hearing that faith and receiving love guided by that same teaching and faith. And that we sinners are being daily made more equipped and enriched and strengthened in that same faith.
Simple point here – homosexuality is NOT, as is often represented, in the same category as things like ethnicity which people simply ‘are’. The reason it’s not in the same category is because it involves very much DOING things, ie the sexual acts, and of course the wanting to do those things, the having urges and desires in the matter, and having such urges and desires is nowhere near as simple as the ‘being’ of ethnicity. Things people ‘do because urges and desires’ includes pretty much everything from the saintly to the devilish. With ethnicity people can’t even meaningfully ‘DO’ or CHOOSE, precisely because deeds are involved ‘gay’is chosen behaviour and it’s not possible to glibly say “I ‘naturally’ have such-and-such urges and desires, it must automatically be OK for me to live out/act out those urges and desires”. It is necessary to further discuss whether the urges and desires are good or bad; and there is also the possibility in a plural society that there can be disagreement on that and there will have to be some negotiation on mutual toleration within society by those holding different views.
A key point needing to be resolved here is that since ‘gay’ is NOT like ethnicity, because it has this chosen behaviour and ‘urges and desires’ element, it is inappropriate for ‘gays’ to claim the same kind of legal protection afforded on grounds of eg race. If ‘gays’ demand that degree of protection they are not asking for ‘equality’ but for a privileged position for their behaviours and their urges and desires.
So unless a man is actually in a sexual relationship with another man he isn’t gay?
This is so tedious. Pieter Valk is gay. Greg Coles is gay. PC1 is gay. I’m gay.
You miss the point – whatever way you define ‘gay’ if a man is not having or wanting a SEXUAL relationship with another man, he is doing/wanting nothing sinful.
You also miss another point – this distinction between ‘being’ on the one hand and ‘doing because urges and desires’ on the other is way wider than just sexual issues; it is a general moral principle. A major part of its importance here is that by putting ‘gay’ in a different category to ethnicity it makes a legally important difference to the protection to which ‘gays’ can be entitled, and on the other hand the extent to which it is (or should be) legitimate to disagree with them. That in turn makes a major difference to how the issue can be discussed….
It doesn’t really help the conversation to simply dismiss the careful reasons why some Christians who are attracted to people of the same sex do not call themselves ‘gay’ because they reject the implicit anthropological assumptions that this term makes.
This has been explained several times already! Respected author in this Rachel Gilson (who is herself same-sex attracted) says:
“So many Christians I love have opted for LGBT+ language, and they have done so for good reasons. I don’t I want to suggest that this language is beyond the pale, or not an option for some Christians. But I’m not convinced it should be the language most Christians choose for themselves. It is tangled up with worldly goals and impulses and claimed specifically and actively by those who identify as Christian but have abandoned God’s words on sexuality. For the majority of Christians with same-sex attractions, LGBT+ language is not the wisest choice.”
Thank you, Ian Paul. I argue as well as follows.
My reaction to AJB’s comment is as previously. Yes, we are living in a cultural moment and space in which you want to hold the term ‘gay’ is univocal and self-interpreting. Your view does not make it so. That’s a logical fallacy. ‘Pieter Valk is gay. X is gay’ is in other words, ‘X holds that the term gay applies to him.’ ‘I AJB say I am gay.’ Fine. Others say, there is no such univocal sense. This is why the very term itself has arisen in a specific cultural moment. Something is creating it.
If I hear him correctly, AJB wants to hold that the word ‘gay’ has a universal, trans-cultural and trans-historical sense. At most, that is an opinion. It cannot be proven. I and others would hold the obverse. I am not a linguistic philosopher but I have learned from them. ‘Gay’ is a neologism.
People are perfectly entitled to make claims about the way they are using words, and go on to clarify that. They are not entitled to claim that all others must follow them.
Whoop- dee- doo. That makes us all so happy, we can sing-along, ‘oh so pretty and witty and gay’, if not homosexual.
As in this vintage British Railways Poster of 1960:
https://www.britishrailwayposters.com/store1/Life-is-Gay-at-Whitley-Bay-p133472072
It seems to capture a certain English quaint sin-free family essence of gayness, yet now locked-in- a-time past; a foreign country, pre-permissive -sexual- revolution- society.
Can I raise another question?
Concerning the question of “adiaphora” – which Andrew mentions, Richard Hays has never seen differing beliefs about “same-sex erotic activity” (his wording) as grounds for division.
In “The Moral Vision of the New Testament” he wrote
“My theological position on violence is a minority position both in the US church at present and with respect to the church’s historic mainstream position. I cannot excommunicate my militarist brothers and sisters, and I do not expect them to excommunicate me. But I do expect that there will be vigorous moral debate in which we try to persuade each other whether Christians can ever rightly take up the sword. Just as there are serious Christians who in good conscience believe in just war theory, so there are serious Christians who in good conscience believe that same-sex erotic activity is consonant with God’s will. For the reasons set forth in this book, I think that both groups are wrong, but in both cases the questions are so difficult that we should receive one another as brother and sisters in Christ and work toward adjudicating our differences through reflecting together on the witness of Scripture.” (p401)
and in his commentary on 1 Corinthians, published a year later, commenting on 1 Corinthians 1 vv10-17 he wrote
“The more challenging task will be to enable today’s readers and hearers to embrace the foundation for unity that Paul identifies: the cross of Christ and baptism into his name. Note well that Paul does not appeal to the Corinthians to stop bickering in the name of expediency or humanitarian tolerance. Instead he points to Jesus Christ as the one ground of unity. The Letter to the Ephesians offers an authentic exposition of Paul’s theology at this point: Christians are called “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” because their identity is defined by “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4:3-5). Any attempt by the community to define itself in other terms – whether in the names of leaders or doctrines or good causes – will promote schism in the church and make a parody of the faith we profess…
…In our time, divisions in the local church may arise more often over “issues” (such as homosexuality, abortion, or the naming of God in prayer) than over the personal appeal of particular leaders. Either way, Paul’s calling to the church is clear: unity in Christ. Only when that unity is kept in sight will we be able to work in good faith to be “united [restored] in the same mind and the same purpose”.” pp25,26
Is this the same as classifying them as “adiaphora”, or do we need another category of “unresolved, fiercely contested, but not unity-breaking” issues? Where do our current discussions about “differentiation” fit within this framework, or should we consider it mistaken?
If I may, I think you need to say more about what you mean. The denominational character of Christianity hangs over Hays’ appeal to ‘get along.’ ‘Get along’ where? The United Methodist Church to which he belongs? It split over this issue, and it did so in slow, methodical, but decisive way. It has something of the same complexity as the CofE inside a wider Anglican Communion, though in its case, the international element formed a quite specific part of the UMC deliberations and final voting. What he may have thought was a disagreement held together by Cross and Baptism (or however he understood these aspects in terms of this ethical arguments) finally went another way. Obviously disputants on either side did not un-baptize their counterparts, or call for a vote on how the Cross might be said to inform the debate. Rather, they took concrete measures to allow a mechanism for division in which the least amount of pain and/or injustice would be inflicted — a procedure agreed by all sides and then the discussions and final voting, over a series of years, transpired. The result in the Methodist church presently before us. Doubtless Hays and his family must decide where ‘they will go to church’ and this ‘ecclesial reality’ must certainly inform where his thinking has changed. We see similar realities impinging in Episcopal and Anglican churches in the same NA context. Over time, moreover, newcomers to these bodies may be unaware of the debates that occasioned their division, or the simple fact of there being differing options. As is true in any widely denominated landscape, people go to church and decide if the preaching, sacraments, service, worship life bring Christ alive in their lives. I suspect they would read the Hays book and his symbol system he erects as potentially useful, but with the emphasis on the adverb.