Box Turtle
Kincaid Peddles Distorted Orthodoxy Test While Promoting Immorality
Part 2: Jesus’
Distance Healing of an Official’s “Boy” and Kincaid’s Bogus Charge of My
“Unorthodox Approach to Doctrine”
by Robert A. J.
Gagnon, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA 15206-2596
gagnon@pts.edu
August 2, 2008
For a PDF version with proper pagination
and format click here
The second example that Timothy Kincaid, blogging for the homosexualist
website “boxturtlebulletin.com,” gives where my alleged “homophobia
trumps written witness” is in my critical analysis of whether the story
of Jesus’ distance-healing of a Gentile centurion’s “boy” implies Jesus’
acceptance of homosexual practice (http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2008/06/24/2266).
In an article, “Did
Jesus Approve of a Homosexual Couple in the Story of the Centurion at
Capernaum?”
(http://robgagnon.net/articles/homosexCenturionStory.pdf),
I offered seven reasons why the story cannot support a homosexualist
interpretation that Jesus was condoning sex between the centurion and
his “boy” (pais). In the sixth reason, I argue that if one wants
to use the story in Matt 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 to reconstruct what the
“historical Jesus” believed about homosexual practice, then one should
recognize that the earliest recoverable version of the story, which
takes account of the parallel in John 4:46b-54, probably did not contain
the requisite elements for a homosexualist spin; namely a Gentile
centurion and his slave. Rather, the historical evidence suggests
that Jesus encountered a Jewish official petitioning of behalf of
his son (see the arguments in online article cited above).
Kincaid labels this suggestion “reading what isn’t
there” and “ignoring what is present.” The irony escapes him of his
charging me with “reading what isn’t there” while entertaining for
himself the view that Jesus was endorsing an alleged homoerotic
relationship between the centurion and his “love slave” or “boy-toy.” If
Jesus were endorsing such a union, he would have been endorsing not only
a homosexual relationship but also one of the most exploitative forms of
homosexual practice in antiquity: a coercive relationship between a
master and his male slave that often involved castrating one’s slave as
a means of prolonging his youthful appearance. The argument is absurd
(see VI.2 below).
I.
The
relationship between historical criticism and inspiration
While Kincaid’s
interpretation of the story is certainly a case of “reading what isn’t
there,” my interpretation is not, inasmuch as I don’t argue that Matthew
or Luke reads the story as a story about someone other than a Gentile
centurion. I read exactly “what is there” in these stories (i.e., what
is there in Matthew and what is there in Luke). Asking questions about
what actually happened in the life of Jesus, however, goes beyond issues
of “what is there” in the respective written texts to the
prehistory in oral transmission.
Kincaid seems to know little or nothing about
historical-critical methodology or its integration with theories of
scriptural inspiration. Theological readings and historical narratives
are often mixed together in Gospel accounts. In all four Gospels the
Earthly Jesus and Risen Christ merge to some extent. Sometimes the
concerns of the post-Easter church manifest themselves in revised
versions of Jesus traditions. For example, Matthew turns the parable of
the great supper (Luke 14:15-24 [Q]) into a thinly veiled allegory about
the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans where, after
“those who had been invited to the [king’s] wedding banquet” killed the
king’s slaves who were bringing the invitation, the king “sent his
troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city” (Matt
22:1-10). Although I believe that the Gospels provide an accurate
overall portrait of what the earthly Jesus said and did, it is clear
that God had no problem with the Spirit of the Risen Christ—who is no
less real than the earthly Jesus—speaking to the post-Easter church’s
needs through the recasting of earthly Jesus traditions.
II. Did
Jesus meet the centurion directly or only through intermediaries?
This idea of
speaking to the special circumstances of the post-Easter church through
a fusion of the message of the Risen Christ into the stories and sayings
of the Earthly Jesus, leading to alterations in the “historical memory”
of the narrative, is also clear from a comparison of the versions of the
centurion story in Matt 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10. In Luke’s version Jesus
never actually meets the centurion. Instead, the centurion sends first a
delegation of Jewish elders and then a delegation of friends. In
Matthew’s version the encounter with the centurion is direct. No mention
is made of the double delegation. How does one resolve this difference
in a way that honors the inspiration of Scripture? Suggesting that Jesus
had two different encounters with a centurion with virtually identical
punch lines would be foolish. Jesus would have had quite a déjà vu
experience. No, either Jesus met the centurion directly or he didn’t.
Either Matthew truncated the story by eliminating the double delegation
or Luke expanded the story to include a double delegation. To argue one
or the other alternative is not to “read what isn’t there” or “ignore
what is present,” as Kincaid confusedly thinks, but rather to make
historical and theological sense of different accounts of the same event
in a way that takes seriously each scriptural account.
Some have suggested that Matthew telescoped the
account of the double delegation. However, I have argued in a series of
articles published in blind-peer-review scholarly journals (New
Testament Studies, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Novum Testamentum),
and members of International Q Project subsequently came to the same
conclusion, that Matthew more likely represents the “Q” story behind
Matthew and Luke at this point.
[Note: Most scholars, including
evangelical scholars, think that Matthew and Luke each independently use
a common written source, consisting mostly of sayings, in addition to
Mark’s Gospel; namely, “Q” (from German “Quelle” meaning “source”). The
verbatim agreements in Greek are too extensive not to posit a
literary relationship. Most also recognize that the centurion story was
in Q, again because of the extensive verbatim agreement in Greek.]
First, the idea that the centurion never met Jesus stands in tension
with the request that Jesus “come” to the centurion’s house (still
preserved even in Luke). Second, nowhere else does Matthew make such a
wholesale omission of major characters from a story. Third, the amount
of narrative that the Lukan version contains goes well beyond the amount
of narrative that appears anywhere else in the sayings source Q. Fourth,
the vocabulary and syntax of the double-delegation motif in Luke’s
version is thoroughly infused with “Lukanisms.”
Fifth, we can see how the double-delegation motif fits beautifully
theological interests that are prominent elsewhere in Luke-Acts: (1)
conforming the portrait of the centurion here to that of the God-fearing
Gentile centurion Cornelius in Acts 10-11 and offering an apologia
against Jewish accusations before Roman authorities that Christian
communities hate the Jewish people; and (2) emphasizing the theme of
patronal humility (i.e., giving without expecting a patron’s due), here
with the centurion viewing himself as unworthy not only to have Jesus
come under his roof but even to meet him. So the original Q version of
the story almost certainly spoke of a direct encounter between Jesus and
the centurion. Luke (or the circles in which he operated) expanded the
story to make it relevant for a new audience with a different set of
interests. We can choose to see this development as guided by the
Spirit, especially since the theology behind the changes are consistent
with the Spirit’s work elsewhere in the pages of Scripture.
One might add that Matthew has also made changes to
the Q source. In particular, he imports from a different location in Q a
saying about “the sons of the kingdom” being thrust outside and “many
coming from the east and west” being brought into the messianic banquet
(Matt 8:11-12; compare Luke 13:28-29). He apparently does so in order to
make this a foundation story that justifies the new Gentile mission of
his community, announced in the Great Commission at the end of his
Gospel.
III. Is
John 4:46b-54 telling the same basic story?
It would be
intellectually and apologetically unhelpful to ignore the close
similarities between the Q (Matt/Luke) centurion story and the story of
the royal official in John 4:46b-54. The two stories share the following
common elements:
-
An
official …
-
“upon
hearing” of Jesus’ arrival … (Luke/John)
-
in
Capernaum …
-
came
“to him” and requested healing for his “boy” (pais) …
-
who
“was sick” and “about to die” (Luke/John).
-
Jesus
healed the boy from a distance …
-
saying, “Go” and making a declaration of the cure (Matt/John).
-
The
official, returning home, found the boy healed (Luke/John) …
-
“in
that hour” (Matt/John).
Granted, the identity between the two sets of
stories, Q and John, is not as strong as the identity between the
account in Matthew and the account in Luke. But we should not expect it
to be. Matthew and Luke are editing a common written source. Q and John,
however, represent two independent strata of tradition that originally
circulated orally. John shares a number of stories in common with
stories in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, Luke); for
example, elements of the story about John the Baptist’s preaching, the
naming of Simon as “Rock,” the cleansing of the temple, the feeding
miracle, Jesus walking on water, the anointing of Jesus by a woman
before his Passion, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and a number of
stories in the Passion Narrative. Nearly all the parallel accounts
contain significant “historical” details that cannot be harmonized if by
“harmonized” we mean reconstructing a historical account that preserves
all these differences. Nor does an “orthodox approach to doctrine”
require us to harmonize in this sense (contrary to what Kincaid
alleges). A reading of a number of Church Fathers and even some
Reformers demonstrates this point, who explain these divergences in ways
other than an assumption of every last detail in the Gospel accounts
occurred during Jesus’ earthly ministry in precisely this way.
Given these things, the number of similarities
between the Q account and the Johannine account is striking. Even the
Church Father Irenaeus seems to have identified the stories, referring
to the “son of the centurion” when speaking of John 4:46-54 (Adv.
Haer. II 22:3; note that John refers only to a “royal official”). It
is hardly “unorthodox,” then, to suggest that the same event is in view,
told in two different ways.
IV. Did
the original historical event involve a distance healing for a Gentile
centurion’s slave or a Jewish official’s son?
The conclusion that
John 4:46b-54 (minus editorial additions of the Fourth Evangelist, of
course) and the Q story behind Matt 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 are probably
telling the same basic story has ramifications for assessing a
homosexualist reading of the centurion story. For the latter depends,
for its starting point, on the assumption that Jesus encountered a
Gentile requesting healing for his slave. The Johannine
version, though, states that Jesus encountered a nondescript royal
official (i.e., someone in the employ of Herod Antipas, without any
indication that he is a Gentile) requesting healing for his son
(pais [“boy”] in John
4:51 = huios [“son”] in 4:46-47, 50, 53).
If the Johannine
version is closer to the circumstances of the actual event at these two
points, then there is no possibility of arguing for a homosexual
relationship between the one requesting the healing and the person for
whom it is requested. Although normally Synoptic Gospel accounts are
given historical priority over accounts in John, I argue in my online
article that in this case John’s account is more likely to reflect the
historical event behind the retelling, at least as regards the
official’s ethnicity and the identity of the one being healed. Here are
the arguments that I put forward:
1.The
pais
(boy) was originally a son, not slave, of the official.
In favor of this conclusion are the following considerations (here I
build on my earlier online treatment):
a.
The fact that John
clearly characterizes the pais, “boy,” as a
huios,
“son,” in John’s version.
b.
The fact that the “boy” is identified
as a slave only at the latest stage of the tradition.
While Luke
clearly glosses pais
with doulos, “slave” (7:2-3, 10), Matthew uses only the
ambiguous pais, which is likely to reflect the wording in Q. Had
Q also read the more specific doulos there would have been no
reason for Matthew to move toward increasing vagueness. That the
tradition at its earliest stages referred only to an ambiguous pais
explains why one trajectory of the tradition moved in the direction
of “son” (John), another remained outwardly ambiguous (Q, Matt), while a
third moved in the direction of “slave.” The unambiguous interpretation
of pais as “slave” represents the latest stage of the tradition
within the canonical corpus, since most scholars recognize that the
Johannine account is making use of an earlier “Signs Source.”
c. The fact that Luke had motive for altering an
original story about a son to a story about a slave. Luke had
a theological motive for construing the pais as a slave rather
than as a son: He wanted to show that the centurion embodied his ideal
of a patron who was kind and humble. Not only did the rich centurion not
lord himself over others in an uncaring way (compare the saying in Luke
22:24-27)—Luke alone identifies the centurion as rich enough to build
the Capernaum synagogue for the Jews there (7:5)—but also he went so far
as to treat as “precious” even his slave, earnestly petitioning for
healing on his behalf even though it meant lowering himself in relation
to the Jewish miracle worker. Any father would intercede for his child;
but this centurion did so even for his slave. Elsewhere Luke shows
himself willing to alter the Q version in order to emphasize the
centurion’s humility; namely, in having him refuse even to meet Jesus
directly: “Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy even to come to
you” (7:7). This leads him to change the story from a direct encounter
with Jesus to a mediated encounter. Luke’s identification of the pais
with a slave may also have been facilitated by the mention of a
slave in the core Q saying (“I say … to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does
it”) and perhaps by hearing of a tradition of the story similar to the
Johannine version that speaks of the official being met en route to his
home by “his slaves.”
d. The fact that Q is likely to have understood
pais in the sense of “son.”
First, the Q text behind Matthew and Luke
refers to the centurion defining his authority as one who can say
“to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it,” alongside of a
statement about the authority he exercises over his soldiers. Given that
this statement is made without any hint that “my slave” is to be
identified with the “boy” (pais) for whom he is requesting
healing suggests that the Q account did not identify the pais as
the centurion’s slave.
Second, I have argued that all the major
differences between the Johannine version and the Q account can be
explained by a pre-Johannine version of the story coming into contact
with the story of the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter (Mark
7:24-30)—particularly the identification of the official as a Gentile,
the petitioner’s acknowledgement of unworthiness and surprising
response, and the acclamation of the petitioner’s great faith. If so,
this would argue for Q’s identification of the “boy” as the Gentile’s
son since the Syprophoenician woman intercedes for her daughter. Some
(including myself) think that the Q community was only an earlier stage
of Matthew’s community. Matthew heavily reworks the story of the
Syrophoenician woman, playing up the great salvation-historical distance
between this Jewish savior and a “Canaanite” woman and adding
significant material about the resistance of Jesus’ disciples and even
Jesus himself to the woman’s pleas (Matt 15:21-28). This appears to have
been a story very important to Matthew’s community before Matthew’s
Gospel was written (thus explaining Matthew’s willingness to redact
Mark’s account so heavily). Perhaps already in the Q-stage of the
community’s history—but late in Q’s literary development given that the
narrative genre is a bit out-of-place in this sayings source and,
moreover, given that the pro-Gentile theme of the story may reflect
developing openness to Gentile mission—a version similar to what we now
see in John (minus Johannine editorial additions) was reworked in light
of the similar story of the Syrophoenician woman.
This last point about the story of the
Syrophoenician woman also introduces a third point: There appears to
be a “family of traditions” about distance healings that involve
petition for one’s child. We see this not only in John 4:46b-54 and
the story of the Syrophoenician woman but also in the
history-of-religions parallel of a first-century Galilean (Hanina ben
Dosa) who also healed from a distance a rabbi’s son. In all cases
the stories involve a parent and child. Moreover, all other healing
stories about persons who have died or are on the verge of doing so are
about blood relations, whether one’s child (Jairus’ daughter: Mark
5:21-24, 35-43; the widow’s son at Nain: Luke 7:11-17) or one’s brother
(Mary’s and Martha’s brother Lazarus: John 11).
e. The fact that Matthew appears to
have understood the pais as a son. The arguments for why the
Q community likely understood the pais as a son apply also to
Matthew, especially given Matthew’s keen interest in the story of the
“Canaanite” woman (15:21-28).
Matthew’s probable
insertion of pais in the miracle story of the epileptic boy/son
in Matt 17:18 (cf. 2:16 where he also uses pais of a “boy” or
“child”) also points in this direction. It is true that in 14:2
(Matthean editing of Mark) and possibly also in the citation of Isa 42:1
in Matt 12:18 Matthew uses pais in the sense of “servant” or
“slave.” However, these uses have nothing to do with a person being
healed and so are rather remote as parallels. Josephus, another
first-century Palestinian Jewish historian, normally uses pais
and huios (son) as equivalent terms.
Collectively these arguments make it likely that the
earliest recoverable version of the story involved a healing of the
official’s son, not slave.
2. The petitioner was originally a Jew.
The argument for identifying the ethnicity of the official as
originally Jewish rather than Gentile is twofold.
a. John’s account likely refers to a Jew.
Like the Judean Nicodemus (John 3) and the Samaritan woman before him
(John 4:1-42), the Galilean official is initially a representative of
his region’s shallow sign faith. In the new setting which the Fourth
Evangelist gives the story, it is evident that he intends the reader to
view the royal official in light of his introduction to the story: as
representative of the “Galileans” who “had seen everything that Jesus
did in Jerusalem at the [Passover] festival, for they too had gone to
the festival” (4:45). At the festival “Jesus would not entrust himself
to them (i.e., to the ‘many’ who ‘believed in his name because they were
seeing the signs that he was doing’) because of him knowing … what was
in humans” (2:23-25). It is this role played by the royal official, the
role of a Galilean with shallow sign-faith, that explains Jesus’ abrupt
chastisement of the official in 4:48 (“unless you see signs and wonders
you will certainly not believe”). This role also suggests that the
Fourth Evangelist did not perceive the official as a Gentile but as a
Jew (or, at most, a nondescript representative of all Galileans, not
Gentiles per se). The trilogy of ‘Nicodemus - woman at the well - royal
official’ is not the ethnic one of ‘Jew - Samaritan - Gentile’ but the
regional one of ‘Judean - Samarian - Galilean.’ John reserves Gentile
contact with Jesus until after his glorification in the cross/ascension.
When at a later Passover festival the request is made to see Jesus by
“Greeks” (Gentiles or at least all non-Palestinians) this signals the
“hour” for the Son of Man to be “lifted up from the earth” so that he
may “draw all people to” himself (12:20-24, 32-34). There is no reason
to believe that John understood the story differently from his source.
As Robert Fortna noted in his important work, The Fourth Gospel and
Its Predecessor (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988): “It is far more
likely that in its original form, or at least as known to SG [i.e. the
Signs Gospel that the Fourth Evangelist used as a source], the man had
not been identified as to nationality but could be presumed to be a
Jewish official, living as he does in the Jewish town of Capernaum” (58
n. 131).
b. Transforming a story about a Galilean (Jewish)
official into a story about a Gentile centurion is historically more
probable than the reverse. In Q, Matthew, and Luke the centurion is
indeed identified as a Gentile. However, a story exalting Gentile faith
is more likely to be a later creation than a story that leaves ambiguous
the ethnic status of the petitioner, precisely because the trend in the
church as it became increasingly Gentile was to maximize in the
tradition Jesus’ involvement with Gentiles. As noted above, the
differences between the (pre-)Johannine version and the version in Q can
be explained by the impact that exposure to the story of the
Syrophoenician woman would have had in converting a story about a
nondescript royal official into a story about a Gentile whose exhibition
of faith and acknowledgement of Gentile unworthiness leads to a
distance-healing from Jesus for the petitioner’s child. The very image
of a distance healing could have prompted hearers to think of the
distance in salvation-history between a Jewish Messiah and a Gentile
supplicant. It is very difficult, however, to imagine a scenario that
would have led church circles eager to establish the legitimacy of
Gentile mission to convert a story about the triumph of Gentile faith
with its attendant bridging of the distance between Jew and Gentile into
a story about a Jew who receives a distance healing but who did nothing
particularly remarkable to provoke it.
The weight of historical evidence thus decisively
favors a core historical narrative behind John 4:46b-54, Matt 8:5-13,
and Luke 7:1-10 involving a distance healing of a Jewish official’s son.
Such a reconstruction does not read something that “is not there” in the
text or “ignore what it is there.” It rather reads the different
versions of the same event and decides which features in each version
are most likely to reflect the historical event that provoked the
various retellings. Recognizing that John 4:46b-54 is an independent
telling of the same story as the one lying behind Matt 8:5-13 and Luke
7:1-10, with its own prehistory in oral transmission prior to
incorporation into John’s Gospel, buttresses the historical veracity of
the core story; namely, that Jesus dramatically healed a Jewish
official’s son by simply speaking it into existence from a great
distance.
V. The
Shape of Inspiration in the Story of the Capernaum Official
How then do we deal with issues of inspiration? Any
doctrine of scriptural inspiration has to start with what is in
Scripture, not with what one wishes the Scripture to say. We cannot say,
for example, that the doctrine of inspiration dictates that every event
in Jesus’ life mentioned in a given Gospel happened at precisely the
chronological sequence that the Gospel portrays it as happening. For we
encounter numerous instances where the Gospels put traditions at
different places in the narrative sequence of Jesus’ ministry. For
example, Matthew constructs his “Sermon on the Mount” in chs. 5-7 using
as a nucleus a core set of sayings found in Q (compare Luke’s “Sermon on
the Plain,” 6:20-46) and splicing in material from his special source
and other parts of Q (as well as a couple of short pieces from Mark’s
Gospel) to produce a carefully crafted, programmatic summary of Jesus’
message (with everything structured in three’s or multiples of three).
Calvin recognized that Jesus did not say all these things in a single
setting “on the mount”; that Matthew was responsible for the ordering of
the whole. Even the setting “on the mount” appears to be a Matthean
literary touch, portraying Jesus as a New Moses of Word. Similarly, in
chs. 8-9 Matthew brings together ten miracles from various parts of
Mark’s Gospel and Q in order to present Jesus as a New Moses of Deed:
Mark 1:40-44; Q/Luke 7:1-10; Mark 1:29-31, 32-34 (interlude: Q/Luke
9:57-60); Mark 4:35-41; 5:1-20; 2:1-12 (interlude: Mark 2:13-22); Mark
5:21-43 [2 miracles]; Mark 10:46-52; Q/Luke 11:14-15 (note: Moses did 10
signs before Pharaoh). The sequence is not a true historical
sequence but a true theological sequence.
In the same way, differences in narrative detail
cannot be suppressed by a preconceived notion of what inspiration should
look like. What inspiration means when applied to narrative material in
Scripture must take its cue from what exists in the text. This is an
orthodox approach to interpreting Scripture. In the specific case of
Jesus’ distance healing of an official’s son, the Q source behind the
story in Matthew and Luke and its subsequent embellishment in Matthew
and Luke tell us what Jesus would have said had he encountered a Gentile
in the time of the post-Easter church. The Christian who relies on the
authority of Scripture can understand changes made in the narrative as a
true theological witness to what the Risen Christ now says. Luke’s spin
in identifying the pais of the centurion as a slave and the
centurion as a rich person presents a “true” ideal image of the
God-fearing Gentile who becomes a Christian, a person who is humble in
dealing with others of significantly lower status.
So to put the matter as Kincaid does—Gagnon “says
that the authors of the books of Matthew and Luke made a mistake and
told the story incorrectly” so that “God’s divine inspiration got it
wrong”—shows significant (willful?) misunderstanding and misinformation.
Matthew and Luke each told the story through the lens of, and speaking
to, the post-Easter situation, informed by their own communities of
faith. And the Spirit oversaw this process. However, inspiration does
not mean—and never did mean for the majority of Church Fathers—that
everything recorded in every Gospel narrative happened in the ministry
of the earthly Jesus precisely as recorded.
Kincaid closes by saying: “And those who are looking
for a less word-for-word approach to doctrine are already capable of
finding within the message of Christ an extravagant welcome that
includes gay and lesbian Christians.” There is an extravagant welcome to
all persons, irrespective of felt impulses (for we all continue to
experience sinful impulses), to repent, turn one’s life over to Christ
in faith, receive the benefits of his amends-making death, and walk in
the power of his Spirit, which means “taking up one’s cross,” “denying
oneself,” and “losing one’s life.” God’s “extravagant welcome” does not
mean that people with intense polysexual urges can continue to live out
of them, even in adult-committed unions. Persons who find themselves in
love with a close blood relation cannot act on such desires, even in
adult-committed unions. Persons experiencing same-sex attractions cannot
engage in same-sex intercourse, even in adult-committed unions.
Kincaid’s gospel is a severely truncated gospel and therefore no gospel.
Holding to a male-female prerequisite for sexual unions is not a minor
part of the teaching on sexual ethics in Scripture. It is presumed as
foundational in every narrative, law, proverb, metaphor, and poetry that
has anything to do with sexual behavior.
Kincaid talks of my allegedly “unorthodox approach
to doctrine” while inviting people to affirm a form of behavior that
Scripture regards as a foundational violation of sexual ethics,
homosexual practice. This is a behavior that (to use Paul’s language)
dishonors our creation as “male and female,” as sexual complements and
counterparts designed not for sexual pairing with someone of the same
sex but rather, if sex is to be had, with a true sexual complement. The
logic of a two-sexes pairing is that the two halves of the sexual
spectrum come together to form a single sexual whole. One integrates
with what one isn’t, with what one lacks on the sexual spectrum. One is
attracted to what one lacks in oneself on the sexual spectrum, not
aroused by the distinctive features of one’s own sex. The self-degrading
logic of a same-sex pairing is that each participant is only half his or
her own sex: two half males making a single full male; or two half
females making a full female. The closest analogue to adult-committed
homosexual practice is adult-committed incest, another instance of
sexual intercourse between persons who are too much alike formally or
structurally (incest on the level of familial relation, homosexual
practice on the level of biological sex). There is no comparison between
taking seriously the narrative differences that exist in different
Gospel accounts, on the one hand, and advocating for what Scripture
consistently deems as an egregious instance of sexual immorality.
VI. What If the “Historical Jesus” Did Do a Distance Healing for a
Gentile Centurion’s Slave?
I believe the historical reconstruction that I have
presented above marshals a very strong case for an original encounter
between Jesus and a Galilean Jewish official in which Jesus does a
distance healing for the official’s son. I recognize, however, that not
everyone will agree because people may decide these questions on grounds
other than where the historical evidence leaves (some on the basis of an
erroneous preconceived view of what inspiration means, many more simply
because they are ideologically committed to denying the biblical witness
against homosexual practice).
It bears mentioning that if even just one of the two
positions that I outline above is acknowledged, the homosexualist
reading of the centurion story remains negated. One the one hand, if the
official were Gentile but the “boy” were his son, a sexual relationship
between the two would constitute incest; obviously not something that
Jesus could have condoned and not something that even a Gentile would
likely engage in. On the other hand, if the “boy” were his slave but the
official a Jew, a known sexual relationship between the two would be
impossible in first-century Jewish Palestine, given the views that
prevailed everywhere in Second Temple Judaism about homosexual practice
and the capital punishment that would have been threatened.
For the sake of discussion, let’s suppose that both
of my historical contentions were false and the “historical Jesus” did
in fact perform a distance healing for a Gentile centurion and
his slave. What then? Would there still be a strong case against
any assumption that Jesus was tacitly endorsing homosexual practice? In
my opinion the evidence for this would still be insurmountable. Here I
will repeat the other arguments in my earlier online treatment, then
respond to the negative comments appended to the Kincaid article at
boxturtlebulletin.com by a certain “Patrick Casanova,” who flatters
himself that he is an adept critic of my work, and by Kincaid himself.
Patrick falsely characterizes this argument as:
“Because sex with male servants was not a universal phenomenon, this one
obviously did not do it.” Rather: Since the whole premise of the
homosexualist interpretation of the story cannot be granted—namely, that
Jesus must have assumed that a homosexual relationship was going
on so that his silence can only be read as approval—the homosexualist
interpretation is invalid. What the homosexualist interpretation argues
would have been assumed could not in fact have been assumed. Moreover,
the homosexualist reading is based entirely on Luke’s
identification of the “boy” as a slave. But Luke also presents the
centurion as a paradigmatic God-fearer, comparable to the centurion
Cornelius in Acts 10-11. No Gentile commonly recognized as a
God-fearer among first-century Jews would have been accepted as such had
it been known that he was engaging in homosexual practice. To argue
otherwise is as absurd as arguing that the centurion could still have
been viewed as a God-fearer if he were having sex with his mother or
sister in an adult-committed union.
Actually his
treatment of me, disrespectful and distorted as it is, is one of
Kincaid’s “kinder and gentler” moments. Elsewhere (here I peruse only a
few of his articles) we frequently encounter such descriptions as
“astonishing ignorance,” “nutbaggery,” “frothing lunacy,” “lunatic
ranting,” “homophobe,” and “bigot.” He calls Peter LaBarbera of
Americans for Truth “Porno Pete.” After reading such characterizations
and many more one can go to the “principles”
that are suppose to govern the “boxturtlebulletin.com” site and get a
good laugh: 1. “We are compassionate.” 2. “We are tolerant.” 3. “We are
civil.” (I’m not making this up!) 4. “We are honest.” 5. “We are
hopeful.” I guess they forgot to leave out: 6. “We are modest.” And
finally: 7. “We are self-deceived.”