Does Jack Rogers's New Book "Explode the
Myths" about the Bible and Homosexuality and "Heal the Church"?
(Installment 2: June 9, 2006)
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA 15206
gagnon@pts.edu
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So one can
readily see that Rogers tends to avoid remarks from scholars who agree
with his overall stance regarding support for homosexual unions but who
also disagree with his central conclusion that “the Bible [does not]
condemn all homosexual relationships” (p. 70). One can understand why:
Such literature seriously undermines the appearance that Rogers wants to
give; namely, that there is a united front among pro-homosex scholars
regarding the assertion that “the Bible does not condemn all homosexual
relationships.” In fact, the majority of the best pro-homosex scholars
acknowledge the precise opposite: Scripture does condemn all homosexual
relationships. In not letting readers know this, Rogers is not acting as
an honest scholar.
It is also
in stark contrast to his eagerness to let readers know when scholars who
are not affirming of homosexual practice agree with the way that Rogers
wants to interpret a given text. For example, Rogers is eager to cite
Marion Soards and Richard Hays, two scholars who do not endorse homosexual
practice, when their views on particular scripture texts match what Rogers
would like to hear. (Note that both Soards and Hays wrote their works
before any of my work was published.) Rogers’s style of only citing
scholars who agree with his overall position when they also agree with him
in particulars is in contrast to my book The Bible and Homosexual
Practice. There I cited disagreements on the interpretation of
particular texts not only by pro-homosex scholars but also by scholars
disapproving of homosexual practice (e.g., my reference to Hays on the
Sodom narrative, p. 71 n. 74). I then show why I think both the former and
the latter have erred.
Postscript on Prof. Soards: Since on a couple of occasions Rogers
cites Marion Soards’ work Scripture & Homosexuality (Westminster
John Knox, 1995) to dismiss the relevance of certain biblical texts
(specifically, the Levitical prohibitions and 1 Cor 6:9), I took the
liberty of writing Prof. Soards (who teaches at Louisville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary) to ask him whether he had changed his views on these
texts in the light of what I have published since 2001. Soards responded
on 6/10/2006 with an email that he has kindly permitted me to print here:
More than before I am persuaded that all
the biblical texts are relevant to the discussion of contemporary same-sex
relations. . . .
The OT texts seem to me to state a
perspective that the NT texts affirm, thus, giving a consistent and
persuasive biblical witness with regard to homosexual activity. Scripture
consistently denounces such behavior and there is no way to read the
biblical witness—expressed in a wide variety of texts in a wide variety of
ways—as condoning homosexual activity. For me, even texts that are not
primarily commenting on homosexual behavior—rather referring to it in
relation to another point that is being made—are negative toward
homosexual activity and are to understood as such for contemporary
reflection on the subject.
Rogers does not seem to read my intentions with clarity—perhaps because I
expressed myself in less than clear ways—but if anything I am more than
ever persuaded of the relevance of the range of OT/NT texts for the
current discussion of homosexual behavior. Actually to put it succinctly,
I find your own analysis/exegesis persuasive.
So much for
Rogers’s use of Marion Soards’s work to buttress any of his own views.
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Rogers doesn’t even recognize that the two main
arguments that he employs to establish his central contention about the
Bible not condemning all homosexual relationships—the exploitation
argument and the misogyny argument—are mutually exclusive. Indeed, one
of the two—the misogyny argument—actually contradicts this contention.
The exploitation argument assumes that Scripture’s authors were
criticizing only particularly exploitative homosexual unions (those
involving boys, slaves, or prostitutes), not caring and committed
homosexual unions. This is an argument which asserts that the biblical
prohibitions of same-sex intercourse were not intended to be absolute.
The misogyny argument, however, asserts the opposite; namely, that the
biblical prohibitions of homosexual practice were intended to be
absolute. Rogers repeatedly stresses the desire to keep women oppressed
in a subordinate position as the impetus for Scripture’s opposing
homosexual unions. If this were indeed the motive, as Rogers claims,
then the biblical opposition would be total and absolute because any
homosexual union, including committed homosexual unions, would threaten
to undermine male rule over women by allowing a man to serve as the
passive partner in a male homosexual union and a woman to serve as the
dominant, active partner in a female homosexual union. So Rogers cannot
logically have it both ways. He can’t insist both that (1) the Bible’s
rejection of homosexual unions was never intended to include caring
homosexual unions and that (2) the Bible’s rejection of homosexual
unions fundamentally rests on a desire to prevent women from taking an
assertive role in sexual relations, whether the relationship was
committed or not.
Why does Rogers
get caught in this contradiction? Partly the reason is that Rogers’s work
is derivative—Rogers doesn’t think through the issues himself and doesn’t
have any expertise in biblical scholarship but simply parrots uncritically
any biblical scholar whom he thinks will help him reach his overall
conclusion. This leads us to what appears to be the major reason that
Rogers allows himself to get caught in this contradiction: Rogers isn’t
really interested in finding out what Scripture says. He is interested in
pacifying Scripture so that it does not oppose his desire to support
homosexual practice reached on grounds other than Scripture. Any
argument will do for disabling Scripture’s statements that appear to speak
absolutely against homosexual practice. Consistency of argumentation is
secondary to this overall goal.
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While claiming repeatedly that he pays attention to
the historical-cultural and literary contexts of scripture texts and
lifting up three guidelines for interpreting Scripture that stress
context matters (nos. 2, 6, 7; pp. 57-66), Rogers shows very little
awareness of such context matters. Numerous examples could be cited,
regarding every biblical text that Rogers deals with as well as many
that he does not touch upon because he doesn’t understand the contextual
connection. Here we must be very selective in citing a few examples
out of many:
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Contextual problems with Rogers’s orientation
argument. In ch. 4 Rogers reproduces seven guidelines for
interpreting the Bible in times of controversy that the PCUSA came out
with in 1992 from two previous documents. The second guideline is:
“Let the focus be on the plain text of Scripture, to the grammatical
and historical context. . . .” In his commentary Rogers gives as an
example of appropriate use of historical context something that is
actually in error: “The Bible . . . has no concept like our present
understanding of a person with a homosexual orientation. Indeed, the
concept of an ongoing sexual attraction to people of one’s own sex did
not exist . . . until the late nineteenth century” (p. 58). To suggest
that no one in the ancient world posited congenital influences on at
least some homosexual development or viewed some persons as
exclusively attracted to members of the same sex is patently false.
Rogers can only make the claim by completely ignoring work done by
Brooten, Schoedel and myself on this matter (see above for Brooten and
Schoedel; from my own work see especially my article “Does the Bible
Regard Same-Sex Intercourse as Intrinsically Sinful?” in Christian
Sexuality (ed. R. Saltzmann; Kirk House, 2003), especially pp.
141-52; summarized in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views,
pp. 101-2 [with online notes] and dealt with in a preliminary way in
The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 384-85, 392-95). Thomas K.
Hubbard, editor of Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook
of Basic Documents (University of California Press, 2003), who
supplies excellent introductions for each of ten chapters of
compendious source materials, writes:
Homosexuality in this era [viz., of the
early imperial age of Rome] may have ceased to be merely another practice
of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as an essential and central
category of personal identity, exclusive of and antithetical to
heterosexual orientation. (p. 386)
He also points
to a series of later texts from the second to fourth centuries
A.D., as with much earlier
Aristotelian and Hippocratic works, that “reflect the perception that
sexual orientation is something fixed and incurable” (p. 446). It is
important to add here that many of the same Greco-Roman moralists and
physicians who held such views could still oppose the behaviors arising
from homoerotic predispositions. They could do so by distinguishing, as
one Aristotelian text puts it, between behavior that is in accordance with
nature and behavior that, though given “by nature,” is yet “constituted
contrary to nature” as a “defect” (Problems 4.26). Rogers doesn’t
even show any awareness of the literature on this subject, let alone
respond to the arguments. It is most ironic that Rogers uses as his prime
example of the need to place “the plain text of Scripture . . . [in] the
grammatical and historical context” an example that shows that Rogers does
not know the historical context (pp. 57-58). And yet it cannot be a matter
of mere ignorance if Rogers has read my books on the subject—as he claims
to have done. He has willfully chosen not to alert the reader to the
problems with his view.
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Contextual problems with Rogers’s idolatrous
sexuality argument. The other example that Rogers gives under
guideline 2 for attention to historical context is his suggestion that
the biblical indictments of homosexual practice were intended to apply
only to people who “worship other gods” and not to “Christian people
who are worshipping the one true God whom Jesus called us to worship”
(p. 58). This is partly also a literary context issue. At any rate it
is another demonstration that Rogers is poorly informed about context
matters. It assumes, for example, that ancient Israel and early
Judaism would have understood the Levitical proscriptions against
male-male intercourse to apply only to acts conducted in the context
of idol worship. In effect, it would have been okay for two men to be
in a sexual relationship with each other as long as they did not
deviate from worship of Yahweh. This is historically preposterous.
Simply laying same-sex intercourse at the doorstep of idolatry does
not explain why Paul finds this particular activity committed by
idolaters, and not some others, so very wrong.
By the same
token, while Paul in Rom 1:24-27 presents homosexual practice as a
consequence of idolatry it is clear that he does not see idolatry in the
strict sense (i.e., the worship of statues or other images) as a necessary
precursor to homosexual practice. Certainly none of the other vices
enumerated in 1:29-31 require prior worship of statues, even though here
too Paul treats such vices as the consequence of worshipping idols and
God’s handing over (1:28). Moreover, Paul does not say in Rom 1:24-27 that
homosexual desire itself originates from the worship of statues. It says
only that God “gave/handed over” idolaters to such desire and to other
desires (1:24, 26, 28)—desires that were apparently preexisting but not
overpowering. The story presented in Rom 1:18-32 is not about the
origination of sin (for which see the discussion of Adam’s fall in Rom
5:12-21) but rather about how it is that sinful practices are
qualitatively and quantitatively greater in the Gentile world than in the
Jewish world. As regards to the vice list in 1 Cor 6:9-10, where the term
“men who lie with a male” is included, obviously none of the vices in the
list presupposes prior worship of statues (excepting, of course, the vice
of idolatry). Paul knew that a believer could as well engage in male-male
intercourse as in man-mother incest (1 Cor 5) quite apart from
participating in idol worship in the strict sense. Indeed, the context of
both the real case of the incestuous man in ch. 5 and the hypothetical
example of a believer having sex with prostitutes in 6:15-20 presupposes
that Christian offenders are primarily in view in 6:9-10.
All these
matters are thoroughly discussed in The Bible and Homosexual Practice,
284-89 (“Did Paul Think Only Idol Worshipers Could Engage in Same-Sex
Intercourse?”). The same arguments also appear, along with others, in my
online article, “Bad Reasons for Changing One’s Mind: Jack Rogers’s Temple
Prostitution Argument and Other False Starts” (Mar. 1, 2004; at
http://www.robgagnon.net/ResponseToRogers2.htm for html version and
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoRogersResp2.pdf for pdf). This
was a response to a presentation by Rogers posted on the Covenant Network
website, in which he attempted unsuccessfully to dismiss my work through
distortion. I know for a fact that Rogers knew about the article. So
Rogers must have been aware of the powerful arguments against his
position. But he didn’t want to alert readers of his book to these
arguments. Surely if he had been able to rebut my arguments he would have
done so. The fact that he leaves them unmentioned once more underscores
the dishonesty of his presentation.
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Homosexual temple prostitution at Corinth?
Speaking of my article, “Bad Reasons for Changing One’s Mind,” it is
interesting that the Rogers piece to which my article was responding
highlighted Rogers’s visit to Corinth as a “significant occasion”
when he ‘realized’ that Paul’s remarks about homosexual practice
were restricted to “idolatrous people engaged in prostitution.”
Rogers got this pivotal ‘insight’ when he looked up at the ruins of
the temple to Aphrodite on the hill known as Acrocorinth and
surmised that when Paul wrote Rom 1:24-27 from Corinth
he was remembering the AcroCorinth and
saying: “That is the worst example of idolatry I have ever seen.” I would
agree. Paul’s point Is not about homosexuality, but idolatry, worshipping
false gods.
You can still
see Rogers’s article on the Covenant Network website at
http://covenantnetwork.org/sermon&papers/Rogers.htm. As I pointed out
in my response, there is a universal scholarly consensus that there was no
temple prostitution at this temple in Paul’s day (and no evidence that
there was ever any homosexual cult prostitution at this site). Yet,
oddly enough, though Rogers describes his experience as a “significant
occasion” for rethinking his views on Paul and homosexual practice, he
nowhere mentions this defining moment in his new book’s chapter-long
description of how he came to change his views (ch. 1, pp. 1-16). This is
known as “rewriting history.” This is an example both of how Rogers does
not know the historical context well and of how he conveniently leaves out
of his book what does not help his case—even his own wrongly interpreted
life experience.
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Contextual problems with Rogers’s misogyny
argument. Under guideline 6—“interpretation of the Bible
requires earnest study . . . to interpret the influence of the
historical and cultural context”—Rogers focuses on the misogyny
argument (which, we noted above, Rogers uses in spite of the fact that
it contradicts his assertion that the Bible does not oppose all
homosexual practice). According to Rogers, “the assumption of male
gender superiority is a significant aspect of the historical and
cultural context of the biblical passages that seem to discuss
homosexuality” (p. 64). He then goes on to give three short quotes
from Nissinen, Bird, and Furnish to the effect that the motivation
behind Scripture’s apparent opposition to homosexual practice arises
from a desire to keep men in a position of superiority and dominance
over women. There are at least three things pertaining to a broader
context of male dominance that Rogers either doesn’t know—because he
doesn’t follow the guideline to study earnestly the
historical-cultural context of Scripture—or conveniently forgets to
inform readers of.
(1) In the
Greco-Roman milieu opposition to male homosexual practice intensified as
appreciation for women grew. As Thomas K. Hubbard puts it, in the age
of imperial Rome “the increasingly liberated status of women was crucial
to the polarization of sexual preferences.” When one looks at ancient
debates over whether male-female love or male-male love is superior (Plutarch’s
Dialogue on Love 1-12, Achilles Tatius’ Luecippe and Clitophon
35-38, and pseudo-Lucian’s Affairs of the Heart), one finds that
the heterosexual position espouses a higher view of women as
suitable companions and friends deserving of equal pleasure in the sexual
bond, “whereas the pederast’s position seems in every case to have its
origins in a fundamental hatred of women” (Homosexuality in Greece and
Rome, 444-5). The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus, for example,
combined an affirmation of women’s capacity for learning philosophy with a
strong rejection of homosexual practice (12). Hence, it is no surprise
that as trends developed toward greater roles for women in early
Christianity (compared with early Judaism generally) opposition to
homosexual practice in no way diminished.
(2) Given this
correlation in the ancient world between increasing women’s liberation and
intensified opposition to all homosexual practice, it is not surprising
that even Greco-Roman critiques of homoeroticism are often motivated by
considerations other than misogyny. For example, the structural
complementarity of the sexes, as regards both anatomical and procreative
design, is often cited by opponents of homosexual practice. As Hubbard
notes: “Basic to the heterosexual position is the characteristic Stoic
appeal to the providence of Nature, which has matched and fitted the sexes
to each other” (ibid.). Similarly, Craig A. Williams acknowledges: “Some
kind of argument from ‘design’ seems to lurk in the background of
Cicero’s, Seneca’s, and Musonius’ claims: the penis is ‘designed’ to
penetrate the vagina, the vagina is ‘designed’ to be penetrated by the
penis” (Roman Homosexuality [Oxford University Press, 1999], 242).
The second-century (A.D.) physician
Soranus (or his fifth-century “translator” Caelius Aurelianus)
characterized desires of “soft men” to be penetrated by other men as “not
from nature” insofar as they “subjugated to obscene uses parts not so
intended” and disregarded “the places of our body which divine providence
destined for definite functions” (4.9.131). Part of Charicles’ attack on
all homosexual practice in Affairs of the Heart is the assertion
that male-male love is an erotic attraction for what one already is as a
sexual being:
She (viz., Aphrodite) cleverly devised a
twofold nature in each (species). . . . having written down a divinely
sanctioned rule of necessity, that each of the two (genders) remain in
their own nature. . . . Then wantonness, daring all, transgressed the laws
of nature. . . . And who then first looked with the eyes at the male as at
a female . . . ? One nature came together in one bed. But seeing
themselves in one another they were ashamed neither of what they were
doing nor of what they were having done to them. (19-20; my emphasis)
(3) If early
Judaism and early Christianity were merely imitating misogynistic trends
in the broader cultural environment when it condemned homosexual practice,
then why was opposition to homosexual practice more intense in ancient
Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity than anywhere else in the
known ancient world of the Mediterranean basin? If we follow Rogers’s
reasoning, one can only arrive at the absurd corollary that the writers of
Scripture, and Jesus, were among the biggest misogynists of the
Greco-Roman world. This corollary flies in the face of significant
evidence in both Testaments, but especially in the New Testament, of
significant roles for women. Had issues of status and gender
stratification been the sole, or even primary, motivating force behind
scriptural opposition to homosexual practice rather than gender
differentiation, then the same sort of qualified mentality against
homoerotic behavior prevailing in the ancient world would likely have
developed in ancient Israel and in early Judaism and Christianity. For in
the ancient world some significant accommodation was made to male
homosexual practice within a broader misogynistic bent, specifically the
right of males to penetrate socially inferior males such as youths,
foreigners, and slaves. The greater the role played by status over gender,
such that an inferior male could be considered less of a male, the more
openness to homosexual practice existed. It is precisely the intense
opposition to all homosexual practice in early Judaism and Christianity
that leads to the conclusion that for these subcultures gender
differentiation was a far greater concern than gender stratification.
For these
three reasons, the misogyny argument put forward in a very uncritical and
unreflective way by Rogers—parroting Nissinen, Bird, and Furnish—must be
judged untenable. Rogers simply doesn’t understand well the Scripture
texts having to do with homosexual practice in their cultural and
historical context.
Continued in Installment 3