Case
Not Made:
A Response to Prof. John Thorp’s “Making the Case” for
Blessing
Homosexual Unions in the Anglican Church of Canada
Robert A. J.
Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate
Professor of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary,
616 N.
Highland Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15206
gagnon@pts.edu
June 20, 2007
For a print copy use the
PDF version here.
Preface
A paper entitled “Making the Case: The Blessing of
Same Sex Unions in the Anglican Church of Canada” (May 2007) has been
circulated to all the delegates at the 2007 General Synod of the
Anglican Church of Canada (29 pages—or 31 if one counts the two-page
list appendix at the end). The writer of the paper is a certain John
Thorp, who is a professor of philosophy at the University of Western
Ontario. A copy of the paper can be found on the web at the Anglican
Church of Canada website at
http://www.anglican.ca/faith/ethics/documents/Making-the-Case-Thorp.pdf.
Although Thorp apologizes in his preface for the
limited scope of his essay, this does not stop him from making many bold
claims. He ends with the following: “Gay liberation is clearly
the work of the Spirit. How can it reasonably be judged otherwise?” (p.
29; his emphasis). He believes that the case he has made for blessing
homosexual unions at three levels—Scripture, Tradition, and Reason—“easily
overcomes the surface prohibitions” against homosexual practice in
Scripture (p. 19; my emphasis).
The reality of the matter is quite different. I see
very little evidence that he is even aware of the major counterarguments
to his position, much less that he responds effectively to these
arguments. This circumstance apparently forms the basis for his
overconfidence. True, he has some understanding of the philosophical
discussions in ancient Greece; see, for example, his essay “The Social
Construction of Homosexuality” in Phoenix 46.1 (1992): 54-61
(online at
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/thorp.html).
But his lack of expertise in biblical studies, theology, and science
shows throughout the essay. Even where one would expect him to be
strongest, namely in his own area of philosophical argumentation, the
presentation is surprisingly weak.
Even so, I never assume that what appears as a
markedly weak case to the trained eye will also appear so to the
untrained eye. The rebuttal below presents in relatively short order
some of the major counterarguments, following in order the basic outline
of his essay. We can only be cursory here given the short turnover time
that delegates will have to read and digest this material.
Fuller
documentation of my arguments can be obtained by reading material from
the abridged bibliography. Hopefully Prof. Thorp will begin reading some
of these resources.
Introduction:
A Faithful, Not “Frozen,” Church in Matters of
Significance
In his
introduction (pp. 1-3), Thorp repeatedly warns against a “frozen”
church. Sadly, he shows precious little concern for a faithful
church. His straw man consists of groups in the church that allegedly
hold to “eternal and unchanging religious law, enshrined in the Bible
and governing human life in every last one of its details” (p. 1;
emphasis added). Thorp contends that “if at first” embracing homosexual
unions “appears to be a radical break in the faith and order of the
Church, it is in fact not so.” In response I lift up the following
points for reflection:
1. The two-sexes
prerequisite is no little “detail” in Scripture but a core value in
sexual ethics. The universal witness of Scripture to a
male-female prerequisite for valid sexual unions—the flip side of which
is the witness of Scripture against every form of homosexual practice—is
no little “detail.” It is a core value among Scripture’s sexual ethics.
It is a value held:
-
pervasively,
that is, within each Testament and across Testaments;
-
absolutely,
that is, without exception;
-
strongly,
that is, as or more offensive than adultery and the worst forms of
consensual adult incest;
-
counterculturally,
that is, in opposition to broader cultural trends.
As such,
retaining the Bible’s position on this matter renders the church
faithful, not frozen. Violating this foundational stance is not
“dynamic,” as Thorp claims, but profoundly disobedient.
2. Thorp’s attack
on a position of “no change” beats a dead horse. Perhaps
surprisingly for Thorp virtually no one is arguing for the
eternal and unchanging character of every one of Scripture’s commands.
Indeed, such a position would be patently unbiblical inasmuch as Jesus
himself overruled the Law of Moses when he revoked exemptions to the
monogamy principle that had been given men but never women (Mark 10:2-12
par. Matt 19:3-9).
Jesus acknowledged
that these exemptions in the Law were nothing more than concessions made
to human (chiefly male) hardness of heart. Now Jesus was declaring that
such concessions would no longer be allowed. So clearly Jesus accepted
the view that the Old Testament or covenant could be improved upon; that
is, aligned more closely to the perfect will of God. Thorp is beating a
dead horse of his own making when he argues against the unchangeable
character of “every last detail” of the Bible.
3. Jesus himself
is Thorp’s main obstacle for discounting a two-sexes prerequisite.
What was the basis for Jesus’ unilateral amendment of the Law of
Moses that eliminated the right of men to more than one wife? Here the
matter becomes embarrassing for Thorp’s position, for Jesus cited as his
justification God’s creation of “male and female” in Gen 1:27 and the
marriage standard of a “man” and his “woman” being joined together in
Gen 2:24—two texts that Thorp seeks to circumvent by endorsing
homosexual unions.
Jesus’ declared
these two texts as constituting the foundation for his limitation of the
number of parties in a sexual bond to two. In other words, the ‘twoness’
or duality of a sexual bond is predicated on the ‘twoness’ or duality of
the sexes. Eliminating the significance of the latter for defining
appropriate sexual bonds leaves the church without basis for a monogamy
principle. God’s creation of two primary sexes is the foundation for
prohibiting additional persons beyond two in a sexual bond, whether
concurrently (polygyny) or serially (repeat divorce/remarriage). The
union of the two sexes into one makes a third party both unnecessary and
undesirable.
That was Jesus’
opinion, which should have considerably more significance than Thorp’s
opinion or that of any bishop who also seeks to contravene Jesus’ view.
Since Jesus lifted up Gen 1:27 and 2:24 as normative, with proscriptive
implications, for all matters of human sexual ethics, it is not
surprising that when Paul indicts homosexual practice absolutely in Rom
1:24-27 and 1 Cor 6:9 he has these same two texts from Genesis in the
background. He simply shows himself to be a good disciple of Jesus.
4. The
male-female prerequisite is the foundation or prior analogue for
defining other critical sexual norms. A powerful
indicator of the significance of a male-female prerequisite is its
relationship to other key sexual standards.
-
For Jesus the two-sexes prerequisite
grounded in God’s creation will in Scripture must have been more
important than his rulings against polygyny and divorce/remarriage
inasmuch as the foundation is greater than the positions predicated on
the foundation.
-
The Bible’s stance against adult,
consensual incest cannot be more important than its stance against
homosexual practice since:
1)
Though both are rejected in Scripture on
grounds of too much formal or structural sameness (incest on a familial
level, homosexual practice on the level of sex or gender), this degree
of structural sameness is felt more keenly in the case of homosexual
practice. For sex or gender is a more integral component of sexual
relations, and more foundationally defines it, than is and does the
degree of blood relatedness.
2)
While the Old Testament accommodated at
different points of Israel’s history to some forms of incest, Scripture
never makes an accommodation for homosexual practice of any sort.
3)
An implicit proscription of homosexual
behavior can be grounded in the creation narratives in Gen 1-2 (as Paul
certainly did, see below) but as regards incest at most only an implicit
prohibition of intergenerational incest might be found.
-
Adultery
becomes an applicable offense only when the sexual bond that the
offender is cheating on is a valid sexual bond. One can’t cheat
against a union that is structural invalid, and thus immoral, from the
beginning—or at least the notion of cheating must be considerably
diluted (much as the idea of ‘cheating’ on a mistress must, by
definition, be diminished in significance). Consequently, incest and
homosexual practice violate God’s sexual standards at a more
foundational level than adultery.
5. Same-sex
intercourse radically offends against God’s intentional creation of
humans as “male and female” (Gen 1:27) and the definition of marriage as
a union between a man and a woman (Gen 2:24). Genesis 1:27 links
God’s image imprinted on humans with the complementary sexual
differentiation of humans into male and female. Although animals are
similarly differentiated, only in humans is that differentiation
connected with being created in God’s image. This suggests that what
humans do sexually can affect either negatively or positively the stamp
of God’s image on them. It also suggests that, while male and female
each have individual integrity as God’s image, the union of male and
female brings together complementary expressions of the divine image
into a full-orbed sexuality. Entering into a homosexual union disregards
the sacred foundation on which Gen 1 predicates sexual activity and
dishonors one’s God-given sex by merging with a person of the same sex
as though that person were the complement to one’s sex.
Genesis 2:21-24
give a beautiful illustration in story form of the inherent
complementarity of a man-woman sexual bond and so the implicit, inherent
discomplementarity of a same-sex sexual bond. Woman is drawn from the
“side” of the human (a better translation than “rib”). She is the
missing part, sexually speaking, to a man—the missing sexual complement
if one is seeking a sexual relationship with another. Man and woman may
be (re-)joined into one flesh because the two emerged out of one flesh.
This is a lovely picture of the basic point that men and women are each
other’s sexual “other halves”—not two males or two females.
6. Every text in
Scripture that treats the issue of homosexual practice treats it as a
high offense abhorrent to God. A triad of stories about extreme
depravity—attempted sexual assault of male visitors by the men of Sodom
(Gen 19.4-11), the attempted sexual assault of the Levite passing
through Gibeah (Judg 19.22-25), and (as I and others have argued
elsewhere) Ham’s offense against his father Noah (Gen 9.20-27)—feature
man-male intercourse as an integral element of the depravity. Arguing
that these stories indict only homosexual practice characterized by
coercion (rape) is like arguing that a story about an adult raping a
parent (which, incidentally, is probably what the story of Ham and Noah
is about) only indicts coercive forms of incest. If one examines these
stories in their historical and literary contexts—the ancient Near
Eastern evidence, other texts written by the same author, other texts in
ancient Israel presupposing a male-female prerequisite or indicting
homoerotic activity, and the history of interpretation—one sees that the
same-sex dimension of the acts is a significant compounding
offense, not an incidental act.
The Levitical
prohibitions of homosexual practice (18:22; 20:13) treat it as a
first-tier sexual offense (20:10-16), specifically tag it with the label
to’evah (“abomination, abhorrent act”) that is normally reserved
for high moral offenses, and in all other respects treat the act as a
matter of moral impurity. Unlike merely ritually impure acts, homosexual
practice is not contagious through physical contact and is not rectified
by ritual bathing; nor does the prohibition encompass unintentional or
inadvertent acts.
Jesus, as we have
seen, predicated his view of marital monogamy and indissolubility on a
male-female prerequisite for valid sexual bonds given in Gen 1-2. His
view on homosexual practice is clear not only from this but also from:
his view of the Old Testament as holy Scripture and his retention of the
Law of Moses even on relatively minor matters such as tithing; his
intensification of the Law’s sexual ethic in matters involving adultery
of the heart and divorce and in his saying about cutting over body parts
(Matt 5:27-32); the fact that the man who baptized him, John the
Baptist, was beheaded for defending Levitical sex laws; early Judaism’s
univocal opposition to homosexual practice; the early church’s united
opposition to homosexual practice; the distinction that he drew between
the non-defiling effect of food and the body-defiling character of
gratifying sexual desires for behavior that God forbids (Mark 7:21-23);
and other arguments.
Paul in Rom
1:24-27 treated homosexual practice as comparable to idolatry insofar as
both radically suppress the truth (one about the Creator, the other
about the way the Creator made us) transparent in the material
structures of creation/nature. He refers to homosexual practice, both
female and male, as an act of sexual “uncleanness” or “impurity” (akatharsia),
an “indecency” or “shameful act” (aschēmosune), a “dishonoring (atimazesthai)
of their bodies among themselves,” the product of “dishonorable
passions” (pathē atimias), and an act “contrary to nature” (hē
para phusin) that, in part, was its own “payback” (antimisthia).
Twice later in the same letter he alludes back to homosexual practice as
a paradigmatic example of sexual impurity and immorality that believers
must put aside or else still face God’s coming judgment (6:19-23;
13:13-14). The continuation of the vice list from 1:19-27 to 1:28-31
does not mean that Paul regarded idolatry and homosexual practice as
“just two of many vices,” nor does the continuation of the argument in
ch. 2 suggest that Paul is opposed to the Christian community judging
idolatry and homosexual practice as high moral offenses.
Paul in 1 Cor 6:9
lists “soft men” (malakoi, i.e. men who feminize themselves to
attract male sex partners) and “men who lie with a male” (arsenokoitai;
cf. also 1 Tim 1.10) among a series of sexual offenders that include
adulterers and, implied in the context, men who engage in incest and men
who have sex with prostitutes (pornoi, cf. 5.9-11; 6.15-16). Such
persons, whether they claim to be believers or not, “shall not inherit
the kingdom of God” if they do not repent (6.9-10; cf. 2 Cor 12:21).
The reasons given
above make clear that the Bible’s male-female prerequisite for sexual
unions is no little “detail.” Deviating from this foundation for sexual
ethics is indeed a “radical break in [i.e. from] the faith and order of
the Church.”
Moral Evolution
Thorp appeals to Richard Hooker’s three-stranded cord
(later identified as a three-legged stool) consisting of Scripture,
Reason, and Tradition (Thorp subsumes experience under reason). However,
he does not use this hermeneutical model in the manner that Hooker would
have. Particularly problematic is the short shrift that Thorp gives
Scripture, which for Hooker occupied “that first place” to which “both
credit and obedience is due.” In a 29-page paper Thorp gives Scripture a
grand total of two-and-one-third pages, discussing it only after he
treats both “Moral Evolution” and “Reason.” Even his handling of “moral
evolution,” “reason,” and “tradition” contain fatal errors and
misinterpretations. We will begin with his section on “Moral Evolution”
(pp. 4-9).
Thorp makes the
single point here that “morals change” (p. 9) and cites the
church’s stance on usury and slavery to make his point. That changing
circumstances may result in changing moral standards from those
enunciated in Scripture within limits is, as I have already
observed, patently obvious. Making this point, however, does not in any
way establish Thorp’s case for changing in the specific area of
homosexual practice. Indeed, proper analogical reasoning shows the
matter to be otherwise. Here there are three main problems with Thorp’s
argument.
First, the concept
of “moral evolution” implies steady improvement in the morality of
society in all, or virtually all, areas over the centuries. Any minimal
understanding of history will show this assumption to be false. There is
at least as much moral devolution over time, as witnessed not
least in the sexual looseness and infidelity that characterizes modern
Western society.
Second, valid
moral change is not always in the direction of greater permissiveness.
One need only look at the six antitheses that kick off the Sermon on the
Mount, two of which have to do with sex, where Jesus summarizes his
message as: You used to be able to get away with the following things; I
tell you that such is no longer the case because I’m closing these
loopholes (Matt 5:17-48).
Third, the two
analogues that Thorp cites for jettisoning the Bible’s stance on
homosexual practice are poor analogues. In fact, Thorp has chosen to
eschew near analogues (incest, polyamory) in favor of adopting more
remote analogues (usury, slavery). He has done so for the obvious reason
that the closer analogues won’t get him to his desired ideological
outcome.
Usury. The
Bible’s stance on usury does not remotely approach the consistency,
severity, absoluteness, and strongly countercultural character of the
Bible’s stance on homosexual practice. Thorp’s analogy is akin to
comparing usury law and incest law. In other words it makes little
sense.
Slavery.
The analogy with slavery also has insurmountable problems. Note the
following differences between the Bible’s stance on slavery and the
Bible’s stance on homosexual practice:
-
No mandate.
There is no scriptural mandate to enslave others, nor does one incur a
penalty for releasing slaves. No noble values ever ‘rode’ on the
preservation of the institution of slavery. Selling oneself into
slavery was seen as a last-ditch measure to avoid starvation—at best a
necessary evil in a state with limited welfare resources (Lev 25:39).
There is, however, a scriptural mandate to limit sexual unions
to heterosexual ones, with a severe penalty (in this life or the next)
imposed on violators.
-
Not pre-Fall.
Unlike the opposite-sex prerequisite, Scripture does not ground
slavery in pre-Fall structures. Even if one were to contend that this
is a de-historicizing argument, based on myth, the creation story
still tells us that the biblical writers viewed heterosexual unions,
unlike slavery, as normative and transcultural.
-
The Bible’s critical edge toward
slavery. One can discern within the Bible a
significant critical edge toward slavery. Front and center in
Israelite memory was its remembrance of God’s liberation from slavery
in Egypt (e.g., Exod 22:21; 23:9; Lev 25:42, 55; Deut 15:15).
Christian memory adds the paradigmatic event of Christ’s redemption of
believers from slavery to sin and people (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23; and
often). Israelite law put various restrictions on enslaving fellow
Israelites—mandatory release dates, the right of near-kin redemption,
not returning runaway slaves, and insisting that Israelites not be
treated as slaves.
The “undisputed Paul” in
1 Cor 7:21 and Phlm 16 regarded liberation from slavery as at least a
penultimate good. The ultimate good, of course, was freedom of moral
purpose, something that not even slavery could deprive someone of. First
Corinthians 7:21 is best translated as: “Were you, a slave, called?
Don’t let it trouble you. But if also (or: even if, if indeed) you are
able to become free, all the more (or: rather) use (it, i.e. your
freedom),” that is, to redouble your efforts to serve God. As regards
Philemon, Thorp inaccurately characterizes Paul’s message as: “And, of
course, the whole of the letter to Philemon is about the return to him
of his runaway slave Onesimus, whom Paul had encountered in prison” (p.
8). No, the whole of the letter is about Paul getting Philemon to look
at Onesimus in an entirely new light, including as a person who should
be treated “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved
brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord” (i.e., in the sphere of
both society and church; v. 16).
The canon of Scripture shows
considerable discomfort with the institution of slavery. Yet there is
not the slightest indication anywhere in the canon that same-sex
intercourse is anything other than a detested practice to be utterly
eschewed by the people of God in all circumstances. The discomfort that
Scripture shows is not with any opposition to same-sex intercourse but
rather with any accommodation to it.
4. The
Bible’s countercultural witness. Although
the contemporary church has gone beyond the Bible in its total
opposition to slavery, the biblical stance was generally more critical
of slavery than were the surrounding cultures out of which the
Scriptures emerged. The countercultural edge was in the direction of
criticizing and weakening the institution of slavery. The precise
opposite happens to be the case with the Bible’s stance on same-sex
intercourse. The authors of Scripture expressed far greater
disapproval of such behavior and maintained a far more rigorous
male-female sexual prerequisite than did the cultures of their day.
The countercultural edge was decidedly in the direction of
intensifying opposition to homosexual practice. For Paul liberation in
the Christian life here meant freedom from the tyranny of intense
urges that dishonor the human creation as male and female, not
necessarily by losing the intense urges but rather by gaining a new
power, that of the Spirit, to enable obedience amidst hardship
(compare Rom 1:24-27; 6:19-22; 7:5-6; 8:12-17).
Simply put,
Scripture nowhere expresses a vested interest in preserving slavery but
rather in many ways strong reservations, whereas Scripture does express
a clear countercultural and creational vested interest in preserving an
exclusive male-female dynamic to human sexual relationships.
Scripture itself does not provide the kind of clear and unequivocal
witness for slavery that it exhibits against same-sex
intercourse.
An emancipation
movement would not have appalled Jesus and Paul but acts of same-sex
intercourse would have done just that. There is much to suggest that
Jesus and Paul would have condoned an emancipation movement, though they
might have questioned: (1) how it could be accomplished without massive
violence (they did not live in democratic states and lacked political
power); (2) how some particularly destitute persons would survive (they
did not live in welfare states so some people might face starvation);
and (3) how the disciples of Jesus would survive if it made emancipation
a cornerstone (they would confirm for authorities suspicions that
Christian faith was a seditious threat to the Roman Empire). Thorp’s
stance on same-sex intercourse represents a fundamental challenge to the
authority of Scripture and Jesus that far supersedes any challenge posed
by emancipation movements. It is a challenge to Scripture’s core
values.
What the authors
of Scripture, and Jesus, meant by “slavery” was also something
significantly different from what we Americans normally mean by slavery.
Slavery in the ancient world was not predominantly race-based, often did
not mean lifelong servitude, often served as a form of criminal justice
(in the absence of long-term prison facilities), often allowed private
enterprise, sometimes led to social advancement, and operated in a
social and political economy that made complete abolition of the
institution problematic (totalitarian states that disallowed such
political reform; no welfare net). These differences are well documented
and help to mitigate the problem of different stances toward the
institution of slavery held by ancient and modern believers.
Better
analogues: incest and polyamory. Instead of fixating on the
relatively remote analogies of usury and slavery, why doesn’t Thorp
focus attention on the much closer analogies of incest and polyamory?
After all, these are also sexual offenses. Incest is closest to
homosexual practice as a severe sexual offense in Scripture. Both incest
and homosexual practice are rejected, ultimately, because they
constitute an attempt at merging with someone who is too much of a
structural same. As noted above, polyamory (multiple-partner sexuality)
is rejected by Jesus on the ground that it violates the twoness of the
sexes established by God at creation. So clearly there is a logical link
that can be made between homosexual practice and incest, on one hand,
and homosexual practice and polyamory, on the other.
Homosexual
practice, incest, and polyamorous unions all can be conducted by adults
as consensual, loving relationships. Homosexual practice and incest can
also be monogamous, while even a polyamorous bond can express fidelity
in a lifelong commitment. None of these relationships is
intrinsically harmful, if by harm we mean scientifically
measurable harm. Absolute prohibitions for all three depend
significantly on a principle of embodied structural congruity that
transcends the will and orientation of the participants.
The best analogies
are obviously those that share the greatest number of points of
correspondence with the thing to which they are being compared. Thorp
has ignored the best analogies. It is clear that Thorp doesn’t want to
focus attention on the analogues of incest and polyamory because doing
so would lead the church to the conclusion that it should continue to
oppose homosexual practice. For we continue to oppose absolutely in the
church incest and polyamory—even those instances of an adult,
consensual, and committed sort. Since Thorp doesn’t want to reach the
conclusion that a prohibition of homosexual practice be maintained, he
chooses the more remote analogues of usury and slavery. That is an
intellectually dishonest form of analogical reasoning.
In promoting
homosexual practice Thorp is actually pushing for a reinstitution of
slavery, the kind of slavery that Paul warns against in Rom 6:1-8:17: a
slavery to the sinful impulses of the flesh to do what God expressly
forbids.
Reason
Thorp’s argument from reason is thin on reasons even
though this represents his only hope of overturning Scripture and
Tradition (pp. 10-16). His argument has two parts.
The first part
claims that the church originally did not regard homosexual practice as
a severe offense but “just one vice among others” with “the grounds for
its disapproval” being “quite various” (p. 11). This claim is false.
From its roots in ancient Israel, through the New Testament, and to the
Church Fathers and beyond, homosexual practice has consistently been
regarded as (1) a high moral offense that is (2) contrary to God’s
design in nature/creation. Thorp’s contention that homosexual practice
first becomes a high offense in the work of Peter Damian (ca. 1050) is
historically absurd. Certainly there is no justification in the New
Testament for hating persons who engage in homosexual practice. There is
justification, however, for being repulsed by homosexual practice in a
manner akin to the revulsion felt for incest between a man and his
mother (1 Cor 5). At the same time offenders are not to be consigned to
hell and done with, but rather sought out for the purposes of being
recovered for the kingdom of God.
Typical of Thorp’s
misreading of texts is his handling of Didache 2:2-3. Thorp
assumes that because pederasty is mentioned in the Didache among
an array of offenses it is being viewed as “just one vice among others.”
Didache 2:2-3 simply constructs a vice list based on the second
half of the Decalogue without attempting to provide a ranking. To give
an analogous example, Paul is clearly morally outraged by the case of
the incestuous man in 1 Cor 5, a person whom Paul refers to as a
pornos, i.e. a sexually immoral man. He clearly does not regard
incest as “just one vice among others,” say, as merely the equivalent of
the sin of fornication (i.e., non-incestuous, heterosexual intercourse
outside of marriage). Yet he simply includes the pornoi as one
among many offenders in the vice lists in 1 Cor 5:9-10 and 6:9-10 from
whom the church should temporarily disassociate (pending repentance) and
who (if repentance is not forthcoming) run the risk of exclusion from
God’s kingdom.
The second part of
Thorp’s argument from reason is that “the secular understanding of
homosexuality has changed in recent decades” in that we now know,
allegedly, that homosexuality, “like left-handedness, . . . is a normal
abnormality” and that it is a proclivity that is “either inborn, or at
any rate acquired so early in life that the agent has no say in its
acquisition” (p. 15). Persons who engage in homosexual practice are
“sexual minorities,” on the analogy of “racial and religious minorities”
(ibid.). They can live well-adjusted lives.
A later section of
his paper entitled “Other Considerations” (pp. 23-26) also belongs here.
Thorp argues that homosexual practice cannot be “contrary to nature”
inasmuch as it is exhibited in many animal populations (to stress the
point Thorp even appends a 2-page list of mammals exhibiting homosexual
behavior, drawn from Bruce Bagemihl’s book, Biological Exuberance;
pp. 30-31). Against a procreation argument, Thorp argues that the church
has accepted non-procreative sexuality among heterosexuals.
None of these are
strong arguments for overturning the powerful witness of Scripture
against homosexual practice. Consider the following:
-
Innateness as anticipated in the
ancient world and as irrelevant for assessing an act as moral.
The argument about innateness of homosexual desire is a complete
wash, for two reasons. First, already in the ancient world congenital
causation factors for at least some forms of same-sex attraction were
posited. As classicist Thomas K. Hubbard notes in his Homosexuality
in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (University of
California Press, 2003): “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).
Second, as even Thorp has to admit (p. 26), the “born
that way” argument does not do justice to the Christian view of original
sin, nor the fact that humans experience a wide array of innate impulses
that are sinful. Quite simply, “no clear conclusions about the morality
of a behavior can be made from the mere fact of biological causation,
because all behavior is biologically caused” (J. Michael Bailey and
Brian S. Mustanski, “A therapist’s guide to the genetics of human sexual
orientation.” Sexual and Relationship Therapy 18.4 [2003]:
429-36, here p. 432). Pedophilia, for example, is every bit as “innate,”
that is, not a product of willful choice, as homosexuality. The same can
be said for “polysexual” impulses, the common (especially male)
dissatisfaction for lifelong monogamy. While at present it is more
difficult to tie “orientation” to incest, incest would (or should) not
be acceptable even if there were such a thing as an orientation to
incest on the part of some. None of God’s commands are predicated on
people lacking or losing any innate desire to violate the command in
question.
-
The absurdity of analogies with
left-handedness and ethnicity.
Left-handedness is a bad analogue for homosexuality because
left-handedness is not an impulse to do something God expressly
forbids. It is not a desire to merge sexually with another
structurally discordant to oneself.
Comparisons between benign non-sexual conditions and
disputed forms of sexual relationship are fraught with difficulties.
Sexual intercourse has its own distinctive rules. For example, it would
be absurd to argue, as Thorp and other proponents of homosexual unions
do, that the love commandment validates all sexual unions where love is
present. The problem with such a use of the love commandment would be
readily apparent if one realized that, while Jesus commanded us to love
everyone, he at the same time restricted the number of persons with whom
one could have sex to one other person lifetime (based, as we have seen,
on a two-sexes prerequisite). Obviously, then, Jesus had a distinctive
sex ethic. He absolutely prescribed love of everyone with whom one comes
into contact, including an enemy, while absolutely proscribing sex with
more than one other person and limiting that one other person to a
person of the other sex.
Sexual intimacy is not just more love. It has its
own distinctive character from generic, non-sexual love. Accordingly,
parents who “love” their children by having sex with them go to prison.
A few years ago at the American Academy of Religion national meeting the
Gay Men’s Issues in Religion Group had a theme session that advocated
for “polyfidelity” (faithful, multiple-partner sexual unions). One of
the presenters compared an erection to a particularly warm handshake.
Another likened the Trinity to a sexual ‘threesome.’ These presenters
did not realize that sexual unions have their own unique prerequisites
that are not required by, and sometimes are at diametrical odds with,
the command to love everyone.
A polysexual orientation is a much closer, and thus
better, analogue than the non-sexual and non-moral condition of
left-handedness. Again, Thorp doesn’t want the closer analogues because
they lead to a conclusion that Thorp finds undesirable.
The attempt to develop the category of “sexual
minorities,” on analogy to ethnic minorities, leads to ludicrous
results. An ethnicity is a condition that is 100% heritable, absolutely
immutable, primarily non-behavioral, and therefore inherently benign.
Homosexual orientation is a sexual impulse and, like many sexual
impulses, it is:
·
Not 100% heritable. Homosexual
development cannot be predicted with the degree of certainty that one
can predict that two people, say, of French ancestry will always produce
a child of French ancestry.
·
Open to some change in the course of
life, at least as regards the intensity of the impulse. Needless to say,
persons of French ancestry do not become more or less French in the
course of life.
·
Primarily a behavioral desire to do
something. Being French or any other ancestry or ethnicity is more a
condition of being than of behavior.
Thus homosexuality, unlike ethnicity but like
polysexuality (i.e. polyamory), pedosexuality (pedophilia), and desires
to have sex with close blood relations, is not an inherently benign
condition. Of course, a person is not held culpable merely for
experiencing an impulse to do what God forbids. But such an impulse is a
sinful impulse because it seeks to violate God’s commands. If it were
not a sinful impulse there would be no need to refrain from expressing
it. When an individual acquiesces to the impulse in thought and/or deed,
then the individual becomes culpable for sin.
-
Why homosexuality in the animal
kingdom does not make homosexual practice natural in the deepest
sense. Thorp’s
argument about homosexuality in the animal kingdom is irrelevant even
for making his nature argument. I never used my dear departed dog
“Cocoa” and her instinctive sexual habits as a basis for determining
what is “natural” behavior. You can find animals of various species
where some part of the population at least practices incest,
pedophilia, extreme polyamory, and cross-species sex, along with
same-sex sexual activity. Does this make all such activity “natural”?
In one sense, perhaps, but not in all senses.
Nature cannot be limited to impulses but rather must be
broadened to include the formal, embodied structures of human existence.
The sheer structural incongruence of an incestuous bond, a sexual bond
involving more than two persons concurrently, and an adult-child sexual
bond are enough for people to categorize such bonds as unnatural. The
unnatural character of homosexual practice does not stem in the first
instance from what animals do or don’t do. It stems from the totality of
embodied maleness, if male, or femaleness, if female, each of which
represent only one half of the sexual spectrum. In other words, it stems
from the structurally incongruous character (anatomically,
physiologically, and psychologically) of same-sex sexual unions.
Homosexuality is unnatural in the sense that it is narcissistic arousal
for the distinctive features of one’s own sex; or the self-deluded
desire to complement one’s own sex (which is intact) through merger with
someone of the same sex, as if one were only half one’s own sex.
-
Why an otherwise well-adjusted
life does not validate homosexual practice.
The fact that some homosexual persons live otherwise well-adjusted
lives does not establish the validity of homosexual practice.
First, the definition of immorality is not limited to
what produces intrinsic, scientifically measurable harm. If it
were otherwise, society would have to endorse some type of virtually
every sexual bond. Even adult-child contact does not produce inherent
measurable harm, as two APA studies have noted, to say nothing of adult
incest or faithful polyamory. Homosexual persons do not become complete
moral werewolves simply because they engage in homosexual practice.
People compartmentalize their impulses and behaviors, being good in some
areas and bad in others. The good doesn’t convert the bad into good.
Second, Thorp’s claim overlooks the fact that homosexual
persons experience disproportionately high rates of measurable harm
in ways that typify their specific sex. Same-sex erotic bonds lack a
person of the other sex to moderate the extremes of a given sex or to
fill in the gaps of that given sex. Not surprisingly, homosexual men
experience on average markedly higher numbers of sex partners in the
course of life and a markedly higher rates of sexually transmitted
disease. Homosexual women experience on average unions of shorter
duration and higher rates of mental health issues, probably due to the
greater personal expectations that women put on sexual relationships
(thus putting added pressure on the relationship) and a higher
investment of self-worth in the success of the relationship (which, when
the relationship fails, leads to greater depression). Because men and
women were designed by God to complement each other in a sexual bond,
not men and men or women and women, the former type of union is natural,
the latter type unnatural.
This leads to the third point: Such problems are
symptomatic of a deeper root problem; namely, conceiving a person of the
same sex as the appropriate sexual complement to one’s own sex.
-
A proper use of a procreation
argument. Thorp dismisses a procreation
argument on the grounds that heterosexual relationships are blessed
even when lacking a procreative capacity. Procreation was clearly not
Paul’s main concern either (cf. 1 Cor 7) but that didn’t stop him from
issuing a severe indictment of homosexual practice in his letters. The
procreation argument is a heuristic device—one more clue for why God
did not design two persons of the same sex for sexual pairing. There
is a big difference between having equipment failure (infertility
among heterosexual couples) and not having the equipment at all (the
inherent incapacity for procreation in homosexual bonds).
Thorp’s argument
from reason is thus badly constructed. He seems not even to be aware of
the main counterarguments to his position, much less answer them
effectively.
Thorp’s
misogyny argument. A final point needs to be said about Thorp’s
predictable use of a misogyny argument in this section of his paper. He
suggests that “the deep reason for the loathing of homosexuals
that our culture has known” stems “ultimately from the disprizing of
women that was a common feature of the cultures of the Mediterranean
basin” (pp. 14-15). But this argument will not work, for at least three
reasons.
-
First, even Greco-Roman critiques of
homosexual practice were more broadly motivated than simply a desire
to keep women down. Greco-Roman moralists also appealed to the
structural complementarity of the sexes, as regards both anatomical
and procreative design. “Basic to the heterosexual position [against
homosexual practice in the first few centuries C.E.] is the
characteristic Stoic appeal to the providence of Nature, which has
matched and fitted the sexes to each other” (Hubbard, Sourebook,
444). The misogyny argument ignores concerns for formal or structural
congruence that they applied (and we still apply) to various forbidden
sexual practices.
-
Second, in the Greco-Roman milieu
opposition to male homosexual practice intensified as appreciation for
women grew. Advocates for the superiority of male-female love
generally espoused a higher view of women as suitable
companions and friends deserving of equal pleasure in the sexual bond.
-
Third, the illogical but inevitable
corollary of the misogyny argument is that ancient Israel, early
Judaism, and early Christianity were the most misogynistic cultures in
the ancient world. For it is in these cultures that one finds the
strongest opposition to homosexual practice. As it is, the idea that
these cultures were more deeply misogynistic than “pagan” cultures is
absurd. Therefore, it is also absurd to argue that the primary
stimulus for opposing homosexual practice in the pages of the Bible
was a fundamental fear or hatred of women.
Scripture
As we have already noted, Thorp’s discussion of
Scripture (pp. 17-19) is poor indeed. At no point does he provide a
careful examination of any texts of Scripture. Instead he focuses on two
main philosophical arguments that are more asserted than substantiated.
1. Why a
prohibition of “committed” homosexual unions is both reasonable and
scriptural. Thorp first contends that “it seems extremely
unlikely” that the Bible could be expressing opposition to “lifelong,
committed, nurturing” homosexual relationships since “the language is
too harshly dismissive to allow us to think it is motivated by any
knowledge” of such (p. 18).
Before offering my
main critique an aside is in order. First, one should bear in mind that
the characterization “lifelong” is problematic given that only a tiny
fraction of all homosexual relationships turn out to be
lifelong—certainly less than 5% and probably less than 1% in cases where
there is not premature death through AIDS. A more realistic expectation
for about 10-25% of committed homosexual unions is “long-term,” meaning
something like a union of 5-20 years duration.
I offer two main
points in response to Thorp’s argument.
First, this is
nothing at all unusual or unreasonable about an absolute prohibition of
homosexual unions, even of a committed sort. In fact, Thorp would
presumably apply the same logic to dismissing absolutely all adult
consensual incestuous bonds, say, between a man and his (widowed or
divorced?) mother or between a woman and her brother. Surely he would
not argue here that our retention of an absolute prohibition of such
unions is “too harshly dismissive” when it does not make exceptions for
adult incestuous bonds that are “lifelong, committed, nurturing” (and, I
might add, that are infertile or that use birth control)? Presumably, he
would recognize that formal or structural prerequisites exist for sexual
bonds irrespective of whether the sexual union exhibits love and
commitment. As I have argued, the structural discomplementarity of
homosexual bonds is even more severe than that of incestuous bonds.
We have also noted
that faithful polyamorous arrangements—whether a traditional polygamous
bond or non-traditional “threesomes” and the like—are not as severe a
violation of God’s sexual norms as are homosexual unions. Jesus
predicated his view of monogamy on a two-sexes prerequisite and the
foundation must be more important than the structure built on the
foundation. And yet in the Western Church we don’t make any allowances
for polygamy, even in circumstances where consenting adults are involved
and love and commitment are evident. Thorp refers to the tolerance of
polygamy “in many Anglican jurisdictions in Africa . . . in cases where
men who [already] have several wives convert to Christianity” (p. 18).
Yet presumably even Thorp would not make exceptions (not even in Africa)
for Christians who want to enter into a new polygamous
arrangement. But isn’t this view “too harshly dismissive”?
Thorp’s problem
here is that he simply assumes in the case of homosexual practice
(though apparently only here) that love and commitment ultimately trump
all formal requirements for a sexual union, so long as intrinsic
measurable harm cannot be demonstrated. But such a position leads to
absurd results that not even he would accept (hopefully).
Parenthetically,
Thorp makes an argument based on the church’s partial accommodation to
divorce and remarriage in modern times, an accommodation that he
attributes to changing circumstances (p. 18). However, the argument
won’t get him to where he wants to go as regards validating homosexual
unions, for at least two reasons. First, as we have already noted, Jesus
and the entire apostolic witness (to say nothing of the Old Testament
witness) understood the two-sexes prerequisite for marriage to be more,
not less, important than the lifelong character of such bonds. The
dissolution of a natural bond cannot be compared to an active entrance
into a strongly unnatural bond. This is particularly true in cases where
one has largely been the victim of the dissolution rather than the
perpetrator but it is even true in the case of the perpetrator. It is
not possible to reason correctly from accommodation for a lesser offense
to an accommodation for a greater offense. For the same reason I’ve not
heard anyone arguing that greater laxity on divorce/remarriage permits
greater laxity on “committed” incest. Second, the church doesn’t ordain
anybody who has been divorced and remarried five times, let alone
someone who declares that s/he will continue to get divorced and
remarried monthly with the fewest negative side-effects. Yet that is
precisely what Thorp and other advocates of homosexual unions want the
church to do with someone who is actively and unrepentantly engaged in
serial homosexual practice.
My second point to
Thorp’s assumption that the Bible’s indictment of homosexual unions
could not have embraced committed homosexual bonds is this:
Demonstrating that homosexual practice is rejected absolutely (i.e.,
without exception) by the authors of Scripture is easy to demonstrate. I
will lay out only a brief outline here with respect to Paul’s view
because (1) Thorp himself has made no attempt to document his
conclusions by careful exegesis of Scripture in its historical context
and (2) demonstrating this fully would add at least another ten pages of
text to this paper when I have already demonstrated this fully in many
other writings that Thorp and others simply need to take the time to
read. Here are six main arguments:
1) Appeal
to the creation texts. Paul clearly had in
view the creation texts in Gen 1:27 and 2:24 behind his two main
indictments of homosexual practice, Rom 1:24-27 (note eight points of
correspondence, in a parallel tripartite structure, between Gen 1:26-27
and Rom 1:23-27) and 1 Cor 6:9 (see the citation of Gen 2:24 in 1 Cor
6:16). These echoes establish that Paul’s main problem with homosexual
practice was that it was a violation of God’s will for male-female
pairing established in creation, not that it was typically
exploitative.
2) The
nature argument. Paul’s nature argument in
Romans 1.24-27 does not lend itself to distinctions between exploitative
and non-exploitative manifestations of homosexual behavior but rather to
an absolute rejection of all homosexual bonds. By para phusin
(“beyond nature” in the sense of “contrary to, against nature”) Paul
meant that the evidence from the material structures of creation—here
the complementary embodied character of maleness and femaleness—gives
clear evidence of God’s will for human sexual pairing (cf. the quote
from Hubbard above against the misogyny argument).
3) The
absolute wording of Rom 1:24-27. In Rom
1:24-27 Paul emphasizes the mutuality of the homoerotic desires
(“inflamed with their yearning for one another” and “their bodies being
dishonored among themselves”). This proves that Paul is not restricting
his remarks to coercive, exploitative acts. Moreover, the wording of
“exchanging” and “leaving behind” the other sex for the same sex is
absolute. The text does not say that men and women exchanged or left
behind committed relationships with either sex for exploitative
relationships with either sex. It states clearly that the problem was
solely the exchange or leaving behind of other-sex sexual unions to
pursue same-sex sexual unions.
4) The
indictment of lesbian intercourse in Rom 1:26
does not support the view that Scripture’s indictment is limited to
exploitative homosexual acts, since lesbianism in antiquity was not
characterized by pederasty, prostitution, or abuse of slaves. Indeed,
Greco-Roman moralists in antiquity who wanted to argue against man-male
intercourse in its entirety sometimes cited intercourse between women as
the ultimate trump card inasmuch as lesbian intercourse was disapproved
of even by men who advocated for man-male intercourse. Thorp contends in
a footnote that “it has been persuasively argued” that Rom 1:26 refers
to heterosexual anal intercourse” rather than lesbian behavior. This is
false, given the following facts: (a) the parallel phrasing of Rom 1:26
and 1:27, where “even their females exchanged the natural use” parallels
“likewise also the males, having left the natural use of the female”;
(b) Paul’s attribution of blame exclusively to “females” with no mention
of males in 1:26; (c) instances in ancient sources where one finds a
pairing male homoeroticism and female homoeroticism; (d) references to
lesbianism as unnatural in ancient “pagan” literature but no such
references to heterosexual anal intercourse as unnatural; (e) the
uniformly negative view of female homosexual practice among men in the
Greco-Roman world; and (f) the dominant history of interpretation of Rom
1:26 as lesbianism by the Church Fathers. On the last point Augustine
(ca. 410) is a notable exception, but (as B. Brooten notes) this may
have been due to his debates with the Pelagians, who in Augustine’s view
had an overly positive view of sex in marriage apart from its
procreative function. All the other Church Fathers from Augustine’s time
or earlier who commented on what Paul meant by unnatural female
intercourse in Rom 1:26 understood it as lesbian intercourse: Clement of
Alexandria (ca. 200), Tertullian (ca. 200), “Ambrosiaster” (ca. 370),
and John Chrysostom (ca. 390; cf. Bernadette Brooten, Love Between
Woman [University of Chicago Press, 1996]).
5) The
inclusive character of the terms malakoi and arsenokoitai
in the historical and literary context for 1 Cor 6.9.
As regards the meaning of malakoi (lit., “soft men,” in the sense
of men who feminize themselves to attract male sex partners) note:
a. Its
place in amidst other participants in illicit sexual intercourse and its
pairing with the immediately following word arsenokoitai.
b.
Philo of Alexandria’s use of cognate words
to refer to men who actively feminize themselves for the purpose of
attracting other men.
c. Greco-Roman
uses of malakoi and the parallel Latin word molles (soft
men) to denote effeminate adult males who are biologically and/or
psychologically disposed to desire penetration by men.
As regards the meaning of arsenokoitai (literally,
“men lying [koitē] with a male [arsēn]”) note (among other
reasons):
d. That
the word is a specifically Jewish/Christian word formulated from the
prohibitions of man-male intercourse in Lev 18:22 and 20:13, which Jews
of the period interpreted absolutely to include consensual adult male
contact.
e. Actual
usage of arsenokoitai and cognates in Christian texts written
after 1 Corinthians, which was not limited to pederasts or men who had
sex with call boys.
f. The
implications of the broad context in 1 Cor 5-7, such as the parallel
case of incest in ch. 5, the presumption of consent in the vice list in
6:9-10, the citation of Gen 2:24 in 6:16, and the presumption of a
male-female prerequisite in the treatment of marriage in ch. 7 (cf. also
1 Cor 11:2-16).
g. The
fact that sex between two free adult males in the Roman Imperial Age was
regarded as more offensive, not less so, than sex with an adolescent
boy.
6) The
existence of committed homosexual love in the Greco-Roman world.
A conception of caring homoerotic unions already existed in Paul’s
cultural environment. Yet even homosexual unions of this sort were
rejected by some Greco-Roman moralists. For example, in a debate over
heterosexual and homosexual bonds, Plutarch’s friend Daphnaeus admits
that homosexual relationships are not necessarily exploitative, for
“union contrary to nature does not destroy or curtail a lover’s
tenderness.” Yet, he declares, even when a “union with males” is
conducted “willingly” it remains “shameful” since males “with softness (malakia)
and effeminacy (thēlutēs) [are] surrendering themselves, as Plato
says, ‘to be mounted in the custom of four-footed animals’ and to be
sowed with seed contrary to nature” (Dialogue on Love 751).
Historically
speaking, then, the evidence is overwhelming that Paul, like all other
Jews and Christians of the period, opposed homosexual practice
categorically and absolutely. Louis Crompton was correct when he stated
in his massive Homosexuality and Civilization (Harvard University
Press, 2003):
According to [one]
interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at “bona fide”
homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a reading, however
well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul
or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance
of same-sex relations under any circumstance. The idea that
homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been
wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early Christian. (p. 114)
2. Why the “Big
Picture” of Scripture doesn’t disavow a prohibition of homosexual
practice. Thorp’s second line of reasoning is that “even if Paul
means to condemn such relationships,” we should read the Bible “for the
big picture,” which “urges us in the direction of love and acceptance of
gay and lesbian people” and “abstinence from judgment” (pp. 18-19).
The problem with
this argument is that there is nothing in the “big picture” of the Bible
on sexual ethics that moves “in the direction of” support for homosexual
practice. The New Testament, to say nothing of the Old Testament,
certainly doesn’t define love as tolerating behaviors that Scripture
strongly, pervasively, and counterculturally forbids. “Love does not
rejoice over wrongdoing (or: unrighteousness, adikia) but
rejoices in conjunction with the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). In a context
having to do with sexual behavior Paul insisted that what counts is
“keeping the commandments of God” (1 Cor 7:19). An outraged Paul asked
in the case of the incestuous man, “Isn’t it the case that you are to
judge those inside (the church)?” (1 Cor 5:12). He intended this rule to
apply equally to men who have sex with a male and to adulterers (6:9).
Jesus was no
different. Jesus coupled his outreach to tax collectors and sexual
sinners with a call for repentance as an essential precondition for
inheriting the kingdom of God (Mark 1:15 par.; 6:12 par.; Matt 11:20-21
par.; 12:41 par.; Luke 13:3-5). In the paradigmatic story of the woman
caught in adultery Jesus prevented the crowd from stoning the woman—dead
people don’t repent—but clearly commanded the woman to “no longer be
sinning” (John 8:11). This command is combined elsewhere in John with
the warning “lest something worse happen to you” (i.e., loss of eternal
life; John 5:14). In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount the saying about
cutting off offending body parts in order to avoid being sent to hell
full-bodied is sandwiched in between two sets of teaching on the
importance of sexual purity (Matt 5:27-32). Jesus viewed rebuke of the
recalcitrant as an integral part of what it meant to love one’s neighbor
(compare Luke 17:3-4 par. Matt 18:15, 21-22 with Lev 19:17-18). He
repeatedly warned about the perils of the coming judgment for those who
only hear his words but do not do them (e.g., Matt 7.13-27). He defined
discipleship to him as taking up one’s cross, denying oneself, and
losing one’s life (Mark 8.34-37; Matt 10.38-39; Luke 14.27; 17.33; John
12.25)—in short, radical death to self, not accommodation to preexisting
intense bodily urges to do what God forbids.
As we have seen,
the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” that Jesus lifted from
Lev 19:18 as the second greatest commandment does not lead us to accept
a wider array of sexual behaviors. For Jesus interpreted “neighbor” as
broadly as possible to mean “everyone with whom one might come into
contact, including one’s enemy.” Yet he developed a sexual ethic that
narrowed further the sexual ethics of the Old Testament by restricting
the number of persons with whom one could have sex to one other person
of the other sex lifetime—an interpretation, as we have seen, derived
from the male/female, man/woman prerequisite enunciated in Gen 1:27 and
2:24. Now perhaps Thorp understands Jesus’ interpretation of the love
commandment better than Jesus himself did. But I seriously doubt it.
Another person
who understood the love commandment was Augustine.
Do not imagine that . . . you then love your neighbor when you do not
rebuke him. This is not love, but mere feebleness. Let love be fervent
to correct, to amend. . . . Love not in the person his error, but the
person; for the person God made, the error the person himself made. (Ten
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.11; NPNF, slightly
modified)
Tolerating or accepting sinful behavior would only convey
to the perpetrators that the sin in question is “no big deal,” leave the
individual exposed to the wrath of God, and put such a one at risk of
exclusion from an eternal relationship with God—not to mention the
harmful effects of undermining the community’s resolve to resist sexual
impurity (1 Cor 5.6-7: a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough)
and provoking God’s judgment on the community as a whole.
As an aside, we should note that Thorp’s
understanding of the Spirit/letter contrast does not mean in Scripture
(i.e. Paul in 2 Cor 3:6; Rom 2:27, 29; 7:6) what Thorp alleges that it
means. Whereas Thorp understands it to mean “surface rules” versus “the
deep lessons of Scripture” (p. 28), Paul meant a mere script that does
not empower one to do what is commanded versus the impartation of the
gift of the Spirit that enables us to do what God commands (i.e., the
law written on the heart). In short, the issue is not one of overturning
God’s foundational commands (Thorp) but rather one of being empowered at
long last to keep these commands. Of course, I prefer Paul to Thorp.
Given the arguments that can be mounted against
Thorp’s use of Scripture and reason, there seems to be unwarranted
arrogance in Thorp’s statement: “A deep reading of the Scripture . . .
combined with what Reason tells us about homosexuality, easily
overcomes the surface prohibitions” (p. 19; my emphasis). Thorp has
offered neither “a deep reading of the Scripture” nor even a convincing
presentation of the case from reason.
Tradition
As regards his
treatment of “Tradition” (pp. 20-22), Thorp offers nothing positive to
bolster his case. Indeed, he tacitly admits that there is nothing in the
long history of the church that might lead to an openness toward
homosexual practice—other than the fact that the church has changed on
some other issues (usury, slavery), none of which, as we have seen,
remotely approximates the extensive change that would be required to
affirm homosexual practice. Rather than offer something positive from
tradition, Thorp performs two ‘rear guard’ actions.
First, he argues
that “what has been believed everywhere, at all times, by everyone” (quod
ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est) is not
necessarily “reliably catholic teaching.” Thorp goes so far as to
argue that the Church “should change” its teachings “in the light
of evolving circumstances” (p. 22, his emphases). Such a
statement, however, requires qualification. “Evolving circumstances” are
only relevant if they fundamentally refute the primary premise on which
the scriptural teaching is based. We have already shown that Thorp has
not made this case with regard to the issue of homosexual practice.
Indeed, the evidence indicates that the premise for Scripture’s
opposition—namely, that men and women are each other’s sexual “other
halves,” not men and men or women and women—is not fundamentally
affected by the existence of “lifelong” or “loving” homosexual unions.
Scripture doesn’t indict homosexual practice on the sole basis of a lack
of longevity or loving affect.
Then, secondly,
Thorp defines what Hooker meant by “tradition” as that which the Church
believes to be true on the basis of Reason (note: Thorp says “Scripture
and Reason” but his whole discussion indicates Reason as the driving
force). In effect, although Thorp refers to Hooker’s three-legged stool,
Thorp’s own understanding of Hooker leaves one with a two-legged stool
since he interprets Tradition to be the virtual equivalent of Reason.
Since we have already shown that Thorp is far from making his case from
reason, let alone from Scripture, his discussion of Tradition gets him
nowhere.
Conclusion
Thorp concludes as
follows:
This essay set out to make
an Anglican case, in an Anglican way, for the blessing of same sex
unions in the Canadian Church. It has undertaken to show that the
introduction of such a practice . . . would sit comfortably on the
three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. (p. 27)
As it is, though
Thorp may have “set out to make an Anglican case, in an Anglican way,”
the case that he has attempted to make is no different from the case
that other proponents of homosexual practice have attempted to make from
their own denominational heritage—whether it be Catholic, Presbyterian,
Lutheran, Methodist, or Baptist. Neither Hooker’s delineation of
Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, on the one hand, nor Thorp’s
contention that circumstances may change the “details” of the Bible’s
commands, on the other, represents a peculiarly Anglican approach to
hermeneutics.
Rather than
demonstrating that blessing homoerotic unions “sits comfortably on the
three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason,” Thorp has
rather shown that his position has no leg to stand on (or, to fit the
image, sit on). Scripture is decisively against any blessing of
homosexual unions, inasmuch as blessing such a union would constitute
implicit endorsement for the homosexual activity that constitutes the
union. In the same way, blessing an adult, committed incestuous
relationship or polyamorous relationship would imply an endorsement of
the incest or polyamory that establishes the sexual bond. Neither Reason
nor Tradition provides substantive grounds for deviating from
Scripture’s two-sexes prerequisite for valid sexual unions. Indeed,
Reason and Tradition actually support Scripture’s stance rather than
stand in tension with it.
The truth is that
Thorp adopts a distinctly anti-Anglican position both in the secondary
or even tertiary status that he gives Scripture (contrast the primacy
that Hooker gave Scripture in his three-legged stool) and in the way
that he mishandles Reason and Tradition. His position is anti-Anglican
because it is anti-Christian. Christians can hold deeply anti-Christian
positions and this is apparently one such case.
Recapping our main
points:
-
We pointed to Jesus’ use of this core
value in sexual ethics, which he believed to be firmly ensconced in
the creation stories (Gen 1:27 and 2:24), as a foundation for
extrapolating a more demanding approach to monogamy and marital
indissolubility.
-
We noted that the male-female
prerequisite is the foundation or prior analogue for defining other
critical sexual norms, including prohibitions of incest, polyamory,
and adultery.
-
To this we added the fact that every
text in Scripture that treats the issue of homosexual practice
treats it as a high offense abhorrent to God. Along the same lines
we noted that the assumption of a male-female prerequisite and the
attendant opposition toward homosexual practice in ancient Israel,
early Judaism, and early Christianity was pervasive, absolute, and
countercultural.
-
In our treatment of Thorp’s argument
for “Moral Evolution,” we noted that Thorp took no account of
(1) the more common pattern of moral devolution and (2) the fact that
for Jesus moral evolution meant a tightening, not loosening, of God’s
moral standards. We also showed that (3) Thorp’s attempt at analogical
reasoning, comparing the Church’s current stance on homosexual
practice to its earlier positions on usury and slavery, failed at two
key levels:
-
It failed to note the major
differences between these alleged analogies and the Church’s
appropriation of a core value in Scripture’s sexual ethics. Here we
focused on the slavery argument, demonstrating that Scripture
exhibits a decisively critical edge toward slavery while maintaining
a deep, vested interest in a male-female prerequisite.
-
Moreover, it failed in ignoring the
much closer analogues that can be found in the Church’s stance
against incestuous and polyamorous relationships of an adult,
committed, and caring sort. We noted that Thorp apparently fixated
on more remote analogues in order to ‘fix’ the game of analogical
reasoning; that is, he accommodated the results to his desired
ideological objective. This, we suggested, was a dishonest use of
analogical reasoning. Fair use of analogical reasoning demands that
one follow the lead of the closest analogies, even when doing so
leads one to results that one would prefer not to reach.
-
In our discussion of Reason, we
noted (1) that (contrary to Thorp’s profile of historical development)
the Church has maintained a consistent stance against homosexual
practice as a high moral offense that is contrary to the Creator’s
design embedded in nature. (2) As regards allegedly radical new
knowledge about homosexuality, we made a number of points.
-
We underscored, first, that already
in the Greco-Roman milieu of Paul’s day orientation theories had
been formulated for at least some forms of homosexual practice; and,
second, that the innateness of a given impulse is no argument for
the morality of that impulse since all impulses have a biological
basis.
-
We showed the attempted analogies to
left-handedness and ethnicity to be fatally flawed since neither of
these analogies involves an impulse to do what God expressly
forbids. We argued that Jesus himself did not believe that
application of the love commandment was a sufficient standard
for defining acceptable sexual relationships; that sexual
relationships necessitated special formal or structural
prerequisites which did not apply to love generically construed. If
it were otherwise, then having sex with everyone (including close
blood relations, multiple persons concurrently, and children) would
be an appropriate fulfillment of the command to love one’s neighbor
as oneself.
-
We also demonstrated that evidence of
homosexuality in the animal kingdom does not prove that homosexual
practice is “natural” in the deepest sense. For animals regularly
engage in lots of behavior that we would consider “unnatural”
because “nature” entails not just innate urges but considerations of
embodied complementarity. As unnatural characteristics of
homosexuality, we referred both to the narcissism of being
erotically aroused by the distinctive features of one’s own sex and
the self- and other-dishonoring delusion of imaging a person of the
same sex as the sexual complement to one’s own sex.
-
We argued that Thorp’s point about
well-adjusted homosexual persons is mitigated by two facts: first,
that no form of consensual sexual behavior that we currently regard
as immoral produces intrinsic, scientifically measurable harm; and,
second, that homosexual males and homosexual females do experience
disproportionately high rates of measurable harm in ways that typify
the extremes and gaps of their given sex.
-
We showed that Thorp’s attempt to
blame the Church’s opposition to homosexual practice on a latent
misogynistic impulse was misguided for three reasons: first, that it
took no account of arguments based on formal or structural
congruence employed in the ancient (and modern) world; second, that
it failed to recognize that higher views of women in antiquity led
to increasing opposition to homosexual practice; and, third, that it
led to the manifestly absurd corollary that the most misogynistic
cultures in antiquity were ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early
Christianity.
-
As regards Scripture, we noted
the serious deficiencies in the attention and priority that Thorp gave
to the subject, which is understandable in light of Scripture’s
profound opposition to homosexual practice and preservation of a
two-sexes prerequisite.
-
We first established that, contra
Thorp, there was nothing “extremely unlikely” or “harshly
dismissive” about the view that Scripture is absolutely opposed to
homosexual practice, for this is comparable to Scripture’s stance
against committed incestuous unions and to the New Testament’s
consistent opposition to committed polyamorous bonds (note too the
Old Testament’s opposition to polyandry). Quite simply, there are
formal or structural prerequisites for sexual bonds, involving the
complementarity of embodied existence, that transcend the question
of how two (or more) people feel about each other sexually.
-
We then showed that the modern
ecclesiastical accommodation to divorce and remarriage is a less
helpful analogue, both because Scripture doesn’t treat divorce and
remarriage as significant an infraction as homosexual practice and
because divorce/remarriage doesn’t approach the serial or highly
repetitive character of homosexual practice.
-
Finally, in our discussion of
Tradition we indicated that Thorp could derive no positive
argument from tradition to substantiate the radical change in
Christian sexual ethics that Thorp and others are advocating. The best
that Thorp could come up with is (1) contending that “what has been
believed everywhere, at all times, by everyone” is not necessarily
“reliably catholic teaching,” restating his fatally flawed “moral
evolution” examples of usury and slavery; and (2) reinterpreting
Tradition to be the virtual equivalent of the Church’s use of Reason,
which is not helpful to Thorp’s overall argument since he failed to
make the case from both Reason and Scripture.
Thorp ends with
two final thoughts. First, he presents as the only two alternatives for
the Anglican Church of Canada: either continue “loathing” homosexual
persons or “fully accept” homosexual persons by blessing homosexual
unions. These are false alternatives. Replace “homosexual persons” with
“polysexual persons” and you get the point. Persons who experience
homosexual desires are like any persons who experience desires to do
what God expressly forbids (which, ultimately, takes in everyone). They
are welcome in the Church but not to engage unrepentantly in behavior
that Scripture treats (and, I might add, Reason confirms) as abhorrent
to God—irrespective of whatever intense impulses are experienced. The
Church obviously should not loathe persons struggling with same-sex
attractions either by consigning them callously to hell or by
blessing behavior that will put their inheritance in God’s kingdom at
risk. The Church expresses its love precisely in a refusal to
condone homosexual practice, coupled with efforts at meeting intimacy
needs short of violating God’s clear commands.
Thorp’s second
point is that homosexual persons are capable of exhibiting fruits of the
Spirit. The point, however, is both trivial and problematic: trivial
because most persons in the church are able to exhibit such fruit in
some areas of their life even as they sin in other areas; problematic
because the very act of engaging in same-sex intercourse (like incest
and ‘polyfidelity’) is itself evidence that insufficient fruit has been
borne.
The fruit-bearing
analogy was used by the early Church to bring in Gentile believers who
were uncircumcised and who did not observe the full array of dietary
commands in the Law of Moses. However, both Jesus and Paul expressly
rejected comparisons between such ritual observances and moral
matters involving sexual practice (Mark 7:21-23; 1 Cor 6:12-20;
7:18-19). Scripture does not ground circumcision in creation structures
but it does so ground a two-sexes prerequisite for sexual activity.
Circumcision and dietary laws were Jewish ritual prescriptions enjoined
only on proselytes and, like ritual generally, affected the body only
superficially. But Judaism included a prohibition of homosexual practice
among its “Noahide laws” enjoined on all Gentiles. And both Judaism and
the early church understood that sexual immorality affected the body
holistically. Gentile inclusion in the first-century Church was about
welcoming persons, not about accepting the sexual practices (including
homosexual practice) that typified much of Gentile life. Such practices,
according to both the Apostolic Decree and Paul’s letters, were
distinctly unwelcome (Acts 15:20; 1 Thess 4:3-8).
I trust that Prof.
Thorp is sincere in his beliefs. However, when he ends by saying that
Gay
liberation is clearly the work of the Spirit. How can it
reasonably be otherwise?
one can only shake
one’s head in astonishment at the degree to which he is sadly mistaken,
and in loving concern at the prospect that he might contribute to
the self-deception of those struggling with same-sex attractions, and
in holy fear at the danger of God’s judgment faced by the Anglican
Church of Canada. May it be otherwise.
Additional Resources by Dr. Robert
Gagnon
2001
Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics.
Nashville: Abingdon.
2002 “Are There
Universally Valid Sex Precepts? A Critique of Walter Wink’s Views on the
Bible and Homosexuality,” Horizons in Biblical Theology
24:72-125. Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoWinkHBTResp.pdf.
2003 Homosexuality
and the Bible: Two Views, with Dan O. Via. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Also: “Notes to Gagnon’s Essay in the Gagnon-Via Two Views Book.”
50 pgs. Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/2Views/HomoViaRespNotesRev.pdf.
2003 “Does the Bible
Regard Same-Sex Intercourse as Intrinsically Sinful?” Pp. 106-55 in
Christian Sexuality: Normative and Pastoral Principles. Ed. R. E.
Saltzman. Minneapolis: Kirk House.
2003 “A
Comprehensive and Critical Review Essay of
Homosexuality, Science, and the ‘Plain Sense’ of Scripture,
Part 2.” HBT 25: 179-275. Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoBalchHBTReview2.pdf.
2003 “An Open Letter
to the Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.” 3 pages. Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoGriswoldLetter.pdf.
2003 “Response to
Countryman’s Review in Anglican Theological
Review: On Careful Scholarship.” 18 pages.
Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/Reviews/homoCountrymanResp.pdf.
2005 “Old Testament
and Homosexuality: A Critical Review of the Case Made by Phyllis Bird.”
Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 117: 367-94.
2005 “Scriptural
Perspectives on Homosexuality and Sexual Identity.”
Journal of Psychology and Christianity
24: 293-303.
2005 “Sexuality.”
Pp. 739-48 in Dictionary for Theological
Interpretation of the Bible. Eds. K. J.
Vanhoozer, et al. London: SPCK; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
2005 “Why the
Disagreement over the Biblical Witness on Homosexual Practice? A
Response to Myers and Scanzoni, What God Has Joined Together?”
Reformed Review 59: 19-130. Online:
http://www.westernsem.edu/wtseminary/assets/Gagnon2%20Aut05.pdf.
2006 “Homosexuality.” Pp. 327-32 in New
Dictionary of Christian Apologetics. Eds. C.
Campbell-Jack, G. J. McGrath, and C. S. Evans. Leicester, U.K.:
Inter-Varsity Press.
2006 “Does Jack
Rogers’s New Book ‘Explode the Myths’ about the Bible and Homosexuality
and ‘Heal the Church?’ Part 3.” 15 pgs. Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/RogersBookReviewed3.pdf.
2006 “Does Jack
Rogers’s New Book ‘Explode the Myths’ about the Bible and Homosexuality
and ‘Heal the Church?’ Part 4.” 16 pgs. Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/RogersBookReviewed4.pdf.
2007 “Is Rowan
Williams wrong on the meaning of Romans?”
Church of England Newspaper (The Record),
4 May 2007, pp. 22-23, online:
http://www.churchnewspaper.com/Get-CEN-Online.aspx.
Fuller version: “Rowan Williams’ Wrong Reading of Romans (. . . and John
14.6),” 11 pgs. Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homosexRowanWilliamsResp.pdf.
2007 “Did
Jesus Approve of a Homosexual Couple in the Story of the Centurion at
Capernaum?” 8 pages. Online:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homosexCenturionStory.pdf.