Bad Reasons for
Changing One’s Mind
Jack Rogers’s Temple
Prostitution Argument and Other False Starts
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of New Testament
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA 15206-2596
rgagnon@pts.edu,
www.robgagnon.net
March 1, 2004
The Covenant Network has proudly posted on its website a piece by the
controversial former moderator Jack Rogers, entitled “How I Changed My
Mind on Homosexuality” (an address given to the Covenant Network Northwest
Regional Conference on Oct. 11, 2003; go
here). The fact that the Covenant Network is so enamored with
it—posting the full 6000-word address, along with a color photo of Rogers
and side captions—says something about what passes there for profound
reflection on Scripture.
Rogers has
been saying for a long time that his intensive study of Scripture led him
to embrace committed homosexual unions. He repeats the point in this
latest address: “I had often said that I could not change my negative
attitude toward homosexuality unless I was convinced by Scripture.” Now at
long last Rogers reveals what precisely in Scripture caused him to change
his mind. Here it is.
In the
summer of 1992 Rogers visited Greece and Turkey. At Corinth he looked
upward from the place where Paul was tried. Rogers saw
the AcroCorinth, a mountain on which was a
temple to Aphrodite, a bisexual god/goddess. In ancient time, it was
staffed by seven thousand prostitutes, male and female. . . . That
experience in Corinth became a significant occasion for reflection on the
meaning of the Bible. I began to study Romans 1 and 2 afresh. . . .
[Paul] wrote Romans from Corinth. I think
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.
Paul is talking about idolatrous people
engaged in prostitution. It is
hardly fair to apply his judgment on them to Christian gay and lesbian
people who are not idolaters and no more lustful than anyone else.
(emphases added)
So Rogers
had an epiphany of sorts from his experience at Corinth: In Romans 1:24-27
(and, presumably, 1 Cor 6:9; cf. 1 Tim 1:10) Paul was not condemning
homosexual practice per se but merely a type of homosexual practice
associated with temple idolatry. Rogers advances no other argument to
support this theory. That’s all he has.
We will
begin with a discussion of why Rogers’s temple-prostitution theory is
unworkable (part I). After this, we will demonstrate how Rogers
misunderstands the broader literary context for Paul’s remarks in Romans
1:18-32 (part II). Then we will treat Rogers’s continued distortion of the
nature argument as a simple failure to understand the principle “both
Scripture first and nature” (part III). Finally, we will deal with the
rest of Rogers’s justifications for endorsing homosexual practice,
focusing particularly on his past and present misunderstandings regarding
the significance of fidelity and longevity in a minority of homosexual
unions. We will show that Rogers still does not grasp Scripture’s real
reason for proscribing homosexual practice (part IV).
I. Fifteen Reasons Why the Temple Prostitution Theory Is a Bad Idea
I know of
no serious biblical scholar, even prohomosex biblical scholar, who argues
that Paul had in mind only or primarily temple prostitution—not Nissinen,
not Brooten, not Fredrickson, not Schoedel, not Bird, not Martin, etc.
There are many reasons why this view has not found a welcome in serious
biblical scholarship. I shall limit myself to fifteen such reasons,
without making a pretense that the list is exhaustive.
1.
Rogers’s historical anachronism regarding temple prostitution in Corinth.
Rogers’s trip to Corinth convinced him that Paul’s views on homosexual
behavior were profoundly influenced by the alleged existence of “seven
thousand prostitutes, male and female” at the temple of Aphrodite in
Corinth in Paul’s day. As it happens, the only ancient account that refers
to cult prostitutes at the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth is a brief
mention by Strabo in Geography 8.6.20c:
And the temple of Aphrodite was so rich
that it owned more than a thousand temple-slaves, prostitutes, whom both
men and women had dedicated to the goddess. And therefore it was on
account of these women that the city was crowded with people and grew
rich. (Text and commentary in: Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s
Corinth: Texts and Archaeology [GNS 6; Wilmington: M. Glazier, 1983],
55-57)
Any
critical New Testament scholar knows that Strabo’s comments (1) applied
only to Greek Corinth in existence several centuries before the time of
Paul, not the Roman Corinth of Paul’s day; (2) referred to “more than a
thousand prostitutes,” not seven thousand; and (3) mentioned only female
(heterosexual) prostitutes, not male (homosexual) prostitutes. Scholars
agree that there was no massive business of female cult prostitutes—to say
nothing of male homosexual cult prostitutes—operating out of the temple of
Aphrodite in Paul’s day; and that there may not have been such a business
even in earlier times (i.e., Strabo was confused). This is not
particularly new information, which makes it all the more surprising that
Rogers was taken in, apparently, by an ill-informed tour guide. For
example, Hans Conzelmann made the following remarks in his major
commentary on 1 Corinthians written some thirty years ago:
Incidentally, the often-peddled statement
that Corinth was a seat of sacred prostitution (in the service of
Aphrodite) is a fable. This realization also disposes of the inference
that behind the Aphrodite of Corinth lurks the Phoenician Astarte. [Note
97:] The fable is based on Strabo, Geog. 8.378. . . . Strabo,
however, is not speaking of the present, but of the city’s ancient golden
period. . . . Incidentally, Strabo’s assertion is not even true of the
ancient Corinth. (1 Corinthians [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress,
1975 [German original, 1969], 12)
This continues to be the view held by scholars. As Bruce Winter notes in a
recent significant work on 1 Corinthians,
Strabo’s comments about 1,000 religious
prostitutes of Aphrodite . . . are unmistakably about Greek and not Roman
Corinth. As temple prostitution was not a Greek phenomenon, the veracity
of his comments on this point have been rightly questioned. The size of
the Roman temple of Aphrodite on the Acrocorinth ruled out such temple
prostitution; and by that time she had become Venus—the venerated mother
of the imperial family and the highly respected patroness of Corinth—and
was no longer a sex symbol (After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of
Secular Ethics and Social Change [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001],
87-88; similarly, Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth, 55-56)
The scholarly consensus that there was no homosexual prostitution at the
Corinthian temple of Aphrodite in Paul’s day is enough, all by itself, to
dispense with Rogers’s theory and show Rogers’s unreliability as an
exegete of the biblical text. But we continue anyway.
2. The plain-sense meaning of Romans
1:24-27. There is nothing in the language of Romans 1:24-27 that
keys into the issue of prostitution or indeed the issue of exploitation
generally. What Paul expressed as the problem was not the particularly
exploitative way in which some homoerotic relationships were
conducted in the ancient world but rather same-sex intercourse per se:
females exchanging sexual intercourse with males for sexual intercourse
with females, and males likewise having sex with males.
3. The mention of lesbian intercourse in
Romans 1:26.
The fact that Paul mentions lesbian intercourse in Romans 1:26—which in
the ancient world did not take the form of temple prostitution—proves that
Paul did not have in view only forms of same-sex intercourse associated
with idol worship or commercial transactions.
4. Mutual gratification and mutual
condemnation in Romans 1:24-27. If Paul were condemning only
exploitative forms of male-male intercourse, he would hardly have indicted
in Romans 1:24-27 both partners in the sexual relationship. Yet he does
condemn both partners—“males engaging in indecency with males, receiving
back in themselves the recompense which was required of their
straying.” This is consistent with the fact that he regards the activity
as mutual and consenting: dishonoring “their bodies among themselves”
and being “inflamed with their yearning for one another.” Far from
painting a picture where one party is being degraded and exploited by the
other, Paul portrays both partners as seeking to gratify their urges with
one another and together reaping the divine recompense for their mutually
degrading conduct.
5. The Genesis connection. That
Paul had the other-sex prerequisite in Genesis in view is obvious from the
clear intertextual echoes to Genesis 1:26-27 found in Romans 1:23-27—eight
terms of agreement between the two sets of texts, in nearly the same
order. It is no accident, too, that the other major Pauline text dealing
with same-sex intercourse, 1 Corinthians 6:9, is cited in close proximity
to Gen 2:24 (1 Cor 6:16). And it is also no accident that these are the
two key creation texts lifted up by Jesus in Mark 10:6-8 as prescriptive
norms for defining all human sexual behavior: “male and female
he made them” (Gen 1:27) and “For this reason a man will . .
. be joined to his woman (wife) and the two shall become one flesh”
(Gen 2:24). The story in Genesis 2:18-24 clearly images marriage as the
sexually intimate “re-merger” of the constituent parts, man and woman,
split from an originally undifferentiated sexual whole. Same-sex erotic
unions are structurally precluded from reconstituting a one-flesh merger
because the male and female elements cannot be reconstituted from a
male-male or female-female union. Since the only differentiation created
by the splitting is the differentiation into the two sexes, the presence
of the two sexes is indispensable to a valid sexual rejoining. There is no
realistic possibility that Jesus, in citing Gen 1:27 and 2:24 as
prescriptive norms, missed this other-sex prerequisite—“male and female,”
“man and woman”—so clearly embedded in these verses and their surrounding
narrative and so staunchly embraced by Jews everywhere in Jesus’ day.
(Many other arguments could also be made for adducing Jesus anti-homosex
stance; see ch. 3 [pp. 185-228] of The Bible and Homosexual Practice
or pp. 68-74 of Homosexuality and the Bible). And the fact that
Paul had the Genesis creation accounts in view when he indicted homosexual
practice proves that he recognized their implication for abrogating all
forms of same-sex intercourse (The Bible and Homosexual Practice,
289-93).
6. The parallel between idolatry as an act
against creation and same-sex intercourse as an act against nature.
Rogers belittles the notion of a parallel between idolatry and same-sex
intercourse. Yet the context makes the parallel obvious (see The Bible
and Homosexual Practice, 266-69). Paul emphasizes in Romans 1:18-32
that human beings are “without excuse”—even unbelievers who do not know
Scripture—because God’s will is evident to them in creation/nature.
Exhibit A (on the vertical level) is idolatry and exhibit B (on the
horizontal level) is same-sex intercourse. Both alike represent attempts
at suppressing the truth about God in creation or nature, transparent to
human minds and even visible to human sight. Both acts are spoken of as
“exchanges” of clear natural revelation for gratification of distorted
desires (1:23, 25 and 1:26 respectively). Both acts are depicted as
absurd—foolish or self-dishonoring—denials of natural revelation. The
parallel—and not merely consequential—relationship between idolatry and
same-sex intercourse is confirmed in Testament of Naphtali 3:3-4,
where both idolatry and same-sex intercourse are viewed as exchanging the
order of nature:
Gentiles . . . altered the order of them
[viz., either that of the sun, moon, and stars, cited in v. 2, or their
own], and have followed after stones and pieces of wood by following
after wandering spirits. But you should not act in that way, my
children, recognizing [instead] in the firmament, in the earth and in
the sea and in all the products of workmanship, the Lord who made all
these things, in order that you may not become like Sodom, which
exchanged the order of its nature.
For
further discussion of this text, see: The Bible and Homosexual Practice,
88-89n.121, 258n.18; and Homosexuality and the Bible,
online note 35.
In short, the parallel between idolatry and same-sex intercourse in Rom
1:18-27 is evident: Those who had suppressed the truth about God visible
in creation were more apt to suppress the truth about their sexual bodies
visible in nature.
7. The other vices in Romans 1:29-31 not
dependent on idolatry. Yes, Paul sees idolatry as leading to an
increase in same-sex intercourse as well as to an increase in the other
vices cited in Rom 1:29-31. But to say that Paul was limiting the
indictment in Rom 1:24-27 only to homosexual cult prostitution is like
saying that the continuation of the vice list in Rom 1:29-31 had only
idolatrous contexts in view. Obviously, persons who reject the clear
revelation of a transcendent God in creation are going to be more likely
to engage in forms of sexual behavior that suppress the truth about human
sexual complementarity accessible in nature. Equally obvious, however, is
the fact that Paul recognized that it was not necessary to worship idols
to commit any of the immoral behaviors cited in Rom 1:24-31.
8. Sexual uncleanness in Romans 6:19.
Later in Romans 6:19 Paul warns believers not to return to the kind of
“sexual uncleanness”—akatharsia, the same Greek term employed in
1:24 of same-sex intercourse and other sexual offenses—that characterized
their lives as unbelievers. He certainly was no more restricting the use
of the term to sex in the context of temple prostitutes than he was
restricting any of the other instances of “lawlessness” to activity
conducted in the context of idolatrous worship.
9. The distinction between idolatry and
male-male intercourse in 1 Corinthians 6:9. To say that Paul was
limiting the indictment of male-male intercourse in 1 Cor 6:9 to
homosexual cult prostitution is like saying that Paul was only opposed to
incest (the case under discussion in chs. 5-6) in idolatrous and
commercial contexts. In fact, “idolaters” are listed as a separate
category of offenders, distinct from those who commit incest,
prostitution, fornication, adultery, and male-male intercourse. The case
of the incestuous man in ch. 5 involves a self-professed Christian with no
linkage to idol worshipping or to prostitution. And the discussion of
prostitution in 6:12-20 certainly is not tied only to temple
prostitution. The reasons for the proscription of incest and same-sex
intercourse are similar: sex with someone who is too much of a same,
whether a familial same (incest: sex with the “flesh of one’s flesh,” Lev
18:6) or a sexual same (homosexual behavior: males who have sex with
males).
10. The expression “contrary to nature” as
applied to same-sex intercourse. In all the critiques of same-sex
intercourse as “contrary to nature” that can be found in the ancient
world, not a single one ever refers to the idolatrous or commercial
dimension of same-sex intercourse. For example, the physician Soranus
described the desire on the part of “soft men” to be penetrated (cf. 1 Cor
6:9) as “not from nature,” insofar as it “subjugated to obscene uses parts
not so intended” and disregarded “the places of our body which divine
providence destined for definite functions”(Chronic Diseases
4.9.131). Moreover, numerous cases of same-sex erotic relationships
involving neither prostitution nor cultic activity can be documented for
the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods.
11. Early Jewish critiques of same-sex
intercourse. When one reads the critique in early Judaism of
homoerotic practice—especially in Philo and Josephus—one notices rather
quickly that the remarks focus on the compromise of sexual identity, not
issues such as exchange of money or idolatrous connections. The same holds
for rabbinic literature. See The Bible and Homosexual Practice, ch.
2.
12. The link between “men who lie with males” in 1 Cor 6:9 and the
absolute prohibitions in Leviticus. The term
arsenokoitai in 1 Cor 6:9, a distinctly Jewish and Christian
term—literally, “men who lie with males”—is derived from the absolute
prohibitions of male-male intercourse in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
(Septuagint: koite = “lying [with],” arsen = “a male”). That
these prohibitions have to do, first and foremost, with sexual intercourse
and not with idolatry is evident from their sandwiching in the midst of
the sex laws in Lev 20:10-21, separate and distinct from the regulation
against sacrificing to Molech in 20:2-5. They are no more tied to idolatry
or prostitution than are the laws against adultery, incest, and bestiality
that surround them. Neither Second Temple Judaism nor rabbinic Judaism
(nor Patristic Christianity) restricted the relevance of the Levitical
prohibitions to male-male intercourse conducted in the context of idol
worship or prostitution.
13. The main objection to the homosexual cult prostitutes in the Old
Testament. The Old Testament—particularly Deuteronomy and the
“Deuteronomistic History” (Joshua through 2 Kings)—does condemn
“homosexual cult prostitutes” (the so-called qedeshim, “consecrated
ones”). But even here, parallel figures in the ancient Near East—the
assinnu, kurgarru, and kulu’u—were held in low regard
not so much for their prostitution as for their compromise of masculine
gender in allowing themselves to be penetrated as though women (The
Bible and Homosexual Practice, 48-49). Even Phyllis Bird, a prohomosex
Old Testament scholar who has done as much work as anyone on the
qedeshim, acknowledges that the writers of Scripture emphasized not
the cultic prostitution of these figures but rather their “repugnant
associations with male homosexual activity.” On the qedeshim, see
The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 100-110.
14. The meaning of “soft men” in its historical context. The
term malakoi in 1 Cor 6:9—literally, “soft men”—was often used in
the Greco-Roman world as a description of adult males who feminized their
appearances in the hopes of attracting a male partner. Jewish and even
some pagan moralists condemned them, not for their role in temple
prostitution—most were not temple prostitutes—but for their attempted
erasure of the masculine stamp given them in nature. See further The
Bible and Homosexual Practice, 306-12; and Homosexuality and the
Bible, 82-83 with
online notes 96-98.
15. A Corinthian critique of male-male love. The pseudo-Lucianic
text Affairs of the Heart records a debate between Charicles, a
Corinthian, who defends the superiority of male love for women, and
Callicratidas, who defends the superiority of male love for males.
Interestingly, the Corinthian never focuses on the association of
male-male love with temple prostitution. Instead, he notes that men who
engage in sex with other males “transgress the laws of nature” by looking
“with the eyes at the male as (though) at a female,” “one nature [coming]
together in one bed.” “Seeing themselves in one another they were
ashamed neither of what they were doing nor of what they were having done
to them” (cited in The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 165-66 n.
10). What does this critique have to do with temple prostitution?
Absolutely nothing. Yet Rogers would have us believe that Paul’s view of
same-sex intercourse, and that of Scripture generally—which every
historical piece of evidence indicates was more absolutely, consistently,
and strongly opposed to same-sex intercourse than anything found in the
Greco-Roman world—was actually more accepting of homosexual
behavior than the cultural milieu out of which emerged.
Rogers claims that when he learned to read the anti-homosex texts in
Scripture in their historical and literary context he discovered that they
didn’t condemn homoerotic activity per se. But the truth is that Rogers
doesn’t know the historical and literary context well. What he thinks he
knows—his allegation about rampant temple prostitution at Corinth in
Paul’s day—he in fact does not know. Since Rogers bases the major part of
his argument on the premise that the biblical texts had only homosexual
cult prostitution in view, the end result of our analysis above is that
Rogers has no scriptural case for affirming committed homosexual
unions.
The worst
part of all is that Rogers could have deduced all these reasons for why
the temple prostitution argument is untenable from a careful reading of
The Bible and Homosexual Practice. The idolatry, cult prostitution,
and exploitation arguments are treated at several points in the book
(e.g., pp. 100-110, 129-32, 284-89, 347-61). Unless Rogers can refute all
fifteen arguments given above—an obvious impossibility—he should admit to
readers that either he has not read my book for comprehension or he has
chosen to ignore the insurmountable problems with his position. The matter
is deeply troubling, whether the problem lies with gross incomprehension
of clear and repeated discussion in my book or a deliberate cover-up of
the aforementioned material for a credulous audience.
II. On Rogers’s Misunderstanding of Romans 1-3
This
epiphany that Rogers experienced regarding temple prostitution at Corinth
made him “realize” that Paul was opposed to anyone, anytime, passing
judgment on the behavior recorded in Rom 1:18-32 (idolatry, same-sex
intercourse, murder, deceit, covetousness, etc.). At least this is how
Rogers interprets Rom 2:1: “Therefore, you are without excuse, O human,
everyone who judges, for in what you judge another you are condemning
yourself, for you who judges does the same things.” He “buttresses” this
conclusion with an appeal to Rom 3:23-24: “for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift, by his grace,
through the redemption in Christ Jesus.” According to Rogers, to use Rom
1:24-27 as a basis for condemning homosexual practice is “to turn Romans 1
into a law” and “to misrepresent Paul’s point. It turns the Protestant
Reformation upside down.”
1.
Reading beyond Romans 1-3 to Romans 6:1-8:17. Needless to say,
Rogers’s conclusion would have been news to Paul, as well as to the great
Reformers. Like many who share his view of homosexual behavior, Rogers
fails to do the simple task of reading beyond Romans 3 to Romans 6:1-8:17.
When Paul asks in ch. 6 the rhetorical question, “Should we sin because we
are not under the law but under grace?” he answers by insisting that
genuine adherence to the lordship of Jesus Christ leads us out of a
life under the control of the sinful impulse (6:15-23; 7:5-6; 8:1-17; cf.
6:1-14). Thus Paul can assert:
Just as you [formerly, as unbelievers]
presented your bodily members as slaves to sexual uncleanness (akatharsia)
and to [other acts of] lawlessness with a view to lawlessness, so now [as
believers] present your bodily members as slaves to righteousness with a
view to holiness. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with
respect to [not doing] righteousness. What fruit, therefore, were you
having at that time? Things of which you are now ashamed, for the end
(outcome) of those things is death. (Romans 6:19-21)
Interestingly, same-sex intercourse in Rom 1:24-27 is cited as the prime
example of “sexual uncleanness” (akatharsia)—the very word used in
Rom 6:19 to denote the behavior that Christians must now leave behind
(note that the term appears nowhere else in Romans). The mention of
shameful practices that lead to death in Rom 6:19-21 also clearly echoes
the themes of Rom 1:24-27, 32. Obviously, then, the point of the Christian
life is to discontinue the shameful practices of 1:19-31, including
females having intercourse with females and males having intercourse with
males. If the wrath of God manifested in this age involves, in
part, God permitting people to engage in such self-dishonoring, shameful
behavior, with death resulting, then the saving righteousness of God
must mean not merely forgiveness of sins but empowerment, through the
Spirit, to be delivered from the primary control of such shameful
impulses.
Accordingly, “sin shall not be lord over you, for you are not under the
law but under grace” (6:14). To be “under the law” is to be dominated by
sinful passions that “bear fruit for death” (7:5). To be “under grace” is
to be Spirit-controlled and thus bearing fruit for life (7:6). It is life
lived in “the law of the Spirit of life”—that is, life lived under
the primary regulating power of indwelling Spirit—that effects liberation
from “the law of sin and death.” Paul means by “the law of sin and death”
the internal regulating power of sin operating in human flesh, which
brings death to those who obey it (8:1-2). Life lived in conformity to the
Spirit “fulfills the righteous requirement of the law” (8:4) rather than
violates or ignores the law.
For Paul,
the transformed life, while not meriting salvation, is the indispensable
middle term between Christ’s justifying death and the gift of eternal
life. Self-professed Christians who continue to live life under sin’s
primary sway will perish. Thus the conclusion to the question, “Should we
sin because we are not under the law but under grace?”—that is, should we
sin because there are, allegedly, no apocalyptic repercussions for
sinning—is as follows:
So, then, brethren, we are debtors not to
the flesh, that is, to live in conformity with the flesh. For if you live
in conformity to the flesh, you are going to die. But if, by the Spirit,
you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. For as many as are
being led by the Spirit of God—these are the children of God.
(8:12-14)
In other
words, a profession of faith void of a transformed life is worthless and
will not save a person from divine wrath. Calvin put it well when, in
commenting on Rom 8:9, he wrote:
Those in whom the Spirit does not reign do
not belong to Christ; therefore those who serve the flesh are not
Christians, for those who separate Christ from His Spirit make Him like a
dead image or a corpse. . . . Free remission of sins cannot be separated
from the Spirit of regeneration. This would be, as it were, to rend Christ
asunder. (The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the
Thessalonians [trans. R. MacKenzie; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961],
164)
Similarly,
commenting on Rom 6:19, Calvin contends that Christians should be “no less
eager and ready in performing the commandments of God” than they
were eager, as unbelievers, to engage in sinful conduct (ibid., 134;
emphasis mine, noting the importance of obedience to God’s commandments
for a faithful Christian life).
2. The gospel
mandate to abstain from various sexual practices. Thus it is
ludicrous to contend, as Rogers does, that it would “misrepresent Paul”
and “turn the Protestant Reformation upside down” if the church condemned
“the sexual expression of one group of people.” (Imagine the consequences
of following the same line of reasoning for persons who experience
exclusive sexual attraction for children!) Even in Paul’s day, (1) not
everyone engaged in same-sex intercourse, much less homosexual cult
prostitution; and (2) there were widespread theories that attributed one
or more forms of homosexual practice to some degree of congenital
influence for some people (see The Bible and Homosexual Practice,
380-94 passim; and now “Does the Bible Regard Same-Sex Intercourse
as Intrinsically Sinful?” in Christian Sexuality [ed. R. Saltzman;
Kirk House, 2003], 106-55, particularly pp. 141-46). Neither of these
points dissuaded Paul from singling out same-sex intercourse as a prime
example, among inter-human sins, of human suppression of the truth about
God’s creation evident in nature. Nor did these points prevent Paul from
exhorting believers not to return to the unclean sexual practices of their
former life, whether same-sex intercourse or some other “lawless” act
influenced by biological predispositions.
Indeed, the
same point is made in 1 Cor 6:9-20, where Paul exhorts the Corinthian
believers not to return to the sexual immorality of their former life,
which could include adult consensual incest, male-male intercourse,
adultery, fornication, and sex with prostitutes. “These things some of you
were; but you washed yourselves off, you were made holy, you were
made righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of
our God” (6:11). The basis for his appeal is that sex, unlike dietary
concerns, is not a matter of soteriological indifference (6:12-20;
contra Rogers and others who have appealed to the inclusion of Gentile
believers in Acts 15 as a parallel). What one does sexually can get one
thrown into hell (compare Jesus’ saying about cutting off body parts in
Matt 5:29-30). Precisely because Christ has purchased us out of slavery to
sin, we belong to God, not ourselves, and so should “glorify God in [our]
bodies” (6:19-20). In the immediate context it is obvious that Paul was
not against the church passing judgment on believers who engage in sinful
sexual behavior, even behavior of an adult, consensual, and committed
sort. In the case of the incestuous believer in 1 Corinthians 5, a
somewhat exasperated Paul asked the Corinthians: “Is it not those
inside [the church] that you are to judge?” (5:12). By Rogers’s
reckoning, the Corinthian believers should have responded: “No. You are
turning grace into law!” But that is the wrong answer to this obviously
rhetorical question.
Paul does
indeed set up a sting operation in Romans 2 against moral persons—in
context, primarily unbelieving Jews—who condemn those who engage in the
sinful activities of Rom 1:18-32 while committing sins of their own. But
Paul does so not to trivialize the moral life but rather to underscore the
universal human need for putting one’s trust in Jesus’ atoning death and
empowering presence. (Note that the Covenant Network wrongly treats the
atoning, or amends-making, function of Jesus’ death as a non-essential
doctrine of Christian faith.) God’s wrath is still coming on those
who live under sin’s primary rule, which for Paul meant all unbelievers
and some self-professed believers in Christ. Jesus’ amends-making death
makes possible the indwelling of Christ’s Spirit for those who believe,
which in turn makes possible a Spirit-led life, with an outcome of eternal
life. A return to the sin-led life of old puts at risk one’s inheritance
in the kingdom of God, whether one claims to be a believer or not. This
includes a return to the practice of same-sex intercourse.
In short,
the fact that all persons have sinned is no license to continue in sin.
The point of our “baptism into Christ’s death” is that we should now, “as
if alive from the dead,” put our bodily members at God’s, not sin’s,
disposal (Rom 6:3-14). The difference between our lives before faith and
our lives in faith is
not that we now get to live sinful lives without fear of apocalyptic
repercussions, but rather that we are now empowered by the indwelling
Spirit of Christ to live lives that do not lead to death.
I had
already treated the relationship of the argument in Romans 1:18-32 to the
rest of Romans in The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 277-84. That I
have to restate it here for Rogers is just one more example that Rogers
has not read my book for comprehension. Worse still, it is regrettable
that this basic point of Christian teaching regarding the new creation in
Christ and the necessity of a transformed life has to be made clear to a
former moderator of the PCUSA and professor emeritus of theology. As I
have said many times, the global theological arguments used to support or
minimize homosexual behavior are just as harmful, and perhaps more so,
than the support of homosexual behavior.
III. Rogers’s Distortion of the Nature Argument—Once Again
In his
address Rogers goes on to attack my work by repeating a blatant
misrepresentation that he had made two years earlier in a national
Covenant Network address (2001). “The irony is that for Gagnon, you really
don’t need the Bible, because everything it says about homosexuality
comes, not from revelation, but from his understanding of natural law.” I
have already clearly shown this to be a gross distortion of what I wrote
in The Bible and Homosexual Practice. See “Robert Gagnon on Jack
Rogers’s Comments: Misrepresenting the Nature Argument,”
pdf and
html.
Rogers
willfully distorts my “both-and” argument regarding Scripture and nature
into an “either-or.” He alleges that my argument actually ignores the
special revelation of Scripture or regards it as irrelevant. Given that my
500-page book is mostly about Scripture’s case against same-sex
intercourse, such an allegation is absurd.
1.
Taking my remarks out of context. Rogers takes a few statements in
my book out of context and mischaracterizes their contextual
sense—evidently the same procedure that he employs when he reads the
biblical witness against homosexual practice (see I. above).
For example,
he quotes the following line from my conclusion:
Acceptance of biblical revelation is thus not a prerequisite for
rejecting the legitimacy of same-sex intercourse. (p. 488)
What he
conveniently neglects to cite is the very next line:
However, for those who do attribute special inspired status to Scripture
at any level, there is even less warrant to affirm same-sex intercourse.
In other
words, for those who do not know, or (like Rogers) refuse to accept,
special biblical revelation, there is adequate reason in the natural realm
for not approving of same-sex intercourse. And both the sentence that
Rogers cites and the one he does not are part of the second of four
reasons why I contend that same-sex intercourse is contrary to God’s
intention for human sexual relations. The first and primary reason that I
cite is:
Same-sex intercourse is strongly and unequivocally rejected by the
revelation of Scripture. (p. 487)
I make a
similar point at the conclusion to ch. 4, “The Witness of Paul”:
To be sure, Paul and other Jews derived
their own opposition to same-sex intercourse, first and foremost, from
the creation stories in Genesis 1-2 and the Levitical prohibitions,
both which have intertextual echoes in Rom 1:18-32. Yet, Paul contended,
even gentiles without access to the direct revelation of Scripture have
enough evidence in the natural realm to discern God’s aversion to
homosexual behavior. (p. 337; emphasis added)
How could
this point be any clearer? The direct revelation of Scripture is primary,
but even the indirect revelation of nature provides sufficient grounds for
holding accountable those who engage in same-sex intercourse, whether out
of ignorance of Scripture or out of defiance of it.
2. A
simple principle: Both Scripture first and nature.
It is a simple “both-and”: both Scripture first and nature—and, I
might add, the disproportionately high negative effects attending
homosexual behavior and the increase in homosexuality that would
arise from cultural endorsement and incentives.
The
coherence of Scripture and nature is not surprising in view of the fact
that the Revealer who communicates in Scripture an other-sex prerequisite
is also the Creator who designs males and females for complementary sexual
pairing. The alternative is the kind of Gnostic dualism that the church
resisted in the second to fifth centuries. If Scripture itself makes an
appeal to creation/nature, it can hardly be contrary to a revelation-based
approach to make a similar appeal (within limits; see point 3 below). That
Paul
does make such an appeal to the created order in Romans 1:24-27 is
easily demonstrated (see my eight-point section, “An Imposed Natural Law
Theory?” [pp. 6-9] in my online response to L. William Countryman’s
review,
pdf version and
html version). But the witness of Scripture is, of course, primary. It
is, if anything, even more unequivocal and binding than the testimony of
nature. Let it also be said that Paul was not the first writer of
Scripture to appeal to creation’s or nature’s testimony to God (see James
Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology [Oxford: Clarendon,
1993]).
3. An
anti-Scriptural, anti-Reformed view of nature? Rogers tells his
audience that to suggest that creation or nature gives people any
indication about God or God’s will for human behavior is an anti-Reformed
and anti-Scriptural view. He says:
Paul, according to Gagnon, proclaims that
both God and ethical human behavior can be known through observing
nature. To most American Christians that just sounds like common sense.
However, in the Reformed tradition, we know God in Jesus Christ as
revealed in Scripture. Augustine, Calvin, and most of the Reformed
tradition, would have had real theological differences with Gagnon’s
methodology.
Rogers is
wrong as regards both Paul and the Reformed tradition. He sets up a false
dichotomy between (1) knowing anything about God and ethical
behavior “through observing nature” and (2) knowing God definitively
“through Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture.” Clearly, Paul (and
Scripture generally) did believe that some rudimentary things could
be known through creation/nature, without detracting from the definitive
character of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
I made
clear in The Bible and Homosexual Practice that I am not arguing
that people can attain saving knowledge of Jesus Christ simply through
observation of creation or nature. In failing to note this, Rogers once
again shows either deliberate deception of his audience or lack of basic
reading comprehension. At the same time, I state what Paul obviously
stated in Romans 1:18-32: people know enough through creation and nature
to leave them “without excuse”—that is, justly under God’s sentence of
judgment and in need of special revelation about Jesus Christ. In some
areas nature provides enough knowledge for humans to be held culpable for
violations, but never enough knowledge or power to bestow justification.
Hence:
It is certainly true that, for Paul, at
least since the coming of Christ definitively redemptive knowledge of God
was possible only through . . . the communication of the gospel . . .
[and] God’s “sealing” of the believer with the Spirit of Christ.
Nevertheless, Rom 1:18-32 makes quite clear that Paul allowed for
sufficient knowledge of God accessible through observation of the material
creation to enable gentiles to deduce that idolatry was wrong and to
justify God’s expression of wrath against those who commit it. He also
apparently regarded some knowledge of moral absolutes among gentiles as
possible through the “natural” faculties of reason and conscience (Rom
2:14-16). However, he did not regard such knowledge as any more fruitful
for redemption than the access that Jews had to the direct revelation of
Mosaic law. . . . For Paul, then, nature provided the unbeliever (and
believer) with access to some information about God and God’s will that
enabled compliance with the truth at some level. It also justified God’s
condemnation of those who violated certain basic principles concerning
idolatry and immorality. Yet the knowledge that nature/creation
communicated about God was insufficient for salvation—only the word of the
gospel and the gift of the Spirit could convey that. (The Bible and
Homosexual Practice, 257 n. 17)
For Rogers
to argue that it was otherwise for Paul, that Paul did not see any
revelatory character to nature, is a blatant misrepresentation of the text
of Scripture. On what basis does Paul contend in Romans 1:19-23 that those
who worship statues in the images of humans and, worse, animals are
“without excuse”? Apparently for Rogers there is no basis for such a
verdict. But Paul says otherwise. For pagans without Scripture, the
grandeur and order of creation itself testifies to a God who is above and
beyond creation:
The wrath of God is being revealed from
heaven against every impiety and unrighteousness of humans who suppress
the truth about God in their unrighteousness, because the knowable
aspect of God is visible/evident to them, for God has made it
visible/evident to them. For from the creation of the world on, his
invisible qualities are clearly seen, being mentally apprehended by means
of the things made—both his eternal power and divinity—so that they
are without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)
A limited
appeal to natural revelation here is unmistakable. Only a prior commitment
not to acknowledge any degree of natural revelation could cause one to
miss it. A similar point is made in the first-century
A.D. (?) Jewish work Wisdom of
Solomon:
All people who were ignorant of God were
foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are
seen to know the one who exists, nor did they recognize the artisan
while paying heed to his works; but they supposed that either fire or
wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars . . . were the gods that
rule the world. . . . Let them perceive from them how much more powerful
is the one who formed them. For from the greatness and beauty of
created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.
Yet . . . perhaps they go astray while seeking God and . . . trust in
what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful. Yet
again, not even they are to be excused; for if they had the power to
know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to
find sooner the Lord of these things? (13:1-9)
A similar
point is made in Testament of Naphtali 3:4 (cited in point I.6
above). These texts are additional examples of the fact that Rogers does
not read New Testament passages properly in their historical context. To
my knowledge, there is not a single major commentary on Romans written in
the past quarter century that would dispute the reading of Romans 1:19-23
that I am giving here.
Not only
does Rogers’s claim distort Scripture, it also distorts the Reformed
tradition. Readers can get a concise overview of the matter in the entry
“Natural Theology” in the Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith (ed.
Donald McKim; Westminster / John Knox, 1992), 250-53. Calvin held the view
that I am espousing (this is evident both in his Institutes and in
his commentary on Romans). For example:
By saying God manifested it he
means that man was formed to be a spectator of the created world, and that
he was endowed with eyes for the purpose of his being led to God Himself,
the Author of the world, by contemplating so magnificent an image. . . .
God is invisible in Himself, but since His majesty shines forth in all His
works and in all His creatures, men ought to have acknowledged Him in
these, for they clearly demonstrate their Creator. . . .
This [statement, “that they may be without
excuse” (Rom 1:20)] clearly proves how much men gain from this
demonstration of the existence of God, viz. an utter incapacity to bring
any defense to prevent them from being justly accused before the
judgment-seat of God. We must, therefore, make this distinction, that the
manifestation of God by which He makes His glory known among His creatures
is sufficiently clear as far as its own light is concerned. It is,
however, inadequate on account of our blindness. But we are not so blind
that we can plead ignorance without being convicted of perversity. We form
a conception of divinity, and then we conclude that we are under the
necessity of worshipping such a Being, whatever His character may be. Our
judgment, however, fails here before it discovers the nature or character
of God. . . . And yet we see just enough to keep us from making excuse. (The
Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians,
31-32; commenting on Rom 1:19-20)
Of one
piece with this argument is Calvin’s comment on Rom 1:26, where he speaks
of same-sex intercourse as “the fearful crime of unnatural lust,” in which
humans become “worse than beasts, since they have reversed the whole order
of nature.”
Nothing
stated in the opening lines of the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1643
is at odds with my own view:
Although the light of nature, and the
works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness,
wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not
sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is
necessary unto salvation.
Of course, Rogers, in
supporting homosexual behavior, accepts neither the direct
revelation of Scripture nor the indirect revelation of nature. Here
is my wish: Would that Rogers upheld the definitive, countercultural
revelation of Scripture as regards same-sex intercourse!
4.
The irony of Rogers’s own unacknowledged natural theology. Of
course, the irony of ironies is that Rogers, while criticizing me for
accepting the limited natural theology put forward by Scripture, peddles
an unacknowledged natural theology of his own, and an anti-scriptural one
at that.
Rogers appeals to an immutable homosexual destiny for some as a basis for
claiming that God “created” them that way and that the church should learn
to accept homosexual practice. “I didn’t choose my heterosexual
orientation. That is just the way that God created me. I see no reason to
doubt the stories of [homosexuals] . . . that they are simply created
differently in this aspect of their being.”
This
is a version of natural law argument that contravenes both the witness of
Scripture and the witness of the Reformers to Scripture. It is no more
credible than contending that, because men on average are significantly
more visually stimulated and genitally focused than women, society should
be more permissive of short-term sexual unions or plural marriages for
males—and all the more so in cases of homoerotic male relationships. Or
that because some persons do not choose a pedophilic or ephebophilic
orientation society should find ways to accommodate such desires while
averting measurable harm to minors.
Modern
scientific study recognizes that all behavior, good and bad, is the
product, at some level, of biological causation factors. Even
non-theologians know that there is no intrinsic link between biological
causation and morality. A recently published article on the genetics of
sexual orientation, written by two “essentialist,” prohomosex scientists,
Brian Mustanski and J. Michael Bailey, concedes:
Despite common assertions to the contrary,
evidence for biological causation does not have clear moral, legal, or
policy consequences. . . . No clear conclusions about the morality of a
behaviour can be made from the mere fact of biological causation, because
all behaviour is biologically caused. (“A therapist’s guide to the
genetics of human sexual orientation,” Sexual and Relationship Therapy
18:4 [Nov. 2003], 432)
The fact that there may be some
indirect genetic or biological influence on homosexuality does not reduce
us to moral robots. We may not have asked to feel a given way, but we are
responsible for what we do with such feelings. Christian faith does not
operate on a model of biological determinism. It operates on the model of
a new creation in Christ, in which sinful, biologically related urges are,
and are to be, put to death.
Paul
himself viewed sin as an innate impulse running through the members of the
human body, communicated by an ancestor, and never fully within human
control. Paul distinguished between innate impulses, which were frequently
products of a sinful condition and thus unreliable indicators of God’s
will, and the holistic structural complementarity of male-female
sexuality, still intact from creation and thus a more reliable indicator
of God’s will for sexual pairing. Unfortunately, Rogers refuses to accept
such a distinction.
In
short, Rogers, not I, promotes a kind of natural theology that the
Reformers would have rejected. It is Rogers, not I, who ironically
dispenses with the special revelation of Scripture in favor of his own
flawed brand of natural theology.
IV. The Rest of Rogers’s Case for Supporting Homosexual Practice
1.
The freedom-from-heterosexual-sin argument. Rogers states that a
particular remark by a homosexual man “got me thinking” that homosexual
intercourse might not be sinful after all: “I can tell you a sin that you
have committed that I never have. I have never looked on a woman to lust
after her.” Now why this remark should have had any role in
changing Rogers’s mind about homosexual behavior is a mystery to me. So
the man in question substituted one sin (lusting after a sexual “other”
who is not one’s spouse) for what Scripture regards as a worse sin
(lusting after sexual sames). So what? This is not an improvement. Indeed,
there are now two sins, not one: erotic desire to merge with what one
already is as a sexual being and an erotic desire for more than one
such person.
Analogies
are helpful here. Would Rogers change his mind about incest if a person
with incestuous desires were to say to him: “I can tell you a sin that you
have committed that I never have; I have never looked with lust at a
person outside my family unit”? Would Rogers change his mind about
polygamy if a polygamist said to him: “I can tell you a sin that many
monogamists have committed that I never have; I have never divorced any of
my wives”? Or, worse, would Rogers change his mind about pedophilia if a
pedophile said to him: “I can tell you a sin that you have committed that
I never have; I have never looked at an adult woman to lust after her”?
2.
Rogers’s misunderstandings about promiscuity and homosexuality.
Rogers was deeply surprised by the fact that not all homosexuals are
promiscuous or nasty people. Judging from his narrative, this
consideration seems to have played the dominant role in his change of
mind, along with his unacknowledged nature argument regarding sexual
orientation (see III. above). But this just underscores Rogers’s naďveté
about homosexuality and his misunderstanding of Scripture’s proscription.
Rogers operated with two false assumptions: (1) Homosexual relationships
can never be committed and faithful; and (2) Scripture opposes
homosexual practice only because of an absence of commitment and
fidelity. Persons who start with an uninformed view of homosexuality and
what Scripture says about homosexual practice are prone to endorsing
homosexual practice when they encounter evidence at odds with their
uninformed view. Rogers was, and remains, one such person.
Regarding
the first assumption, of course a tiny percentage of homosexual
relationships can be long-term (say, of twenty-five years duration or
more) and monogamous and free of sexually transmitted
disease and mental illness problems. No form of consensual sexual behavior
of any sort—including incest, polyamory, and even pedophilia—leads
irresistibly to infidelity, disease, and personal distress for all
participants, in all circumstances, and in scientifically measurable ways.
I suppose that we should be grateful that Rogers has not encountered
committed incestuous, polyamorous, or adult-child unions. For, if he had,
he might—if he reasoned consistently—start approving of some of these
types of relationships.
But
homosexuals experience a disproportionately high rate of such problems in
each of these areas, even in homosex-affirming areas such as San Francisco
or the Netherlands. The main problem is not homophobia but the way men and
women are constructed as sexual beings. In a same-sex erotic pairing, the
sexual gaps of a given sex are not filled and extremes are not moderated.
For example, J. Michael Bailey—chair of the department of psychology at
Northwestern, perhaps the most prominent researcher of homosexuality, and
a strong advocate for “gay rights”—has written:
Because of fundamental differences between
men and women. . . . [and] regardless of marital laws and policies. . . .
gay men will always have many more sex partners than straight people do. .
. . Both heterosexual and homosexual people will need to be open minded
about social practices common to people of other orientations. (The Man
Who Would Be Queen [Joseph Henry Press, 2003], 100-102)
Even more
importantly, rejecting homosexual practice on the assumption that it lacks
commitment is like rejecting incestuous behavior on the assumption that it
lacks longevity or inherently involves children. It does not get at the
ultimate reason for the rejection, which has little to do with the absence
of commitment, longevity, and adult partners. We will come back to this in
point 7 below.
3.
Rogers’s misunderstanding of the meaning of change. Rogers was
surprised to find out that most homosexuals could not change from a
“category 6” homosexual (exclusively homosexual) to a “category 0”
heterosexual (exclusively heterosexual). We have already discussed above
why resistance to “change” is no argument for the morality of a given
behavior (see III. above). To this may be added the following point:
Rogers, like many, has an overly restrictive understanding of change. In
the Christian worldview change is a multifaceted phenomenon. Legitimate
change can include any, some, or all of the following:
- A reduction or
elimination of homosexual behavior
- A reduction in the
intensity and frequency of homosexual impulses
- An experience of some
heterosexual arousal
- Reorientation to
predominant heterosexuality
Not a
single New Testament moral imperative is predicated on the assumption that
believers first lose all innate desires to violate the imperative in
question. Indeed, the greatest Christian triumph comes not when all
contrary desires are removed but rather when obedience persists in the
face of strong desires to the contrary. That, in a nutshell, is cruciform
existence: losing one’s life, taking up one’s cross, denying oneself, and
following Christ.
Management of homoerotic impulses, normally coincident with a
reduction in intensity, is possible for all homosexual Christians. Indeed,
most homosexuals experience at least one shift along the Kinsey spectrum
during the course of life, even apart from any therapeutic intervention.
Does Rogers want to contend that Alcoholics Anonymous is a disaster
because most participants in its programs do not undergo a complete or
near-total eradication of desires for alcohol? Homoerotic orientation,
like alcoholism (or pedophilic orientation, an intense desire for multiple
sexual partners, or addiction to pornography), cannot be equated with
ethnicity, sex, and eye color as a non-malleable, completely congenital
condition.
Ironically, those like Rogers who argue
that homosexual behavior should not be disavowed precisely because it is
resistant to change would—to be consistent—have to contend that
non-monogamous relationships be accepted for male homosexual
relationships. This is because empirical evidence to date strongly
suggests that male homosexuals have extraordinary difficulty, relative
even to lesbians, in forming lifelong monogamous unions.
Rogers also does nothing with the evidence
that I amass that microcultural and macrocultural factors can increase the
incidence of homosexuality in the population (see The Bible and
Homosexual Practice, 395-429; also my response to Countryman’s review
of my book, sec. VI: “The Effect of Societal Approval” [go
here for pdf and
here for html]). In fact, Rogers never refers to any concrete studies
of any sort.
4.
The few-texts-against-homosexual-behavior argument. Rogers says:
“I have become convinced that to pull the few statements about
homosexuality out of Romans 1 and make them a universal law exactly denies
the point that Paul is making.” The notion that ancient Israel, early
Judaism, and early Christianity only marginally held an other-sex
prerequisite for valid sexual unions is absurd. Biblical texts that
explicitly reject same-sex intercourse are more numerous than Rogers is
apparently aware of. They extend beyond Paul and Leviticus to the
“Yahwist” (much of the Tetrateuch), Deuteronomy, the “Deuteronomistic
History” (Joshua through 2 Kings), Job, Ezekiel, Jude, and 2 Peter. Texts
that implicitly reject homosexual unions run the gamut of the
entire Bible, including not only the creation stories in Genesis
1-3, Jesus’ appeal to Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24 as prescriptive norms
(as well as a half dozen other indications of Jesus’ view), the Apostolic
Decree in Acts and other porneia (“sexual immorality”) texts, and
texts that reject overt attempts at blurring sexual differentiation (e.g.,
Deut 22:5; 1 Cor 11:2-16), but also the whole range of narratives,
laws, proverbs, exhortations, metaphors, and poetry that presume the sole
legitimacy of heterosexual unions. Nowhere is there the slightest
indication of openness anywhere in the Bible to homoerotic attachments,
including the narrative about David and Jonathan. The truth is that, so
far as extant evidence indicates, every biblical author, as well as Jesus,
would have been appalled by any same-sex intercourse occurring among the
people of God. The other-sex prerequisite for marriage is not a marginal
view in Scripture. It is the only view and one that is held strongly,
absolutely, and counterculturally. There is as much, or greater, basis in
Scripture for rejecting same-sex intercourse than there is for rejecting
man-mother or brother-sister incest.
5. The
it’s-not-in-the-Confessions argument. Rogers says that Scripture
ultimately convinced him that loving homosexual unions are acceptable—a
case that we have shown to be specious. It is interesting that Rogers
spends more time in his talk trying to show that the Reformed Confessions
do not deem homosexual practice as sin than he does trying to make the
case from Scripture. This underscores how little Scripture matters for
Rogers on this issue. G-6.0106b makes clear that “Those who are called to
office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture
and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church.”
The basis in Scripture for opposition to homosexual practice is clear; and
Scripture in Reformed churches is the basis for the confessions. To what
extent the Confessions explicitly specify the prohibition of
homosexual practice I leave to others to discern—though I am largely
unimpressed by Rogers’ arguments.
This much
is clear: Only a liberal “fundamentalist” or “literalist” can possibly
ignore the obvious point that every confession of the church that says
anything about marriage operates on the premise of an other-sex
prerequisite. Marriage was always regarded in the Reformed churches as the
reconstitution of male and female into a sexual whole. Furthermore,
references in the Confessions to New Testament texts alluding to
porneia, “sexual immorality”—“fornication” is too restrictive a
translation—include implicitly a reference to same-sex intercourse, as
also incest. How many explicit references in the Confessions are there to
prohibiting man-mother incest? Yet who would argue that the Confessions
are somehow “open” to such sexual unions?
6. The
argument from the analogies of slavery/racism and women. I have
shown in my works why these are bad analogies and why the analogy
regarding incest is far superior. Rogers shows no awareness of my
arguments. See: The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 441-52;
Homosexuality and the Bible, 43-50. There was a recent attempt by a
certain Rev. Krehbiel on
www.Presbyweb.com to lift up antebellum American views on slavery as
an analogue to contemporary views on homosexual behavior (go
here and
here). But I have shown in two responses that there is no merit to
such an argument (go
here and
here). In the absence of effective rebuttals, there is no point here
in restating my position.
7. Why
same-sex intercourse cannot be judged solely on the basis of loving
disposition. As with nearly everything else, Rogers
mischaracterizes the argument of my book to say that same-sex intercourse
is only wrong because the body parts don’t fit. (Indeed, he says that I
speak of anatomical complementarity “so often it gets embarrassing.”)
He blames me for not “consulting either the motivation or manner of
expression of real gay and lesbian people.” Actually, I don’t ignore the
“manner of expression of real gay and lesbian people.” I provide much more
documentary evidence of what homosexuals typically do than Rogers does
(see The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 452-60, 471-85). Indeed,
Rogers provides nothing but small-scale, personal anecdotal evidence. But
that aside, I should also say that I don’t “consult the motivation” of
those in incestuous or polyamorous relationships either, and frankly I
would be shocked if Rogers did. Rogers grossly misunderstands why same-sex
intercourse is wrong and tragically invalidates any notion of structural
prerequisites for sexual activity that transcend personal motivation.
Anatomical complementarity serves as an important heuristic springboard
for grasping the broad complementarity of maleness and femaleness. The
complementarity of the sex organs is a very important dimension of the
whole, as is evident from the health hazards and repulsive quality of men
who eroticize the anal cavity for penetration and even oral activity.
Anatomy is also a clue not easily falsified, unlike the malleable
character of many human desires. Christians are not anti-body gnostic
dualists. At the same time, the matter is about more than sex organs. It
is about essential maleness and femaleness. In effect, Paul is saying in
Rom 1:24-27: Start with the obvious “fittedness” of human anatomy. When
done with that, consider procreative design as a clue. Then move on to a
broad range of interpersonal differences that define maleness and
femaleness. The image behind this is the splitting and remerging of the
two sexual halves in Gen 1:27 and Gen 2:21-24.
Simply put, the obvious compatibility of male and female genitals is both
part of and emblematic of the broad complementarity of essential
maleness and essential femaleness that is so well illustrated by both the
copulative act and by the story of the splitting off of woman from a
sexually binary, primal human in Genesis 2:21-24. Scripture teaches that
woman is man’s sexual “other half” and counterpart, not another man.
Scripture rejects same-sex intercourse because it represents a false
attempt to complete one’s sexual self with a sexual same. A sexual
counterpart is required for reconstituting the sexual whole of an
original, sexually undifferentiated human.
In the end, erotic desire for the same sex is
sexual narcissism or sexual self-deception: an erotic
attraction either for what one knowingly is as a sexual being or for what one wishes to be but in fact
already is: male for male, female for female. As with consensual adult
incest, issues of commitment and monogamy are simply beside the point and
come into play only after the prerequisites for a valid sexual
union are met.
No one can
reasonably deny that a homoerotic desire is an erotic attraction to what
that person already is or has as a sexual being. What else are
homoerotically inclined persons attracted to? Why else would a person who
experiences homoerotic desire, especially exclusively so, desire
specifically a person of the same sex rather than a person of the
other sex? And we are not talking here simply about a friendship or
admiration. We are talking about erotic attraction, a desire to sexually
merge and become one with a person who is not a complementary
sexual counterpart but a person of the same sex. That’s why we call it “homosexual”
intercourse (homo- for homoios, “like” or “same”) and distinguish
it from “heterosexual” intercourse (hetero- for heteros,
“other, different”). It is patently a desire for the essential sexual self
that one shares in common with one’s partner. By definition it is
sexual narcissism or sexual self-deception. There is either a conscious
recognition that one desires in another what one already possesses as a
sexual being (anatomy, physiology, sex-based traits) or a self-delusion of
sorts in which the sexual same is perceived as some kind of sexual other.
There are no other alternatives.
Notice here
that I am not asserting, as Rogers would probably suppose, that two or
more persons in a homoerotic relationship are inherently incapable of
exhibiting mutual care and compassion. As noted above, such a claim would
be absurd for virtually any proscribed form of human sexuality. Rather,
so far as the erotic dimension is concerned, homoerotic desire is
sexual narcissism or sexual self-deception. The church has no objection to
intimate, non-erotic same-sex relationships. We call them friendships. It
is only when an erotic dimension is introduced to a same-sex relationship
that problems develop. If one protests that there is only a fine line
between
intimate and erotic, another may respond: parents who do not
maintain a clear distinction between intimate and erotic in dealings with
their own children are candidates for criminal prosecution.
Again, I’m
not talking merely about what some prohomosex advocates derisively refer
to as an “obsession with plumbing.” Quite clearly, though, most
homosexuals, especially male homosexuals, exhibit an obsession with the
“plumbing” or anatomy of persons of the same sex. The tremendous emphasis
on “gay” pornography in the male homosexual community, their significantly
higher average rates of sex partners, and the existence of “gay
bathhouses” are all striking testimony to this. To say that distinctive,
same-sex anatomical features are not critically important to homosexual
men would be like saying that most heterosexual men experience only minor
attraction to beautiful female anatomical distinctives. At the same time,
I am talking about something more than “plumbing” or anatomy: recognition
of something holistic, an essential maleness or essential femaleness. We
have to ask: Why do about 99% of all persons in the United States limit
their selection of mates to persons of a particular sex? The only
reasonable answer is that sexual differentiation is the primary
consideration for mate selection. Either people want a mate of the other
sex (97% of us) or they want a mate of the same sex (2%). No other
criterion for mate selection comes even close to this one consideration.
Clearly, there is a basic human acknowledgement that a person’s sex
matters; that there is something essentially male and essentially female
that causes persons to rule out of consideration an entire sex when they
choose a sex partner. And it is precisely the erotic attraction to the
same essential sex that one already is, to the distinctive sexual features
that one already has, that can be labeled sexual narcissism.
In this
connection, too, it is interesting that homosexual men, even those who
bear effeminate traits, usually desire very “masculine” men as their sex
partners. Why? Undoubtedly many desire what they see as lacking in
themselves: a strong masculine quality. Such a desire is really a form of
self-delusion. In the perspective of Scripture and indeed of science, they
are already men, already masculine. They are masculine by virtue of their
sex, not by virtue of possessing a social construct of masculinity that
may or may not reflect true masculinity. They need not seek completion in
a sexual same. Rather, they must come to terms with their essential
masculinity.
Concluding Word
Despite
what Rogers would like readers to believe, his narrative underscores that
the real catalyst for his change of mind was not Scripture but experiences
that called into question his initial naďveté about homosexuality. He then
attempted, rather unconvincingly, to contort Scripture in ways that would
buttress his newfound beliefs, advancing a temple prostitution argument
that is without merit. Ultimately, he effectively eliminates all
structural prerequisites to sexual unions and considers only whether
“love,” narrowly defined as a subjective disposition of concern for
another, is manifested between the participants. Rogers gives no thought
for the differences between intimacy and eroticism in the application of
this principle of “love.” He tries to hold on to the sanctity of two
partners at any one time but he fails to explain to readers why we should
maintain this prerequisite when (1) Scripture regards the other-sex
dimension as even more significant than the number of partners; (2)
fidelity and commitment can be manifested in “threesomes” or other
polygamous unions; (3) male homosexual relationships show themselves to
be, on the whole, deeply resistant to monogamy; and (4) the limitation of
sex partners to two persons at any one time is itself predicated on the
idea, rejected by Rogers, that two sexes are needed to create a sufficient
sexual whole.
All in
all, Rogers’s address raises troubling questions about his competence in
handling the biblical text, his integrity in restating accurately and
fairly the positions of those with whom he disagrees, the real priority of
Scripture in his life, and the consistency and logic of his hermeneutical
moves. Then, too, his address raises the same troubling questions for the
Covenant Network that sponsors and esteems Rogers’s work. Perhaps the best
thing that can be said is that we continue to hope for a properly directed
change of mind for Jack Rogers, and the membership of the Covenant Network
generally—reforming in the direction of Scripture rather than “deforming”
away from it.
©
2004 Robert A. J. Gagnon