HOW JACK ROGERS CONTINUES TO DISTORT SCRIPTURE AND MY WORK:
PART 1
A Response to Jack Rogers’s “11 Talking Points . . . And
how Robert Gagnon gets them wrong”
Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon
Associate Professor of New Testament,
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
(June 20, 2006)
Jack Rogers, recent author of the book
Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality (Westminster John Knox), has
responded (June 14, 2006) to my first four installments critiquing his
book: “Does Jack Rogers’s Book ‘Explode the Myths’ about the Bible and
Homosexuality and ‘Heal the Church’?” (found
here,
here,
here,
and here
for html version and
here,
here,
here,
and
here for pdf version; Rogers's review is
here (www.drjackrogers.com).
In his response Rogers continues to
misrepresent both the subject of “Scripture and homosexuality” and my work
on the subject. In addition, by not responding to the vast majority of the
arguments that I make against his claims about the Bible and
homosexuality, he continues the strategy that he adopted in his book;
namely, ignoring the massive weight of evidence against his position.
Jack Rogers talks about “rave reviews”
of his book. I haven’t seen a single rave review, or any review, by a
biblical scholar, let alone by a biblical scholar who adopts a different
position than the author’s (contrary to what I received for my book The
Bible and Homosexual Practice). Moreover, he says that he has been on
an extensive book tour before large audiences. And this is evidence of
what? It is certainly not evidence of any fact that he has made strong
arguments about Scripture and/or homosexual practice.
Rogers hopes that flash will substitute
for substance. It does not. The editors in power at Westminster John Knox
and the Presbyterian Publishing House, mostly strong advocates for
homosexual practice, and the media outlets in PCUSA circles and elsewhere,
are giving a full-court press to push Rogers’s book on the church,
particularly the PCUSA branch. But this is nothing but an ideologically
driven propaganda show for a book that does not merit the attention that
it is getting.
Rogers claims that my critique of his
book “is filled with personal attacks on me which are simply untrue.” What
are these “personal attacks” that are “untrue”? Rogers doesn’t say. My
comments are rather accurate and substantive critiques of major
misrepresentations that Rogers makes of my work and of Scripture. The
problem lies not with the one who points out these blatant
misrepresentations but with the one who makes them.
Here are my ‘talking points’ to Rogers’s
response.
1. Rogers’s chief charge is that I
make no mention, in the first four installments of my critique, of various
other arguments in his book. The inference of his charge is that I
can’t respond to these arguments when the reality is that I haven’t
yet had time to respond to them. Rogers makes so many
misrepresentations in his book that it takes a long time to give adequate
responses to each of them. I have produced 48 pages of critique thus
far and more material is coming. I couldn’t get the next projected
3 installments out because I had to complete my teaching responsibilities
for the term at Pittsburgh Seminary (including getting all grades in) and
prepare to come to the General Assembly in order to serve as both a
commissioner on the vital Church Orders Committee handling overtures
affecting the sexuality standard and an overture advocate for an overture
going before the even more vital Ecclesiology Committee handling the
sexuality Task Force’s Final Report. Now I am at GA and my time is
limited. But a more detailed response to all his arguments will come in
due time, soon after General Assembly.
2. The deceptive character of
Rogers’s chief charge is underscored by the fact that I have made repeated
responses, in work already published, to each of the issues that Rogers
claims that I ignore in my as yet uncompleted critique of his book. Yet
Rogers has failed to acknowledge, let alone respond to, much less rebut,
these responses. This includes my work on hermeneutical models and why
the alleged analogies for accepting homosexual practice, used by Rogers
and others (slavery, women’s roles, divorce, and the Gentile inclusion
analogy), are really not good analogies. As with nearly everything else,
Rogers ignores my arguments altogether, hoping to lead his readers to the
false assumption that no such arguments exist.
3. As for the scriptural arguments
that I do mount against Rogers in the 48 pages put out thus far in four
installments, Rogers makes little or no attempt to respond.
My
conclusion from this is that Rogers has no argument to make. Whereas I
have responded to all of Rogers’s main arguments--whether in my recent
response to Rogers’s book or in earlier writings (two of which respond to
Rogers’s previous online work, plus a 500-page book, etc.)--Rogers has
responded to few of my arguments and rebutted none.
But rather than acknowledge to
readers that he was wrong in any of his great claims about Scripture and
my work, he once again hopes that by ignoring my arguments he can give
readers the false impression that his arguments are basically sound.
For example:
-
I argued throughout
Installment 3 that Rogers lied
when he twice claimed before his readers that I “simply assert, without
supporting evidence” that the Bible’s opposition to homosexual practice
is absolute. I supplied in Installment 3 sixteen pages of documentation
of some (not all) of the many arguments that I have made in my published
work for concluding that the apostle Paul opposed all forms of
homosexual practice, committed or otherwise. I could have expanded
considerably the length of this response in Installment 3 if I had
developed the arguments to the extent that they are found in my other
publications and if I had widened the net to look at biblical texts
outside Paul. Rogers’s claim amounts to the biggest lie that anyone has
made of my work to date or probably could be made to any work.
Nowhere in Rogers’s response is there any mention of this, much less any
apology to me and to his readers for bearing false witness in an
extraordinary way.
-
The above-mentioned lie made by Rogers also
underscores the extraordinary distortions about Scripture in Rogers’s
work. For Rogers insists throughout his book that the view that “the
Bible condemns all homosexual relationships. . . . is simply incorrect”
(p. 70). Yet in his reply to me he does not respond to even a single one
of the 20 pieces of supporting evidence from literary and historical
context that I provide for the assertion that the scriptural texts from
the apostle Paul categorically reject all homosexual
relationships. Surely if Rogers could have rebutted this mountain of
supporting evidence, or even one piece of it, he would have done so.
But rather than admit anything, Rogers simply leaves unmentioned that
his central contention about the biblical witness being open to
committed homosexual unions is contradicted by a mountain of contrary
evidence.
-
I showed in
Installment 1 that Rogers very
selectively quotes from pro-homosex scholars who have worked extensively
on the subject of the Bible and homosexuality, citing them only when
they support his own position on biblical texts and ignoring them
completely when they do not. Not only does he ignore the vast
majority of the main arguments put forward by scholars who do not
endorse homosexual practice, but he also conveniently ignores remarks
from even pro-homosex scholars that contradict his use of the
“exploitation argument” and “orientation argument” (i.e., arguments that
the Bible allegedly does not speak against non-exploitative homosexual
unions and that the ancient world allegedly had no conception of
congenital influences on homosexual behavior, respectively).
Rogers
makes absolutely no mention in his reply about my noting this,
presumably because his actions here are, from a scholarly viewpoint,
indefensible.
-
I demonstrated in
Installment 2 that the very
examples that Rogers gives for showing the importance of the historical
contexts for biblical texts pertaining to homosexual practice actually
show that Rogers does not know well the historical context. I
demonstrated this for Rogers’s (1) orientation argument, (2) idolatrous
sexuality argument, and (3) misogyny argument. (1) Rogers insists in
his book that “the concept of an ongoing sexual attraction to people of
one’s own sex did not exist . . . until the late nineteenth century.”
But I noted that the ancient world did have a view of homosexuality--as
Thomas K. Hubbard notes in his Homosexuality in Greece and Rome:
Sourcebook of Basic Documents (University of California Press,
2003)--“as an essential and central category of personal identity,
exclusive of and antithetical to heterosexual orientation.” Rogers is
strangely silent about this in his response. (2) In direct
contradiction to Rogers’s assumptions, I demonstrated in various ways
that Paul’s indictment of homosexual practice was not limited to
homosexual acts conducted in the context of worship of false gods and
reminded Rogers that I had already given 15 arguments for this point in
a previous online rebuttal of Rogers. All of these arguments Rogers
conveniently ignores. Particularly interesting is the fact that Rogers
excises from his personal narrative of how he came to change his views
on homosexual practice a “significant occasion” for such change
mentioned in an earlier Covenant Network article: his visit to Corinth.
Could this excision have anything to do with my 2004 criticism of his
false assumption that Paul derived his negative view of homosexuality
from homosexual temple prostitution at Corinth? All scholars of Corinth
agree, I pointed out, that there never was any homosexual temple
prostitution in Corinth, either in Paul’s day or in the classical
period. Rogers does not acknowledge to readers this basic error. He
prefers to keep quiet about it and alter his own personal history.
(3) I cited three insurmountable problems with Rogers’s use of a
misogyny argument--the assumption that Scripture’s opposition to
homosexual practice can be attributed primarily to a male desire to keep
women subjugated--and showed that Rogers didn’t even realize that his
use of such an argument directly contradicted his exploitation argument.
If Scripture were opposed to homosexual practice on the grounds that
such practice would challenge male supremacy over women, then clearly
Scripture would be opposed to all homosexual practice, not just
homosexual practice conducted in an exploitative or idolatrous manner.
Again, Rogers doesn’t mention to readers this fundamental problem with
the central contentions of his book.
-
In Installment 4 I showed how Rogers lied to readers
about my views on same-sex attractions when he twice stated that “Gagnon
claims . . . that homosexuality is a willful choice.” I further
showed that Rogers operated with the mistaken notion that the only two
choices for explaining homosexual development were (1) complete willful
choice or (2) complete congenital determinism; furthermore, that Rogers
didn’t realize that scientific studies to date point to multiple
causation factors, including congenital influences (genetic,
intrauterine), familial and peer influences, physical environment,
societal restrictions or openness, demographics, education, personal
human psychology, and incremental choices. In his only comment on the
scientific evidence (his “talking point” 7), Rogers completely ignores
the issue of causation/origination of homosexuality on which he places
so much emphasis in his book. Instead he diverts readers’ attention to a
different claim; namely, that “homosexuality is not a mental disorder
and there is no need for a ‘cure.’”
Rogers
doesn’t seem to realize that the claims of professional organizations that
homosexuality is not a “mental disorder” or that “there is no need for a
‘cure’” are largely political advocacy statements by politicized health
organizations. Few conditions create intrinsic distress or
intrinsic harm. But a large number of studies show significantly high
rates of distress and harm, for which a significant and likely factor
appears to be the absence of a gender complement in same-sex unions. For
example, even David Myers, whom Rogers loves to cite, has to admit in his
recent book with Letha Scanzoni that high rates of sex partners on the
part of homosexual males is attributable, in the first instance, not to
homophobia but to unbridled male sexuality that does not have to negotiate
its interests in relation to women (What God Has Joined Together?
124-25).
Rogers
claims that I “quote from a research paper or academic journal when it
suits [my] interest but [try] to dismiss the broad consensus” of health
organizations. The fact is that I quote in various works that I have
written the biggest and most important research studies, not a small
number of peripheral studies. Rogers, however, cites virtually no
studies--indeed, just one, which he got from reading Myers. The
declarations of politicized health organizations, whose ethics
subcommittees are often staffed and led by self-identified “gays” and
lesbians, are meaningless in the absence of specific studies that prove
claims. If Rogers wants readers to assume (and it appears that he does)
that the disproportionately high rates of relational and health problems
associated with homosexual activity have everything to do with
“homophobia” and nothing to do with the absence of a sexual counterpart,
let him cite the studies that prove this. He might consider, for starters,
the famous 2001 Dutch study which showed that high percentages of
psychiatric disorders persisted in male and female homosexuals in spite of
the considerable tolerance for homosexuality among the Dutch (T. Sandfort,
et al., “Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders: Findings from
the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS),”
Archives of General Psychiatry 58.1: 85-91).
What I find particularly interesting
about Rogers’s response to my critiques is that, though he is riled up (he
says, “I’ve heard enough”) and claims that he will “highlight some of the
principle themes in my book and the ways in which Gagnon gets them wrong
in his review,” he in fact offers no rebuttal to any of the points that I
have thus far made in my four installments of critique. What he attempts
to do is take me to task for “ignoring” or “making no comment about”
things that I haven’t yet had time to rebut again but soon will
(and, in any case, already have in previous work). In “Part 2” I will
respond briefly to each of these erroneous “talking points” made by
Rogers.