Response to the
Pastor of the Pittsburgh Presbytery regarding the Vote to Allow Homosexual
Ordination in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.
by
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary;
gagnon@pts.edu
May 12, 2011
For printing use the pdf version
here
I
give my permission for this article to be circulated widely in print,
email, and on the web.—RG
May 12, 2011
Rev. Sheldon
Sorge
Pastor to
the Pittsburgh Presbytery
Dear
Sheldon,
This letter
is in response to your pastoral letter to the sessions within the
Pittsburgh Presbytery, dated May 12, 2011
(http://pghpresbytery.org/news/sheldon_shares/2011/ss_051211.htm).
I can
understand your desire to prevent fracture in the Pittsburgh Presbytery as
Pastor to the presbytery. However, I must express my disagreement with
your use of Pauline texts to buttress your position that the recent
approval of Amendment 10A to the Book of Order should occasion no
deep soul-searching about staying in the denomination.
I do not say
here that Presbyterians faithful to Scripture’s strong male-female
prerequisite for sexual relations should immediately leave the PCUSA. I
only know that your exegesis of Pauline texts on this matter is
considerably off the mark and glosses over very serious matters. The
denomination’s allowance of “adult-committed” homosexual activity among
its ordained leadership is at least as morally problematic as if the
denomination allowed for “adult-committed” incest or polyamory among its
ordained leadership. In ignoring this I feel that you are doing the
majority of the presbytery a disservice.
You cite 1
Corinthians 1:13: “Has Christ been divided?” Clearly the focus of most of
1 Corinthians is on church unity. Yet for Paul that overall emphasis on
unity did not apply to matters of gross doctrinal error, idolatry, or
sexual immorality. It applied only to matters of relative indifference,
that is, matters that did not seriously affect entrance into God’s
kingdom. Paul never would have counseled an “agree to disagree” approach
on denial of the resurrection (ch. 15), eating at an idol’s temple and
flirting with idolatry (ch. 10), or a case of egregious sexual immorality
(chs. 5-6).
Indeed, in a
letter that deals with numerous problems in the Corinthian community, only
at one point does Paul insist that the offender be put out of the
community: the case of a believer in an adult-consensual incestuous
relationship (ch. 5). The similarity of vice lists in 5:9-11 and 6:9-10
indicates that Paul insisted that the offender be expelled from the
community pending repentance (5:9-11) precisely because the offender was
at high risk of being excluded from the kingdom of God (6:9-10). Paul
rebuked the leadership at Corinth for being “puffed up,” inflated with
pride, as regards their tolerance of such behavior. They should rather
have mourned the fate of the incestuous man, as one would mourn at a
funeral (5:2).
Given the
intensity and outrage of Paul’s reaction, it doesn’t take a great deal of
imagination to realize that, had the Corinthian leadership not only
ignored Paul’s demand but, even worse, installed the incestuous man as a
leader over the Corinthian church, Paul would have come to them with the
proverbial “rod” (4:21). Had this not worked there is little doubt that he
would have broken ties completely. Otherwise, the rest of Christendom,
including the great centers in Jerusalem and Antioch, would have
disassociated themselves completely from Paul as being the “libertine”
that Judaizers had falsely claimed him to be.
However,
Paul would never have let matters get to that point since he took a
backseat to no one when it came to opposing sexual immorality. In our
first extant Pauline letter, 1 Thessalonians, when Paul got around to
moral exhortation in ch. 4, the first thing on his list was to warn
against any sexual immorality (4:1-8). He stated clearly that to oppose
his commands on sexual purity would be tantamount to a rejection of God
that would incur God’s avenging action (4:6-8).
The evidence
that Paul not only opposed homosexual practice absolutely, without
exceptions for “adult-committed” homosexual relationships, but also
regarded it as even worse than adult-committed incestuous or polyamorous
unions is, to say the least, overwhelming. The case for asserting that
Paul or any other Jew or Christian of the period might have held some
openness to committed homosexual unions entered upon by homosexually
oriented persons is historically indefensible. Even the top homosexualist
scholars today in biblical studies, classics, and church history
acknowledge this point.
Claims to
“new knowledge” today about homosexuality don’t fly. Committed homosexual
relationships were known in the Greco-Roman world, including semi-official
marriages between men and between women. We also have Greco-Roman
moralists opposing even such committed unions as being unnatural, to say
nothing of similar opposition from early rabbinic material and from Church
Fathers. There were also widespread theories positing congenital
influences on one or more forms of homosexual development. Indeed the idea
of an exclusive, innate same-sex attraction for some was acknowledged in
many sectors of thought.
To suggest
that Paul might have exhorted believers at Corinth to stay in fellowship
with a church that installed as leaders persons who were actually engaged
in homosexual practice or in incest, whether “adult-committed” or not, is
bad revisionist history.
The same
considerations apply to your use of the text of Ephesians. You cite Eph
4:2-3 (“bearing with one another in love, being in earnest to maintain the
oneness of the Spirit in the bond of peace”) and 2:14-16 (Christ removing
the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile). Paul is quite
clear that unity is not to be safeguarded at the expense of sound doctrine
(4:7-16) or moral purity (4:17-5:12). Unity is not something we fit Christ
into but something that follows from putting Christ in the supreme place.
The writer
of Ephesians insisted that there could be no unity bought at the price of
tolerating sexual immorality. He stressed that believers were “no longer
[to] walk as the Gentiles walk, … who have given themselves to
licentiousness (aselgeia) for the greedy doing of every
sexual impurity (akatharsia)” (4:17, 19). In fact, he
insisted:
5:3Sexual
immorality (porneia)
and sexual impurity (akatharsia)
of any kind . . . must not even be named among you, as is proper among
saints. . . . 5Know
this indeed, that every sexually immoral person
(pornos) or sexually impure
person (akathartos)
. . . has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
6Let
no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath
of God is coming on the children of disobedience.
7So do not become associates
of theirs. 8For
you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk as children of
light. . . . 10determining
what is acceptable to the Lord.
11And
do not be partnering with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather even
be exposing/refuting them. 12For
it is shameful even to speak of the things that are done in secret by
them.
You assure
us that persons on all sides of the homosexuality issue are “sincerely
devoted to biblical authority” and are all alike “committed to the
lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture.” The Corinthians
who tolerated a case of adult-consensual incest in their midst could have
claimed the same. But such claims ring hollow when support is given for a
form of behavior—among the leadership, no less—that Scripture treats as an
instance of egregious sexual immorality.
Your remark
that “God’s people dare not let the world set our moral agenda” will
strike many of us as ironic. Denominational allowance for homosexual
practice is precisely that. You add: “The Bible is clear that many
practices the world tolerates and even celebrates – greed, envy,
promiscuity, slander, inhospitality, and the like – have no place in the
kingdom of God, nor do they have any place in the church.” Exactly the
same thing can and should be said about homosexual practice. You even say:
“This is a time to be more attentive to the call to biblical
holiness, not less.” Yet the denomination’s willingness to accept the
extreme sexual immorality of homosexual practice among its ordained
officers is the opposite of being “attentive to the call to biblical
holiness.”
Characterizing soul-searching about the impact of this serious departure
from Scripture and holiness on denominational unity as “polarization,” “demonization,”
and mere “partisan hostility” is uncharitable and scripturally inaccurate.
By the same reasoning, Paul’s response to the case of gross sexual
immorality at Corinth in 1 Cor 5 would have to be viewed as an instance of
polarization, demonization, and partisan hostility. That makes no sense to
me.
Your
online title and preface to your letter cites the Bob Dylan line
“The times, they are a-changin”
as if the promotion of homosexual immorality in the PCUSA is akin to the
civil rights movement of the ’60s. I do not know what your intentions were
here but it comes across as a partisan response inappropriate for a
presbytery that this past year (and consistently) voted by a two-thirds
majority to retain the ordination standard that sexual activity should be
limited to the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman.
I do not
wish you to think that I have any hostility to you personally. I do not
question the sincerity of your views. I just question them so far as their
accuracy in interpreting and applying Scripture is concerned.
Sincerely
yours,
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate
Professor of New Testament
Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary