Background
On Mar. 25, 2006 I gave a daylong
presentation at a Walla Walla Presbyterian church, jointly sponsored with
a Lutheran (ELCA) church, on "The Bible and Sexuality," which focused on
the topic of homosexuality. The event was well attended and many expressed
appreciation for how the event went. A local UCC church called The First
Congregational Church, which is very vocal and confrontational about its
endorsement of homosexual activity, held a "prayer vigil" regarding my
visit. A couple of persons from that church attended the first
morning session and maybe about 10 attended the very end of my talk, which
took questions from the audience. The statements-in-the-form-of-questions
that some of them raised proved to be a great opportunity for getting the
message of the gospel out as regards human sexuality.
On Apr. 30, more than a month after the
event, the pastor of The First Congregational Church in Walla Walla, Rev.
Greg Kammann, posted an op-ed piece in the local newspaper, Walla
Walla Union-Bulletin, a paper known in the area for its heavily biased
reporting of homosexual issues (often with what some perceive as acrimony
and hate for those who disagree). The op-ed piece was entitled "Anti-gay
Bible lecture fails love test." In it Kammann, who shows no evidence in
his remarks of having attended or at least heard or understood any
significant part of my presentation (and possibly he did not attend at
all), makes all sorts of false claims about what I believe and what
Scripture apparently says. I find it odd that an op-ed piece that proposes
to judge another as unloving would take such liberties with the truth. I
offer here my response.
A copy of Kammann's op-ed piece is
posted after my response.
Response
On Apr. 30
a certain Rev. Greg Kammann, whom I have never met, wrote a strident
personal attack against me that fails the very love test that he allegedly
promotes ("Anti-gay Bible lecture fails love test”). In addition to his
caustic tone, he bears false witness. And he encourages behavior that,
according to the Bible, puts persons at risk in relation to God’s rule.
Sadly, there is every
indication that he wrote the attack out of his own prejudices rather than
from listening to my presentation. At no point does he address a single
one of the arguments that I made in a four-hour presentation. I make below
three major observations.
1. Scripture and
Jesus. Kammann alleges that “the real problem” is that I have “put
[my] mistaken (in the opinion of all progressive Scriptural scholars)
interpretation of the Bible above God’s will.” Who these “progressive
scholars” are, I know not. For I have yet to see anyone effectively take
on the arguments that I introduced in my 500-page book, The Bible and
Homosexual Practice (2001) and have added to in numerous publications
since then.
In fact, Kammann seems
unaware of the fact that the best of these so-called “progressive
scholars” admit that the Bible’s opposition to homosexual practice is
absolute, taking in both caring and exploitative types.
Some also acknowledge
that the concept of a homosexual orientation has strong antecedents in the
ancient world. The allegedly modern “discovery” of such an orientation
would have made little difference to St. Paul and other writers of
Scripture.
The entirety of
Scripture, from the creation texts in the Book of Genesis to the judgment
scenes in the Book of Revelation, indicates that God has ordained a
two-sex, or other-sex, prerequisite for valid sexual unions. The flipside
is that Scripture presents God as strongly opposed to any form of
homosexual practice.
Kammann’s attempt to
treat the Bible’s views on slavery and women’s roles as analogous to its
views on homosexual practice is inappropriate, for many reasons. For
example, relative to its cultural environment, the Bible shows both a
strong critique of slavery and a lifting up of the worth of women. Yet the
Bible’s countercultural witness on homosexual practice is toward stronger
affirmation of a male-female prerequisite for sexual relationships.
Kammann ignores the
entirety of the biblical witness and instead focuses exclusively on Jesus,
claiming that, “contrary to Gagnon’s argument,” Jesus would not have been
opposed to homosexual unions. Yet Kammann nowhere addressed a single one
of my many arguments that rebut this contention.
For example, Jesus in
Mark 10:6-9 clearly predicated his view of marital monogamy on the
‘twoness’ of the sexes: “God made them male and female” (Genesis 1:27) and
“for this reason a man shall . . . become joined to his woman” (Genesis
2:24). Jesus argued that a third party to a sexual union is neither
necessary nor desirable because marriage joins in wholeness the two
divided halves, as it were, of a sexual whole created by God. If one gives
up this premise of a two-sex prerequisite, there no longer remains any
scriptural, nature-based, or logical basis for limiting the number of
persons in a sexual union to two.
Jesus also assumed that
“born eunuchs,” which might have included men who desired other men rather
than women, are to be celibate (Matthew 19:12).
The very man who baptized
Jesus (John of Baptist) was beheaded for his defense of Levitical sex
laws—specifically the laws against incest, even of an adult, consensual
sort. Incest, like same-sex intercourse, entails the merger of two persons
who are already too much alike on a formal or structural level.
Jesus’ general acceptance
of the Law of Moses and his own intensification of sexual ethics make it
extremely unlikely that Jesus discarded the major Levitical prohibitions
against male-male intercourse, prohibitions tacitly accepted in other
parts of Jesus’ Bible.
Jesus didn’t need to
speak directly against homosexual practice in first-century Israel
because, quite simply, no Jew was doing it or promoting it.
Yes, Jesus reached out to
the lost. But he did so not to endorse a life of sin but rather to reclaim
them for a life lived for God. (Incidentally, the Greek word for “sin” is
not amartia, as Kammann writes, but hamartia.) As the story
of the woman caught in adultery illustrates, Jesus told people to “sin no
longer” “lest something worse happen” to such persons (i.e., divine
judgment; John 5:14; 8:11).
Although Kammann would
have readers believe otherwise, Jesus frequently warned people of the dire
consequences of a life lived in disobedience to God’s commands. For
example, see Jesus’ statement about cutting off body parts in Matthew
5:29-30, in the midst of a discussion about sexual matters.
It is also a misuse of
Jesus’ “fruit test” to claim that persons who habitually sin in one or
more areas of their life are forever incapable of bearing any moral fruit
in other areas. And it is a misuse to claim that moral behavior in some
areas validates all one’s behaviors, even when those behaviors violate
core scriptural values.
For these and other
scriptural arguments readers may wish to consult my recent 112-page
article for an online journal called Reformed Review. The article
is entitled:
“Why the Disagreement over the Biblical Witness on Homosexual Practice.”
A link to it can be found on my website at www.robgagnon.net.
2. Sexual
orientation and change. Kammann bears false witness when he claims
that I demand that all homosexual persons change their “sexual
orientation.” I never said or implied such. The call to do God’s will,
which is lifted up in the Lord’s Prayer, does not depend on us first
losing all innate desires to resist that will.
Change is a much more
varied phenomenon than Kammann supposes. The greatest change in a person’s
life comes when, in spite of intense contrary desires, he (or she) answers
Jesus’ call to discipleship to “lose his life” and “deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me“ (Mark 8:34-35).
At the same time Kammann
falsifies current scientific evidence if he suggests that familial and
social factors exert little effect on the incidence or even intensity of
homosexual desires.
3. The true meaning
of love. Kammann further alleges that I “condemn homosexuals.”
This is false, as is the inflammatory title referring to an “anti-gay
Bible lecture.” My presentation was not about hating persons but about
rescuing persons from the tyranny of a life lived in opposition to God’s
creation design. As any parent knows, love often means disapproving of
behaviors arising from deeply ingrained desires.
One cannot restrict the
meaning of harm, as Kammann does, to universal, scientifically measurable
harm. Contrary to what Kammann argues, incestuous unions or polyamorous
(multiple-partner) unions of an adult and committed sort do not
intrinsically lead to scientifically measurable harm to all participants
in all circumstances. Few consensual behaviors do. Indeed, not even
pedophilia inevitably leads to measurable harm, according to two recent
APA studies.
Homosexuality does have
inherent within it higher risks for measurable harm: significantly greater
numbers of sex partners and a high incidence of sexually transmitted
disease especially for homosexual males; shorter-term relationships and a
higher incidence of mental health problems especially for homosexual
females.
These harmful effects are
largely attributable to the same-sex character of the relationships.
Extremes of a given sex are not moderated, nor gaps filled, when a true
sexual counterpart is absent.
This leads us to what
Scripture regards as the root problem of homosexual practice: Perceiving
union with a sexual same as though it were the completion of the sexual
self. Scripture presents homosexual practice as dishonoring to one’s
God-given integrity as a male or as a female (Romans 1:24-27).
The logic of a
male-female bond is that two sexual counterparts merge to form a single
sexual whole. But the implicit ‘logic’ behind a homosexual union is the
false notion that each person is only half of his or her sex.
Participants in a
same-sex union are sexually aroused by what they falsely perceive as
lacking in themselves: males by maleness, females by femaleness. This is a
serious denial of the way that God has made us, namely, as “male and
female” (Genesis 1:27).
I don’t fault Rev.
Kammann for having too much love but rather for having, at best, a love
that is misinformed and misguided (and, as regards Kammann's
characterization of me, a lack of Christian charity and honesty). What may
have been intended as love can unintentionally become a manifestation of
hate when it leads persons to engage in behavior that God and Christ in
Scripture strongly reject and that does damage to the image of God stamped
on the sexual self.
Rev. Kammann's op-ed-piece
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin
Greg Kammann
First Congregational
On March 25 many of us
witnessed the condemnation of homosexuals at a lecture on “The Bible and
Sexuality,” by Rob Gagnon, Ph.D.
His single-minded attack
on homosexuality seemed unloving and was certainly not the expressed topic
of his seminar.
Contrary to Gagnon’s
argument, nowhere in scripture did Jesus condemn homosexuality.
What Jesus did was
regularly condemn the harming and advocate the loving of others.
And most students of the
Bible recognize that the cultural mores of Biblical times sometimes
negatively influenced Biblical writers, causing some to condone slavery,
some to relegate women to subordinate roles, and others to condemn
homosexuality.
But even then, their
condemnation was clearly directed toward promiscuous and or forced sex,
harmful whether engaged in by homosexuals or heterosexuals.
Sin, after all, refers to
harm, or the failure to love. The Greek word used in the earliest New
Testament manuscripts for sin is “arartia,” which means, “missing the
mark.”
The mark, as we know from
multiple scriptural passages, is love, agape, in Greek, of God, self, and
neighbor.
Anders Nygren, in his
seminal work, “Eros, Philia and Agape,” distinguished between three
different meanings of love in the Bible: romantic love, friendship and
Christian love – agape – which not only avoids harming, but, in fact, does
what is needed in each situation (as the Good Samaritan did, for example).
Gagnon therefore widely
missed the mark by lumping homosexuality together with incest, pedophilia,
bestiality, adultery, promiscuity and other harmful sexual perversions.
The clear difference is
that all, except homosexuality, are harmful to at least one of the
involved persons.
Monogamous, committed,
and loving (both erotic and agapaic) homosexual unions are, by definition,
not harmful to anyone.
In fact, many of us know
homosexual couples who are not only loving, committed and monogamous, but
who also exhibit wonderful spiritual fruits.
Since the Scriptures tell
us that we shall know them by their fruits, it is doubly evident that
Gagnon is wrong to call homosexuality sinful.
Gagnon recommends that
homosexuals change. I find that odd. I don’t know how I, as a
heterosexual male, could change my sexual orientation.
Why does Gagnon believe
that homosexuals can, or should? Here is the real problem: Gagnon has
put his mistaken (in the opinion of all progressive Scriptural scholars)
interpretation of the Bible above God’s will.
God chose the way of the
Cross, the way of forgiving love, as the way to transform those who need
transforming.
But Gagnon recommends
that we use the punitive powers of condemnation and exclusion to transform
certain people, even though there is genuine disagreement on who needs
transforming.
I believe that God is
fully capable of working with any in the homosexual community who are
acting in harmful ways, just as God is fully capable of working with any
in the heterosexual community who are acting in harmful ways.
To help understand how
that works: Jesus judges sin in the same way that beauty judges
ugliness. In other words, when we contemplate how fully Jesus modeled
faithfulness to love, we find ourselves feeling embarrassed, ashamed and
even ugly by comparison.
This motivates us to
become more like Jesus. So, do we trust the transformative power of God’s
love or not? God evidently did. In fact, that is why God chose the
Cross, the way of forgiving love, rather than exclusion, condemnation, or
any other punitive use of power as the means to transform us and help us
grow in our faith.
The Rev. Greg Kammann became pastor
of First Congregational Church in Walla Walla Oct. 25, 2004.