Newsweek, the Bible, and Trash
Journalism
by Robert
A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary,
gagnon@pts.edu
January 14, 2015
For
a pdf version with proper pagination go
here
Newsweek, a once prestigious news magazine
that sold for $1 in 2010, has published as its cover feature for the New
Year (Jan. 2-9; online Dec. 23) what can fairly be described as trash
journalism. The article, entitled “So
Misrepresented It’s a Sin,” is a hit piece against
evangelical/orthodox views of the Bible that offend the leftwing
political sensibilities, particularly as regards homosexual relations.
Its contents ironically illustrate the title, not by correcting
misrepresentations of Scripture but rather by advancing them.
The author of the article is Kurt
Eichenwald, who is a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and a
former reporter for the New York Times. Eichenwald’s primary
expertise is as an investigative reporter of business scandals, not as
an interpreter of the Bible (a fact that the article makes abundantly
evident). Eichenwald’s rant against orthodox views of Scripture rambles
from the alleged faulty transmission and translation of the biblical
text, to the presumed error of the Trinity as the stimulus for murdering
others, and to the heinous act of public prayer. By the end of the
article, if not before, the careful reader will see that Eichenwald’s
ultimate bęte noire is any Christian appeal to the Bible as a
basis for rejecting homosexual practice as sin. Apparently, by
undermining the authority of Scripture Eichenwald hopes to undermine any
appeal to a male-female requirement for sexual relations.
Already in the first sentence
Eichenwald states, “They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their
condemnations of homosexuals”; then goes on to speak of “the illiteracy
of self-proclaimed Biblical literalists lead[ing] parents to banish
children from their homes … engender[ing] hate and condemnation.” The
last two hysterical references are connected later in his article to the
issue of homosexuality. Two large photos center on the issue of
homosexuality, one showing “God hates fags” signs from the Phelps
family—depicted as representative when in fact their rhetoric is
repudiated by the entirety of American evangelicalism. The longest
section by far of the article has to do with homosexuality (almost 200
words more than the next longest section). That’s not counting the
concluding section “Judge Not,” whose theme fits better his rant against
a male-female prerequisite for sex than his rants against school prayer,
creationism, and the deity of Christ.
Eichenwald’s rhetoric throughout is
abrasive, clearly designed to make Christians ashamed of ever making
such an appeal to the Bible again. Christians who regard homosexual
practice as sin (or who—horror!—favor prayer in public school) “are
God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians,” “hypocrites,” “Biblical
illiterates,” “fundamentalists
and political opportunists,” and “Pharisees.”
Alongside Eichenwald’s abusive rhetoric is his one-sided and sparse
“research.” He cites as his authorities left-of-center writers like Bart
Ehrman and Jason BeDuhn (with a little bit of Richard Elliott Friedman
thrown in).
With all this, Eichenwald has the
temerity to say: “Newsweek’s
exploration here of the Bible’s history and meaning is not intended to
advance a particular theology.” I can only imagine what the article
would have looked like if Eichenwald had allowed himself to become
tendentious.
Not that any of this is surprising for
Newsweek. This is not the first time that the editors at Newsweek
have made assaulting the scriptural stance against homosexual practice
their crusading issue (for example, see
here and
here).
There is
so much error and absurd reasoning in this 7600-word article that this
review can hardly cover all the nonsense within the space limit of 1000,
5000, or even 7600 words. This is especially true because it takes
longer to show patiently why heresy and incompetent exegesis are what
they are than to spout such. The essay that follows is divided into two
main parts: (1) Eichenwald’s missteps on Scripture, Christology, the
process of canonization, and public prayer; and (2) Eichenwald’s
missteps on the Bible and homosexual practice.
Part I: Eichenwald’s Missteps on
Scripture, Christology, Canonization, and Prayer
Eichenwald sets up his article first
to undermine reliance on Scripture as a supreme authority for moral
discernment and then to show how Christians, oblivious to the problems
with a high view of biblical inspiration, also ignore its clear teaching
in the matter of public prayer.
Playing Make-Believe with the Word of God
Eichenwald first tries to make a case that
the New Testament Greek text is unreliable. The truth is the exact
opposite. Eichenwald cites the number of New Testament manuscripts
available to us as a negative when in reality it is a positive. The
fewer and later the manuscripts for an ancient text, the more difficult
it is for scholars to be confident about the overall reliability of the
manuscript base.
No ancient text has come down to us
with greater reliability. For example, the oldest surviving manuscript
for a significant portion of Plato’s fourth-century
B.C.
dialogues dates to the end of the ninth century; for the Discourses
of Epictetus the twelfth century. Contrast that with the New
Testament, where we have one substantial Greek papyrus dating to around
200 (Paul, Hebrews) and another to the third century (Gospels, Acts).
There are another 125 fragmentary papyri dating from the 2nd
to 7th centuries. In addition, we have more than three
hundred upper-case parchment (i.e. animal-skin) manuscripts of NT
writings (called uncials or majuscules), dating largely from the 4th
to 10th centuries, including half a dozen 4th-5th
century manuscripts containing most of the New Testament. To these can
be added hundreds of lower-case parchment manuscripts (called minuscules)
dating from the 9th to 16th century. Then there
are many manuscripts from the 4th century on that are
translated into other languages (Latin, Syriac, Coptic) and thousands of
citations from various Church Fathers. The manuscript base possessed by
NT scholars is the envy of all other historians of ancient history.
Only a tiny fraction of the total
number of variations among the NT manuscripts pose any serious problem
for scholars in determining the original text. Eichenwald’s reference to
the lone variant in Luke 3:16 rather proves this point. Furthermore, no
major Christian doctrine hangs in the balance because of these
variations.
Eichenwald makes much of two stories
inserted by later scribes: the story of the woman caught in adultery in
John 7:53-8:11 and the story of Jesus’ resurrection appearances in Mark
16:9-20. Yet neither of these interpolations is representative of
scribal alterations. In fact, they are the two largest interpolations in
the NT. Moreover, there is no uncertainty in NT scholarship regarding
their secondary status. (The same is true of the Trinitarian formula
appearing in some later manuscripts of 1 John 5:7, likewise cited by
Eichenwald.) Contemporary English translations all give readers an
indication that these texts were added by a later hand.
Eichenwald asserts that the story of
the woman caught in adultery “simply never happened” and that “scribes
made it up sometime in the Middle Ages.”
As it
happens, the earliest manuscript evidence dates to the fifth century and
there are indications from third-century Christian texts of the story’s
existence. It is possible that the story in some form circulated orally
at a much earlier date. Whether the event happened or not, it well
epitomizes what we know elsewhere of Jesus’ reaction to sexual sinners.
Eichenwald shows his lack of
knowledge of text-critical issues when he states that the saying over
the cup in Luke 22:20 and the statement about Jesus being “carried up
into heaven” in Luke 24:51 “first
appeared in manuscripts used by the translators who created the King
James Bible, but are not in the Greek copies from hundreds of years
earlier.” Most of the earliest manuscripts contain these readings, as
anyone who can read the textual apparatus in a modern edition of the
Greek New Testament knows. Although a minority of early manuscripts
lacks these texts and one can posit scribal motivation for their
insertion, on the whole the evidence favors their originality.
For further discussion of
Eichenwald’s failings on text-critical matters see the discussions by
two other scholars,
Daniel Wallace
and
Michael Kruger.
Translating the Heaven Out of Jesus’
Divinity
Eichenwald states that no one “has ever
read the Bible…. At best, we’ve all read a bad translation—a translation
of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of
copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.” Ah, Mr. Eichenwald,
some of us still do read the Old Testament in ancient Hebrew and the New
Testament in ancient Greek, not just in “bad translations” (and there
are many good translations).
Eichenwald also charges that English
NT translations are notoriously unreliable renderings of the Greek text.
As a NT seminary professor who regularly teaches Greek, I emphasize to
students the value of reading the NT in its original language. I think
Eichenwald himself could benefit markedly from being proficient in
Greek. Yet I certainly would not allege that those who are wholly
dependent on modern English translations have little hope of determining
essential Christian doctrine. The King James Version is no longer “the
gold standard of English Bibles” (contra Eichenwald). Of course, some
modern translations are better than others; but the number of good
English offerings is better today than it has ever been (including the
NAB, NRSV, ESV, NET, CEB, HCSB, REB, NASB, NIV, NJB, and NLT).
Eichenwald cites as his key example
of translation inaccuracy renderings of the Greek verb proskunéō
(προσκυνέω) as “worship” when applied to Jesus. He is correct in
asserting that the verb’s basic sense is “prostrate oneself (before)”
(literally, “kiss toward”). He seems to prefer (erroneously) the meaning
“praise God” over “worship” when applied to a deity (against the
standard lexicons: LSJ and BDAG). But his main complaint is that
translating the verb as “worship” when Jesus is the object constitutes “translational
trickery” whereby “a
fundamental tenet of Christianity—that Jesus is God—was reinforced in
the Bible, even in places where it directly contradicts the rest of the
verse.”
While it is true that there are
places in the Gospels where “prostrating oneself” is the better
translation when Jesus is the object, it is equally true that the sense
is already there sliding over into the meaning of “worship”—a double
entendre where at least readers (and sometimes even the supplicants in
the narrative) are expected to know the deep import of the prostration.
For example, in Mark 5:6 a demoniac prostrates himself before Jesus in
acknowledgement that Jesus is “Son of the Most High God,” possessing
divine power over demons. In Matt 14:33 the disciples “prostrated
themselves before” Jesus after he stilled the storm, declaring “Truly
you are the Son of God” (God is often depicted in the OT as a storm
deity having power over the elements). In John 9:38 the blind man’s
prostration before Jesus appears to be a demonstration of his
recognition of Jesus’ status as the “Son of Man” of Daniel 7 who has
come down from heaven “into this world for judgment.” In Luke 24:50 the
disciples prostrate themselves before the risen Jesus who is being
carried up to heaven, obviously indicating their belief that he is being
raised to a position of divine authority by God over all things (“at his
right hand”; similarly, Matt 28:9, 17). In Matt 2:2, 11 the magi
prostrate themselves before a child that Matthew elsewhere explains to
readers is “God with us” (1:23) born by the direct working of God.
Moreover, the verb clearly has the
meaning of “worship” when applied to Jesus (the Lamb) in Rev 5:14, since
the Lamb is placed alongside God as a recipient of adoration (5:13).
Indeed, at the start of Revelation the risen Jesus appears before John
of Patmos with features (like hair white as white wool) and titles (like
“the first and the last”) that elsewhere in the OT are attributed to God
(1:13-18). In Heb 1:6 the verb is used of Jesus, who is presented as
superior to angels and the object of their worship.
Eichenwald’s reference to
“translational
trickery” is thus nothing more than an indication of his own unawareness
of contextual matters. He flubs up even worse when he claims that the
same kind of “manipulation” occurs when English translations render
Philippians 2:6a as Jesus “being in the form of God” rather than
“being in the image of God” as in Gen 1:27. Eichenwald is
apparently picking up on the claims of a minority of scholars that Phil
2:6 is not describing Jesus' divine pre-existence but his human role as
an Adam who does not fail. As it happens, “form” or “shape” is the
meaning of the Greek word morphē (μορφή), not “image” (for which
one would expect the word eikōn/εἰκών; “likeness, image”; see
again LSJ and BDAG). Contrary to what Eichenwald claims, translating
“form” is not an instance of “publishers … insert[ing] their beliefs
into translations that had nothing to do with the Greek.” As the
majority of NT scholars recognize, the context for the “Christ hymn” in
Phil 2:5-11 presents Jesus as being exalted by God to the highest
station over all, receiving the divine name (YHWH), precisely because he
“emptied” and “lowered himself” from his heavenly station “by coming to
be in the likeness of humans,” not regarding “his being equal to God” as
“something to be exploited for personal gain.”
The picture in Phil 2:5-11 is similar
to the depiction of Jesus as divine Word/Reason (Lógos) in the
prologue of John’s Gospel (1:1-18; see 1:1: “the Logos was God”), or as
“the radiance of God’s glory and the impress (stamp, engraving,
reproduction) of his essential being” in Hebrews (1:3). New Testament
scholars know that the matrix for these depictions existed in the
characterization of heavenly Wisdom in early Judaism (Proverbs, Sirach,
Baruch, the Wisdom of Solomon, etc.).
Colossians 1:15 does refer to Christ
as the “image” (eikōn/εἰκών) of God (also 2 Cor 4:4) but in a
context that makes clear Christ’s more-than-human status: “...the image
of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation because in him all
things were created.” Paul affirms Christ’s role in creation also in 1
Corinthians 8:6 (“through whom are all things”). There can be no
question of reasonably understanding Paul as denying the notion of
Christ’s preexistence. For Paul, John, and the writer of Hebrews, Jesus
was the transcendent thinking/acting faculty of God immanent in the
world and accessible to human beings with mind and spirit.
In view of these texts and others,
including some in which Jesus is called “God” (not only John 1:1 but
also 1:18 and 20:28; probably also Titus 2:13; Heb 1:8; 2 Pet 1:1;
possibly Rom 9:5), it is ridiculous for Eichenwald to assert: “So where
does the clear declaration of God and Jesus as part of a triumvirate
appear in the Greek manuscripts? Nowhere. And in that deception lies a
story of mass killings.” Of course, the precise term “Trinity” does not
appear in the NT. Nevertheless, there are many places in the NT where
God the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit are grouped together in
presentations of divine work, such as the Great Commission baptismal
formula in Matt 28:19 and the benediction in 2 Cor 13:14 (“The grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the partnership of the
Holy Spirit be with you all”; cp. 1 Cor 12:4-6; 2 Cor 1:21-22; Gal 4:6;
Rom 8:3-4; Eph 4:4-6; 1 Pet 1:1-2; John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:7,
13-15; Jude 20-21; Rev 2:7, inter alia).
Now Eichenwald might have argued that
the construct known as “the historical Jesus” did not think of himself
as God incarnate in the flesh. In order to make such a case, one would
have to (1) dispense with a view of the inspiration of Scripture that
looks like inerrancy; (2) view the picture of “the man from heaven” in
John’s Gospel as a post-Easter way of thinking retrojected back into the
mouth of the earthly Jesus; (3) emphasize that there is no clear
statement by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) of his
incarnation; (4) point to such statements as Mark 10:18 (“no one is good
except God”); and (5) note that the speeches in Acts do not presuppose a
message about incarnation. With these presuppositions one could make a
reasonable case that the earthly Jesus did not understand himself as the
preexistent self-actualization of God now incarnate in the flesh.
However, this is not the same as Eichenwald’s claim that nowhere in
the NT is Jesus viewed in this manner. Incarnational Christology is
the dominant NT witness.
Furthermore, even as a question about
the self-identity of “the historical Jesus” one would have to explain
certain statements or actions of the pre-resurrection Jesus in the
Synoptic Gospels that imply the appropriation of divine prerogatives,
such as: (1) Jesus unilaterally amending the Law of Moses (Israel’s
divine constitution) in the six antitheses of Matt 5:21-48, particularly
evident in his canceling of a divorce option (see also Mark 10:2-12);
(2) Jesus’ self-referential statements in Mark that “the Son of Man has
authority to forgive sins on the earth” (2:10) and “the Son of Man is
Lord even of the Sabbath” (2:28), alluding to the divine being in Daniel
7:13-14 who is invested with all authority by the Ancient of Days after
defeating the chaos beast; (3) Jesus’ reference to the exclusive mutual
knowledge of the Father and the Son (the so-called “Johannine
thunderbolt” found in the Q saying in Matt 11:25-27 par. Luke 10:21-22);
and (4) Jesus’ use of the amen-formula (“surely,” “truly”) at the start
of his utterances (rather than as a response to what others say),
suggesting that Jesus needed no person’s confirmation of the veracity of
his utterances (extraordinary in the culture of early Judaism where
veracity hinged on continuity with earlier sages).
In addition, arguing that the
historical Jesus did not conceive of himself as the preexistent Son of
God not only discounts the rest of the NT witness but also ignores the
fact that, regardless of what the pre-resurrection Jesus consciously
knew about his pre-existence, there is ample evidence from the Synoptic
Gospels that Jesus viewed himself as God’s supreme emissary to whom
authority as judge over all creation would be given, to some extent
before death but certainly fully after death in the kingdom of God (for
example, Matt 12:27a par. Luke 10:22a; Mark 8:31-38; Matt 28:18). I
think a strong case can also be made from Jesus’ statement in Mark 10:45
(“the Son of Man came … to give his life as a ransom for many”) and at
the Last Supper in Mark 14:24 (“my blood of the covenant which is to be
poured out for many”) that Jesus believed that his coming martyrdom
would make restitution for the sins of the world. In short, Jesus
believed that he was the Savior and Lord of the world, which after all
is the central confession of the Christian faith.
Strangling Jesus’ Divinity to End the
Violence
In one of the most jumbled pieces of logic
in an article loaded with jumbled logic, Eichenwald claims that too much
attention to the authority of the Bible, particularly as regards the
doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement, is responsible for so
much bloodshed in the world.
The fact that episodes of Christians
killing others, including fellow Christians, have occurred in the past
two millennia is hardly breaking news. Even so, it is absurd to argue
that such episodes are directly attributable to holding too high a view
of biblical inspiration or to specific orthodox doctrines such as the
incarnation and the atonement. The vast preponderance of Christians
throughout history have held such views and, far from using such views
as justification for violence, rather were persuaded to be non-violent.
This is certainly true in the past century where religious persecution
by Christians of others is not to be compared to religious persecution
by, say, Muslims or even non-Christians (for the latter, start with the
hit parade of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot). Were firm convictions about
biblical authority, the incarnation, or the atonement the source of
violence in the world, we would expect a very different picture than the
one we see today or from the one that existed in the first three
centuries of Christian history. Constantine’s “conversion” (a
questionable one at that) would never have come about if Christians
hadn’t already exerted enormous influence in the Roman Empire through
the nobility of non-violent martyrdom and the development of charitable
infrastructures that impressed many pagans about the value of Christian
faith.
At the heart of the Christian faith
stands the image of a Savior crucified, an image in which love, grace,
and mercy triumph over violence. The earliest followers of Jesus were
not violent but rather among the persecuted. Throughout history one can
find religious adherents who did not follow the tenets of their own
religion. That is no argument against religious convictions but rather
an argument for religious convictions to be understood and applied.
Eichenwald contends that “the
sociopath emperor,” Constantine, “changed the course of Christian
history, ultimately influencing which books made it into the New
Testament.” Such a fallacious statement shows Eichenwald to be
misinformed about the canonical process in Christian history. With few
exceptions (disputes over Hebrews in the West, Revelation in the East,
and some of the Catholic Epistles [James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2-3 John]; the
occasional addition of a few texts not now in the canon), what would
come to be known as the NT canon was in place before Constantine came to
power (compare the evidence from Marcion, Irenaeus, the Muratorian
Canon, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, and
Eusebius; also the evidence of the earliest manuscript collections).
Constantine did request Eusebius to collect fifty copies of the
scriptures for use in Constantinople but Eusebius himself probably
played the decisive role in determining which still questionable works
would be included and which excluded.
Fourth-century councils affirmed what
had already become a reality in the churches. Christian orthodoxy
defeated “Christian” Gnosticism (to which Eichenwald seems to be
attracted) because the latter was an elitist, anti-somatic,
self-centered, individualistic, ethically vacuous, and intellectually
convoluted movement that, though persisting for many centuries, never
developed mass appeal. In complete opposition to Jesus’ view of the God
of the Old Testament, Gnostics viewed the God of Abraham, Moses, David,
and Isaiah as at best inferior to themselves and at worse downright
evil. Eichenwald wants to present the triumph of orthodoxy over
Gnosticism as the product of a violent top-down imposition against
legitimate diversity. The actual facts of the case show otherwise.
Orthodox Christian faith won because it was truly catholic in its
appeal, more theologically profound, and far more faithful to the
witness both of the OT and the earliest traditions about Jesus.
Weaving a Tangled Web of Narrative
Differences in Scripture
Eichenwald focuses on narrative
“contradictions” in the biblical account in order to undermine appeals
to Scripture; specifically, the Christmas story, the Easter story, the
Flood narrative, and the Creation accounts. He is correct that many
evangelical Christians who make appeals to these texts are unaware of
the problems. Yet many others are aware and have various ways of dealing
with them.
One approach is to find ways of
harmonizing apparent discrepancies. For example, the creation story in
Genesis 1 focuses on the creation of the world as a whole, while the
creation story in Genesis 2 treats events occurring in the Garden of
Eden. The “Christmas” story in Matthew 1-2 is telling the story from the
vantage point of Joseph (ch. 1) and then treating events involving the
magi that occur when Jesus is 1-2 years old (ch. 2), whereas Luke is
telling the story from the vantage point of Mary (ch. 1) and focuses on
events occurring in close proximity to the time of Jesus’ birth (the
shepherds and the presentation in the temple, ch. 2).
Sometimes this method works or at
least appears plausible. At other times it seems to force material in
preconceived molds. For example, Matthew does seem to presuppose that
Joseph and Mary have been in Bethlehem all along. When they return from
Egypt to escape persecution, Joseph’s inclination is to return to Judea.
They end up in Nazareth only because the Herodian line is still in place
in Judea after Herod’s death (2:19-23). In Luke’s version Joseph and
Mary are originally from Nazareth and go to Bethlehem only because of
the census. So there are tensions between the two accounts. Even so,
both agree on the ‘that-ness’ of a virgin birth.
Similarly for the resurrection
appearances, Matthew seems to presuppose a one-time resurrection
appearance in Galilee, whereas Luke apparently knows only resurrection
appearances in the vicinity of Jerusalem in Judea. Again, the
‘that-ness’ of Jesus’ resurrection is never in question (not even in
Mark’s Gospel, which probably ended without resurrection narratives).
Paul provides further confirmation of the point in his listing of
witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection in an early traditional piece noted in
1 Cor 15:3-7. The specifics of his source should be given greater
historical weight than the Gospel narratives because his account can be
traced to the earliest years of the Jerusalem and Antioch churches.
Another approach is to view
inspiration of Scripture differently for the genre of narrative than for
the genre of, say, letters. Whatever inspiration means for narrative, it
does not always require the reporting of events precisely as they
happened. Rather it entails the deeper meaning of events. The writers of
Scripture sought to be faithful to available tradition, given the
limitations of oral culture, and were not necessarily averse to
adjusting narrative to OT prophecy, iconic stories of their culture, and
theological proclamation.
This view of things fits with the way
the earliest Christians handled traditions about Jesus’ sayings and
deeds. There was no Gospel canon in place in the first century. Sayings
and stories circulated by word of mouth, often independently of
surrounding contexts and sometimes collected according to genre
similarity (e.g., miracle stories and parables). Christian visitors to a
given community would be asked what sayings or stories they had heard
and from whom they heard it (ideally from someone who knew one of the
apostles or Jesus’ family). In circumstances where there were
conflicting details between the stories of outsiders and their own,
decisions had to be made based on various criteria (and not always by
the single criterion of “what really happened?”). Thus when Luke
describes how he went about the process of telling a narrative of Jesus’
life, he does not appeal to supernaturally-induced inerrancy. He rather
states that he did his best to give a reliable account given the
limitations of his sources (1:1-4).
Certainly the ongoing role in the church
of Jesus' closest followers for the first few decades of the church's
existence, and after their death the availability of others who knew
this first generation, would have exercised some restraint on wild
retellings. Yet even such a network could not have checked every excess,
given the state of delivery systems for information in the first
century. Nor perhaps was it desirable in all cases to exert a tight
rein, since the risen Christ was very much of an ongoing living presence
in Christian communities.
Since the creation accounts are
clearly dealing with transcendent realities (primeval history),
evangelicals will disagree on how much of the stories are symbolic (from
all to none). (The descriptions of creation in the Psalms, Isaiah, and
Job as a battle with Leviathan or Rahab, made much of by Eichenwald, are
obviously intentional poetic-archaic imagery on the part of the writers,
not to be taken literally.) There is no one evangelical response to the
relationship of the creation stories to the scientific theory of
evolution, although Eichenwald argues as if there were a univocal
response. Yet evangelicals are agreed (and right) to see certain
theological principles communicated in the creation texts: the
demytholigizing of deified nature; God’s deliberate design manifested in
the material structures of creation; and the importance of the creation
of male and female as sexual counterparts. Even story and myth can
contain important (and inspired) theological truth. At least Jesus
thought so.
As an aside, Eichenwald takes an
unwarranted swipe at evangelical emphasis on “family values,” noting
that Jesus spoke of his followers forsaking family for him. It seems to
escape Eichenwald’s notice that Jesus emphasized family values in
teaching on the permanence and duality of marriage, the value of human
life (e.g., justifying healing on the Sabbath), and the image of
children as models of discipleship (“unless you become like this little
child…”). What Jesus chastises is the positioning of family above
the calling of God as an excuse for not following Jesus. A case
in point is the anecdote about the man who says that burying his father
is more important than heeding Jesus’ call to discipleship (Matt
8:21-22).
On the timing of Jesus’ return,
Eichenwald argues that Paul and Mark both appeared to believe that Jesus
would return in their lifetime (I would add John of Patmos in Revelation
and others). He rejects the application of the principle from 2 Peter
that “with the Lord … a thousand years is like a day” (3:8), on the
small-minded grounds that most scholars regard 2 Peter as
pseudepigraphal (i.e., not written by Peter himself but by someone in
Peter’s name in deference to Peter’s assumed views). Eichenwald
overlooks an even more important principle in 2 Peter in the immediately
following verse: “The Lord is not slow about his promise … but is
patient to you (scoffers), not wanting some to perish but rather that
all may make progress toward repentance.” Delay is a byproduct of God’s
grace, not a mistake on God’s part. Is a word to the wise sufficient for
Eichenwald?
As we shall see, maintaining the
Bible’s consistent and strong witness for a male-female prerequisite for
sexual relations does not require a simplistic or rigid view of
inspiration. It rather requires merely the realization on the part of
Christians that what is viewed in Scripture from creation to Christ as
foundational for sexual ethics ought to be maintained by those who call
Jesus Lord.
Casting the First Stone against Those Who
Pray in Public
Eichenwald rails against school prayer and
conservative prayer rallies that have the nation’s moral condition in
view. His argument is drawn from Jesus’ remarks about prayer in the
Sermon the Mount, warning followers not to parade their piety publicly
but to pray in secret (Matt 6:5-15; cp. Mark 12:39-40), and from Jesus’
consistent example of praying in private. Certainly we should guard
against praying for the express purpose of soliciting praise from others
and have our spiritual antennas up for hollow political manipulation of
prayer.
Yet Eichenwald has once again failed
to consider adequately the broader context. Jesus’ own instructed
prayer, “the Lord’s Prayer,” is riddled with first-person plurals that
indicates Jesus’ intention that this be a communal prayer. Jesus
attended synagogues and one of the main functions of synagogues was to
facilitate corporate prayer. In fact, synagogues in the Diaspora were
called “prayer houses” (cp. Acts 16:13, 16). The Old Testament contains
many stories of national prayer, including Solomon’s long prayer
dedicating the temple before the assembly of Israel (1 Kgs 8:22-61) and
Ezra’s lengthy prayer at the ceremony marking the return of the exiles
to the land of Israel (Neh 9:6-37). Jesus himself introduced meals with
prayer, including at the feeding of the 5000 and at the Last Supper.
When people brought their children to Jesus so that he could lay hands
on them and pray publicly, Jesus did not rebuke them. He rather rebuked
the disciples for trying to prevent it (Matt 19:13).
Communal prayers were daily offered
in the Temple. While the priest Zechariah was going into the temple to
offer incense, “the whole assembly of the people was praying outside”
(Luke 1:10). Jesus told a parable about a Pharisee and tax collector,
each of whom went to the Temple to pray out loud (Luke 18:10-14).
According to Mark, Jesus at the end of his ministry entered the temple
citing the words of Isa 56:7, “My house shall be called a house of
prayer for all the nations” (Mark 11:17). Luke in Acts reports that the
earliest followers of Jesus visited the temple to pray (3:1), in
addition to praying in their own communities (1:14, 24; 2:42; 4:24-31;
6:6; 8:15; 12:5, 12; 13:3; 14:23; 16:25; 20:36; 21:5; 28:8). Paul
enjoined communal prayers (1 Cor 11:4-5, 13; 14:13-15). Not only did he
mention the contents of his prayers on behalf of the letter’s recipients
(see the thanksgiving recitals in 1 Thess 1:2-3; 1 Cor 1:4-7; Phil
1:3-5; Phlm 4-6; Rom 1:8-10, etc.) but he also sometimes wrote new
prayers for them in his letter, which along with the rest of the letter
were read out in a community setting (Phil 1:9-11; cp. Eph 3:14-19).
It should be fairly obvious from
these references that Jesus did not intend by his remarks to outlaw all
corporate prayer for his followers. All that Eichenwald needed to do was
pick up a concordance and check out references to “pray” and “prayer”
but he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do even that before charging evangelicals
with ignorance and distortion of the Bible.
Part II: Eichenwald’s Missteps on the
Bible and Homosexual Practice
Perhaps the worst section of all in
Eichenwald’s article is the main point: It is hypocritical to pay
attention to three places in the Pauline corpus that speak negatively
about homosexual practice (1 Tim 1:10; 1 Cor 6:9; Rom 1:24-27) because
you don’t do all the things commanded in these letters anyway. His
argument partly misreads contextual matters and partly presumes the
fallacious assumption that everything in the biblical text carries the
same weight.
The reasoning is embarrassingly poor
and takes no account of the enormous amount of literature critiquing
homosexualist readings of Paul (Eichenwald doesn’t get beyond Paul). If
one’s article is going to be featured by Newsweek as the cover
article, is it defensible not to do even the most minimal responsible
research?
Mugging 1 Timothy 1:10
Eichenwald starts: with the term “men
who lie with a male” (arsenokoítai/ἀρσενοκοῖται) in 1 Tim 1:10,
the least significant of the three direct references to
homosexual practice in Pauline literature. Before he gets to his main
point he offers two subsidiary ones. First, he states that there has
been dishonesty in translating the term into English by the NIV, NASB,
the LB, and others, for they had rendered the Greek as “those who
practice homosexuality” (actually, the NASB has “homosexuals”). Why
dishonesty? Because “the word homosexual didn’t even exist until
more than 1,800 years after when 1 Timothy was supposed to have been
written.” Oddly enough, when Eichenwald speaks of the same term in 1 Cor
6:9, he says that “the translation is good” even though the translations
are the same or similar to those for 1 Tim 1:10. (Note to Eichenwald:
You need to update from the 1971 Living Bible to its successor since
1996, the New Living Translation.)
To call the translation “those who
practice homosexuality” “manipulative” and “made up” is to misconstrue
the art of translation, which sometimes necessitates “dynamic
equivalence” for the sake of clarity with modern readers. For example,
it is often necessary to replace terms for Roman coinage with comparable
dollar amounts. Few will understand what Jesus means when he says
“Aren’t two sparrows sold for an assarion?” (Matt 10:29; i.e., a
Roman copper coin equivalent to a half hour of a day laborers work). So
English translations translate by a term that modern readers will
understand (a penny or a small coin, though “penny” is too low a
denomination).
To be sure, “homosexuals” (NASB) is
an inaccurate translation since it implies that the mere experience of
homoerotic attractions makes one liable to exclusion from God’s kingdom
when the Greek word clearly focuses on behavior. However, the
translation “practice homosexuality” doesn’t have that problem (though
it might better be worded “engage in homosexual practice”). The term
“homosexual” simply means “same” sex (from Greek hómoios/ὅμοιος).
Granted, that expression takes in not just male homosexual practice but
lesbian behavior as well. Yet the objection is not decisive since Paul
clearly paired in his own thinking female same-sex practice with male
same-sex practice (Rom 1:26-27) .
Still, it is better to translate “men
who lie with a male” not only because this is a more literal rendering
of the Greek compound but also because it gets across the deliberate
intertextual echo to the Greek translation (LXX) of the Levitical
prohibitions in 18:22 (“a man shall not sleep with a male [ársēn/ἄρσην]
[as though] lying [koítē/κοίτη] with a woman”; cp. 20:13).
The connection between the term and the Law of Moses is highlighted here
since at
least the last half of the offender list in 1 Tim 1:8-10 (and possibly
the whole) corresponds to the Decalogue. In early Judaism and
Christianity the seventh commandment against adultery, which was aimed
at guarding the institution of marriage, served as a summary of all
biblical sex laws, including the prohibition of man-male intercourse.
Unfortunately, Eichenwald doesn’t
seem to be aware of this basic meaning of the word. He prefers the King
James translation, “them that defile themselves with mankind.” That is
actually a much worse translation than “those who practice
homosexuality” because it implies an ambiguity not present in the Greek
word. That is just how Eichenwald wants it: “Perhaps that means men who
engage in sex with other men, perhaps not.” His motive is different from
that of the KJV translators, which, as a friend and fellow scholar (Jim
Keener) aptly commented to me, “almost certainly has more to do with the
blushing sensibilities of the day than with any ambiguity in the
translators’ understanding of what the term meant.”
Eichenwald then attempts to dismiss 1
Tim 1:10 by telling readers that 1 Timothy is a “forgery.” There is
indeed credible (though not certain) evidence for regarding the Pastoral
Epistles as written by someone other than Paul within a few decades
after his death, perhaps with access to genuine Pauline traditions
(travelogues, creedal formulations). Even if that were the case, it
doesn’t follow that the text should be dismissed, for it provides
evidence that Paul’s views about homosexual practice in 1 Cor 6:9 and
Rom 1:26-27 continued in churches that aligned themselves with his
memory.
Eichenwald’s key argument—and the one
that he repeats also for his treatment of 1 Cor 6:9 and Rom 1:26-27—is
to combine an “all sins are equal” canard with a comparison to sins that
evangelicals accommodate at some level; then charge evangelicals with
hypocrisy. Eichenwald alleges: “Contrary to what so many fundamentalists
believe, outside of the emphasis on the Ten Commandments, sins aren’t
ranked. The New Testament doesn’t proclaim homosexuality the most
heinous of all sins. No, every sin is equal in its significance to God.”
Notice the logical contradiction: “every sin is equal” follows “outside
of the emphasis on the Ten Commandments, sins aren’t ranked.” Well,
then, Eichenwald’s “every sin” statement can’t be taken seriously.
Moreover, it is not just a matter of
the Decalogue delineating particularly serious offenses. The Decalogue
is not an exclusive list of the most serious offenses. It is
rather a representative list of serious offenses, explicitly
specifying only those that occur fairly frequently in the population but
implying a number of others. No one who has any competent knowledge of
sexual ethics in ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity
could seriously contend that adultery was viewed as more heinous
than especially unnatural sexual acts like incestuous sex with one’s
parent or bestiality. The same applies to homosexual practice. The
reason these sexual offenses are not mentioned in the Ten Commandments
has to do with their relative infrequency in ancient Israel, not
relative insignificance.
As noted above, early Judaism and
Christianity construed the Ten Commandments as a template for many other
commandments, with prohibitions of homosexual practice, incest, and
bestiality coming under the heading of the adultery interdiction. Since
the vice list in 1 Tim 1:8-10 is organized at least in part along the
lines of the Decalogue, it is hardly surprising that the prohibition of
adultery is taken up in a more generalizing way, referring to the
“sexually immoral” (Gk. pórnoi/πόρνοι). It is then followed by an
extreme offense, “men who lie with a male,” which, while not common in
ancient Israel, was common enough in the Gentile world of the Roman
Imperial Age and such an extreme offense to Jews and Christians as to
justify its singling out in 1 Tim 1:10 (in agreement with Rom 1:24-27
and 1 Cor 6:9, which likewise single out homosexual practice alongside a
general reference to sexual immorality).
Another inconsistency in Eichenwald’s
reasoning is his comparison of opposition to homosexual practice only to
biblical offenses that he thinks evangelicals will have a difficult time
opposing consistently. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t compare opposition
to homosexual practice with universally agreed serious vices like
murder, kidnapping, and perjury (all listed in 1 Tim 1:9-10, with
kidnapping not explicitly cited in the Decalogue). If he had made such a
comparison two things would immediately have become apparent—if not to
him, at least to his readers. First, sins are of varying degrees of
severity. Second, Christians would be just as much hypocrites if they
opposed severe sins while tolerating homosexual practice (if severe) as
they would be if they tolerated less severe sins while opposing
homosexual practice (if less severe).
The Canard that Homosexual Practice Is No
Worse than Any Other Sin
The truth is that not even Eichenwald
believes that “every sin is equal in its significance to God.” Does he
believe that genocide is no more severe a sin than taking home a company
pen? Or sleeping with one’s mother (consensual or not) than speaking in
an angry tone? Or rape than gluttony? Or robbing a person at knifepoint
than lying about whether the dishes have been washed? Or beating a man
because he’s a racial minority than cheating while playing Scrabble? Or
kidnapping a child than not sharing one’s candy bar?
No, of course he doesn’t believe that. He
couldn’t believe that and maintain any moral credibility. Indeed, it is
apparent from Eichenwald’s article that he is particularly upset with
what he regards as great sins, like “parents banishing their kids” for
“being gay” (which he twice refers to in the article). So at this point
Eichenwald is being either duplicitous or obtuse. Either way,
Eichenwald’s intellectual and moral gaffe is notable, considering his
condescending tone toward others.
As to his chastisement of
evangelicals for “banishing their kids” for “being gay,” I don’t know
any evangelicals who would “banish” their underage child from the
house simply for experiencing same-sex attractions. Yet I can
understand parents setting rules for appropriate sexual conduct.
When I was a minor some four decades ago in a non-evangelical household,
my parents made clear to us that, if we children were to live under
their roof and eat their food, we would have to abide by their rules,
which undoubtedly included not being a serial-unrepentant fornicator or
thief. I’m sure that we would have been forgiven had we succumbed to
temptation. However, were we to have persisted in such behavior “with a
high hand and a stiff neck,” there might have been repercussions. I
never tested my parents’ resolve to see if they would actually carry out
the threat. I didn’t view their standard as harsh then, nor do I now.
Did Eichenwald’s parents let him as a minor do whatever he wanted to do,
when he wanted to do it, and with whom he wanted to do it with? All
parents set some standards with their children, which is another
indication of the obvious: Some offenses are more severe than others.
It is easy enough to prove this point
from Scripture, though Eichenwald ironically mocks those who think
otherwise, referring to them as demonstrating “that they know next to
nothing about the New Testament.”
Consider
the following:
(1) Leviticus 20 reorders the sexual offenses in ch. 18 according to
severity of offense (penalty). The most severe sexual offenses are
grouped first (20:10-16: adultery, the worst forms of incest, same-sex
intercourse, bestiality). Of course, different penalties for different
sins can be found throughout the legal material in the Old Testament.
(2) After the Golden Calf episode Moses told the Israelites, “You have
sinned a great sin” (Exod 32:30), a point confirmed by the
severity of God’s judgment. (3) Numbers 15:30 refers to offenses done
with a “high hand” (deliberately and perhaps defiantly) as more grievous
in nature than relatively unintentional sins (15:22, 24, 27, 29).
Moreover,
(4) Jesus referred to “the weightier
matters of the law” (Matt 23:23), adding: “Blind guides, those who
strain out the gnat but who swallow the camel” (23:24). What’s the
difference between a gnat and a camel if all commands and all violations
are equal? (5) Jesus famously pinpointed the two greatest commandments
(Mark 12:28-31) and spoke of “the least of these commandments” (Matt
5:19). To have greater and lesser commandments is to have greater and
lesser violations. (6) Jesus’ special outreach to economic exploiters
(tax-collectors) and sexual sinners was not so much a reaction to their
abandonment by society as an indication of the special severity of these
sins and the extreme spiritual danger faced by such perpetrators. This
is the apparent in the story of the sinful woman in Luke 7:36-50: The
one who is forgiven more, loves more. (7) Then there is Jesus’
characterization of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” as an “eternal
sin” from which one “never has forgiveness”—in context referring to the
Pharisees’ attribution of Jesus’ exorcisms to demonic power (Mark
3:28-30).
In addition,
(8) Paul talks about different grades of
actions in 1 Cor 3:10-17: One can construct poorly on the foundation of
Christ and suffer loss while still inheriting the kingdom. However, the
one who “destroys the temple of God” (viz., the church) over matters of
indifference would incur destruction from God. (9) If all sin is equally
severe to God then why did Paul single out the offense of the incestuous
man in 1 Corinthians 5 among all the Corinthians’ sins as requiring
removal from the community? Furthermore, if there were no ranking of
commands, how could Paul have rejected out of hand a case of incest that
was adult-consensual, monogamous, and committed? The answer to the
latter question is that Paul knew the incest prohibition was more
foundational than the commands to monogamy and permanence. For further
discussion of these and other examples, see pp. 5-8 of
this article.
If it is obvious
that Jesus and the writers of Scripture believed that some sins by their
nature were more serious than others, then what remains of Eichenwald’s
claim that “the
New Testament doesn’t proclaim homosexuality the most heinous of all
sins”? First of all, I don’t know anyone who claims that homosexual
practice is the worst of all sins. Eichenwald’s wording is
designed to obfuscate the issue. What Scripture does indicate clearly is
that homosexual practice is a severe sexual violation. Here are eight
good reasons for rendering that verdict (largely reproduced verbatim
from pp. 8-10 of
this article, with alterations).
(1) The first human
differentiation at creation is the differentiation between male and
female. In Gen 2:21-24 the creation of woman is depicted as the
extraction of a “rib” or (better) “side” from the human so that man and
woman are parts of a single integrated whole. Woman is depicted as man’s
sexual “counterpart” or “complement” (Heb. negdo). A male-female
prerequisite is thus grounded in the earliest act of creation. Contrast
the situation with incest prohibitions which are not grounded in
creation. Incest prohibitions cannot be implemented until after the
human family spreads out and becomes numerous.
(2) Although in
the concluding summary of the sex laws in Leviticus 18 all the sexual
offenses are collectively labeled “abominations,” “abhorrent” or
“detestable acts” (to’evoth; vv. 26-30), only man-male
intercourse is specifically tagged with the singular to’evah (v.
22; also 20:13). Outside the Holiness Code in Lev 17-24 the term is
normally used for various severe moral offenses (not merely acts
of ritual uncleanness), including occasionally homosexual practice (Deut
23:18; 1 Kgs 14:24; Ezek 16:50; 18:12; probably also Ezek 33:26). As
noted earlier, in Lev 20 the sexual offenses of Lev 18 are reordered
according to two tiers of severity, with homosexual practice being
included in the first tier of capital offenses.
(3) A triad of
stories about extreme depravity feature a real or attempted act of
man-male intercourse as an integral element of the depravity: Ham’s
offense against his father Noah (Gen 9:20-27;
compare
the phrase “see the nakedness of” in Gen 9:22 with the same phrase in
Lev 20:17 of sexual intercourse);
the attempted sexual assault of male visitors by the men of Sodom (Gen
19:4-11); and the attempted sexual assault of the Levite passing through
Gibeah (Judg 19:22-25). Some have argued that only coercive homosexual
practice is in view in these stories. Given the generally negative view
of homosexual practice in the ancient Near East, that makes as much
sense as saying that a story about a man raping his parent (so the Ham
story) indicts only coercive forms of incest. Obviously these are
“kitchen sink” narratives targeting multiple heinous offenses.
(4)
Jesus’ appeal to Gen 1:27 (“male and female he made them”) and Gen 2:24
(“for this reason a man shall … be joined to his woman/wife and the two
will become one flesh”) in his remarks on divorce-and-remarriage in Mark
10:6-9 (par. Matt 19:4-6) show how important a male-female prerequisite
for marriage was. Jesus argued that the twoness of the sexes ordained by
God at creation was the foundation for limiting the number of persons in
a sexual bond to two, whether concurrently (no polygamy) or serially (no
divorce/remarriage, at least not for any cause). If Jesus regarded a
male-female prerequisite as foundational for extrapolating other sexual
ethics principles (here marital monogamy and indissolubility), wouldn’t
a direct violation of the foundation (homosexual practice) be more
severe than a violation of principles built on that foundation
(polygamy, adultery, remarriage-after-divorce)? We know that Jesus was
using the duality or binary character of the sexes as the basis for
limiting the number of persons in a sexual union to two because the
Essenes, a sectarian Jewish group of the time, likewise used the same
one third of Gen 1:27 to prohibit men from “taking two wives in their
lives,” noting also that even animals entered the ark “two by two” (Damascus
Covenant 4.20-5.1).
Jesus didn’t
have to argue explicitly against homosexual practice in first-century
Judaism because engaging in such behavior was unthinkable for Jews. We
have no evidence of Jews advocating such behavior, let alone engaging in
it, within centuries of the life of Jesus. Jesus set out to close the
remaining loopholes in Judaism’s sexual ethics (another was “adultery of
the heart”), not to repeat more severe prohibitions already universally
accepted by Jews. For example, the fact that Jesus said nothing about
incest is an indication that he accepted the strong strictures
against it in Levitical law. It is not an indication that he regarded
remarriage-after-divorce as an equally serious or more serious offense
than incest.
(5) Eichenwald
also claims that Paul didn’t give any indication in Romans 1:24-27 for
regarding homosexual practice as a particularly severe sin. “There
is no bold print or underlining for the section dealing with
homosexuality—Paul treats it as something as sinful as pride or debate.”
Yet the highly
pejorative description in conjunction with the extended attention surely
suggests that Paul regarded homosexual practice as an especially serious
infraction of God’s will, in line with all Jewish perspectives of the
time. It makes little sense to argue that Paul took extra space in Rom
1:24-27 to talk about how homosexual practice is “dishonorable” or
“degrading,” “contrary to nature,” an “indecency” or “shameful/
obscene behavior,” and a fit “payback” for their straying from God in
order to show that homosexual practice was no worse than any
other sin.
As a complement to
idolatry on the vertical vector of divine-human relations, Paul chose
the offense of homosexual practice to be his lead-off example on the
horizontal vector of intra-human relations. Like idolatry, homosexual
practice involved a suppression of truth accessible in the material
structures of creation still intact in nature. “Humans ... in
unrighteousness are suppressing the truth, because the knowable aspect
of God is transparent to them, for God made it transparent to them. For
his invisible attributes, ever since the creation of the world, are
being clearly seen, mentally apprehended by means of the things made ...
so that they are without excuse” (Rom 1:20). In order to engage in
homosexual practice, humans would first have to suppress the
self-evident sexual complementarity of male and female (anatomically,
physiologically, psychologically). Romans 1:18-32 is an extended vice or
offender list. Like most other Pauline vice or offender lists, idolatry
and sexual immorality are listed one-two (in some lists sexual
immorality appears first); and this not because they are merely equal to
other offenses (cp. 1 Thess 4:1-8 with 1:9; and Gal 5:19-21; 2 Cor
12:21; Col 3:5; Eph 4:19; 5:3, 5).
(6) Apart from
ruling out sex between humans and animals, the male-female
requirement for sexual relations is the only sexual requirement held
absolutely for the people of God from creation to Christ. While we see a
limited allowance for polygyny in the OT (multiple wives for men, though
never polyandry, multiple husbands for women), subsequently revoked by
Jesus, and some limited allowance in earliest Israel for what will later
be termed incest in Levitical law (e.g., Abraham’s marriage to his
half-sister Sarah; Jacob’s marriage to two sisters while both were
alive), there is never any allowance whatsoever for homosexual practice
in the history of Israel. Every single law, narrative, poetry, proverb,
moral exhortation, and metaphor dealing with sexual matters in the Old
Testament presupposes a male-female prerequisite. The only exceptions
are periods of apostasy in ancient Israel (e.g., the existence of
homosexual cult prostitutes, which narrators still label an
abomination). Polygamy is a violation of the monogamy principle that is
only secondarily extrapolated from a male-female prerequisite.
Incest is a violation of a requirement of embodied otherness that is
only secondarily extrapolated from the foundational analogy of
embodied otherness established at creation. Homosexual practice is thus
viewed as worse than incest and polyamory.
(7) The severe character of
homosexual practice is amply confirmed in Jewish texts of the Second
Temple period and beyond (for texts, especially Philo and Josephus, see
my The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 159-83). Jews in the
Greco-Roman period regarded man-male intercourse as the prime example,
or at least one of the top examples, of Gentile impiety (e.g.,
Sibylline Oracles 3; Letter of Aristeas 152). Only bestiality
appears to rank as a greater sexual offense, at least among “consensual”
acts. There is some disagreement in early Judaism over whether sex with
one’s mother is worse, comparable, or less severe. The absence of a
specific recorded case of same-sex intercourse in early Judaism from the
fifth century
B.C.
to ca.
A.D.
300 also speaks to the severity of the offense. Regarding the
possibility of Jews engaging in this abhorrent behavior, a text from the
rabbinic Tosefta comments simply: “Israel is not suspected” (Qiddushin
5:10).
(8) The historic position of the
church over the centuries is that the Bible understands homosexual
practice as an extreme sexual offense. For example, among the Church
Fathers Cyprian (200-258) called it “an indignity even to see.” John
Chrysostom (344-407) referred to it as “monstrous insanity,” “clear
proof of the ultimate degree of corruption,” and “lusts after monstrous
things.” Theodoret of Cyr (393-457) called it “extreme ungodliness.”
John Calvin, no slouch when it came to emphasizing universal depravity,
nonetheless labeled homosexual practice “the fearful crime of unnatural
lust,” worse than “bestial desires since [it reverses] the whole order
of nature,” “vicious corruption,” “monstrous deeds,” and “this
abominable act.”
In short, the claim that homosexual
practice in the Bible is viewed no more severely than any other sin is
unsupportable. Yet it is the lynchpin for Eichenwald’s case against
Christian opposition to homosexual practice. Eichenwald simply hasn’t
done his homework on the issue and yet he and the editors of Newsweek
thought that his views merited cover-article treatment.
Comparing Homosexual Practice in 1 Tim
1:10 to Heavy Drinking & the Role of Women
Instead of comparing homosexual
practice with severe sins to which the church has not accommodated,
Eichenwald prejudices the case by making comparisons only with
lesser sins on which he feels the church has already compromised itself.
With regard to the context for 1 Tim 1:10, he cites drunkards (actually
this doesn’t appear in the vice list in 1 Tim 1:8-10 but only in
discussions of church leadership positions; but it does appear in the
offender list in 1 Cor 6:9-10). He gushes: “Most frat boys in America
are committing sins on par with being gay. But you rarely hear about
parents banishing their kids for getting trashed on Saturday night.”
Yet a more careful reading of
Scripture’s view of drunkenness doesn’t get Eichenwald where he wants to
go. Drunkenness in Scripture is frowned upon because of that to which it
might lead: sexual immorality, violence, verbal abuse, and the like. The
story of a one-time drunken Noah passed out in his tent doesn’t receive
the severe moral disapprobation that Ham receives for emasculating his
father by having sex with him. Furthermore, evangelical families would
generally seek help for children who are repeatedly and impenitently
getting drunk. They certainly wouldn’t be affirming drunkenness, which
is what Eichenwald is demanding in the case of homosexual practice.
Eichenwald’s next lame comparison is
with female politicians who speak in public. Eichenwald lampoons 1
Timothy as “one
of the most virulently anti-woman books of the New Testament,” referring
to remarks in 2:8-15 about women wearing modest dress, learning in
silence, and not teaching or having authority over men. However, the
writer of 1 Timothy (whether Paul or a later Paulinist in Paul’s name)
is not talking about female politicians. It is dubious at best that he
has in view anything other than Christian assemblies when talking about
teaching and exercising authority. Based on remarks elsewhere in the
letter, it is apparent that the author’s views are conditioned at least
in part by concern that the persecuted nascent Christian movement not
give offense to outsiders so that the maximum number may be won over to
the faith (2:2-4; 3:7; 5:14; 6:1; cp. Titus 2:5, 8); in part also by
concern for naďve and uneducated Christian women being taken in by
ascetic itinerant preachers with strange myths and high fees (4:1-3, 7;
5:13-15; cp. esp. 2 Tim 3:5-7; 4:3-4; Titus 1:10-14; 3:9-10).
When Eichenwald puts these
injunctions on the same level as those against homosexual practice, he
shows all the hermeneutical (i.e., interpretive) sensitivity of using a
meat cleaver to deal with a pimple. Not even in the Pastoral Epistles
are “uppity women” put in vice or offender lists and pegged for
exclusion from the kingdom of God (unlike serial-unrepentant
participants in homosexual behavior). While the Bible’s proscription
against homosexual practice is unremittingly negative (pervasive,
absolute, penalized to the maximum extent) even in relation to the
cultural context, the Bible’s view of women, taken as a whole, shows
considerable openness for female liberation relative to that of some
other cultures.
This openness takes many forms.
The creation story in Gen 2:4b-3:24
relegates a husband’s rule over his wife to the Fall (3:16). In Gen
1:26-28 male and female combined express God’s image and both are called
on to manage God’s creation. Elsewhere in the OT, even within a broader
patriarchal context significant women figures appear throughout Israel’s
history: for example, Miriam, Tamar, Rahab, prophetess/judge Deborah,
Jael, Ruth, the prophetess Huldah, and Esther. Occasionally an
inequitable old law is revised to provide greater parity between men and
women, as with the law governing the release of slaves (cf. Exod 21:2-11
with Deut 15:12-18). Feminine metaphors are occasionally applied to
Yahweh’s actions toward his people Israel alongside dominant male
metaphors (e.g., Num 11:12; Deut 32:11, 18; Ps 22:9-10; Isa 42:14;
49:14-15; 66:13).
In New Testament texts, there is an
increased affirmation of women’s roles. Jesus was known to have women
followers, who also played an important part in the empty tomb stories
(Luke 8:1-3; 23:55-24:11), and to have encouraged women to give priority
to learning from him over their own domestic duties (Luke 10:38-42).
Jesus healed women (e.g., Mark 1:29-31; 5:24-34, 35-43; 7:24-30) and
praised them for exemplary acts (Mark 12:41-44; 14:3-9). He also revoked
special male privileges with respect to divorce and polygyny and
declared the taking of another wife to be an act of adultery, not just
against another man, but against his own first wife (i.e., fidelity in
marriage as a two-way street).
Paul continued this teaching on divorce and remarriage in his churches
(1 Cor 7:10-11). Although he believed in a husband’s authority over his
wife, albeit conceived largely in terms of self-emptying service (cp.
Eph 5:22-33), he also did much to undermine conventional, subordinate
roles for women: laboring alongside numerous women co-workers (cf. Rom
16; Phil 4:2-3); insisting on the mutuality of conjugal rights (1 Cor
7:3-4); maintaining that there is “neither male and female” (Gal 3:28)
in the new creation in Christ; and affirming women's prophetic roles,
but in such a way that women did not need to become androgynes to be
spiritual beings (1 Cor 11:3-16; contrast the spurious saying of Jesus
in Gospel of Thomas 114: “Every female who makes herself male
will enter the kingdom of Heaven”). Even as he interpreted Genesis 2-3
as establishing male headship, he could still add a “nevertheless” of
interdependence: “Nevertheless, neither woman without man nor man
without woman in the Lord. For just as the woman is from the man, so
also the man is through the woman. And all things are from God” (1 Cor
11:11-12).
Hence, in the context of a relatively
affirming posture toward women, Jesus and Paul nonetheless maintained
vigorous opposition to homosexual practice. Paul’s gesture toward female
equality as regards homosexual unions was not to excuse homosexual
practice for both women and men but rather to make explicit the
implications of the Levitical prohibition of male homosexual practice
for prohibiting female homosexual practice as well (Rom 1:26). A better
analogy to the Bible’s prohibition of homosexual practice is its
prohibition of incest of even an adult-consensual form: both strong
prohibitions of a form of sexual immorality that can be conducted by
consensual adults, involving too much embodied identity and not enough
otherness. Note to Eichenwald: The best analogies share the most
substantive points of correspondence with the thing to which they are
being compared.
Comparing Homosexual Practice in Rom
1:26-27 to Criticizing the Obama Administration
Even more ridiculous is Eichenwald’s
claim that those who cite Paul’s condemnation of homosexual practice in
Rom 1:24-27 while criticizing the Obama administration are hypocrites.
According to Eichenwald,
There
is a much longer series of verses about how the righteous are supposed
to behave toward people in government authority. It shows up in Romans
13:1-2…. So yes, there is one verse in Romans about homosexuality…and
there are eight verses condemning those who criticize the government. In
other words, all fundamentalist Christians who decry Obama have sinned
as much as they believe gay people have.
The context makes clear
that what Paul meant by
“resisting” or “opposing” the government authorities was outright
refusal to submit to any and all government laws, including the payment
of taxes, which would have resulted in massive state persecution of the
new Christian movement. (According
to the Roman historian Tacitus, there was considerable public unrest in
Rome in the mid-50s because of heavy and unfair indirect taxes that
finally forced Nero to enact some reforms in 58.) Jesus’ remark about
“rendering unto Caesar” makes a similar point; yet obviously Jesus said
and did things (like cleansing the temple) that eventually got him
crucified by the state (note also the martyrs of the early church).
There is zero
correlation between Paul’s concern in Rom 13:1-8 on the one hand and
exercising one’s right in a democratic system to criticize bad
government policies (while still paying taxes) on the other.
The Old Testament witness shows Jews both
endeavoring to be respectful of the foreign powers that ruled over them
and, at times when the government became a major threat to religious
practices, engaging in resistance of government orders.
In his attempts to draw analogies
both with Paul’s injunction about submitting to government authorities
in Rom 13:1-8 and with the treatment of women in 1 Tim 2:9-15,
Eichenwald pathetically determines significance by counting the number
of verses devoted to an issue.
In fact, while 1 Timothy has just one
parenthetical clause that can be interpreted as being about
homosexuality, it contains six verses on the shortcomings of women and
the limitations on what they are allowed to do.
… So yes, there is one verse in Romans
about homosexuality [can’t Eichenwald even count without prejudice?
1:26-27 constitute two verses; and another two verses, 1:24-25, sets up
the discussion] …and there are eight verses condemning those who
criticize the government. In other words, all fundamentalist Christians
who decry Obama have sinned as much as they believe gay people have.
Eichenwald never stops to think that
some issues receive less attention precisely because they are so
beyond the pale of acceptability that talking about the issue at all is
already a defeat; and/or because the incidence of violation or advocacy
thereof is so negligible that it mentioning the offense is unnecessary.
By way of contemporary example, I have never heard a pastor give a
sermon on why parishioners shouldn’t have sex with close kin. Yet I have
never drawn the conclusion that these pastors held some secret
acceptance of incest. We would have no mention of incest in the New
Testament were it not for the immoral relationship at Corinth between a
man and his stepmother. Yet Paul’s description of incest in 1 Cor 5
leaves no doubt about how repugnant Paul viewed incest to be. Bestiality
receives less attention than most other sexual offenses in the Bible.
The reason for that has nothing to do with it being a matter of moral
insignificance.
Not satisfied with the overreach to
Rom 13:1-8, Eichenwald tries another. He points to the rest of the vice
list in Rom 1:29-31 and claims that homosexual practice is no worse than
debating (which actually is not proscribed here), pride, disobedience of
parents, and deceit. Predictably, Eichenwald leaves out the listing of
murder in 1:29: Is homosexual practice as bad as murder? Paul is not
saying that all these vices are equal in all respects. He is asserting
that any sin can get one excluded from God’s kingdom if personal merit,
rather than faith in the atoning blood of Christ, is the means by which
salvation is sought.
Comparing Homosexual Practice in 1 Cor 6:9
to Other Offenses in Context
With regard to the mention of “men
who lie with a male” (Gk. arsenokoítai/ ἀρσενοκοῖται) in 1 Cor
6:9 (the same term appearing in 1 Tim 1:10, cited above), Eichenwald
charges “fundamentalists” with being hypocrites if they take other
Christians to court or are greedy or lie. “All of these are declared as
sins on par with homosexuality” (for the record: lying is not mentioned
here). Yet the discussion of lawsuits among believers in 6:1-8 is
limited to believers in the same congregation, where matters should be
adjudicated internally within the community of faith, if adjudicated at
all. The reference to the “greedy” (Gk. pleonéktai/πλεονέκται)
does not have in mind anyone who ever experiences a greedy impulse
(which would be all of us). It
often
connotes someone who exploits, defrauds, cheats, extorts, or generally
takes advantage of another for personal gain, including unjust seizure
of the property of others. It is not simply a desire for a little more
money. The reference to the “sexually immoral” (Gk. pl. pórnoi/πόρνοι)
includes the incestuous man in ch. 5 who is called a “sexually immoral
person” (Gk. sg. pórnos/πόρνος; 5:11). The list has to do with
serial-unrepentant activity. Evangelicals would be hypocrites if they
continued to oppose serial-unrepentant incest and adultery while
approving homosexual practice.
Do Those Who Follow Paul’s Lawfree Gospel
Have to Give Up All Levitical Prohibitions?
Perhaps Eichenwald’s greatest folly
(not all follies are equal) is in arguing that anyone who adopts Paul’s
view that faith in Christ abrogates the Law of Moses must give up on the
prohibitions of Leviticus against homosexual practice.
Orthodox Jews who follow Mosaic Law can
use Leviticus to condemn homosexuality without being hypocrites. But
fundamentalist Christians must choose: They can either follow Mosaic Law
by keeping kosher, being circumcised, never wearing clothes made of two
types of thread and the like. Or they can accept that finding salvation
in the Resurrection of Christ means that Leviticus is off the table…. If
[fundamentalists eager to condemn homosexuals or anyone else] accept the
writings of Paul and believe all people are sinners, then salvation is
found in belief in Christ and the Resurrection. For everyone. There are
no exceptions in the Bible for sins that evangelicals really don’t like.
Eichenwald exhibits here a gross
distortion and impoverished understanding of Pauline theology and
ethics. While Paul contended that those who were in Christ were no
longer under the Law’s jurisdiction, he also maintained continuity in
core moral standards since the God who gave the Law to Moses and the God
who raised Jesus from the dead were one and the same God.
Christians, whose citizenship is in
heaven (Phil 3:20), were not without law entirely but rather were under
“the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2; 1 Cor 9:21). By way of analogy, an
American who renounces U.S. citizenship and becomes a Canadian citizen
and then commits a murder will not be prosecuted under American law. Yet
he will be prosecuted because it just so happens that there is
considerably continuity between American law and Canadian law on the
matter of murder. Likewise, Christians who commit murder will not be
prosecuted under the Mosaic law because he has been freed from that
jurisdiction. Yet they will stand before the bar of God’s judgment
because in the jurisdiction of Christ murder remains sinful.
Eichenwald pretends that every
command in the Law of Moses had relevance only for the particular
circumstances of ancient Israel. Is Eichenwald not aware that Jesus’
first and second greatest commandments are drawn from Deuteronomy and
Leviticus respectively? Many commandments carried transcultural
significance. This included continuity in basic categories of sexual
ethics, where the demand was actually intensified by the teaching of
Jesus.
Hence Paul vigorously retained the
rejection of homosexual practice (does Eichenwald not remember this from
his own discussion of Rom 1:24-27, 1 Cor 6:9, and 1 Tim 1:10?), incest,
adultery, and fornication given to him in the Old Testament, as well as
Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage (and, implicitly, polygamy)
predicated on a male-female foundation for all sexual activity. So when
he expressed horror at the case of adult-consensual incest going on at
Corinth he used a description of the behavior, “someone has (his)
father’s wife” drawn from the prohibitions of man-stepmother intercourse
in OT law (1 Cor 5:1; cp. “(the) woman/wife of his/your father” in Deut
22:30; 27:20; Lev 18:8, 11; 20:11). We already noted that the term for
“men who lie with a male,” arsenokoítai (ἀρσενοκοῖται), was
formulated from the prohibitions of male homosexual practice in
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13.
Were Eichenwald to apply his absurd
reasoning to other forms of sexual immorality besides homosexual
practice, he would have to say that “fundamentalists” should likewise
give up their “condemnation” of incest, adultery, and bestiality (to say
nothing of murder, theft, and slander) and stop viewing such practices
as threats to salvation. This is exactly what Paul did not do. Paul
lambasted the Corinthian believers for not “mourning” over the potential
exclusion from the kingdom of God of the incestuous man who “called
himself a brother,” demanded that they stop eating and fellowshipping
with such a one until he repented, and warned that such persons will not
inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 5; 6:9-10). An exasperated Paul posed
the following rhetorical question to the Corinthians: “Is it not those
inside the church that you are to judge?” (5:12). Eichenwald answers
with an emphatic “no” but the Greek sentence starts with an
interrogative particle that presupposes a “yes” answer. Ironically,
Eichenwald’s answer places him squarely with the deluded Corinthian
believers, not with Paul.
In our first extant letter of Paul’s,
1 Thessalonians, we see that Paul’s first order of business after giving
thanks for the faith of the Gentile believers amidst persecution was to
remind them that continuance in sexual impurity was tantamount to
rejecting the God who gave his Holy Spirit to them and would incur God’s
vengeance (4:1-8). Paul made it a priority to remind his Gentile
converts repeatedly that serial-unrepentant sexually immoral behavior on
the part of self-professed Christians would mark them out for not
inheriting the kingdom of God and eternal life. Sexually immoral persons
should not deceive themselves into thinking that it was otherwise (1 Cor
6:9-10;
Gal 5:19-21 with 6:7-9; 2 Cor 12:21; Col
3:5; Eph 4:19; 5:3, 5). Faith for Paul was not a mere intellectual
assent to the truth but a holistic life reorientation and transformation
into a life lived for God. For Paul, self-professed converts who lived
immoral lives were not in fact exhibiting justifying faith. Only those
who “no longer live” but rather have Christ “live in” them, convinced
that Christ loved them enough to hand himself over to death on their
behalf, actually operate out of saving faith (Gal 2:19-20; cp. 5:).
In Rom 1:24 Paul characterized
homosexual practice and other sexual offenses as “impurity” or
“uncleanness” (akatharsía/ἀκαθαρσία), a term that he used
elsewhere in Romans only in 6:19, in direct address to the Roman
believers. He reminded them that believers in Christ are no longer
“slaves to impurity,” for to continue in such behavior was to engage
in acts of which they should now be “ashamed” (echoing the shame
language that dominates Rom 1:24-27 regarding homosexual practice). Such
acts, he says, lead to death and the loss of eternal life (6:19-23; cp.
1:32). Indeed, Paul’s entire argument around the question “Why not sin?”
since we are “under grace and not under the law” (6:15; cp. 6:1)
culminates in 8:12-14 with the response: “If you continue to live in
conformity to (the sinful desires operating in) the flesh you are going
to die. But if by means of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the
body, you will live. For only those who are being led by the
Spirit of God are children of God.” Thus, in Paul’s view, mouthing a few
words of confession that Christ is Lord does not exempt Christians from
leading a life consonant with that confession, nor even from the dire
eternal consequences that would arise from failing to do so. For Paul
the outcome for a believer who lives under the primary sway of
sin in the flesh is no different from the outcome for an unbeliever who
so lives. Both alike face the prospect of exclusion from God’s eternal
rule.
Again in Romans 13, shortly after
his discussion of submission to government authorities, Paul makes clear
that sexual impurity is definitely not one of the matters of
ethical indifference (Gk. adiaphora), like diet and calendar
issues, that later in 14:1-15:13 Paul will warn believers against
judging fellow believers for. Paul insists in 13:13-14 that, in view of
the coming day of salvation and judgment, believers “lay aside works of
darkness” such as “sexual misbehaviors and licentious acts” and thereby
to “not be giving prior thought to the flesh for (gratifying its)
desires.” The Greek word for “sexual misbehaviors” is koítai (κοίται),
which literally means, “lyings” or “beds,” a term that obviously links
up with
arsenokoítai
(ἀρσενοκοῖται), “men lying
with a male,” in 1 Cor 6:9 as a particular instance of an immoral
“lying.” The Greek word for “licentious acts” is asélgeiai (ἀσέλγειαι),
which refers to a lack of self-restraint with respect to refraining from
prohibited sexual behaviors. This takes us back to the discussion in Rom
6:19-22 where Paul insists that believers stop putting their bodily
members at the disposal of the kind of “sexual impurity” cited in
1:24-27, which makes them slaves of sin and lacking in sexual
self-restraint. If Paul had wanted his converts to stop passing judgment
on fellow converts who were engaged in unrepentant sexual immorality
then he would have been a monumental hypocrite, inasmuch as he himself
regularly made such judgments.
In short, Eichenwald’s notion that
Paul believed that faith in Christ meant no longer holding on to sexual
purity standards like abstaining from homosexual practice, incest,
adultery, bestiality, and fornication would have been of greatest
surprise to Paul himself. Eichenwald is simply clueless about Pauline
ethics and yet he mocks “fundamentalists” for their alleged ignorance.
When the One Who “Judges Not” Judges Most
Eichenwald’s final argument for why
Christians should give up on their opposition to homosexual practice is
all too predictable. He cites Jesus’ warning about judging others, the
last refuge for hypocrites who specialize in pronouncing all sorts of
harsh judgments on others. “Jesus cautioned his followers against
judging others while ignoring their own sins. In fact, he had a specific
word for people obsessed with the sins of others. He called them
hypocrites.” He repeats this argument in the concluding section of his
article entitled, “Judge Not.” “Jesus said, Don’t judge. He condemned
those who pointed out the faults of others while ignoring their own. And
he proclaimed, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none
other commandment greater than these.’”
Ironically, Eichenwald is exceedingly judgmental of orthodox Christians
throughout his article, even abusive.
Jesus
did speak against judging others (e.g., Matt 7:1-5; parallel in Luke
6:37, 41-42). However, the context for such sayings makes it obvious
that Jesus was not advocating that his followers cease making moral
distinctions between good and bad behavior. The very next saying after
Matt 7:1-5 is about not giving what is holy to dogs or throwing pearls
before swine (7:6)—certainly a statement that presupposes the necessity
of making judgments about immorality. The very section within which Matt
7:1-5 occurs, the Sermon on the Mount, closes just a few verses later
with a series of judgments about the disastrous fate of those who merely
hear Jesus’ words but do not do them: the narrow gate to life that few
enter; the destruction of trees that don’t bear good fruit; the “I never
knew you” response to those who address him as Lord but don’t do what he
says; and the parable about building one’s house on sand (7:13-27). The
same Sermon opens with a series of antitheses that in essence state: You
used to be able to get away with the following but I now say “No
longer.” Two of the six antitheses intensify (not soften) God’s demand
for sexual purity: adultery of the heart and divorce/remarriage. In
between them appears a warning that it is better to cut off body parts
that threaten one’s downfall than for one’s “whole body to be thrown
into hell” (5:27-32).
It is a shame that Eichenwald never
bothered to consider these things. Indeed, roughly half of all sayings
of Jesus contain pronouncements of judgments (for a listing of Synoptic
sayings not unique to Matthew, see pp. 6-12 of
this article).
I wonder whether Eichenwald ever stopped to think that the highest
concentration of judgment sayings of Jesus in all the Gospels occurs in
the very Gospel from which the “judge not” saying is usually cited. For
example, teaching about church
discipline of members who don’t repent of their sin appears in Matt
18:15-20 (cp. Luke 17:3-4).
Surely discipline requires making judgments about the wrongness of
certain behaviors and then correcting the offenders?
It is no accident that Mark opens the
narrative of Jesus’ ministry with this saying of Jesus as a summary of
his entire message: “The kingdom of God has come near: Repent and
believe in the gospel” (1:15). Does Eichenwald want to charge Jesus with
being “obsessed with the sins of others” insofar as he was always going
around and calling people to repent of their sins? A case in point:
Jesus condemned in the strongest possible
terms several towns near the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee for
refusing to accept his message:
Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you
Bethsaida! For if the miracles that had been performed in you had
occurred in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in
sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless, it will be more bearable at the
judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up as far
as heaven? As far as Hades you shall come down! (Luke 10:13-15 // Matt
11:22-24)
Not only did Jesus pronounce judgment on a
few Galilean towns; he pronounced judgment on his entire generation of
Israelites.
This generation is an evil generation. It
seeks a sign, and a sign will not be given to it except the sign of
Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son
of Man be a sign to this generation. The queen of the South will be
raised at the judgment with this generation and will condemn it, for she
came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and see,
something more than Solomon is here! Ninevite men will rise at the
judgment with this generation and will condemn it, for they repented at
the preaching of Jonah, and see, something more than Jonah is here!
(Luke 11:29-32 // Matt 12:39-41 [Q]).
The reference to the “evil generation” is
also picked up in Mark 8:38, wherein Jesus refers to “this adulterous
and sinful generation.” Judgment sayings are such a major part of Jesus’
teaching that it raises the question of whether Eichenwald has ever
actually bothered to read the whole of the Gospels. If he has, then how
could he be so blind as not to see? Jesus did reach out to offenders, in
particular, sexual sinners and economic exploiters (i.e., the tax
collectors who had a justly deserved reputation for extorting several
times more than what was owed). Yet he did so in order to call them to
the repentance that would make possible inheritance of the very kingdom
that he proclaimed.
When Jesus’ anti-judgment saying is
taken in context (something that Eichenwald manifestly does not do), it
becomes quickly evident that his point was not to reject all judgment
absolutely but rather to caution against judgment that (1) lacks
self-introspection, (2) majors in minors, and (3) rejoices in the
damnation of offenders instead of seeking recovery of the lost.
Moreover, when Jesus lifted up as the first and second greatest
commandments preeminent love for God and love for neighbor respectively,
he was not urging people to dissolve the very foundational male-female
matrix for sexual union on which he predicated his whole sexual ethics.
As the themes of the Lord’s Prayer indicate, Jesus was rather calling
people to seek first God’s kingdom, to do the will of God, and to
encourage others graciously to do the same.
It is not loving to affirm homosexual
practice when it is so obvious (anatomically, physiologically, and even
psychologically) that the appropriate sexual counterpart to a man is a
woman and to a woman a man. It is not loving to encourage the
self-dishonoring of the participants in a homosexual act who, in viewing
a person of the same-sex as their “other half,” regard themselves as
only half intact in relation to their own sex rather than in relation to
the only other sex. It is not loving to further relationships where,
owing to the absence of a true sexual complement, the extremes of their
own sex are ratcheted up and the gaps left unfilled, resulting in
disproportionately high rates of measurable harm regarding numbers of
sex partners lifetime and sexually transmitted infections (both
especially for homosexual males) and in relationships characterized by
lower longevity and higher rates of mental health issues (both
especially for homosexual females). It is not loving to disregard the
will of God manifested in the overwhelming witness of Scripture for
God’s intentional design of “male and female” sexual pairing. At least
that is what Jesus thought. Since Eichenwald likes to criticize
“fundamentalists,” evangelicals, and the mainstream orthodox for
allegedly failing to heed the teaching of Jesus (which, he says,
contains “the
true sections of the New Testament”),
he would do well to profit from his own advice.
Concluding Response
Although Eichenwald in a self-aggrandizing
way characterized his article as “an
attempt to save the Bible from the ignorance, hatred and bias that has
been heaped upon it,” Eichenwald has rather contributed to that
ignorance, hatred, and bias in a big way. While he is right in saying
that Christians on the whole should take great care to understand “the
book they consider to be the most important document in the world,” he
is wrong in thinking that he has contributed to its accurate
understanding. In stating that “the actual words of the Bible can’t be
ignored just to line it up with what people want to believe,” he
has unwittingly offered us a picture of how the Bible is all too often
misrepresented by those on the theological left who simply don’t like
what it says.
One can only urge Eichenwald to put
aside his ideological prejudices and let Jesus be Jesus, not some
cardboard caricature of what he would like Jesus to be. In short, he can
allow himself to be made in the image of Jesus rather than remaking
Jesus in his own image.
That, Mr. Eichenwald, is a truly good
place to start.
As for Newsweek,
discard it and go for something with a bit less bias, say, the
National Enquirer?