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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again
Five Snippets
So it comes down to five Bible verses.
The argument that homosexuality is wrong, that homosexuality is sinful, has no other leg to stand upon – if it has any at all – than these five verses: two from Leviticus, one from Romans, one from First Corinthians, and one from First Timothy.
Some want to argue that homosexuality is wrong because it is harmful to others, but there simply is no evidence that homosexuality causes harm to others. The allegations made on this score are in error, and are offered only out of ignorance or sometimes malice.
Some want to argue that homosexuality is wrong because it is “unnatural.” And yet beyond a shadow of a doubt, homosexuality (a sexual attraction to those of the same sex) arises frequently in human beings and frequently in hundreds of other animal species. Nature is far from homogeneous; nature is given to variety and diversity. It is only out of ignorance (or, again, malice) that one would try to argue that homosexuality was unnatural. And is the naturalness of something our test of its morality?
The Indiana Yearly Meeting Minute on homosexuality says that “We believe the Holy Spirit and Scriptures witness to this” [homosexual practices as contrary to the intent and will of God for humankind], but I hear in our discussions only appeals to Scripture, not appeals to the Holy Spirit.
No, the only argument that might have any standing is the claim that there are five verses in Scripture that supposedly proclaim homosexuality to be sinful. Some people have come to call these the “clobber texts” because they have been repeatedly used to clobber gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people as sinful.
And so it matters how we read the Bible. The Bible is really a complex collection of books, some histories, some prayers, some letters, some imaginative stories, some poetry, some prophecy. Some of it is written in Hebrew, and some in a 1st century conversational Greek even though Jesus spoke Aramaic. So translations have to be worked through. In the face of this complexity, we need a consistent approach to reading the Bible: we cannot read some passages one way, and some passages another. How we read the five clobber texts has to have some consistency with how we read what the Bible says about war, adultery, the role of women in the church, what foods we should eat, what we should do about wealth, what we should do about our desires, or hundreds of other questions.
At an Indiana Yearly Meeting annual session a year or two ago, the Bible came up in one heated session, and a pastor said “God-breathed” in the midst of the discussion, and others murmured, “God-breathed” in agreement. They were quoting 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
“God-breathed.” Yes, useful to remember. But what does it mean? What was “Scripture” when the author of 2 Timothy wrote these words? 2 Timothy was likely written towards the end of the first century C.E. There wasn’t yet a New Testament to which he could refer. Paul’s letters were written before the Gospels. The various manuscripts that are compiled into our New Testament were written and circulated in various collections over the first two or three centuries C.E., and weren’t accepted as an authoritative corpus until the late 4th century by action of various gatherings of bishops (the Synod of Hippo, 393, the Third Council of Carthage, 397).
And who wrote 2 Timothy? The letter begins “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, in keeping with the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dear son: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” But there are a good many reasons to doubt that it was Paul who wrote this letter. It doesn’t match the style of his other letters, and we can’t fit it into the sequence of his known travels as reported, for example, in Acts. Most Bible scholars take it to have been written by a follower of Paul, someone trying to copy his example. But what are we then to make of a letter that begins by telling us something that probably isn’t true?
2 Timothy is a letter with a good deal of holy wisdom in it. It is worth study and reverence. But we can hardly take it to be absolutely the literal, end-all truth because the not-Paul who wrote it, claiming he was Paul, tells us that other Scripture (not specified) is “God-breathed.”
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5-17). Jesus uses the Scriptures, which like his Jewish compatriots he would have considered holy but neither complete nor inerrant. More importantly, He invariably turns the meaning towards a new teaching. And his teachings often come in parables, the meaning of which we are led to puzzle through. His disciples were often confused and on the wrong track – the Bible tells us repeatedly. The parables do not yield their meanings easily.
So how come we to think that the Bible gives us its meanings easily and plainly to us? How can we grab a snippet of text and say “there, that’s clear,” especially when the snippet runs against the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount or the two Great Commandments? Especially when the snippet runs against the srong current of Jesus’s good news.
George Fox knew the Bible by heart as did many other early Friends. He already knew it by heart, however, when he was in his time of seeking and despair – and yet it did not suffice. When he had his epiphany on Pendle Hill, he didn’t say, “I see, the Bible is all we need. It’s a finished revelation that is utterly sufficient in all ways.” Instead he said, “Jesus has come to teach His people Himself.” We need the Holy Spirit to help us understand the Bible, a treasured book of incomparable wisdom and instruction. But to substitute the Bible for the Holy Spirit is not what Jesus has in mind when he tells us to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37), reaching back to Deuteronomy 6:5.
Revering the Bible doesn’t mean thinking it an easy look-up reference, a closed book of act-by-rote-rule instruction. Jesus came to breathe a new spirit of love into the old law.
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Comment by Mackenzie on 3rd mo. 28, 2012 at 9:46am -
Irene:
An idea I see put about frequently is to have "civil union" be the ONLY legal status for joining two people, and make it what both same-sex and opposite-sex couples get. Then leave marriage for the religions to define. Want to be joined in the eyes of both your faith community and the law? Get a marriage and a civil union. Only care about the law? Just get a civil union. Only care about the faith community? Just get a marriage.
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Comment by Forrest Curo on 3rd mo. 28, 2012 at 11:07am
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James & I agree that the best response to hostility is to try to accept it without returning it; it just isn't something we can rightly require of someone else while they're in pain from such hostility. When last I checked, there were at least 200 homeless kids on the streets of my county, thrown out of their homes, often violently. Sometimes just abandoned there. "Fat" was sometimes the reason for this; and I've seen perfectly nice people be shockingly cruel to one of their children about that condition. But being "gay" was definitely the most common reason. We really can't know what anyone else suffers from popular contempt-- and aren't entitled to downplay someone else's suffering.
To know God the way Jesus did... is not to escape all restraint. But it does bring one's relation to God far beyond law codes and regulations.
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Comment by ben schultz on 3rd mo. 28, 2012 at 1:11pm -
The image of the recent hearings on contraception come to mind here, a room full of old white guys sitting in careful judgment of womens right to their own fertility, not a woman in the room. I think that though this kind of exercise would be relevant for a Talmudic exercise, but for friends?
No wonder we have such little relevance.
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Comment by Aaron Clark on 3rd mo. 28, 2012 at 11:13pm -
Your sexuality is chosen for you at birth and cannot be changed. And the idea that any loving intellelgent God would be against something you are born with and cannot change I find makes that God out to be very stupid. The bible is not always clear on certain things and you get the bible to say whatever you want it to say. Not mention most people only believe what they believe about the bible because their were raised to believe that way.
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Comment by Ken Baxter on 4th mo. 1, 2012 at 2:59pm
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Is it not possible that what we know of what Jesus said and the Bible, as it exists today, can simply inform our religious views?? If documents were discovered tomorrow in which Jesus said he believed in fairies, would all Christians have to believe in fairies?? I, for one, have a relationship with God in which I can read Matthew 19.4 and feel zero compulsion to rag on homosexuals. But then I seldom stone shrimp eaters either.
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Comment by Aaron Clark on 4th mo. 2, 2012 at 10:00am
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Good one Ken!
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Comment by kevin roberts on 4th mo. 7, 2012 at 10:43pm -
hi thomas--
you've quoted matthew 19:4, but haven't quoted the verses around it, in which jesus makes it plain that he is discussing heterosexual divorce:
Mat 19:3
The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
Mat 19:4
And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
Mat 19:5
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
Mat 19:6
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
it seems to me that to read a judgement of homosexuality into jesus's words regarding heterosexual divorce is to ignore the plain sense of what he said. had jesus intended to make a condemnation of homosexual orientation, he could easily have done so in this conversation.
but he clearly didn't.
your use of this passage in this subject actually depends on matthew 19:5, where jesus says, " . . . for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife . . ." your interpretation of the verse is this one:
" . . . for this cause shall every man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to . . ."
but that's not what jesus said. the bible is very clear on that.
jesus very clearly stated that there are men who leave father and mother, and seek female wives.
jesus very clearly did not say that all men must do so. were that to be the case, any unmarried heterosexual men would be as guilty of sin as any homosexual.
in my opinion, there are many passages in scripture that can be used to assign homosexuality as sinful.
this clearly isn't one of them.
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Where "tempting him" comes into this... Herod Antipas has decided to marry a Hasmonean (Maccabean) princess, Miriam, in hopes that this can set up a dynasty acceptable to his Jewish subjects.
Unfortunately, the princess is already married to his brother. Hey, marrying your brother's wife is a good thing, right? Herod just tells them they're getting a divorce, and she will marry Herod. She's okay with that. But according to custom, the brother is supposed to be dead first, & the object is to give him children, not you. John the Baptist points this out in an impolite manner, and is taken off to prison, where he dies.
Asking Jesus what he thinks about "divorce," in these circumstances, isn't really about "divorce," not as a purely theoretical issue.
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Comment by Howard Brod on 4th mo. 8, 2012 at 5:54pm -
I assume Friend Thomas Kent also believes a woman should cover her head and be in subjection to her husband, and that women should not speak during worship, and that slaves should obey their masters [a command that tacitly approves of slavery], and that over-eating (glutony) is a sin [if so, it should disqualify one from pastoral service just as homosexuality does in FUM yearly meetings], and that a woman should never cut her hair, and on and on. And if you are going to use the old testament to clobber your brother, you will want to stone misbehaving children and adultering woman just to make sure you are following the Bible. There are many things in the Bible that modern people choose not to follow because time and experience has shown these things are legalistic judgements from humans and are NOT borne from the Holy Spirit, nor the Living Jesus. Quakers were persecuted BECAUSE they refused to choose following the Bible over the Holy Spirit. By what right do any modern Quakers reject that heritage to return to the legalism of Christendom.
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As I understand the one about stoning a "disobedient child." A group of rabbis-- all of whom had lost children-- got together to discuss this. "What kind of child could this be?-- that you should just take him out and stone him?"
They tried and they tried, and they just couldn't imagine anyone being that bad. "So why did Hasshem put that on in there?"
"So," they concluded, "we'd have the pleasure of this argument."
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