I think this is the crucial question that we need look at carefully in the discussion of homosexuality. The debate over what the Bible says, how we should read it, and then what we should do with it seems to be endless and loaded with impasse. I want to applaud the iscussion over at David Ker's site where many commentators have clear differences of opinion. Yet the conversation is an example of what Paul told the Colossians:
"As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."
We have too often ignored these critical instructions in our conversations about the church, and I think this discussion exemplifies that. Follow along with James McGrath here and here. Now to my most recent comment which I want to raise here for further consideration.
I think what I have learned from my dogmatic past is that evangelicalism needs a more pragmatic realism that understands the one consistent feature in the map of Christian history and that is its functional social mutability. By that I mean that what we truly believe to be absolute sin today is not the same as it was ages ago. Many still understand women not to be able to hold offices of teaching men theology or holding any position of authority over men in the church. This was transferred to a wider social and political context for most of all histories in humankind.
That women have a vital function in the ministry and can indeed hold offices of authority over men in theological matters is far more normative than ever and will continue to be more normative with succeeding generations. The same discussions about the role of slaves and women have taken place as we are now discussing concerning homosexuality. I think some perspective is needed lest we fold into some irrational progressivism where we simply assume that our age is more enlightened than previous ages. The amass of deaths at the hands of war in the 20th century alone should right dismiss that claim enough.
The argument contra my claim that complementarity should not be limited to body parts, as we know quite well that sex is for more than producing babies given our reduced infant mortality rates worldwide and increased optimal aging, is that of a “trajectory” hermeneutic. This is a fancy way of saying “assertion” without evidence. It assumes what Paul would have said in our current context and that assertion seems to take the shape of whomever is doing the arguing for a given position. Hence, Paul would have not supported even benevolent slavery today when it is quite clear that benevolent slavery was something accepted for him. Treat your slave like a brother, welcome that slave into your family. But this does not change the fact that you have authority over that slave who works for you for no wage at all other than a forced exchange of shelter and food. It seems clear that the authoritarian situation does not justify the benevolence no matter how familial it is rendered.
The point is that we make assumptions on how we read these texts based on variability of contextual matters. I have been on several sides of this argument and the turning point was not in how I understood sin, but in how I understood love and what healthy and up-building relatedness looks like. If you are unhealthily (for a measure of this term one can refer to Maslow's hierarchy among other measures of optimal health in human relationships) related to other people, you cannot be healthily related to God. Many gay persons are unhealthily related to other people and so, they are unhealthily related to God.
The question is if there is a healthy gay relationship in which one can learn better how to relate to God? I think there is and there is ample evidence from gay partnerships that this is true. So can a gay couple receive the love of Christ (which includes an ethical demand to love God and neighbor) in their relationship more fully than outside that relationship? The evidence tells us that we should affirm that claim as the evidence that any form of slavery is unjust, and women in places of theological and biblical authority over men is up-building and not destructive to the church. The alternative to the evidence seems to suggest, for instance, that such a couple must be deceived or delusional. But I submit that this judgment does not make sense because it runs contrary to any measure of relational health that we have applied here. Moreover it does not give an alternative measure to judge its veracity.
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