Monthly Archives: November 2021

The Journey’s End: Scripture and Same-Sex Relationships (Part Eleven)

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In this essay I will finish my chapter-by-chapter summary, analysis, and critique of Karen Keen’s book, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships. In this series I followed Keen’s outline, used her vocabulary, and let her frame the issues. However after today’s essay, with Keen’s argument and my analysis still fresh on our minds, I plan to reflect on the issue of same-sex relationships a bit more independently.

A New Approach?

The Framework

In chapter 8, “Imagining a New Response to the Gay and Lesbian Community,” Keen makes her final appeal for changes in the way evangelical believers relate to gay and lesbian Christians. She opens the chapter by summarizing her foregoing conclusions and urging readers to allow the following principles to inform the debate:

“Scripture interpretation requires recognizing the overarching intent of biblical mandates, namely, a good and just world.”

“Scripture itself teaches us that biblical mandates, including creation ordinances, cannot be applied without a deliberative process.”

“Evidence indicates that life-long celibacy is not achievable for every person.”

“Evidence shows that same-sex attraction is not moral fallenness; it could be understood as natural fallenness or human variation.”

Practical Options

On the basis of these four assertions, which are the conclusions to which the previous chapters have come, Keen argues that there are three ways evangelicals can embrace same-sex relationships without abandoning their evangelical faith:

First, the “traditionalist exception” view enables even those who believe that same-sex relationships are wrong to accept them as accommodations to human weakness because covenanted, loving relationships are better than promiscuity.  Second, the “traditionalist case-law” view accepts the principle that we must take into account the “overarching intent” of biblical mandates. Given that many gay and lesbian people cannot remain celibate and that their determination to live good lives would be greatly strengthen by remaining within the Christian community, traditionalists could view the relationship as morally acceptable.

Third, the “affirming” view accepts gay and lesbian relationships on the same basis as those between other-sex couples. The affirming view sees the biblical prohibitions as “prescientific” in the same way as the biblical cosmology is prescientific. The affirming view bases its acceptance of same-sex relationships not on the letter but the intent of biblical sexual regulations. For the Bible’s rules for sex are designed to prevent harm and facilitate “a good and just world.” “Same-sex relationships are not harmful by virtue of their same-sex nature,” Keen adds. They become harmful in the same way other-sex relationships become harmful, that is, when they are poisoned by betrayal, violence, coercion, deception, manipulation, and other unloving attitudes and acts.

Karen Keen’s “Personal Journey”

In the last section of the book, Keen recounts her journey from her introduction as an infant to “a small-town conservative Baptist church” to the frightening—in some ways shattering—experience in her late teens of “falling in love” with her best female friend. Keen continues her story by recounting some of the stages in her twenty-year spiritual and intellectual quest to understand herself as gay and an evangelical Christian. I will not attempt to summarize in detail Keen’s story. I could not possibly do justice to the confusion, pathos, feelings of isolation and loneliness, and suffering that at times shows through her rather straightforward account. Her book is the fruit of her intellectual journey…so far.

Analytical Thoughts

Theoretical or Practical?

From the beginning I’ve been struck with way Keen combines her intellectual arguments from biblical exegesis/interpretation and science with her pragmatic goals. In this last chapter we see highlighted her practical, pastoral side. Clearly Keen would prefer that evangelicals accept her exegetical/hermeneutical case for accepting loving, covenanted, same-sex relationships on the same basis as other-sex loving, covenanted relationships. But she is willing to tolerate the “traditionalist exception” and “traditionalist case-law” views—though they are far from ideal—as ways to achieve her practical goal of having evangelical churches allow same-sex couples to participate in the life of the church without having to deny their identities or struggle unhappily and unsuccessfully to remain celibate. Keen will not allow fanatical desire for ideological purity to stand in the way of achieving her practical aim. I am only speculating here, but perhaps she hopes that once churches allow gay relationships, even on a less than ideal basis, they may be persuaded to move on to the “accepting” view by coming to understand gay people on a personal level.

The Rhetoric of Autobiography

It is foolish as well as arrogant and uncaring to argue with someone’s telling of their story or to diminish the significance of their self-reported experiences. People feel what they feel and experience what they experience, and no one knows this better than they do. The quickest way to alienate a contemporary audience is to appear unsympathetic to anyone society has designated a victim of oppression. Hence it is almost impossible for members of officially recognized oppressed groups to resist using their stories of struggle and oppression as proof that they are on the right side of history, justice, and goodness; anyone not sympathetic with them is by that very fact on the wrong side. I appreciate very much that Karen Keen resists this temptation. Along with everyone else she knows that feeling that something is good or right or true does not make it good or right or true. Things are good or true or right independently of our private experience. To assume otherwise would destroy the very idea of morality. Nor can telling one’s story serve as proof for anything other than the subjective experience of the story teller. A listener has no rational or moral obligation to accept a story full of pathos and suffering as proof of anything other than the emotional state of the story teller. Such stories rightly evoke compassion but cannot legitimately command agreement.

It would take a hard heart indeed not to be moved by Karen Keen’s story and stories like hers. And I do not have a hard heart, and I never have. Her first church experience was not unlike my own, of a small, very traditional, and Bible-centered congregation. She wanted to become a missionary, and I wanted to preach the gospel in the church. I too made a journey through graduate study of the Bible and theology, confronting all the critical questions modern historians, biblical scholars, philosophers, and theologians raise about our faith. I am also passionate about healthy teaching in the church and the care of the little lambs in Jesus’s flock. We both published books with Eerdmans Publishing Company. I do not, however, have her experience of being a woman or of having same-sex attraction. I do not consider myself better than her on this account. I know that I am worthy only to pray the tax collector’s prayer, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” This is also my prayer and hope for everyone, including Karen Keen.

Since I read Keen’s book the first time and looked at her website, I’ve felt a great love for her. I find her story compelling in many ways. And yet, I find myself unmoved by her argument that accepting same-sex relationships is consistent with a Bible-based evangelical faith for all the reasons I’ve laid out in this eleven-part review.

Does the Origin of Same-Sex Attraction Matter or is it a Giant Red Herring? (Keen Review #10)

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This essay is the tenth part of my critical and analytical review of Karen Keen, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships.* Today I will deal with chapter 7, “Is it Adam’s Fault? Why the Origin of Same-sex Attraction Matters.”

Does the Origin of Same-sex Attraction Matter?

In chapter 7, Keen argues that one’s view on the origin of same-sex attraction matters in assessing its moral status. She considers three options on the issue of origins.

Moral Fallenness

The first view asserts that same-sex attraction is rooted in our “moral fallenness”—some form of the doctrine of original sin—that is, the universal tendency to sin inherited from Adam. In this case same-sex desire falls into the same category as other such sinful desires as lust, pride, greed, envy, and hate. Individuals are morally culpable both for the desire and the acts that gratify the desire. We are obligated not to act on these desires and to purify our hearts of them insofar as possible. Keen rejects the first option as untenable exegetically and theologically and erroneous according to the best scientific understanding of human origins. According to Keen, the story of the creation and fall of human beings in “Genesis portrays a theological and not a scientific account of human origins.”

Natural Fallenness

The second option locates the origin of same-sex attraction in “natural fallenness.” Natural fallenness refers to the divine “curse” resulting from the fall (Genesis 3) and includes sickness, death, and natural evils. On this reading, same-sex attraction falls into the same category as birth defects, chemical imbalances, abnormal brain development, genetic diseases, and other deviations from health of body and mind. Those afflicted with such ills had no choice in the matter. Keen seems to think the second option is an improvement over the first, because it does not attribute same-sex attraction to a morally corrupt nature or malicious choices. Drawing on her hermeneutical studies in previous chapters—for example, Paul’s accommodation of some single people’s inability to remain celibate—Keen argues that evangelical believers ought to accommodate this “disability” in the same way we have accommodated other “imperfections” among people. Allowing gay and lesbian people to form “covenanted relationships” for “companionship and support” would be the most helpful way to enable people “to live with the actual bodies they have.” It is clear, however, that Keen does not think that this view accounts for all the biological, psychological, and experiential data, for it implies that there is something wrong or “imperfect” with gay and lesbian people. Gay and lesbian Christians would inevitably be treated as second class citizens of the kingdom of God.

Natural Variation

The third option, clearly preferred by Keen, treats same-sex attraction as a natural variation within a population—morally neutral and non-disabling. Only about ten percent of the human population, for example, is left-handed. Historically, left-handed people were considered flawed and devious. Even in the modern era parents and therapists attempted to “fix” left-handed people. There is now in the Western world a consensus that “there is nothing wrong with being left-handed.” Keen recommends that Christians view same-sex desire in the same way as we view left-handedness, as a natural variation that consistently characterizes three to five percent of the population. It is not a sin or a curse but a “gift of difference.”

Analytical Thought

What is the force of Keen’s argument?

Keen’s argument progresses from a viewpoint that roots same-sex desire in Adam’s sin to a view that roots it in the negative effects (the curse) of Adam’s sin to a view that denies altogether the immoral or defective nature of the origins of same-sex desire. In other words, the force and direction of the argument from the origin of same-sex desire to its moral status changes as Keen’s argument progresses. As Keen presents it, the first view taints present same-sex attraction with the sinful character of its origin in Adam’s sin. The second view removes the taint of sin from same-sex attraction but leaves unchanged its status as a defect and a wound caused by the sin of Adam.

The third view, however, roots same-sex desire in undefined, chance variations within natural processes. Keen draws the following conclusion–which I have summarized in my own words–from the third view: Since the origin of same-sex desire is morally neutral, the desire itself is morally neutral, and if the desire is morally neutral, acting on the desire must also be morally neutral.

Notice how the force of Keen’s final conclusion depends on her accepting the apparent connection made in the first option between the moral status of the origin of same-sex attraction and its present moral status. She treats the first option as if it claimed to derive its knowledge of the present sinful nature of same-sex attraction exclusively from its acquired knowledge of its sinful origin. This is not true. To the contrary, traditionalists assume—whether they are aware of it or not—that the origin of same-sex attraction must be a sinful act because they already know from biblical moral teaching that same-sex intercourse and the desires that lead to it are sinful. At the risk of repetition let me repeat: the moral character of the hidden origin of a desire is revealed by the manifest moral character of the act arising from the desire—not the other way around.

If I am right about this reversal of order, Keen’s argument will not hold and her conclusion, stated in italics above, does not follow. Contrary to the direction of Keen’s logic, she can know that the origin of same-sex attraction is morally neutral only because she already knows that same-sex attraction is morally neutral on other grounds—not the other way around as her argument leads us to believe. She knows that same-sex attraction cannot be a divine curse following on the sin of Adam because she knows on other grounds that it is not a curse at all. What are these other sources of Keen’s knowledge that same-sex attraction is morally neutral? The answer to this question will have to wait for another day.

Conclusion

All three options beg the question. They assume from the beginning what they ostensibly set out to prove, moving in one giant circle. Contrary to its intentions, this chapter teaches us that speculation about origin of a characteristic cannot help us determine its present moral status. Such fallacious reasoning vitiates all three options and is correctly labeled the “genetic fallacy.”

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*Note: As a matter of fairness and honesty, I ask you not to take my restatement and interpretation of Keen’s thought as identical to her own. I’ve tried to be fair, but if you want to represent her views to others please read her book for yourself or explain that you read about her views in my essays. Also, Keen made two replies to my essays in which she points out what she considers to be misrepresentations of her views in my review. You can find her replies among the “replies” to part seven, “In the Dark All Cats are Black.”