“In the beginning was the Word…and the Word became flesh and lived among us.” (Jo 1:1-14). This Word could communicate the truth about God because “the Word was God.” God’s Word is truth by nature because it is God by nature. In contrast, our words are not by nature God and hence not by nature truth. We are subject to error. At best, words communicate accurately the fallible thoughts of the human mind from which they come. I say “at best” because the process of choosing the right words to communicate our thoughts is also fallible. Often, we are not clear on what we think, and even if we possessed inner clarity of thought, experience teaches us that words cannot perfectly reproduce our thoughts in the minds of others. Not only so, others hear our words through the filters of their own vocabularies and experiences.

Given these challenges many thinkers have observed that open-ended, personal conversation is the best way for two minds to achieve mutual understanding. The back and forth, trial and error, proposal, correction, and counterproposal method of dialogue gradually creates mutual understanding. Writing, podcasts, public speaking involve one-way communication. They are highly subject to misunderstanding, distortion, and caricature. Ideally, we would engage in conversation with everyone we wish to understand. Because the ideal is unachievable, we have to learn to read and listen carefully, analytically, and critically to one-way communications.

An author whose book I read recently drew an inference I think is unwarranted. They based that inference on the verbal similarity between two words. This author observed, quite correctly, that over the last 10 years traditionally evangelical publishers—Eerdmans, Zondervan, and Intervarsity—have started publishing books on both sides of the debate about the Christian acceptability of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living. So, the subject is debated among self-identified evangelicals. But the author inferred from the fact that the moral status of people who identify as LGBTQ+ is debated that the subject is now debatable within Bible-believing, evangelical churches.

I do not think this inference is warranted. To say that an issue is debated is to make a statement of fact apart from any judgment about its status in relation to Christian doctrine. To say that a subject is debatable is to make a claim about its legitimacy as a viewpoint that may be held under the umbrella of Christian faith. For sure, to label a matter debatable takes no position as to which side is correct. But it envisions a state in which churches must tolerate and listen to both parties in the dispute with an open mind.

Within the history of the church many issues have been designated debatable, disputable, or indifferent matters on which believers may disagree without breaking fellowship (See Romans 14 and 15; Acts 15). But which matters were debatable was itself debated! This debate (about which matters were debatable, disputable, or indifferent) turned on the distinction between matters that were essential beliefs, scruples, and practices and those that were in some way adjunct. In the end, however, the church had to make judgments, come to consensus issue by issue, and enforce those decisions as community standards.

With regard to the debate over the Christian acceptability of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living, it will take more evidence than the mere existence of a debate to prove that it is now a debatable matter within Bible-believing churches. This change from a settled to a debatable question would overturn a consensus that is unanimous in the Bible and the universal church until recently. The mere presence of a few authors that dispute that consensus does not warrant breaking with that settled teaching. They would need to convince the church that it has misread the Bible and held to a false, cruel, and destructive teaching for 2,000 years.

In my view, the claim that the issue of LGBTQ+ acceptance is a debatable issue because it is now openly debated within evangelical circles is a rhetorical ploy designed to grant legitimacy and gain a hearing for a viewpoint that has not earned that legitimacy the hard way. Hence the debate today is not only about the Christian acceptability of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living, it is a debate about this issue’s debatability. And the “debatability” of an issue cannot be decided by a few authors’ assertions but is a judgment that only the church can make. In the meantime, the church—given the prima facia teaching of Scripture and the 2,000-year consensus—has every right (and in my view is obligated) to debate with this new teaching as it does with other error and heresy.