Category Archives: biblical hermeneutics

The Wicked Bible

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In 1631, a London printer reprinted the King James Bible. Unfortunately, the typesetters made the glaring mistake that gave the Bible its name. Instead of reading “Thou shall not commit adultery” the seventh commandment reads “Thou shalt commit adultery” (Ex 20:14). In today’s essay, we will examine, not an unfortunate typo, but a determined strategy of interpretation that intentionally leaves out many “shalt nots.”

In the previous seven parts of this study, I described the scientific, philosophical and theological developments that made plausible the thesis that LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living are consistent with the moral and religious teachings of the Bible. I am not addressing non-believers; they don’t care what the Bible says. Nor am I speaking to progressive Christians; they reduce biblical authority to a mousey “me too” to the spirit of the times. I am writing to Christians who say that they accept the Bible’s authority for faith and morality but argue that the church can affirm LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living without compromising this stance.

In my recent book The Choice: Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living (Los Angeles: Keledei Publications, 2024), I analyzed and critiqued a book by Karen Keen: Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships (Eerdmans, 2018). In this book, Keen defends a thesis of the kind I am most concerned for my audience to understand and reject, that is, biblical moral teaching is consistent with LGBTQ+ affirmation.

Keen, along with other authors who defend the same thesis, begins with the tacit admission that, according to a plain reading of the biblical texts and the near universal consensus of the Jewish community and the church for more than 3000 years, the Bible appears unequivocally to condemn same-sex sexual activity. See Genesis 19:1-11; Lev 18:21-24; 20:13; 1 Cor 6:9-10; 1 Tim 1:8-11; and Rom 1:22-28.

In speaking to an audience that believes in the authority of the Bible and reads the Bible within the traditional church, Keen begins with the disadvantage of having the burden of proof. How can she hope to convince this audience of the affirming view? Clearly, she must (1) convince them that the “plain” meaning of the texts is not so plain as they first thought, and (2) if possible, she needs to shift the burden of proof from the affirming to the traditional side. Her book sets about to achieve both of these objectives.

As I come back to her book two years after I wrote my reply, I can now place her argument into the larger framework I’ve developed in this series. In sum, to achieve objective (1), she makes use of the kind of modern historical criticism I discussed in the previous essay under the rubric “Historical Study that Rejects Authority.” As you will see below, her interpretive strategy focuses our attention, not on the texts themselves, but on something behind the texts, that is, on the unspoken motives or aims of biblical moral rules. She moves from the objectivity of the text to possibilities about which we can only speculate. To achieve objective (2), she makes use of the view of reality that Galileo, Descartes, and Locke first proposed and Rousseau, the Romantics, Nietzsche, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir developed to their logical ends, that is, that human beings possess no created or natural, self-revealing essence, identity, or self. Individuals choose and construct who they become. Though Keen does not appeal directly to this postmodern idea, she invokes the private, internal experience of gay and lesbian people as a moral authority that must be respected—an idea that would have made no sense before modernity. Though Keen deals with gay and lesbian issues only, her arguments apply equally to the transgender experience as well.

In the first chapter (“The Plan”) of my book, I outlined the complete argument of her book along with its conclusion. On a macro level, the success of her argument depends on our acceptance of three interpretive principles and acknowledgement of three experiential facts. They are as follows:

 Interpretive Principle #1

The Bible’s positive moral teachings provide a vision of justice, goodness, and peace; they are intended to promote human flourishing.

Interpretive Principle #2

The Bible’s moral prohibitions are intended to forbid things that cause harm to human beings and the rest of creation.

Interpretive Principle #3

To apply the Bible’s moral teachings appropriately, we must deliberate about whether or not applying a biblical rule to a situation prevents harm and promotes human flourishing. Applications that harm people must be rejected.

Experienced-based Fact #1

Gay people do not choose to be gay, and the overwhelming majority cannot change their orientation.

Experienced-based Fact #2

Faithful, loving gay relationships do not cause harm to those involved or to the human community. To the contrary, they can display all the fruits of the Spirit listed in Scripture.

Experienced-based Fact #3

A large majority of gay people do not have the gift of celibacy and find that state deeply painful.

Conclusion

Because covenanted same-sex relationships embody justice, goodness, and human flourishing, do not cause harm to the people in the relationship or the human community, and unwanted celibacy causes great unhappiness to gay people, faithful deliberation must conclude that the Bible allows covenanted same-sex relationships.

The Wicked Bible

The chapters Keen devotes to defending the three interpretive principles aim at achieving objective (1), that is, creating doubts about the traditional interpretation of the anti-gay texts. The chapters that narrate the three experiential facts aim at shifting the burden of proof from the traditional interpretation to the affirming interpretation. Apart from the developments I explored in parts one through seven in this series—Galileo, Locke, and biblical criticism—Keen’s arguments make no sense at all. I can’t imagine anyone even thinking of them.

Such interpreters as Keen read the Bible’s “shalt not” as “it depends.” The Holy Bible becomes The Wicked Bible without changing a word.

A Clarification on the Historical Method of Bible Study

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Some readers of my recent essays on modern historical criticism may have come away thinking that I am against studying the Bible within its ancient historical context. I want to make it clear that I do not reject a historical approach to the Bible. In this brief note I want to clarify my views on this subject.

A Distinction

I make a huge distinction between (1) studying the Bible with the church of the past and present, as the accepted authority for the doctrine and life of the church, with the intention of remaining faithful to the original teaching of Jesus and his apostles and (2) studying the Bible as a historical document on par with other books, outside the church (usually in the university), and with no intention of conforming one’s mind to Jesus’s and his apostles’ teaching.

Historical Study Under Authority

It is appropriate for biblical scholars studying the Bible in way (1) to use every bit of historical and linguistic knowledge they can gain to help the church understand the canonical texts of the Bible. Such scholars seek to serve the church by helping it remain faithful to Jesus and the apostles instead of reading current culture, thought and idiosyncratic fancies into the words of the Bible. The goal is to let the texts speak again as they spoke to their original audiences. It is to respect the authority of the scriptures in the form in which the church received them. This way of studying the Bible is a theological discipline and is of relevance to the church.

Historical Study that Rejects Authority

Biblical scholars who pursue way (2) reject the authority of Scripture for Jesus’s and the apostles’ teaching and may also reject Jesus’s and the apostles’ authority itself. The picture of events portrayed in the canonical texts, they argue, must not be accepted at face value but must be interrogated. The scholar’s aim is not so much to let the texts speak as to search for a history behind or underneath or obscured by the text. Often, the purely academic scholar seeks for human origins for the ideas stated in the texts or the history of the literary composition of the texts. This form of Bible study is a humanistic discipline like others pursued in the secular university.

A Distinction Blurred

I do not deny the possibility of reading the biblical documents as of purely human origin and of humanistic interest only. All one has to do is apply the methods of humanistic study to the Bible apart from faith and submission to its authority or any interest in hearing the word of God in the Bible. One can try all sorts of hypotheses just to see how one can make them fit the data. With the right presuppositions and a vivid imagination one can “find” a purely human Jesus, a gnostic redeemer, an apocalyptic fanatic, or a violent revolutionary. One can find multiple versions of “lost Christianity” and pursue an endless variety of conspiracy theories. The humanistic approach can be quite interesting. In my graduate studies I took many courses that read the Bible in this way. Let them spin out their theories! But they have nothing to say to the church. The church wants to hear the word of God.

However, what concerns me is the influence of the humanistic approach on some biblical scholars in Christian colleges, universities and seminaries. These professors are trained in the humanistic approach to the Bible dominant in secular universities and many of them do not get clear on the difference between the reason the church studies the Bible and the reason humanistic scholars study the Bible. Hence, they fuse the legitimate historical study of the Bible as in way (1) described above with way (2). Apparently, they think that they are obligated to pursue the humanistic study (2) and teach its results to their students because they think it is the only way to apply the historical method to the Bible in a responsible way. And they think they are serving the church and strengthening the faith of their students by doing so. They are mistaken.

For the two ways are incompatible. They begin with different presuppositions and aim at different goals. They overlap in some of the data they study and the skills they employ, and these commonalities are often mistaken for overall compatibility. But that is like saying that robbing banks is compatible with the work of a police officer because the two activities make use of some of the same skills and tools!

The Devil is Always in the Details (of the Method)

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This is the sixth in our series of essays examining how the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” (Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 19), came to be taken seriously by millions of otherwise intelligent people. In this essay I will offer further critique of the historical critical method of biblical study, focusing on the four scientific/critical principles of interpretation listed in part five.

The Principles of Historical Criticism Examined

In the previous essay, I listed four general principles of the historical critical method of Bible study. Biblical scholars derived them from the new empirical/mechanical science and the rationalistic enlightenment inspired by this revolution. The pioneers of the enlightenment—Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Locke—appealed to the stunning advances made possible by the new empirical method as setting a new paradigm for progress in all areas of knowledge. We must, they contended, reject tradition, faith, authority, and common sense, as reliable ways of attaining knowledge and rely instead on our own examination of truth and fact claims. Applying enlightenment principles to the Bible demands that (1) we treat the Bible just as we treat other books, (2) in our biblical studies we rid ourselves of all dogmatic presuppositions, such as those about divine inspiration or the authority of the creeds, (3) we interpret the biblical texts within their ancient cultural, religious, and literary horizons, (4) we must not take fact or truth claims within the biblical texts at face value but must examine them and accept them only to the extent that they are supported by historical evidence.

I titled my previous essay (#5) “How Experts Stole the Bible.” These four principles justify my choosing such a dramatic title. Taken separately or together they wrest the Bible from the arms of the church and place it in the hands of individuals to be used as a quarry from which to gather materials to build their private philosophies or religions. The secular university declares itself the true interpreter of the Bible and the moral conscience of the culture—in direct and self-conscious opposition to the church. Let’s examine each principle separately.

1. Read the Bible Just Like Other Books*

There is, of course, some truth and common sense in this principle. The Bible is written in ordinary human languages with grammatical and syntactical and semantic features that characterize all literature. Its ideas are connected by logical relations and its narratives flow in ways common to literature of its type. The church has rarely disputed this. But the church has never understood the Bible to be in all ways just like other books! It is Holy Scripture! In the early centuries, martyrs surrendered their lives rather than turn over the Scriptures to the pagan authorities. In the Bible, the church hears the word of God speaking through the prophets and incarnate in Jesus Christ. The church gathered and preserved these writings because they contained the apostolic witness to the Word of God, which according to John, “we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). The church never has, does not at present, should not, and never will read the Bible just like other books! And any institution that does so cannot be the church.

2. Responsible Bible Students Must Rid Themselves of All Faith Presuppositions

The second principle of modern biblical criticism also possesses superficial plausibility, which evaporates when examined. The church looks to the Scriptures as its canon (its rule or normative standard). Of course, the church should always be open to deepening and sharpening its faith by its continual reading of Scripture. But the early church received the apostolic writings as authoritative already having an understanding of the faith received from the apostles, memorized and stated concisely in what they called “the rule of faith.”** The church has been reading the Scriptures for over 1900 years. And it keeps on hearing its “rule of faith” confirmed by every reading. The church does not read Scripture as if it had never read it before. It reads it as a community that reaches back in time, not as isolated individuals. Each generation is taught how to read Scripture and what to expect from that reading. Reading the Scriptures without presuppositions is not only impossible; it is also self-deceptive.

3. Interpret the Bible within its Ancient Cultural, Religious, and Literary Horizons.

The third principle, too, contains much truth and much danger. In general, modern people are more aware of the historical distance between the ancient world and contemporary culture than were those, for example, living in the Middle Ages. This awareness can help us hear in those ancient texts what their first readers heard and avoid reading modern ideas and customs back into those ancient texts. It can also warn us not to take the changing customs of dress and diet as binding for all times. However, there is a tendency in modern thought toward what is called “historicism,” which is the belief that we must interpret ancient texts as locked within the ideological limits of their day. Applied to the Bible, critics account for the origin of all its ideas by borrowings from the cultural, religious, and philosophical systems contemporary with it. Historicism excludes miracles, divine revelation, inspiration, and universally applicable moral and religious truth. On historicist principles Jesus must have believed in demon possession, the coming kingdom of God, the resurrection of the dead, etc., because these were the common religious beliefs of his day.

4. Never Take the Biblical Texts at Face Value

More than the others, this principle embodies the enlightenment demand that would-be rational thinkers think for themselves and examine every proposed belief, weighing its credibility in terms of the evidence that supports it. Whereas the early church received the scriptures as a precious legacy and passes them on to each new generation to be read in faith with a view to obedience, modern biblical critics assert the right—indeed the obligation— to question the early church’s judgment at every point and relitigate every sentence. And yet, the process by which the earliest church received and passed on its knowledge of Jesus and the apostolic witness is largely lost to us, except what we have in the canonical New Testament. The process cannot be recovered. But the church of the 1st through the 4th centuries assures us that the end result of the process—the New Testament—is true to Jesus and the apostolic witness. Either we trust it or we don’t.

But modern historians claim to have developed criteria by which to reexamine every detail of the New Testament and judge its historical veracity. They speak with such confidence about “what really happened” you wonder whether they may have mastered the science of time travel! However, the more you read historical critical reconstructions of New Testament history, the more you realize that it’s all speculation and guesswork based on modern notions of what is psychologically plausible, metaphysically possible, and morally and politically desirable. Moreover, scholars reach wildly different conclusions even when they use the same methods. Apart from respect for the canonical texts as they are written, there are no objective standards for interpretation.

*You might be interested in a recent article by James A. Thompson, “Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Higher Critic,” 67. #4 (2025). Restoration Quarterly. Thompson addresses the first principle: read the Bible like any other book.

**See the excellent study by the renowned church historian Everett Ferguson: The Rule of Faith: A Guide (Cascade, 2015).

Next Time: We will see how progressive Christian interpreters use the historical critical method to find justification in the New Testament for acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living.

How Experts Stole the Bible

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This is the fifth in our series of essays examining how the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” (Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 19), came to be taken seriously by millions of otherwise intelligent people. In this essay we will continue our discussion of biblical authority in hope of discovering how some Christian people could come to think that the church should affirm the whole range of LGBTQ+ identities and behaviors even though the plain sense of the biblical text and the unanimous tradition of the church forbid it.

Faith and Authority

In the previous essay I argued that the most basic reason that the earliest church received the Bible as the authority for its faith and life is that it contains the teaching and deeds of Jesus and the witness and teaching of his chosen apostles. Jesus and his apostles were authorities in the sense that you either believe them and follow them or not. This decision marked the distinction between becoming a Christian and a church member or remaining a nonbeliever and outsider. Late in the first century or early in the second, in the absence of the voices of living apostles, the written and unwritten words of Jesus and the apostles, treasured and passed on by the church, called for the same decision.

Note well that the decision to believe the Gospel was (and is) simultaneously the decision to accept the authority of Jesus and his apostles for all things pertaining to the new faith and life. Moreover, the authority of Jesus’s words and deeds and that of the teaching of the apostles was extended to those writings that the church believed preserved and passed on that teaching, the New Testament canon. That is to say, the church not only accepted the words of Jesus and the apostles as authoritative but it accepted the New Testament as the authority for the location of that inspired teaching.

As I pointed out in the previous essay, by the early part of the second century, the church had for some time been quoting the Four Gospels, Acts, and the thirteen letters of Paul as authoritative for defining Christian faith and morals. By the middle of the fourth century, all 27 books of our New Testament were recognized as canonical, that is, as authoritative. The New Testament canon of the fourth century has remained unchanged since that time—for Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches. Though Orthodox theologians tend to quote the ecumenical creeds and the Fathers as authoritative interpreters of Scripture, they recognize Scripture as the foundational authority. Roman Catholic theologians tend to argue from tradition and the authoritative teaching of the church, but they also acknowledge Scripture as the most basic norm. Protestant theologians claim to base all their doctrine and theological arguments on Scripture alone. Scripture, then, is the common language and authority for all three. It is the basis for ecumenical discussion. To refuse the authority of Scripture is to exclude oneself from the historic church in all its forms.

The Scientific Revolution Again

As I argued in Parts 2 and 3 of this series, in developing their empirical/mechanical philosophy Galileo, Descartes, and Locke destroyed the classical and common-sense belief that creation reveals itself truly—even if only partially—in the way it appears to us. They drove a wedge between the human mind and the “external” world. For Locke, human identity, the self, is not determined by one’s place in the order of creation or even by dwelling in a particular body but only by consciousness. The identity of the self is its continuity of consciousness or its consciousness of continuity. One cannot achieve scientific or reliable knowledge of nature or the self by faith, uncritical acceptance of tradition or submission to authority. One must apply the methods of science to examine all truth claims and judge for oneself. Only then can one claim to be a reasonable person.* What, then, of the authority of Scripture?

The Rise of Modern Biblical Criticism

If you’ve read the previous essays in this series, it won’t surprise you when I assert that modern biblical criticism owes its genesis to efforts to apply the methods and standards of modern science to the Bible. From the second to the seventeenth century, the Bible had been quoted, preached and studied by the church as an unimpeachable authority. In its creeds, confessions of faith and theological disputes, the church quoted the Bible as the final word on the subject under discussion. Faith, tradition and received authority had been for eighteen centuries the grounds of the authenticity, truth and certainty of the Bible.

But by the dawn of the 18th century, the philosophies of Galileo, Descartes, and Locke had made faith, tradition, and authority seem unreliable sources of knowledge. The new science demanded that all traditional truth claims be critically examined by rational/scientific methods. To refuse to examine one’s traditional beliefs critically was to risk being labeled superstitious, gullible, irrational, or in other ways backward. From what I have read, this cultural shift in what it means to be a rational person lies at the beginning of modern biblical criticism.

Of course, the Bible is not a physical object that can be studied by empirical science and expressed in mathematical language; it is a historical text. And some biblical scholars began to develop a science of biblical studies in analogy to the new science of nature.** Among the first principles of such a new historical science of the Bible as it developed in the 18th and 19th centuries are (1) read the Bible just as one reads any other book, (2) biblical studies must rid itself of all dogmatic presuppositions, such as those about divine inspiration or the authority of the creeds, (3) interpret the biblical texts within their ancient cultural, religious, and literary horizon, (4) fact or truth claims within the biblical texts must not be taken at face value but must be examined and accepted only to the extent that they are supported by historical evidence.

At first reading, these critical principles may seem to lead only to radical skepticism and unbelief. In fact, however, these four principles were used in the 18th and 19th centuries to reach conservative as well as radical conclusions and the whole range of opinion between. Conservative scholars, who trusted the church to have preserved and passed on the original and true faith, used historical critical principles in their efforts to justify the traditional faith on rational grounds. Theodor Zahn (1838-1933), for example, argued that the Four Gospels and the letters of Paul were considered canonical before the end of the 1st century. In our own day, N.T. Wright (b. 1948) carries on the project of using historical critical principles to support a conservative reading of the gospels and Paul. Other scholars of a more skeptical bent argued that much that had been accepted on faith and authority in the past could not be supported by sound historical examination. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) argued that much of the New Testament teaching about Jesus is not history at all but myth. Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) concluded that hardly any of the letters attributed to Paul were actually written by him and that much of the New Testament was written in the 2nd century. According to Baur, the development of the earliest church was driven by division between the extreme Jewish party led by Peter and the Hellenistic party led by Paul. The resolution came only in the 2nd century with the creation of the catholic church.

The story of the rise and triumph of modern historical criticism is much too long and complicated for me to tell in these essays. But I believe the essential feature of all its forms is this: since the triumph of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment based on it, a person who wishes to be known by peers as an intellectually responsible thinker must not appear to accept any truth claim on mere faith, tradition, or authority. One must, instead, place all truth claims on the witness stand for cross examination. Only those that withstand scrutiny may be accepted with intellectual integrity. As a corollary to this principle, because the number of things we can know with absolute certainty are few, the quality of beliefs may be ranked on a scale that ranges from certain knowledge through various levels of probability to the clearly false. Intellectual integrity demands that one proportion belief to the level of probability. It does not take much imagination to guess that many biblical critics severely reduced the extent of our knowledge of Jesus and the early church compared to that assumed by tradition.

Demystifying Modern Historical Criticism

The social location of the leading historical critics plays an important part in our assessment of their project. To engage at the highest level of modern historical criticism a student must gain an elite education in one of the great universities in the Western world under the supervision of a recognized scholar in the field. One must spend 10 years or more mastering ancient languages and cultures and undergoing thorough socialization into the history of the discipline. The only social location where such rigor can be sustained is the university. The modern university—especially from 1800 to 1960***—is a community of intellectuals bound together by shared academic values: respect in the community depends on adhering to the critical principle mentioned above, that is, the scholar’s conclusions must be supported by reason and evidence alone, not by faith, tradition, or authority. People who do not live within (or near) this elite subculture do not feel the same pressure to conform to this rigorous rationalism as do those whose identity and livelihood depends on its good graces. Indeed, they may find it snobbish, abstract, irrelevant, arrogant, speculative, and irreverent.

Though the number of elite biblical critics is small and they live within the cloistered walls of the university and speak an obscure language hardly anyone outside can understand, their influence extends beyond this narrow circle. (1) Many college students take religion or Bible courses during their college careers at secular or church-related universities. Not many of these courses are taught by top historical critics, but they are taught by the second and third tier students of those elite scholars. Or, students read textbooks that present the skeptical conclusions of biblical criticism as if they were established facts. Perhaps more importantly, students absorb the enlightenment skepticism toward faith, tradition, and authority. (2) University educated people, especially those who attended graduate schools, tend to adopt an elitist identity, which views people of traditional religious faith as unenlightened and backward. They couldn’t defend their elitist views or explain why faith, tradition, and authority are not good grounds for belief. They simply adopt the snobbish attitudes of their teachers. (3) Even professors of Bible, theology and ethics who teach in Christian universities and colleges for the most part received their graduate training under the influence of modern critical scholars. Some of them uncritically adopt the critical methods and conclusions of their teachers and pass them on to their students. (4) The clergy of most denominations are taught some form of historical criticism in their seminary educations and socialized to some degree into the skeptical and elitist academic attitude.

Notes

*Locke himself applied these methods to Christianity in his book The Reasonableness of Christianity.

**Many books have contributed to my understanding of this subject. One of the most important is Werner Georg Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of its Problems, trans. S. McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972).

***Beginning in the 1960s the postmodern model of the university began to compete with the modern/enlightenment model. The postmodern university abandons rationality to embrace leftist ideology and activism.

Next Time: How progressive exegetes and theologians use the principles of modern biblical criticism to ignore the plain meaning of the biblical texts and find their own thoughts behind, underneath, and beside the words of the biblical texts.

The Logic of Biblical Authority

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This essay is the fourth in our series examining how the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” (Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 19), came to be taken seriously by millions of otherwise intelligent people. In this essay we change our focus from the culture in general to the church and the Bible. Perhaps we can stretch our minds to understand how a culture that has abandon reason common sense, and knows nothing about the Bible, could fall for the new gender ideology. But now we ask how it came about that the Bible, which so plainly affirms the created order of male and female in its moral teaching, could be taken by many self-identified Christian people as affirming LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living as legitimately Christian. Today we focus on biblical authority.

The Genesis of Biblical Authority

The earliest church looked to the Old Testament, the teaching of Jesus, and the apostolic witness as the authorities that defined its identity. As we see clearly in the gospels, Jesus came to call the Jewish people to repentance in preparation for the coming kingdom of God. He spoke with a new authority, not to reject the law and prophets, but “to fulfill them” (Matt 5:17). Jesus prayed to the God of the Jews as “our father” (Matt 6:9-13). The early church proclaimed the resurrected Jesus as the long-anticipated Messiah (King) of the Jews. It understood itself as a continuation of the chosen people of God. Hence it treasured the Old Testament as one of its defining authorities.

The church, however, read the Jewish scriptures in light of the new thing that happened in Jesus. Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom, his miracles, exorcisms, welcoming of outcasts, conflict with the Jewish religious authorities…and above all his crucifixion by Jerusalem and Rome and his resurrection from the dead—all of these things signaled that God had done something new and completely unexpected in Jesus the Messiah. From now on, the people of God must gather around Jesus, trust him, listen to him, remember him, and follow him (Mark 9:7). Everything must be understood in his light: the meaning of the Old Testament, the character and purposes of God, and the moral life. Hence the words and deeds of Jesus were treasured by the church as of equal (if not greater) authority with the Old Testament.

Jesus’s words and deeds were heard and seen by many people, especially by his chosen twelve apostles. The Twelve and many other disciples, including Paul, were granted an appearance of the resurrected Jesus. It seems that strictly speaking an “apostle” is one personally commissioned and sent by the resurrected Jesus as a witness (Acts 1:21-22; 1 Cor 9:1-2). Because of their unique relationship to Jesus as his designated witnesses and the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit, the apostles possessed authority to proclaim the teaching and deeds of Jesus, to interpret the meaning of his death and resurrection, and to govern the early church with wisdom. Hence the writings that preserved the teaching and the deeds of Jesus and the apostolic teaching were received with the same reverence as the teaching they contained.

These three authorities—the Old Testament, Jesus’s teachings and deeds, and the apostolic witness and teaching—are reflected in our Bibles today: (1) Old Testament, (2) Four Gospels, and (3) Acts, the letters, treatises, and the Apocalypse. Hence the authority of the Bible to which the church appeals today is derived from the authority of Jesus and his apostles. Specifically, the Bible’s unique authority is grounded in its preservation and communication of the original teaching of Jesus and his apostles.

What is Authority?

So far, I have used the word “authority” without defining it. But it is important to get a clearer idea of this concept. Authority is a quasi-legal concept. It implies power, legitimacy, and competence. Authorities are identified as directed to a particular community or subject area—Roman law, the US Constitution, the King of Spain, etc. An authority has the first (as author) and last (as power) word on a subject. Authorities declare what is or shall be and invite trust and obedience or disbelief and disobedience; they do not propose opinions for negotiation or debate. Jesus taught “as one who had authority,” not as a mere commentator or one offering a likely opinion (Matt 7:28-29). He spoke with divine authority, which called for decision, not quibbling. The apostles spoke with authority derived from Jesus—that is from their firsthand knowledge of Jesus and their appointment and empowerment by Jesus to speak on his behalf (Matt 28:18-19).

For those who wish to be recognized as disciples of Jesus, that is, as Christians (Acts 11:16), submitting to the apostolic authority and teaching is essential. Recall what Jesus said to the seventy in the limited commission: “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). And who can forget what Jesus said to Peter: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt 16:19).

The Bible Today

The church of today appeals to the Bible consisting of the 36 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament as the authority to define and regulate all things Christian. The Old Testament scriptures collected in our Bibles were already current in Jesus’s day and were held by most Jews to be holy. As one can see from the quotations in the New Testament, the early church appealed to the full range of Jewish scriptures, the law, prophets, and writings. The story of the collection of the 27 books of the New Testament is a bit more complicated.

As far as we know, Jesus did not write down his teachings. He traveled around Galilee, Judea, and eventually Jerusalem teaching by word of mouth. His disciples followed him and listened to him. They witnessed his miracles, words, and his death and resurrection. The apostles, too, after Pentecost proclaimed and taught by word of mouth. After persecution broke out in Jerusalem, believers were scattered everywhere preaching as they went. They spread throughout Judea, Samaria, and Syria (Acts 7-9). The Christian gospel was first proclaimed, passed on, and remembered by word of mouth by faithful disciples and institutionalized in such offices as prophets, elders, and bishops. And as long as the first generation of disciples and apostles were alive there was no great impetus to write it all down. The essential gospel could be memorized and recited in a few minutes. Besides, they possessed the Old Testament with its moral teaching, prophetic admonitions, psalms, and wisdom.

Paul’s letters are our first preserved Christian documents. Paul wrote First Thessalonians around 50 AD, about 15 years after his conversion. With the exception of Romans, Paul wrote his letters to deal with problems that had recently arisen in churches he founded. He did not write with a view of preserving the history of Jesus and the church. But his letters are invaluable witnesses to the gospel and history of the early church.

It is important to distinguish between the act of writing the New Testament documents and the acts of collecting, copying, distributing and recognizing them as authoritative. As we can infer from the Prologues to the Gospel of Luke (Lk 1:1-4) and Acts (1:1-3) and a reference in Hebrews 2:3, the second and third generations began to feel the need to compile and record the teaching of Jesus and the history of the early church. Before the end of the first century Paul’s letters were being copied, collected, and distributed as witnessed by the New Testament book of 2 Peter, the letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians (95 AD) and the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (110 AD). The Four Gospels were probably collected and circulated in the late first or early second century. All were listed in the Roman Church’s Muratorian Canon (170 AD) and in Irenaeus’s list of NT books (190 AD). It seems that by the end of the second century most of the 27 books of the present New Testament were recognized as authoritative (i.e., as canonical). A few, however, were disputed and not universally recognized until later: Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter. The gospels, Acts, and the letters of Paul were never disputed and were passed on as part of the apostolic tradition. The disputed books were questioned because of doubts about their apostolic origin. By the middle of the fourth century, they were universally and formally accepted because their connection with an apostle or the apostolic tradition was acknowledged.

A few observations are in order at this point: (1) The teaching of Jesus and the witness of his apostles did not become authoritative because the church recognized them. They are foundational for the church in that the church came into being by accepting them. (2) The first century church taught and passed on the same authoritative tradition by word of mouth and written word without distinction or tension between the two. Only in the middle of the second century did questions arise about the limits of the written canon. Hence only with respect to a few writings—Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter—can it be said that the church deliberated and decided the canon of the New Testament. The heart of the New Testament canon was determined before the church became conscious of the need to set limits to the canon. (3) In this process—whether informal and unself-conscious or formal and self-conscious—the authority of the oral and written tradition derived from the divine authority of Jesus’s words and deeds and his designated witnesses, the apostles. Hence the authority of our Bible derives from its role as the unique deposit of the tradition of Jesus’s words and deeds and the apostolic witness to Jesus.

Next Time: we will pursue the questions: do our Bibles perform this function, and how do we know this?

Push Back and Lift Up: A Review of Two New Books on Marriage, Sex, and Gender

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Today I want to recommend two books devoted to a topic that has increasingly occupied my mind of late:

Rubel Shelly, Male & Female God Created Them: A Biblical Review of LGBTQ+ Claims. Joplin, MO: College Press, 2023. PP. 426.

Rubel Shelly, The INK is DRY: God’s Distinctive Word on Marriage, Family, and Sexual Responsibility. Joplin, MO: College Press, 2023. PP. 182.

The Revolution

Before 2010, I thought most authors advocating the Christian legitimacy of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living were liberals or progressives located in such mainline denominations as the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Disciples of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. After 2014, however, a chorus of authors claiming to be evangelical have written an avalanche of works urging churches to affirm gay and lesbian relationships as morally equal to traditional marriage. And they say they know this is right because the Bible tells them so. This new development demands a new response from authors holding to the traditional/biblical view of sex and marriage. Does the Bible really support affirmation of LGBTQ+ identities and gay and lesbian marriages? If so, how did the ancient people of God and the church get it wrong all these years? Does the Bible define marriage exclusively in terms of “covenant fidelity” and not also in terms of sexual complementarity?

The Author

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of books are published every year. I can read only a few of them. But when Rubel Shelly asked me to read pre-publication forms of these two new books, I agreed immediately. I knew that these books would be high quality, and I was not disappointed. I’ve known Shelly for over 50 years. He is a man of remarkable intelligence, learning, experience, courage, and integrity. He has served the church in roles of preaching minister, college professor, and college president. At present, he is Teaching Minister at the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood Tennessee. The first book, Male & Female, is longer and more scholarly than the second, though not out of reach for any serious reader. It will be very useful as a college text or as a resource for ministers and elders. The second book, The INK is DRY, is written for popular audiences and would serve well for a church group study. Below are the two endorsements I wrote for these books.

For Male and Female God Created Them:

I wish I could put a copy of Male and Female God Created Them in the hands of every Christian pastor, minister, teacher, and counselor! As many Christian leaders have come to realize, the LGBTQ+ challenge is the question of our age. We must meet this challenge! And Male and Female God Created Them is the book for just such a time as this. Brilliant! Penetrating! Courageous! Yet… fair, measured, and compassionate. Shelly’s analysis and critique of the “affirming” position blows away the rhetorical dust and smoke generated by biblical revisionists and gets to the heart of the matter. His positive explanation and defense of the “traditional” (that is, biblical) view of marriage and sex is the best I’ve read in a long time. If you have time to read only one book on this subject, read this one! Then read it again!

For The INK is DRY:

Are we autonomous animals whose sole end is pleasure or created images of God whose end is to become like God in true love and holiness? The Scriptures clearly affirm the latter. Some contemporary interpreters treat the Bible as if it were written in erasable ink or even in pencil. For Rubel Shelly, however, The Ink Is Dry. Shelly guides us in a study of the most significant texts in the Old and New Testaments that deal with same-sex sexual behavior. He sets these passages in their historical contexts and deals with the clever, and often deceptive, maneuvers of interpreters who dispute their commonsense meanings. I especially appreciate the way Shelly places these passages in the context of God’s beautiful creational design for marriage between man and woman. I highly recommend The Ink is Dry to preachers, elders, college students, youth leaders, teachers, counselors, and anyone else concerned about the moral challenges facing the church today. Readers will find it useful for group and individual study.

Recommendation

Ministers, church leaders, ordinary members, and most of all, the younger generations of believers are bombarded by the secular culture—and increasingly by many in the church—with messages challenging and even ridiculing the biblical/traditional views of sex and marriage. If you want help pushing back against this wave of criticism, misinformation, and temptation, read and study Shelly’s books. But Shelly not only pushes back against its distortions, he also lifts up the beautiful ideal of loving, faithful, life-long marriage between one man and one woman. And that rare combination makes these books “must reads.”

Interpreting the Bible the “Humble” Way? A Book Review

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This morning I read Karen R. Keen’s new book, The Word of a Humble God: The Origins, Inspiration, and Interpretation of Scripture (Eerdmans, 2022). Readers of this blog may remember that in September and October 2021 I wrote an extended review and response to her earlier book, Scripture, Ethics & the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships (Eerdmans, 2018). In that earlier book, Keen argued that properly interpreted Scripture allows for acceptance of covenanted, loving same-sex marriages. Her book made a six-part argument. Central to this argument was her view of biblical interpretation:

  • The Bible’s positive moral teachings provide a vision of justice, goodness, and peace, and they are intended to promote a just, good, and flourishing world.
  • The Bible’s moral prohibitions and limitations are intended to forbid things that cause harm to human beings, human community, and the rest of creation and to prevent heartache and destruction from disrupting human flourishing.
  • To interpret and apply the Bible’s positive and negative moral teachings in keeping with their intended purposes, we must deliberate about whether or not applying a specific biblical rule to a particular situation prevents harm and promotes justice, goodness, and human flourishing. Interpretations and applications that harm and inhibit human flourishing must be rejected.
  • Gay and lesbian people do not choose to be gay or lesbian, and the overwhelming majority cannot change their orientation.
  • A large majority of gay and lesbian people do not have the gift of celibacy and find such a state lonely and deeply painful.
  • Therefore:
  • Because loving, committed same-sex relationships embody justice, goodness, and human flourishing, do not cause harm to the people in the relationship or the human community, and unwanted celibacy causes great harm and unhappiness to gay and lesbian people, faithful deliberation and application must conclude that the Bible allows and even blesses covenanted same-sex relationships.

Reading the biblical texts that condemn same-sex activity in view of these rules of biblical interpretation, Keen concludes that we should not apply these texts to covenanted, loving same-sex relationships. To do so would not promote justice, goodness, and peace but would cause harm and heartache and disrupt human flourishing. These texts condemn only exploitative same-sex relationships.

In a brief email exchange with Keen in 2021, I learned that her new book The Word of a Humble God was forthcoming. I expected that this book would explain and defend the interpretative method she used in her 2018 book. And in a sense my expectation was confirmed, but her argument moves in a long, roundabout way and never actually mentions same-sex relationships. In what follows, I do not provide a full review of the book. My goal, rather, is to isolate and examine what I take to be its essential point.

The book is divided into three parts, The Making of the Bible, Inspiration, and Interpretation. Part One contains four chapters and tells the story of the composition of the Bible in the way one might hear it in a introductory course in a progressive or liberal seminary. The Bible must be understood within its Ancient Near Eastern religious, cultural, and literary context (Chapter 1). It is not the work of one author but the result of community experience and a cooperative effort of reflection, oral tradition, writing, and editing (Chapter 2). The Bible was “not produced in one setting…Scripture developed over time, with later scribes updating and adding their contributions to it” (p. 58). The Bible contains many voices that reflect different contexts and perspectives (Chapter 3). Even the “final” form of the Bible was fixed in a process of assessment and decision, and different branches of Christianity (Orthodox, Ethiopic, Roman Catholic, and Protestant) do not agree on the exact extent of canonical Scripture (Chapter 4).

Part Two deals with inspiration. In three chapters, Keen explains her view of inspiration and differentiates it from other views. She first distinguishes between revelation and inspiration. Revelation “is God’s eternally active presence disclosing the divine Self in various ways” (p. 85).  Inspiration “is how that revelatory communication occurred” (p. 85; Emphasis original). Keen lists six views of inspiration, the last of which is her own. She labels her view the “Divine-Humility View.” She states it as follows:

The Bible is the product of God’s humility in sharing power with human beings. It reflects God-given human agency in collaboration with the Creator (p. 86).

The humble God “inspires” the Bible by “collaborating” (p. 99) with humans and working in a hidden way through their experiences to produce the history that culminated in the Bible.

I read and reread this chapter and I still do not know what Keen means by “inspiration,” how she knows that God inspired the Bible, or even why she needs the word “inspiration” to name the mysterious process to which she refers. In Keen’s theory, God’s working seems so hidden that one could never distinguish a product of divine inspiration from a purely human work. And God’s working seems so universal that it becomes difficult to explain how the Bible differs from other modes of divine communication: nature, other religions, philosophy, or inner illumination.

In Part Three, building on her previous chapters, Keen takes up the subject of interpretation. Interpreting the Bible in view of the divine humility involved in its production requires us to come to the text with humility. God hides in the humanity, diversity, and tensions within Scripture. Only as we approach Scripture with humility can we discern God’s word and will. Humility is the gateway to the meaning of Scripture:

The hermeneutical key, then, is the humility of God and our imitation of it. God shares power and serves us. To know God is to do the same. If the Bible reading does not result in using our agency to elevate and serve others, we aren’t doing it right. Any approach to interpretation can be used for selfish ambition; the right reading is the one that embodies humility (p. 173, Emphasis added).

In her 2018 book Scripture, Ethics & the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships, Keen set forth some hermeneutical rules, which I quoted above. We should, she argues, interpret Scripture in view of its divine intention, that is, God’s desire to promote justice, goodness, and human flourishing. We should never interpret Scripture in a way that causes harm, heartache, and destruction. In this book (The Word of a Humble God), she attempts to show that even the mode in which God inspired the Bible models humble love and a servant heart, and it shows that this humble love is what God wants from us. Hence the purpose of Scripture is to model and evoke humble love. Humility is the interpretive key to Scripture.

Although in The Word of a Humble God Keen does not apply her hermeneutics of humility to the question of same-sex relationships, the kinship to the hermeneutics developed in Scripture, Ethics & the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships is obvious. All that is missing is the argument that the traditional reading of Scripture as condemning all forms of same-sex sexual relationships does not embody humble love. An interpreter formed in humble love would not read the Bible in a way that causes unhappiness, loneliness, and shame to gay and lesbian people.

I do not object in principle to the hermeneutics of humble love. The Bible clearly teaches that disciples of Jesus should be both humble and loving. Scripture should not be used as an instrument of torture. However, I object to Keen’s implication that any interpretation of Scripture that causes unhappiness and shame in someone is for that reason alone wrong. This principle is too broad to be of any practical help. In many cases helping people to recognize and repent of their wrong and destructive behaviors–even if it causes them to be sad or angry–can be an act of profound humility and deep love. The question, then, turns not only on whether an interpretation causes someone to be unhappy but on whether the condemned behavior is wrong.

Church, Tradition, and the Burden of Proof (The Bible and Christian Ethics, Part Five)

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Developing a clear understanding of how to apply the Bible to morality requires us to get clear on a few more preliminary matters before we enter into a discussion of the morality of same-sex intercourse and marriage and of gender fluidity. Otherwise we will be talking past each other. It is not as easy as looking in a concordance to find texts relevant to the topic under discussion.

Community

There is no use in quoting the Bible as an authority on moral issues to people who do not accept its authority. Hence the first clarification we must make is about the community to which we are speaking. Are we speaking to the Christian community, the church, or to the world? In other words, are we speaking to people who accept the authority of the Bible for their faith and practice, so that we can believe they are committed to accepting its moral teaching once they become clear what it is? Are we speaking to people who want to be part of that body and benefit from its faith, collective experience, and reflection? Otherwise we are wasting our time engaging in searching the scriptures for their teaching and engaging in exegesis and interpretation. Why expend energy working to understand the Bible’s moral teaching with people who don’t care what it says unless it confirms their preconceived opinions. We may find ourselves having serious disagreements even with those who say they affirm Scripture’s authority.

In this series, I am speaking to the Christian community. In this essay I am speaking to believers who hold to the traditional understanding of the moral status of same-sex intercourse…to encourage and strengthen you.

Tradition

As I hinted above, simply agreeing that the scriptures are “authoritative” (or “inspired,” “inerrant” or “infallible”) does not settle the issue of what the scriptures actually teach on a moral issue. Even people who claim to accept biblical authority differ on some issues. How, then, do we discover what the Bible teaches? Let’s remember what the goal of Christian ethics is: to articulate the moral rules the Christian church is obligated to live by and teach to its young and its converts. A Christian ethicist cannot merely speak from her or his wisdom or private opinion. They speak to, for, and with the Christian community about what that community is obligated to practice and teach. The church existed, lived, and taught about morality long before our generation. It has spent 2,000 years reflecting on what it means to live as a Christian according to the scriptures. Many wise, brilliant, and good Christian people have lived and thought about moral issues. The knowledge and wisdom of the church—what has been called “the mind of the church”—about the nature of the Christian life is embodied in its tradition. If the church is confronted by a Christian ethicist who wishes to argue against the consensus of its moral tradition—that is, what it has believed for 2,000 years is the teaching of the scriptures—the church is fully justified to place on such a person a heavy burden of proof.

On the issues of same-sex intercourse and marriage and gender fluidity, the church is fully justified in being extremely skeptical of the argument made by some individuals that it has been wrong all these years in its understanding of what is right and good and of its understanding of the teaching of the scriptures. The church does not bear the burden of proof here. And if you are unmoved by the arguments for the Christian legitimacy of same-sex marriages and for blurring the distinction between male and female, you are not obligated as a Christian to accept diversity of opinion and practice on these issues. If you wish to trust the 2,000 year consensus of tradition—and the plain meaning of the scriptures—on these issues above the sophistic exegesis and interpretation and appeals to emotion of its critics, you have every rational, theological, and moral right to do so. Do not be intimidated. You are not obligated to refute the critic’s arguments or prove tradition correct before you can continue to believe and live as you have been taught by the church.

The Bible and Christian Ethics (Part One)

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In my recent eleven-part review of Karen Keen, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships, many of points of disagreement focused on the different ways Keen and I understand how the Bible should be interpreted and applied to the issue of same-sex relationships. The root of our disagreement on this particular issue of interpretation and application lies in part in disagreements about how Scripture may be used properly in theology and ethics in general.

With this essay, I will begin a short series addressing the issue of the proper use of Scripture in Christian ethics. I plan to deal with such questions as the following: Is the Bible the exclusive source for our knowledge of good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral? Does the Bible teach morality by means of specific commands, narratives, or general principles? Are the Bible’s moral commands right because it commands them or does it command them because they are right? Does the Bible permit whatever behaviors it does not explicitly exclude? How does the moral teaching of the Old Testament relate to the moral teaching of the New Testament? In what sense is the Bible an authority for moral teaching? What part does tradition play in interpretation? How do insights from modern psychology or science or culture relate to biblical morality?

However before we can address these important questions effectively, I believe we need to set the issue in its broadest context and develop a method for dealing with it in a systematic way. Let us, then, address a more fundamental question first: What is the proper use of the Bible in constructing our understanding of God? The answer we give to this question will illuminate our path toward answering the question about the proper use of the Bible in Christian ethics.

The Bible and the Doctrine of God

To deepening our understanding of God, we need to answer three questions: (1) Is there a God? That is, is there any sort divine reality? (2) What is God? What are the qualities or attributes that belong to the concept of God? (3) Who is God? What is the divine character and identity, and what are God’s attitudes toward human beings and his expectations of them?

These three questions are interrelated. The answer you give to one will somewhat determine the answers you give to the others. Nevertheless, there is an order from general to specific, so that those who disagree in their answers to (2) and (3) may agree on (1). And there can be a large area of agreement about the divine qualities (2) without agreement about the divine identity and character (3).

It should be obvious that the Bible is not the exclusive source for belief in God. People believed in God, gods, or some divine reality before and apart from the biblical history. The Bible itself presupposes and many times acknowledges this. Let’s consider the Bible’s relevance to each of these questions.

Is There a God?

Human beings have a tendency to believe in a divine reality, based in part on the existence, qualities, and impressive powers of nature. The Bible never tries to prove that there is a divine reality. Nor does it contest the legitimacy or basis of other nations’ belief in a divine reality. The debate focused on two other issues, the nature and the identity of the divine reality. In view of this fact, it would be a mistake for us to base our belief in a divine reality exclusively on the Bible and argue that people who believe in God on other grounds are mistaken! Of course, the witness of the Bible contributes to our belief in a divine reality, but it is not the only grounds for belief. If God delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery and raised Jesus from the dead, God indeed exists! But belief in God’s deliverance of Israel and Jesus’s resurrection are themselves contested, and it is easier to believe in the Exodus and the resurrection if you already believe in God.

What is God?

What are God’s attributes? What does it mean to be divine? Again, the very fact that people before and apart from the influence of the Bible believed in a divine reality shows that they had some sort of concept of the divine. In every case, the divine is of a higher order of being than human beings and the rest of nature: the divine is the creative, knowing, immortal power behind and above nature. The areas of theological belief contested between ancient Israel and other peoples were the unity, universal lordship, and exclusive divinity of God in opposition to the many nature gods of the nations. Also, there is within Greek philosophy a line of reasoning that leads to the one most perfect and eternal reality. The thought of Plato and Aristotle and many of their successors tends in this direction.

Hence it would be a mistake to base our understanding of the divine attributes exclusively on the Bible and deny that outsiders possess any true beliefs about the divine nature. For the Bible itself does not deny but assumes that those outside the Bible’s influence have some truth in their concept of God (see Acts 17). The Bible contributes significantly to our understanding of the divine nature: there is only one God, the creator and lord of all. Especially significant is the New Testament’s inclusion of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit within God’s life as the eternal Trinity and its redefinition of God’s power and wisdom in view of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. These differences redefine but do not cancel the pre-Christian view of divine power and wisdom.

Who is God?

What is the divine character and identity, and what are God’s attitudes toward and expectations for human beings? The biblical answer to this question diverges more from the answers given by other ancient religions than its answer to the first two questions. Nevertheless, many ancient peoples believed that their god was good and just—at least to them. The majority of Greek philosophers argued that the divine nature is purely good and above anger and jealously. For the most part the pagan gods’ identities were determined by their connections to nature and its powers and cycles.

In the Old Testament, God is identified as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He bears the Name YHWH (the LORD). He chose Israel, delivered her from Egypt and its gods, and made the covenant with her. He is faithful to his covenant promises and exhibits loving kindness and mercy. He is holy and righteous in all he does. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ becomes the place where we look to see the divine character and identity and to know God’s attitudes toward and expectations for human beings. This center then reorients all our acts of religion toward God.

Conclusion

The uniqueness of the Christian doctrine of God does not lie in its affirmation of a divine reality or in its assertion that God is the powerful, wise, eternal, and immortal Creator. Its uniqueness rests in its distinct appropriation of the Jewish understanding of the divine identity developed in the history of God’s dealings with the people of God as witnessed in the Old Testament. Specifically, Christianity directs our attention to the words, deeds, faithfulness, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the source of our deepest knowledge of God’s character and attitude toward human beings, his expectations of us and the destiny he has planned for us. Beliefs about God derived from other sources, though not rejected as false, are transformed by their new relationship to Jesus Christ.

In future essays I plan to apply a method to the issue of the Bible and Christian ethics similar to the one I used in this essay.

The Art of Persuasion and the Debate about Same-Sex Relationships—A Review Essay (Part Eight)

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Today I will continue my review of Karen Keen, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships.* However before moving on to chapter 6, “The Question of Celibacy for Gay and Lesbian People,” I want to discuss a methodological issue that will become increasingly important as we reach the final phases of Keen’s argument.

Who Bears the Burden of Proof?

The Bible-Believing Audience

Who bears the burden of proof, Keen or the traditionalist? In a court of law in a criminal case, the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The prosecutor bears the “burden of proof.” There is no logical law, however, that says the one who affirms a proposition (for example, “the defendant committed the crime,” or “God exists.”) bears a greater burden of proof than one who denies that proposition. For to deny the proposition “God exists” is logically equivalent to affirming the proposition, “God does not exist.” In the same way, there is no logical law that says defendants are more likely to be innocent than to be guilty. The reason prosecutors bear the burden of proof is that in our culture we believe that it is morally preferable to let a guilty person go free than to punish an innocent one. Hence by demanding that the prosecution bear the burden of proof we increase the level of our certainty that justice will be served. Who bears the burden of proof in the discussion in which we are now engaged, the one who affirms the proposition, “Same-sex relationships are morally acceptable” or the one who denies this proposition? Logically speaking, there is no distinction in the level of evidence required to affirm or to deny this proposition. Who bears the burden of proof? is not a logical question at all but a rhetorical one, dependent on the makeup of the audience the speaker wishes to persuade.

Keen’s target audience of bible-believing evangelicals approaches her book with the presumption that the Bible teaches that same-sex intercourse is immoral and that the ecumenical church has held this view for 2,000 years without dissent. Keen acknowledges this rhetorical situation and argues as if she bears the burden of proof, for on the face of it the Bible and tradition stand overwhelmingly against her contention. She has an uphill climb, and it seems that she is clear about that.

Because Keen has willingly accepted the burden of proof and argues accordingly, I do not as a critic need to accept the responsibility of defending the opposing proposition (that is, “same-sex relationships are not morally acceptable”) to fulfill my duty of dealing with Keen’s argument responsibly. All I need to do is rebut her case. If you are an evangelical who holds the traditional view of same-sex relationships and Keen cannot move you to reject or doubt that position, you have no logical, rhetorical, or moral duty to explain why you remain unmoved.

The Progressive Audience

When the audience is comprised of progressives or simply of a cross-section of popular American culture, the rhetorical situation is completely reversed. Within the last decade, beginning in about 2010, a consensus formed in American and other Western cultures that places gay and lesbian relationships on an equal footing with traditional married couples. In 2021, anyone who argues in a public forum for the traditional view of same-sex relationships bears an insurmountable burden of proof. The biblical teaching on same-sex relationships carries no weight at all. Arguments from natural law or physical complementarity or reproductive capacity are met with incredulity, if not derision. Progressive culture has decided that the self-attested experience of gay and lesbian people—also of transgender people—is the highest authority possible for deciding the issue. Anyone who contests this self-authenticating experience or who refuses to draw the correct conclusions from this testimony can do so only from irrational prejudice, hatred, or fear. Within our culture, expressing traditional views on same-sex relationships corresponds to speaking blasphemy in theocratic cultures and engenders the same sort of response. Under these conditions and with this audience, argument is impossible, dissent is forbidden, and silence provokes suspicion.

A Nagging Question

Before I take up the last three chapters of the book, I need to ask a question to which I will return in my examination of those chapters. Keen presents her arguments as founded on–or at least consistent with–the same view of biblical authority as that held by her evangelical audience, and she seems to accept the burden of proof in relating to that audience. But I wonder how much the plausibility of her argument depends on evangelicals having absorbed to one degree or another the progressive assumption that the self-authenticating experience of gay and lesbian people is the final court of appeal when it comes to the moral acceptability of same-sex relationships. Would Keen’s interpretive strategy and novel treatment of biblical texts possess any plausibility with evangelicals were it not for the influence of progressive culture on them, that is, were they not already disposed to find her arguments plausible?

The social pressure on evangelicals to conform to progressive orthodoxy is powerful, pervasive, and relentless. They face it in their schools and colleges, in the media, in the workplace, and in law. There is no escape, no respite. It takes extraordinary clarity and strength to accept social marginalization as the price of remaining faithful to the Christian vision of life. And Keen offers a simple way out of this difficulty: you can keep your evangelical piety, your Trinitarian orthodoxy, and your doctrine of Scripture while joining progressive/popular culture in celebrating same-sex relationships. I have no doubt that this solution will appeal to many evangelicals, especially to younger generations.

Does Keen consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or instinctively, overtly or subtly appeal to those sensibilities and that desire for a way out? The cultural wind is clearly at Keen’s back. To what extent does she take advantage of it to move her audience toward her position? These questions have been eating at me from the beginning.

*I want to remind the reader again that my choice to review Karen Keen’s book is a matter of convenience. I looked for the right book to serve as a springboard for me to discuss these issues in detail. After examining many others, I decided that Keen’s book would served this purpose very well. My goal is not to chop Keen into little bits. I hope she takes my choice as a complement. There are not many books to which I would devote such thought as I have put into this one.