Category Archives: Jesus and Marriage

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.”

The Real Jesus—A Progressive Humanist?

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In the previous three essays I have been addressing the problem of people who claim to be Christians but wittingly or unwittingly use Christian words primarily to celebrate the progressive agenda of liberation of the self from all oppressive structures, political, religious, social, moral, and natural. They give the impression that Jesus would fit right into progressive culture. And if one carefully selects sayings and stories from the Bible and places them in the progressive narrative, such a view seems plausible to people ignorant of the whole story. But things look very different if we reverse the procedure and think about ethics and salvation from within a full biblical picture of Jesus Christ and the nature and destiny of humanity. Context is everything.

The Real Jesus of the New Testament

According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is Lord, Messiah, and Savior. He is the definitive answer to the questions, “Who is the true God?” (John 1:18, 14:9, 1 John 5:20; 2 Cor 4:6) and “What is the nature and destiny of human beings?” (1 John 3:1-3; Phil 3:21; 1 Cor 15:49). He is the Word of God who is God, who was with God in the beginning, and through whom God created all things (John 1:1-5; Heb 1:1-3; 1 Cor 8:6). He is the Savior, who through his death and resurrection saved us from sin, death, and the devil. In him God reconciled the world to himself “not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:18-19). In the end, everything in heaven and on earth will be unified in Christ (Eph 1:10). In sum, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), the purpose of creation and providence, the means of salvation, and the consummation of all things in which God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

Unless they are ignorant or are being disingenuous, anyone who claims to be a Christian should be willing to confess the New Testament teaching summarized in the previous paragraph. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is the measure of all our knowledge of God and of every dimension of our relation to him. To be a Christian is to be one under authority, to submit one’s mind and heart to the true teacher of what is right and good. Jesus made this clear many times: whoever claims Jesus as their guide must “deny themselves and take up their cross” and follow him (Mark 8:34). They must obey everything he taught (Matt 28:20; Heb 5:9). Already with this step, however, we stand in complete contradiction to progressive humanism, which will admit no other will or external order to which we must conform.

Jesus and the Law

Jesus’s teaching cannot be reduced to a few platitudes about love, tolerance, acceptance and belonging. Jesus showed the typical Old Testament prophetic ethics of care for the poor and the oppressed. But he did not exempt the poor and oppressed from the commandments. Following in the wake of John the Baptist, Jesus also preached “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt 4:17). The one whom Jesus called “your father in heaven” is the God of Israel. Jesus fully and without hesitation acknowledged that the Old Testament law embodied God’s will and human righteousness:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:17-20).

In the following chapters, known as the Sermon on the Mount, far from liberalizing the law, Jesus intensified it and demanded internal as well external obedience. The law against adultery was expanded to include lust and divorce. The command not to murder was extended to hatred and harsh speech. Jesus ends with a warning to his audience to build their lives on his teaching or risk calamity in the day of testing (Matt 7:26-27).

Jesus criticized the Pharisees for focusing on externals and extra biblical traditions not because they oppressed our autonomy or made us feel uncomfortable but because they voided the original divine commands. When he spoke of genuine evils he made a very traditional list:

“For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person” (Mark 7:21-23).

Jesus the Obedient Son

Jesus set an example of obedience to his father in heaven and demanded obedience from his disciples. He prayed in the garden for exemption from suffering and death but submitted his will to that of the father (Matt 26:39). Paul holds up Jesus’s attitude toward the will of God as a stance all believers should follow (Phil 2:5-8; cf. Heb 5:8):

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

Jesus: Not a Progressive Humanist

I could continue indefinitely with this line of thought showing that Jesus does not fit the image of a modern progressive. Only with great distortion and huge omissions can his teaching and his example be used to support this view. Jesus was a faithful Jew. He affirmed the biblical framework for understanding our duties to God: God, creation, moral law, providence, righteousness, judgment, and salvation. Within this framework, human beings are God’s creatures made in his image. They depend on the Creator for their existence and sustenance. They owe God thanks and worship. God’s wisdom and will are displayed in the created order. Hence human beings should trust, obey, and love God. God is the designer of human nature and therefore the author of the moral law, known in creation by reason, in the law and the prophets, and in the teaching, action, and example of Jesus Christ.

Within the progressive humanist framework, attitudes of worship, faith, humility, trust, confession, obedience, repentance, conformity, and submission are rejected as self-loathing born of internalized oppression. Within the Christian story, however, they are pathways to freedom and wisdom and salvation. They are characteristics of a good person. From a biblical perspective, attitudes of rebellion, defiance, self-indulgence, transgression, and self-assertion are judged to be ungrateful, self-destructive, foolish, and sinful. But within the progressive value system they are celebrated as heroic, virtuous, enlightened, and right. They are evidence of self-respect and authenticity.

Conclusion

These two frameworks are irreconcilable. Jesus’s observation concerning the love of money applies equally to the choice between the biblical and the progressive narratives:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matt 6:24)

Hence it is completely illegitimate to quote Jesus in an argument designed to deny the moral law, efface the order of creation, or nullify the commandments. To reject the biblical framework within which Jesus lived and taught while quoting him in support of the progressive agenda is to reject the real Jesus and invent another.

Two Views of Scripture and Same-Sex Relationships—A Review (Part Four)

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In the fourth installment of my review of Karen Keen’s book on scripture and same-sex relationships, I will take up chapter three, “Key Arguments in Today’s Debate on Same-sex Relationships.”

The Clash of the Titans

Keen constructs this chapter as a debate between traditionalists and progressives about the biblical view of same-sex relationships. It focuses specifically on the question of the significance of “gender and anatomical complementarity” for the issue. In previous chapters Keen concluded that traditionalists and progressives agree that the Bible condemns same-sex relationships for a variety of reasons–idolatry, coercion, and exploitation. But they disagree on the crucial issue of whether or not the Bible forbids same-sex relationships because of their lack of “gender and anatomical complementarity” and requires such complementarity for legitimate marriage. The debate turns on the interpretation of six texts: Genesis 1-3; Matthew 19:1-6; Mark 10:1-9; Romans 1; Ephesians 5:22-32; and Revelation 19:7-9.

Keen sets out the traditionalist argument against same-sex relationships in four theses and the progressive case in five theses:

Traditionalist Arguments

The Bible teaches that “gender and anatomical complementarity” is an essential feature of legitimate marriage because…  

  1. “Heterosexual marriage is a creation ordinance, and therefore not culturally relative” (Genesis 1:27; 2:24; Matt 19:4-6).
  2. “Marriage is ordered toward procreation, but procreation is not required to validate marriage” (Gen. 1:28).
  3. “Same-sex desire is the result of the fall” (Romans 1; Genesis 3).
  4. “Heterosexual marriage is a living icon or a symbol of the union of Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:25; 29-32; Revelation. 19:7-9)

Traditionalist arguments appeal in a straightforward way to the texts they quote: The Bible obviously prohibits same-sex intercourse and commends marriage as a God-sanctioned covenant, which it never contemplates as anything other than a union of male and female.

Therefore…

The Bible teaches that “gender and anatomical complementarity” is an essential feature of legitimate marriage.

Progressive Counter Arguments

The Bible does not teach that “gender and anatomical complementarity” is an essential feature of legitimate marriage because…  

  1. “Covenant fidelity, not sexual differentiation, is the foundation of biblical marriage.”
  2. “Procreation is minimized in the New Testament.”
  3. “Paul’s use of “unnatural” (para physin) in Romans 1 must be understood in his historical context.”
  4. “Romans 1 does not describe most gay and lesbian people.”
  5. “Same-sex relationships can symbolize the union between Christ and the church.”

The cumulative force of the progressive theses is mostly negative. They propose exceptions and alternative explanations to the traditional interpretations, thereby creating doubt about traditionalists’ exclusive claims. Newly formed doubt and alternative explanations wedge open the possibility that “gender and anatomical complementarity” may not be an essential feature of legitimate marriage. At this point affirming same-sex relationships as biblically legitimate is a mere possibility. It needs further support to increase its credibility. Keen offers that support in succeeding chapters.

Analysis

1. This chapter operates on two levels. Our attention is drawn first to the debate between traditionalists and progressives. Although Keen denies that she fits in either camp, she nevertheless uses a progressive voice—rather than her own—to represent the viewpoint she accepts. Why? Throughout the chapter Keen’s invisible hand is at work using this debate for her own purposes. But it is not until the next chapter that she tells us that the debate between traditionalists and progressives ends in a “stalemate.” This conclusion opens space for Keen to make her own contribution, which she does in the rest of the book.

2. There may be, however, another reason Keen uses the progressive voice to critique the traditionalist argument. Or, if not a “reason,” an effect. Most Christian defenses of same-sex relationships have been articulated by progressives. Their rejection of biblical authority, embrace of historical relativism, and adherence to theological liberalism gives them greater freedom to question even the plain meaning of the Bible and look for alternative interpretations. Keen does not wish to be associated with this aspect of progressivism. However, she uses the imaginative work of progressives to put these alternative interpretations into our minds. It is an open question, however, whether you can justify the conclusions progressives reach without accepting the whole progressive package. Keen will argue that you can do so.

3. Keen devotes nearly three times as much space to progressive arguments as to traditionalist arguments. Perhaps this lack of balance makes sense because the traditionalist case is rather simple whereas the progressive case is more complicated. The traditionalist needs only point to biblical texts, which clearly condemn same-sex intercourse and commend marriage between male and female. What more needs to be said? Progressives, however, must argue against the grain of the plain meaning of the text. Each of the five progressive theses listed above attempts to defeat the traditional reading of the biblical proof texts for the traditional theses. The effect of the five progressive arguments is to create doubt and stimulate us to imagine alternative interpretations. But I don’t think I am being uncharitable to surmise that Keen gives much more space to progressive arguments because she agrees with them and wants to persuade us of their strength while maintaining her distance from progressivism’s offensive features—offensive, that is, to conservative, Bible-believing Christians.

Critical Comments

I will make my critical comments brief. I don’t want to go into detail in a critique of the chapter’s progressive arguments because Keen has not yet tied herself to them or explained just where she agrees or disagrees with them. I do not want to risk attributing to her something she has not affirmed. In any case, my critique of progressivism would begin at a more fundamental level than the interpretation of the six texts discussed in this chapter.

1. Keen uses the term “heterosexual marriage” to designate the traditionalist understanding of biblical marriage. Usually Keen resists using anachronistic terms that attribute a modern idea to an ancient author. She violates that rule here. Traditionalists would not (or should not) accept this term as descriptive of what they believe. In the Bible marriage means just one thing. It needs no qualifier. To add the adjective “heterosexual” begs the essential question, and thoughtful traditionalists will not overlook this fallacy.

2. Keen has not yet clearly differentiated herself from what she calls “progressive” Christian theology. Hence the reader is kept in the dark about her theological stance and is forced to guess what she is up to. Her thesis is that you do not need to reject biblical authority or your evangelical faith to accept same-sex relationships as biblically legitimate. But her use of insights generated on progressive premises and developed using progressive methods evoke some suspicion about her sincerity in claiming to support an evangelical view of biblical authority.

Next: Keen introduces and applies her own interpretative method to help us to “make sense of Old Testament law.”

The Creator’s Plan for Safe Sex (Moral Crisis #13)

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A Logic Lesson

To define a word, clarify a concept, or articulate a moral principle we must grasp both what it is and what it isn’t, what it includes and what it excludes. Stating what something isn’t without saying what it is gives us no precise idea of what we are talking about. If I tell you, “It’s not a mouse! It’s not a chair! It’s not a star or a glove or a tree” etc., I have not helped you at all to know what it is. However if I tell you what something is, I’ve implicitly let you know what it is not. If I let you know that I am thinking of a coffee cup, you also know that I am not thinking of a horse, a blade of grass, or my best friend in grade school. I don’t have to list all the things of which I am not thinking. You would never dream of complaining that because I did not list my laptop among the things about which I am not thinking, that I left you in the dark on that issue!

Now let’s apply this logic to the question of the biblical understanding of the place and limits on sexual activity. If your approach to this question consists only of discovering and listing every type of sexual activity forbidden in the Bible, you will never get a clear understanding of sexual morality in the Bible. It’s unreasonable to assume that all excluded behaviors must be named—and perhaps described and differentiated—any more than you should expect that I name everything that is not a coffee cup for you to get a clear idea of what I am thinking! It is unreasonable to argue that because a particular sexual behavior or relationship is not listed in a list of forbidden things, that it is therefore permitted.

The Purpose, Place, and Function of Sex

What, then, according the Bible is the purpose of sex? What is its proper place and function? If we get a clear idea of right use of sex, we won’t have to deliberate over an extensive and ever-growing list of misuses of sex. Let me remind you that this question will make no sense to those outside my target audience, those I described earlier in series as thinking about their identities in psychologized, sexualized, and politicized categories. Those who fit this description acknowledge no overarching moral order to which they should conform. So, for them sex has no objective purpose or place or proper function. Purpose, identity, and meaning derive from the inner self and vary from individual to individual.

But for confessing Christians, who take the Bible seriously, the question of the proper place and function and true purpose of sex makes perfect sense. For God is the creator, sustainer, providential guide, and savior of the human person, body and soul. Our true identity is found in Christ. We know there is a meaningful moral order to which we are obligated to submit. What, then, is the proper place and function and true purpose of sex?

In the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament authors,* the proper place and function and true purpose of sex is realized only within life-long, loving marriage, between one man and one woman. All sexual liaisons outside marriage are by definition are forbidden. You don’t have to list these non-conforming sexual acts or agonize in efforts to prove them wrong or justify them as permitted. I will address these futile efforts in upcoming essays. Now I want to remind you of Jesus’s and the apostles’ teaching on marriage.

Jesus deals with marriage on a few occasions. I will quote from his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3-9:

3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

The subject here is divorce. And Jesus makes it clear that divorce is an evil, an evil that Moses tolerated but that he does not. No no-fault divorce here! Hard hearts, unloving and stubborn, are not allowed. In Jesus’s teaching divorce comes under the same condemnation as adultery. Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24, rooting marriage in the creative purpose of God. But Jesus adds an assertion and a command not found in Genesis: “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt 19:6; also in Mark 10:9). Marriage is not merely a human agreement made for human purposes. The involvement of God makes it part of a sacred order, and no one has the right to dissolve it.

Paul also deals with marriage in several places, but I will limit myself to Ephesians 5:28-33:

28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

In this passage Paul also quotes Genesis 2:24. And he also sees marriage as integrated into the sacred order. He calls it a “profound mystery.” The union between husband and wife spoken of in Genesis images the spiritual union between the risen Christ and his people, who are his body. And for those in Christ, it also participates in that mystery. For this reason the union between husband and wife should be a union of self-sacrificial love.

In Hebrews 13:4, we find a short but clear affirmation that marriage is the proper place for sexual intimacy and a severe condemnation of its violation:

4 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

Conclusion

Knowing the clear biblical teaching that life-long, loving marriage between one man and one woman is the proper place for sexual intimacy to achieve its created and redemptive purpose answers a thousand questions about what is forbidden without agonizing, cynical, or sophistical debates.

*Note: We are speaking in these essays of “Christian” sexual ethics, and Christian sexual ethics cannot be derived from Old Testament texts unless they are filtered through the teaching of Jesus and those whom he taught. This is very clear in the text in Matthew 19, which I quoted above. Jesus abrogates Moses’ teaching on divorce and reasserts the creation ideal.