Category Archives: Marriage

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.

The Doctrine Post-Christian Culture Loves to Hate

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Today I want to bring out two truths implied the Christian affirmation that God created “all things visible and invisible.” (1) We tend to locate God’s act of creation in the long past and apply it only to the first creatures. Most Christians are semi-deists; they think God acts in the world but only on occasion, in what are called miracles. But the doctrine of creation asserts that God is Creator in all time and space and of every creature that comes into existence. The world is God’s constant act of creating. God acted just as much as creator in giving you and me existence as he did in saying “let there be light.” We are just as dependent on God for our existence as was the first creature that came into being from nothing. We can allow this thought to inspire us to celebrate God’s love, grace and faithfulness or create in us resentment that we “owe” God so much, that we do not create ourselves and are obligated to obey his commands.

(2) Everything God made is good, and God made everything. There is sin and evil in the world, but the world itself is not evil. The affirmation that “everything is good” means that each and every creature was created for a purpose that serves the final end for which God made the world. There is no such thing as an evil entity, that is, a creature that should not exist and cannot be used for good. Sin and evil are misuses of created things, which are good in themselves. Accepting the Christian view that God created all things good should compel us to look for God’s wisdom in the created order of nature and seek God’s will concerning how to use the creation for good.

But there have always been those who deny the goodness of creation and suspect the Creator of malice. In the early centuries of Christianity (1st through 4th Centuries), some forms of Gnosticism including Manicheanism taught that a world as bad as ours had to be the work of an evil god. They rejected embodiment, passions, sex and eating meat as evil. They were not just vegetarians or vegans; they considered eating fruits and vegetables murder, unless you performed the proper ceremonies to free the spirit trapped within. The goal of this religion was escape from entrapment in the material world, and its practices and ceremonies were designed to facilitate this escape.

I see in contemporary culture some troubling analogies to the Manichean rejection of creation and the Creator. Perhaps this sounds implausible. After all, we live in a pleasure seeking, sensuous culture, not a world-denying one. Let me explain. Modern culture began with a general dissatisfaction with the evils attributed to the ancient social order. Thinkers sought first to persuade and enlighten their way to utopia. Revolutionaries found this method too slow and ineffective and turned to violent revolution to remake the social order. Both of these methods are still being used, but some unwanted conditions cannot plausibly be attributed to unjust social structures or to the physical malfunction evident in disease. Some are bound up with creation and the created order.

I am thinking of Genesis 1:27: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Jesus reaffirmed this created order in Mark 10:6-7: “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.” We must be clear that both male and female are made “in the image of God.” Both are fully human and they are made for each other, to complete each other. Woman is not woman apart from man and man is not man apart from woman.

But there are distinctions that constitute the maleness and femaleness of each. It seems to me that if we really affirm the goodness of the Creator and the order God made, we will embrace and celebrate our maleness or femaleness and the mutually defining the relationship between the two. God made males with certain distinguishing characteristics. These characteristics are “good,” that is, they can be used for the good purposes for which God designed them. (They can also be misused.) God made females with certain distinguishing characteristics, and these characteristics are also “good,” that is, they can be used for the good purposes for which God designed them. (They, too, can be misused.) One set of characteristics is not better than the other, because what makes them “good” is their God-given purpose, not some humanly imagined ranking of goods. Hence men and women should seek their proper dignity and identity not in relation to humanly constructed social orders, which always reflect the fallen and sinful human condition, but in relation to God. Envy and competition, distain and domination or pride and shame arise from ignorance or rejection of the goodness of the Creator. Every gift is to be used for others. The Creator’s work should never be the occasion for pride or shame.

Contemporary culture does not think or speak this way about male and female, nor define the goodness of maleness or femaleness in terms of God’s purpose in creation. Instead, it speaks of “gender” (indeed of multiple genders), which it considers a socially constructed reality, and spreads it out in an infinite continuum. Increasingly, the dominant culture denies the “for each other” nature of male and female with its God-given goal of becoming “one flesh.” In place of a God-created natural teleology it substitutes individual preferences, male for female or female for female or male for male or both. Instead of accepting and celebrating God-created nature, it celebrates the human act of defying confining natural structures and asserting a self-liberated self. At the heart of the gender revolution lies a Manichean-like rejection of creation and the Creator. It seeks escape from entrapment in the confining male-female distinction (the “binary gender” construct) and mutuality, not by practicing asceticism and engaging in mystical ceremonies as the Manicheans did, but by willful acts of self-recreation, rearrangement and redirection. But the fundamental heresy is the same: creation is not the good work of the benevolent Creator to be embraced and celebrated but a condition from which to escape by any means possible.