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What Does it Mean to “Interpret” the Bible?—A Review Essay (Part Five)

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Today’s post continues my analytical and critical review of Karen Keen, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships. I will summarize and examine chapter 4, which along with chapter 5, gets at the heart of Keen’s interpretative strategy. Since these two chapters combine to form one argument, I will delay my critique of chapter 4 until I have summarized and analyzed chapter 5.

The Target Audience (Again)

As you think about Keen’s argument and my critiques, keep in mind her target audience and the constraints this focus places on her reasoning and my responses. She speaks to evangelicals, to people who wish to remain loyal to the principle of biblical authority. They will not accept the progressive view of the Bible’s moral teaching, which dismisses it as primitive, uninformed, and of mere human origin. Though Keen rehearses progressives’ arguments and obviously accepts some of their conclusions, she labors to distance herself from their liberal theological presuppositions. Hence to achieve her purpose of steering clear of both extremes—progressive and traditional—Keen must develop a hermeneutical strategy (interpretation) that both affirms biblical authority and demonstrates that same-sex relationships are morally acceptable. She devotes chapters 4 and 5 to this task, and I am devoting the next two essays to summarizing, clarifying, and critiquing the method she develops in these chapters.

A Theory of Interpretation

The title of chapter 4 gives us a feel for what is to come: “Fifty Shekels for Rape: Making Sense of Old Testament Laws.” In this chapter Keen compares two Old Testament case laws found in Exodus 21:22-25 and 28-30 to similar cases found in law codes of other ancient near eastern peoples. In Keen’s view the similarity of Old Testament laws to those of non-Israelite nations demonstrates that they share a common cultural milieu. Progressives take this commonality to prove that such laws are wholly irrelevant to our time, and traditionalists ignore the challenge this discovery poses to their proof text method of biblical interpretation. Keen proposes a theory of interpretation that takes seriously the cultural relativity of biblical laws while preserving their divine authority. She distinguishes between the culturally conditioned laws and the underlying purposes of those laws. We may view the underlying principles as inspired, divine commands while viewing specific instructions as culturally conditioned applications. It is a mistake, Keen argues, to focus on what the laws instruct the Israelites to do rather than on why the laws were given and the goals at which they aim. In a section on the “enduring meaning of Old Testament laws,” Keen makes the following assertions:

“Inspiration resides not necessarily in the particularities, but in the overarching reason for the laws—namely a good and just society.”

“Sin is generally defined by what harms others.”

“Thus, whether and how we apply a particularity from scriptural mandates depends on the underlying intent of the law and its relationship to fostering a good and just world.”

“What both progressives and traditionalists typically overlook is the deliberative process that we must undertake to rightly interpret and apply biblical laws today.”

The chapter concludes with two questions that prepare the reader for the next phase of the argument:

“What is the overarching intent of the Bible’s sexual laws? Are there alternative ways to fulfill that intent more fully that take into consideration the predicament of gay and lesbian people?”

Analytic Observation

1. In constructing her hermeneutic method, Keen argues that the specific behaviors that biblical laws enjoin or forbid are culturally conditioned applications of such universal and divinely inspired principles as justice, peace, mercy, and love. We are obligated to respect those universal principles everywhere and always, but we are not bound by any previous attempt to embody those principles in specific mandates. According to this interpretative strategy, we are obligated to honor the Bible’s specific rules forbidding same-sex relationships only if we can be convinced that those rules embody the universal principles of justice, peace, mercy, and love in our contemporary situation. Her success in convincing evangelicals of the biblical permissibility of loving, same-sex relationships depends on demonstrating the universal validity and workability of her hermeneutical principle. Does her method of interpretation help us grasp the unchanging divine meaning of the scriptures as she claims or does it give us license to find our own values and meanings underneath the words of scripture? This question poses one of the two or three most decisive issues the reader must decide in assessing the book’s thesis.

Preliminary Questions

1. But has Keen made a convincing case that we can separate specific biblical rules from the principles they embody as discretely as she presumes?

2. Do we agree that Keen’s list of universal principles is exhaustive, that is, is it impossible that a specific rule could do double duty as a universal principle? For example, consider this rule: “Never betray an innocent friend to death.”

3. Does limiting inspiration and divine commands to general principles while attributing all application to culturally conditioned human judgment do justice the Bible as a whole, especially from an evangelical perspective?

4. Has Keen made a sufficient case that these so-called universal principles are not merely abstractions that give no specific guidance in real-life situations but depend for their content on subjective or cultural factors? For example, does “Always love” mean “Never participate in any act that makes another person feel unhappy?” And even if we take it to mean, “Always seek the best for everyone,” within what moral framework do we determine what is best?

5. If the only inspired moral guidance in the Bible is that articulated in the universal principles listed by Keen and those principles lie behind the law codes of every nation—ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, India, and China—what sense does it make to claim divine inspiration for their presence in the Bible? Will evangelicals be satisfied with such a theory of inspiration? It seems more like a theory of natural law written on every heart than the special revelation that evangelicals treasure.

To be Continued…

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.

Sex, Identity, and Politics: Two Incompatible Moral Visions

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Where Are We?

In previous essays I’ve tried to get to the roots of the moral crisis that engulfs contemporary culture. At the origin of this crisis stands the abandonment of the long-accepted notion that human beings acquire experiential knowledge of the good as communities and transmit it through tradition. Simultaneously, modern culture adopted a romantic notion of the good as a feeling of well-being and an individualist view of how we come to know the good.

Given its subjective view of the good, modern culture can no longer make sense of the right as a moral rule that conforms to the moral law. Hence the “right” becomes a private assertion of “what is right for me” or it is identified with legislated human law made through the political process. The simmering crisis becomes open conflict when society’s subjective views of the good and right become concrete disagreement about specific moral behaviors. These disagreements can be settled only by coercion in one of its modern forms: protest, cancellation, intimidation, or legislated human law.

Christians who submit themselves to the authority of Jesus Christ and the scriptures and retain the traditional view of the good and the right find themselves under fire. When confessing Christians oppose the dominant culture’s subjective view of the good and the right they are made to appear backward, oppressive, insensitive, cruel, and downright hateful. Indeed, they are portrayed as enemies of humanity worthy of marginalization, legal proscription, and even persecution.

Clash of Moral Visions

We are now at the point in our discussion of the moral crisis where I need to speak about specific behaviors. And I want to begin with the body and sex. In the contemporary controversy over the use of our bodies we see most vividly the clash between two irreconcilable moral visions. During the course of the last one hundred years Western society has been increasingly sexualized and sex has been politicized. The reasons for this development are complex, and I will explain them in greater detail later in this series. However I will say this in advance: progressive culture from its beginnings in the Enlightenment to today sees Christianity as the greatest enemy standing in the way of its advance. With the rise of the Romantics in the early nineteenth century, nascent progressive culture came to see that Christianity’s limiting of sexual relations to lifetime marriage between man and woman grounded in a sacred moral order served as the foundation of conservative and traditional culture. The family is the perennial bearer of tradition. If society is to be made into a progressive utopia, Christianity must be marginalized if not destroyed. If Christianity is to be destroyed, marriage and the traditional family must be destroyed. And marriage and the traditional family can be destroyed only by removing the limits on sexual activity and transforming the meaning of sex. Sex must be removed from the sacred moral order and reconceived as a means of self-expression and self-fulfillment. Without tradition, isolated, and with their identity being reduced to race and gender, individuals may then be willing to become wards of the progressive state and its educational institutions.

We’ve Been Here Before

But the clash between moral visions is not new. The New Testament is replete with warnings about this collision of worlds: two opposing kingdoms (Col 1:3), life and death (Col 2:3), visible and invisible (2 Cor 4:18), the way of the Spirit and the way of the flesh (Gal 5:13-26), and many others. One of the clearest contrasts is found in Colossians 3:1-14. Paul contrasts two ways of living as opposition between two orientations, to things above or to earthly things:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

The New Testament clearly views the moral life as an essential aspect of a comprehensive and internally consistent way of life, at once religious, spiritual, and moral. Its specific moral rules are not isolated and arbitrary. The moral prohibitions in Colossians 3:5-11, quoted above, are interrelated. All of them deal with “earthly things.” The list in verse 5 centers on misuse of the natural urges of physical body: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed.” The list in verse 8 has to do with misuse of our need for acceptance and fellowship from others: “anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language.” The physical dimension cannot be separated from the social and neither from our relationship to God. We use our bodies to communicate with others and our physical urges almost always involve interaction with others. They can be used to honor God or disrespect him.

Body, Soul, and God

The New Testament affirms the created goodness of the body. But the body is not absolutely good. Its goodness lies in the possibility of its proper use as determined by the intention of creator. It can be misused and misdirected. Those whose minds, hearts, and wills are set “on things above” want to use their bodies for the Lord, but those whose minds, hearts, and wills are set “on things on the earth” view their bodies as instruments for their own pleasure and power. Those who direct their minds toward Christ desire to learn the purpose for which God created their bodies and the rules for their proper use. To those whose minds are set on earthly things, the Bible’s moral rules for the proper use of the body seem strange, unnatural, and oppressive.

The Bible speaks of human beings as body and soul. We are physical and mental. We possess freedom at some levels of our being, but at other levels the automatic processes of nature operate apart from our choice or awareness. The Bible is not concerned with the philosophical problem of the composition of human beings, with debates about the nature of the soul and the relationship between soul and body. It is concerned with the orientation of the whole human being toward or away from God. But the Bible acknowledges what we all know from experience, that there is a hierarchical order in the relationship between body and soul. The mind is the ruling aspect and the body needs to be ruled and guided by the mind, which in turn needs to be informed by the moral law and common sense. Our minds enable us to gain the wisdom we need to discern between good and bad and right and wrong. The body apart from the mind possesses no conscious knowledge of the good and right. It works more or less automatically and instinctively. (Contemporary culture reverses the order by looking to the irrational passions–in contemporary terms “the inner self”–for guidance about what is real and good.)

Now consider the two directions mentioned Colossians 3:1-14 again in light of our created nature as body and soul. Paul speaks of the two ways of living, two possible orientations to God of our whole persons. As whole persons we are body and soul, but the body must be guided by the soul. But the mind must be illuminated by moral and spiritual truth from above in order to guide the body to its proper end, which is to serve God. Paul urges us to set our minds and hearts on “things above.” Unless the mind is set on “things above” it cannot lead the body to do good and right. When the mind forsakes “things above,” the body begins to dominate the mind, which then becomes a mere instrument we use to seek out ways to please the body. It thinks only about “earthly things.” Instead of rising higher to become more and more like God, human beings fall to earth to become mere smart animals. Dangerous ones too!