I have read the Book of Leviticus in The Bible several times.  It is a ponderous book.  I describe it that way because it is a detailed explanation of the holy rules of the Jewish faith.  Kevin DeYoung describes Leviticus thus: “Holiness is the book’s overarching theme….You have holy people (the priests), with holy clothes, in a holy land (Canaan) at a holy place (tabernacle) using holy utensils and holy objects, celebrating holy days, living by holy law, that they might be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” [DeYoung, 40].   After a great amount of detail on the holiness of everything involved with worship, the rest of Leviticus (from Chapter 17 onward) is all about The Holiness Code, rules for how the Israelites were to live as God’s holy people.

DeYoung entitles Chapter 3 of his book “Taking a Strange Book Seriously” referring to the book of Leviticus.

Why is Leviticus front and center in the debate about the role of homosexuality in the church?  It all boils down to two very direct verses: 18: 22 “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” and 20:13 “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.”

Those verses seem very clear: do not practice same-sex sexual behavior.  You do so at your own peril.

The reason DeYoung calls Leviticus strange is that the book is so detailed in holy living that some of the regulations seem to be a bit too rigid.  Leviticus tells how much to charge a debtor for a loan.  You should not wear clothes of two kinds of fabric.  You should never eat bacon.  A man should never have sex with his wife during her menstrual cycle etc.  Surely today the verses about homosexual behavior are strange too.  Maybe they are so outdated that they are no longer relevant?

DeYoung says no, these verses are still very relevant.  In Genesis 2, God made the first woman as a complementary human being.  Men were designed to have sex with women and not to have sex with other men.  DeYoung addresses issues like homosexual rape, rape at the hands of a master, a conquering army or a mob.  In those instances, the aggressive person would be put to death but his view is that Moses is trying to do more than outlaw unwanted same-sex behavior.  His thinking is that holy behavior outlaws same-sex behavior of all kinds, most especially same-sex consensual behavior.  “God’s plan for sexual intimacy in the garden was one man and one woman—not close relatives, not the wife of another man, not a man and an animal and not two men or two women” [42].   Holiness means one man and one woman.

DeYoung is adamant in his view that homosexuality should not be accepted by the church.  First of all, some might argue that Jesus brings a whole new view to the Levitical laws.  With Jesus, food that has been declared off-limits is no long prohibited.  Holy days have been rendered optional.  The entire sacrificial system has been superseded by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  However DeYoung points out that Jesus spoke of fulfilling the Old Testament law, not abolishing it.  One cannot take verses like 18:22 and 20: 13 and just say that is Old Testament outdated instruction.  

Then there is the argument that Leviticus should be treated as “obscure.”  Jesus refers to Leviticus 19: 18 more than any other verse in the Old Testament and it shows up in the New Testament an additional ten times.  Peter and Paul quote Leviticus as they try to summon people to holiness (2 Corinthians 6: 16 and 1 Peter 1: 16).    Paul especially used Leviticus as his source as he implored people to uphold their moral obligations (e.g. 1 Timothy 1:8).  One would consider Leviticus an obscure book if it was not cited much in the New Testament but that is not the case.

Further evidence of the relevance of the abomination of same sex behavior comes from the Apostle Paul who had his own word for two men who had sex: “arsen (man) and koite (bed).  He took that term from Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13.  Paul believed that homosexual behavior was an abomination [see Romans 1: 24].

DeYoung focuses on the term abomination in his argument for the relevance of banning homosexual acceptance in the church.  He states “the word signifies something the Lord despises.”  He points out that there are six things the Lord hates and seven things that are an abomination.  Revisionist theologians are quick to point out that sexual sins in Leviticus are lumped together as abominations, but there is only one sin that is singled out by itself as an abomination, male with male sex.  Added to the seriousness of this sin is the penalty: death.

The rules of uncleanness in the sex act begin in Leviticus with a call to not have sex with a menstruating woman and the admonitions continue from that to a ban on having sex with your neighbor’s wife, sex with another male etc.  Each sex act moves further away from God’s intentions for sex in the Garden of Eden.   DeYoung states “in the Old Testament, not all uncleanness was sin, but all sin made you unclean….Cleanness still matters in the New Testament, but it becomes more of a moral [cleanness] than a ritual [cleanness].” One could argue that moral cleanness may be even more important.

DeYoung does not have a cavalier attitude toward the “strange book” of Leviticus.  To use a cliché, he will not throw out the baby with the bath water.  Yes there may be unusual regulations about eating shellfish but that does not mean that the whole book should be discarded as irrelevant. 

He believes “Leviticus was part of the Bible that Jesus read, the Bible Jesus believed, and the Bible Jesus did not want to abolish.  We ought to take seriously how the Holiness codes reveals to us the holy character of God and the holy people we are supposed to be.

In DeYoung’s view [unlike Peter Gomes’] God’s moral law still matters.  For Gomes, his belief was that America had a moral imagination and that led to the idea that enslavement of human beings was wrong, even though there is support for slavery in the Bible.  DeYoung sees support for the idea that homosexuality should not be accepted in the church and no amount of “moral imagination” will allow him to turn his back on God’s moral law.  The Bibles’ stance against homosexuality may be a “hard text” but it exists and DeYoung refuses to ignore it.

*What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality