St. John Studies

To function in life, we have to use things that we take for granted.  We have to breathe, so we take in oxygen in order to live.  We have to hydrate ourselves because our bodies need water, so we drink in order to live.  I could go on and on and on, listing all the things we do every day in order to live, things that (for the most part) we really don’t notice.  I am now using keystrokes on a laptop to create words on a screen that will eventually find their way on my blog called St. John Studies.  I have deposited words on this blog since 2014, to date 1069 blog posts.  Maybe my words have worked to communicate some of my ideas into understandable thought.  Words work like that.  We put them on a page for people to read, people who are not in our presence.  We are not there to explain them.  The words represent us.

Like breathing and water, we sometimes take them for granted.

Kevin DeYoung does not take all words for granted.  In fact, he devotes a whole chapter to words—two words.  The words in question are malakoi and arsenokoitai, Koine Greek words that are at the center of a discussion of the acceptance or rejection of homosexuality in the Bible.

DeYoung admits the difficulty of writing this chapter: “That makes this a daunting chapter, both for you to read and for me to write.”  Why does he do this?  He is boiling this extremely complicated and controversial topic down to the essentials—words.  He admits they are debatable words.  I would agree, they are.  Revisionist Biblical scholars are debating the meaning of the words today as culture changes and homosexuality becomes more mainstream.  Why should the church not accept homosexual members, perform homosexual marriages and allow homosexual pastors and other ordained leaders?  Would Jesus not do that?  Conservative Biblical scholars take the opposite position.  The Bible does not allow this.  The Bible condemns homosexual activity so how can we allow homosexuality to be accepted in the church?

DeYoung is one of those conservative Biblical scholars and his Chapter 5 entitled “A New Word From an Old Place”* addresses this issue from the point of view of two words, two debatable words.

First Corinthians 6: 9-10** says “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality [oute malakoi oute arsenokoitai] nor thieves, not the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God”

First Timothy 1: 8-11 says “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality [arsenokoitai] enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”

Now revisionist Biblical scholars take these Scriptures to mean something other than men having sex with men.  Despite the use of the words malokoi and arsenokoitai and their more literal meaning, they prefer to define the words as pederasty and prostitution.  Others claim the words refer to any man who wants to be feminine or someone who prefers to be controlled by his passions.  In essence they argue that their interpretations tone down the idea of homosexuality and its consequent condemnation. 

Without getting too deep into the idea of the use of Greek language [I am not an expert] DeYoung states that most English translations “say the same thing.”  If nine teams of Biblical scholars translating nine different translations feel that those two words refer to homosexual behavior, others should not spend a lot of time arguing that they mean something else.  Also DeYoung refers to semantics, the idea that one word can mean various things to various people.  He uses as an example the word “fast.”  One can run fast, one can start a fast or a golfer can play fast.  Words can be used differently by different authors writing in different places and living in different centuries. We all know that words can change meaning as time passes.   To cut down on that type of confusion, the scholar can look at a word within its context.  DeYoung states “context is king.”  What do the words around a word mean? What argument is the author trying to make?  How does the author use the word elsewhere in the author’s writing? 

DeYoung really gets into an analysis of arsenokoitai and malakoi.  When one turns to the history of the words, there is no use before Paul’s use of the words in First  Corinthians and First Timothy.  Arsen means bed and  koite means bed and could be literally translated “bedders of men.”  “Most likely, Paul coined the term from the prohibitions against homosexual behavior in Leviticus 18 and 20” [DeYoung, 63].  In Leviticus it says “you shall not lie with a male as with a woman” and “whoever shall lie with a male as with a woman”(has done something detetestable) [18:22 and 20: 13].  Paul knew the Old Testament Scriptures better than any other writings.  One does not have to be an expert in Greek to see how he gets his word [meta arsenos ou koimethese koiten gynaikos and hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gynaikos.  He uses those words on purpose.  He could have used less shocking words paiderastes [men having sex with boys] but he used language pinpointing sex involving a man with a man which is forbidden in Mosaic law.  He was trying to make a point.  DeYoung is making the case that the Apostle Paul is condemning homosexual behavior.  He continues with a discussion of other possibilities: the idea of a long-term male to male relationship being acceptable, the idea that some men desire effeminate behavior and the idea that some men prefer fine clothing and female-style hair dressing.  Those may have been concepts that were real in Paul’s time but there is little support that Paul intended to put those on his list of vices that were sexual sins.  Instead in First Corinthians and First Timothy, Paul was referring of immoral sexual intimacy between men.

Certainly Paul is not alive today to explain himself, but his words are here as his representative thought.  Are we 100% percent sure of his meaning?  To be truthful, we cannot claim to be 100% sure.  DeYoung is stating that in our culture today it is hard to hear but “Paul is saying what the rest of the Bible supports and most of church history has assumed:  homosexual activity is not a blessing to be celebrated and solemnized but a sin to be repented of, forsaken and forgiven” [67].

*from his book What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality?

**from the English Standard Version of the Bible.  DeYoung states that all modern English versions of the Bible link the “two words” to homosexual behavior.  The King James Version uses euphemisms [abusers of themselves with mankind]  instead of direct links to homosexuality but the KJV is four hundred years old.

It is very problematic to make general statements about large groups of people; those generalizations are almost impossible to prove.  Some say general statements amount to opinion and opinion is worth little compared to facts.  So when I write that in our world we have many Christians who are listening to false prophets I am writing my opinion, but I believe that many Christians have fallen prey to very weak conclusions based on information from questionable sources.  I know it is hard to prove that. 

Yet, I know those people exist.

I have a Christian friend who believes that the Christian faith is the God-ordained faith of America and if America would only cling to its Christian roots, our country will dominate the world.  (This idea ignores the diversity of America, the fact that we are a country with diverse faiths).  I have another Christian friend who believes that the Bible says that we are destined to be rich.  If we believe in God, He will bless us with material wealth and if we are poor, it is because we don’t believe in God enough (where in the Bible does it say that?). A third friend feels that God is working through political candidates, that men and women of a particular political party have been sent to earth to straighten out the world and members of another party are the people of Satan.  When questioned about questionable behaviors that some of their candidates have exhibited, my friend just gives them a “pass.”  They are God-ordained.  They don’t live according to the same standards the rest of us live by. (Where does the Bible say that “some” are free to sin because they are special?).

Where do people get this stuff?  Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube preachers, the dark web?

It seems that people are turning to strange places to get a foundation of their belief systems.  They have forgotten the words of the Apostle John who says “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” [1 John 4]. 

Let’s get particular and ask the question above again.  Where should people be going to get the foundation for their beliefs?

The Bible.

That is a simple answer, one that is also problematic.  How many of us read the “real language” of the Bible?  The vast majority of Christians have not read Koine Greek, so we depend on others to help us understand the language of the New Testament.  As Protestants we have a rich heritage of freedom to read the Biblical text (the Catholic Church has the magisterium, the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, especially as exercised by bishops or the Pope).  But we protested about that “top down” control of Scriptural meaning.  Protestants depend on our translations of Scripture and our ability to understand First Century ideas from our current experience, culture and prior understanding of words and ideas.  I have had debates with Christians who resent any scholarly interpretation of Scripture.  They feel that  a scholar ideas are taking the Bible away from common man.  The Bible is not an obscure book.  It is “clear as a bell.”

It is sometimes not as “clear as a bell.”

What many Christians don’t realize or just don’t want to admit is when one picks up a Bible, they are already involved in interpretation of Scripture.  Any English translation of God’s word is a translation from the original language used by Old Testament and New Testament writers.  Some translations are regarded as better than others [e.g. the New International Version is more highly regarded than the Passion Translation].  The NIV is the result of serious scholarly consideration that tries to translate words, idioms and grammatical constructions from the original language to precise equivalents in English.  The Passion Translation is a paraphrase, which is helpful but not very accurate.  The intent is to eliminate distance between the Biblical writers and today’s world by using today’s language.  The Passion Translation does not try to be precise in translating  English equivalents.

What is the big deal?

Depending on how one reads God’s word, there is a lot of potential for bad interpretation in this world.  From the Biblical text that one reads to pastors who interpret the text for church members, people are looking for answers and too often the quest for foundational answers is not very thorough. 

Some rely on their idea that the “Bible is God’s word” belief.  God wrote the Bible [through Godly men] so the Bible has of course eternal relevance.  It speaks to all humankind in every age and every culture.  I had a friend tell me one time “my God means what He says and says what He means.  I believe every word in my King James Bible.”  My response was tepid.  I did not want to anger my friend who did not realize that the King James Version of the Bible is a literal translation using 1611 English based on accumulated mistakes of over a thousand years of manuscript copying.  In its time it served a major purpose, but we have more accurate translations today.  So I let it go.  I just figured anyone who is taking the time to read a Bible is better than the person who never opens one at all.

What is the answer to all this concern about good Biblical foundational knowledge.  Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart** give guidance for all Bible readers when they say the Bible is the word of God spoken over a one thousand five hundred year period.  Not only does that make understanding difficult, but those times are far removed from 2024.  What did those words of the Bible mean to the people who wrote them?  What did those Godly writers think about God?  How did they understand themselves? 

Fee and Stuart encourage Protestant Bible readers to make an effort to not only understand the historical context of the Bible but also to examine the literary context.  They  pose historical questions like what was going on in Israel at the time of the writing?  What was going on in the church at that time?  What caused the author to write the Scripture in the first place?  Literary context is all about meanings of words.  What do Biblical words mean when we examine them relative to preceding words and succeeding words?  Let’s not get too “grammatical”, but here is an example.  For every pronoun, there is an antecedent.  We have to trace the pronoun back to its antecedent to get the most correct meaning.

In conclusion, we live in a world where we are confronted by too much information.  Our minds are flooded daily with facts and opinions from so many sources.  It is increasingly hard to parse all of this information and determine what is worthwhile and what is worthless.  Too many Christians let others lead them to conclusions about Scripture,  television preachers who need donations, politicians who just need a solid evangelical voting bloc or just someone who desires power over others [false prophets].  Fee and Stuart discuss the Bible as the most important book that anyone will ever read but they have this caveat: “the Biblical text cannot mean what it never meant.”

Many have lost the desire to search for the truth because of the distraction of the massive flow of information and maybe because it is just too mentally taxing.  We want quick answers to foundational questions.  Pastor John Ortberg may be one of the best to address this problem when he uses the following words about Abraham Lincoln : “Abraham Lincoln had little to read but he read it well.  Today we have largely traded wisdom for information, depth for breadth.  We want microwave maturity.”  Biblical wisdom does not occur at microwave speed.  Foundational beliefs do no sprout up overnight.  Certainly impressionable, immature, lazy Christians are prone to accept any message that sounds good are in danger of building their belief systems on “shifting sand.”  But the Christian who takes the time to read Scripture, explore Scripture, meditate on Scripture is building their house on rock.  When the rains come, the floods come and the winds blow that house will not fall.  Microwave Christians who do not take the time to grow a solid faith are like the foolish man who builds his house on the sand.  The rains come, the floods come and the winds blow.  Their house falls…***

*I had intended to dedicate this post to Kevin DeYoung’s analysis of key Greek words related to the condemnation of homosexuality, but I was “inspired” to write these thoughts instead.  Please forgive.

**from their book How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.

***Of course from Matthew 7: 24-27.

“The church should define the culture, not the culture should define the church.”  I can’t tell you where I picked up that quote, but I throw it into my Sunday school lessons from time to time, just to stimulate conversation.  It may sound to some like a clarion call for conservative Christianity, but I am not sure.  Is the church being defined by today’s culture?  Is that a bad thing?  Is that a good thing? 

Some may say that the church needs to strive to be relevant, which seems to support the idea that culture needs to define the church.  Why cling to a First Century point of view, with all its outdated ideas?  Others say that those ideas are not outdated.  They are God’s ideas expressed in His Holy Book.  They are timeless.  They are truth for all ages. 

What is the solution to the problem?  We can’t ignore passages that don’t seem current, like First Corinthians 14: 34-35 and First Timothy 2: 11.  If you aren’t familiar with those, these are the Scriptures that call women to be silent in the church.  First Timothy says that women should not have anyone under them [as a teacher or preacher].  It is wrong for women to have authority over men.  [Is this saying that women are not as important as men?]  It seems the big question is this attitude disrespectful toward women?  If we view the Scripture from a 2024 perspective, the answer would be yes.  But in the First Century the prevailing, accepted normal attitude was to discount the role of women in church.  To have any other view was not socially appropriate.

As I wrote previously [a January 27^th post entitled “The Bible and Women”] one of the best pastors I have ever had in my life was a woman.  I look around in churches: the women are leaders in ministry, education and administration.  Some churches would have to close their doors if women decided to leave. 

Yet what are we to do with First Corinthians and First Timothy?  The doxology uses the words “Praise Him all creatures here below” and closes with “Father Son and Holy Ghost.”  Even today, when a congregation sings songs like “Rise Up, O Men of God” how does a female feel like an equal participant?

Peter Gomes was confronted with this issue in his congregation* as he welcomed a Roman Catholic woman from Boston College to come to speak.  She presented her ideas and abruptly led a walkout in protest of the church’s anti-feminist point of view.  This plunged him into the issue of the role of women in the contemporary church and what the Scripture says about women, in essence the relationship between Scriptural tradition and unique contemporary cultural experience. 

Without going too far afield, Gomes brings up the issue that any generation that has read the words of the Old Testament and the words of the First Century in the New Testament has struggled to understand the context.  A twenty-first century spin on the Bible is bound to happen as readers read and visualize with contemporary minds.  Did that happen in the Eighteenth Century?  It did.  Did that happen in the Sixteenth Century?  It did.  Will a man read the Bible differently than a woman?  I would imagine that to be the case.  My wife leans toward feminism and she is galled by some patriarchal language that she encounters in Scripture.** But yet it is there.

Gomes comments:  “The roles of men and women in agrarian first-century society were prescribed by the circumstances of that society, where, with very rare exceptions, women were subordinate to men” [139].  That’s putting it lightly.

Did that influence Scripture?  Of course it did.

The foundation of this problem to put it simply resides in what a person believes about the authority of Scripture.  If all Scripture is authoritative, the stance of the Southern Baptist Association is correct: women should not be allowed to take leadership positions in church and men should never be subordinate to women.    

Are there those who look at Scripture as less authoritative?  Of course defenders of women write that the idea that women must take a submissive role is not binding.  First Century men were taught to be disrespectful to women and that is not relevant anymore.  Malcolm Tolbert writes “one of the most fundamental mistakes in the reading of Scripture, particularly of the New Testament, is to assume that the structures and the systems it describes are as sacred and authoritative as the principles it affirms.  Not only is that wrong, it is idolatrous, even blasphemous, to use the Word of God to affirm and maintain human privilege”  [Tolbert in Gomes, 143]

That is the very argument that Gomes has stated to attack the idea that chattel slavery was correct in the eyes of Southern Christian plantation owners.  He also argued that this same approach fueled discrimination and persecution against Jews as Christians singled them out as killers of Jesus and deserving of punishment. 

The battle for a prevailing contemporary viewpoint is ongoing as people continue to grapple with what to do with the stated male dominance of the Bible.  For now, Gomes does not actually side with one view or the other, even saying that he understands this issue but “for my part, I have been more willing to edit out offending passages in hymns than I have been to edit out offending passages in Scripture” 135].

For now, there is no definitive answer for this issue and he ends his chapter on “Women and the Bible” with the words “The most significant battle for the Bible since the debates over slavery [the battle about women] women have lead the way, and one would like to think that Lydia, Phoebe and Priscilla would be pleased” [143].  When we return to Gomes, he will have a chapter where he will weigh in on a problem that he feels he must address: the Bible and homosexuality. 

My guess is that he will not sit on the sidelines on that topic; we will know where he stands. 

Will his argument be effective?

We will see.

*Gomes was pastor to Harvard’s Memorial Church, admittedly more “liberal” than some congregations.

**Yes, she reads every post that I write so I am not trying to speak for her. 

I majored in English in the early 70s at a regional university.  My major interest was English literature.  During those days, English majors had tools which they used to understand the meaning of literature.  I remember going to class to hear about contemporary methods which were new criticism, Jungian interpretation, mythical/archetypal interpretation and the historical/biographical context of the author.  At that time, “new criticism” was the “new kid on the block.” 

I never did much with my English major, teaching English in high school for one year and then teaching writing in a community college for several years before concentrating on human communication for the bulk of my teaching career [36 years].  I never really got to teach English literature.

Little did I know that the world of understanding literature [referred to as literary criticism] had changed significantly over the years.  In the last few years, I have taken more time to interpret literature and when I considered the tools used to understand, I found that Feminist interpretation had come into the critic’s toolbox.  Women have insisted on having their perspective considered as they feel their views have been subsumed by a patriarchal society.

What does this have to do with the Bible?

That same feminist perspective has changed the interpretation of the greatest work of literature in the world, the Bible.  Feminist theologians began to assert that the Bible was written in a world of patriarchy and even though many women are mentioned in the Bible, they are [for the most part] denigrated.  Is this fair?  What does it say about the value of women to the world?  How can God write the greatest book in the whole world and place women in such an inferior position?

As feminist theology gained steam, Christians were challenged by this new approach.  Many believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God so if He portrayed a patriarchal world, that is how He intended it to be.  God does not make errors.  Others felt that God’s word needed updating.  The world of the Old and New Testament is not that relevant and that emphasis on patriarchy is very much “out of style.” 

My denomination resolved this problem in its earliest days, with John Wesley licensing a woman to preach in 1761.  Officially, full rights were granted to United Methodist Women to preach in 1956.  However, other denominations are still struggling with this issue, most notably the Southern Baptist Conference. 

Can anyone deny the power of women in the church?  I think not.  Women are in the majority in many churches  Often the ministry program is managed and supplied by women.  Initiatives in religious education have been instituted by women and church charity has long been the province of females in the church.

In short, women have had a profound moral and religious impact on the church.

Where is the problem?  One must look at First Corinthians 14: 34-35 and First Timothy 2: 11-12.  In both cases women are supposed to be silent in the church.  In both cases women are supposed to submit to men.  Women cannot teach or “have authority over” a man.

Peter Gomes writes in his book [The Good Book] this problem with female participation is comparable to other interpretation of Scriptures [e.g. the institution of slavery] because the more seriously one takes Scripture, “the more difficult becomes the problem of several, often contradictory voices, and therefore the more urgent becomes the development of a persuasive principle of interpretation by which the differences are reconciled” [131].  The question of interpretation is one of understanding the text as best as one can and it is not simple especially if you consider text, context and subtext.  Often Protestants want to interpret the Bible for themselves, but are there aspects of meaning that are missed?  I am one who believes that this is so.

Take the feminist subtext for example.  The text says one thing and to have an ample meaning of God’s word, one has to try to determine what the writer and readers felt in the time of the writing.  What about an underlying subtext?  Feminist theologians cry out that the writers of the Bible were all men who considered women as second class individuals, of little value to society as a whole.  “There is a substantial and growing body of Christians in all communions, for whom the Biblical texts in question and the climate of interpretation are in fact out of sync” [133].   Gomes goes on to admit that the most “interesting, creative and demanding scholarship” in the field of Biblical interpretation since the translation of the Bible into English has been the feminist interpretation of Scripture. 

Has this view been accepted with open arms?  No it has not.  “It has become the habit on the part of some evangelicals and religious conservatives to dismiss the mountain of female scholarship on the Bible with the taint of the most extreme and deconstructive dimensions of that scholarship, suggesting pagans and goddesses reside under every hermeneutical bed” [Gomes, 134].  I am afraid that does not sound like acceptance. 

This past year the Southern Baptist Conference expelled two large churches that have women pastors and amended their constitution with the following words: “a Southern Baptist congregation should not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”

Where are we to go from here?

I will go further into the examination of the text where women feel they are being harassed.  Gomes writes, “Language has become the battlefield for the conflict between inclusion of females and exclusion of females.”  One extreme position says it is no longer appropriate to pray “Our Father” and other masculine titles like “Lord” and “King” need to be excluded from the text.  The other extreme position is one of fear.  Like the abolitionists of the Nineteenth Century, many Christians today are scared of women who insist that the subtext of male chauvinism is evident throughout God’s word.  What will that mean for my interpretation of God’s word?  Are these women wrong?

Are there people who are making the effort to avoid extremes?  Of course there are.  Has the role of women changed in our world today? Of course it has.  Are women more dominant than ever before?  They are.   Are they capable of leadership, do they have superior abilities, do they have superior intelligence?  As society has changed, many feel that the interpretation of God’s word needs to change.  There is a conflict between the feminist view and the conservative, patriarchal view. 

We need to move on from that.

Yet there is a denomination of 13,680,000 Christians who are not there yet—the Southern Baptists.

I will look deeper into the texts that the Baptists are standing on in the next section of Gomes’ book, a section aptly entitled “Textual Harassment?”

Don’t lose sight…

It is time to get our bearings.  If you get your “bearings” or find your “bearings,” you find out where you are or what you should do next. If you lose your bearings, you do not know where you are or what you should do next.

When a I am trying to discuss three books at one time, three different approaches to the same subject, it is good from time to time to stop and think about where I am going. 

I just finished Dr. Preston Sprinkle’s discussion of homosexuality in the First Century.  Before that I resurrected a post that I wrote for Christmas several years ago. Preceding the Christmas post, I dealt with Kevin DeYoung’s discussion of “Ought Nots” as he condemns homosexuality outright.  Before that I discussed Peter Gomes and his opinion on Anti-Semitism among Christians.

Where am I now?  I am ready to return to Peter Gomes and this time he is touching on a subject that is “close to home.”   I am a married man.  My wife is a Christian.  I think I am accurate in saying that my wife has never been called to preach God’s word, teach God’s word or write books about God, but she has strong feelings that women who want to do those things have a right to do so. 

What is the problem?  This is the 21^st Century.

Many denominations allow active female participation in preaching, teaching and writing about God.

The problem is there are passages in the Bible that speak against women participating openly in leadership roles in the church.  In the 21^st Century, a major denomination has taken a stand against female participation.  The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been debating the role of women in the church since the 1880s . In 1984, the SBC passed a resolution against women’s ordination, stating that women were excluded from ordained ministry to “preserve a submission God requires because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall”.*  This past year they expelled some churches from the denomination because of female leadership concerns.

This is a denomination of 13,680,000 Christians.

More importantly to me, it is my wife’s former denomination and she does not agree with this stand.  She is a very intelligent, highly educated, independent woman who is not satisfied with saying that women are subservient to men.

I agree with her.  I have had a female pastor and in my lifetime, she was one of the most outstanding pastors I have ever had.

And that is where we are:  Chapter 7 of Peter Gomes’ book entitled “The Bible and Women, The Conflicts of Inclusion.”

*from “The Conversation” website, by Susan Shaw accessed on 1/23/2024.

The Christian church in all its various denominations has been losing members for many years.  Many people have theories about why that is happening.  Polls have been conducted on the “unchurched” to have a more factual explanation about why people have left church.  I could cite numerous theories and “facts” concerning this matter but I have a simpler explanation.  Some may scoff at my ideas but here they are anyway.  God has great expectations for man.  Jesus came to earth to “set the bar high” for human behavior.  As Christians, many of us have not tried hard enough to live the words of our Father and mirror the life of His Son.  We have given ourselves a “pass” on acceptable Christian behavior.  We have invented the idea that a lower standard for Christian behavior is acceptable.  In reality, we have lost our way.  

People inside the church and especially people “outside” the church have been taking notice for some time now and they have left the institution of “the church.”

Christians seem to think that becoming allies to politicians will give us power and maybe this does, but at what cost?  Did Jesus play politics with the powerful of His day?  Romans 13: 1 says “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.”  Jesus knew that there was only one Divine Leader and that is the way He lived His life.  The Apostle Paul knew that Jesus the politician did not exist and doing His Father’s will was His only guide (as it should be ours).    Paul knew that there are no Scriptural examples of Jesus cozying up to politicians like Christians do today.  Christians take the Bible and twist it to fit the policies of the day or even turn their faith into a political movement.  Some see this and say “I can’t be a part of this anymore.”  Those on the outside of church looking in only see hypocrisy as some politicians advocate policies that are anything but loving, the idea that Paul advocates for in First Corinthians 13:  “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”   Why join with those people who say one thing and show another?

Christians seem to think that taking stands against certain groups of people “outside the mainstream” is also a proper attitude.  That is why I am doing this discussion of Christian thinking on the LGBTQ+ issue.  Trying to be even-handed in today’s world is tough. We live in a world where intolerance is the watchword, as some seem quick to condemn someone who has different thoughts than they do.   Too many Christians seem quick to condemn a lifestyle that others are living if it is a different lifestyle than their own.  Trying to discuss this issue with a pastor who advocates for the LGBTQ+ community (Peter Gomes) and a pastor who advocates against the LGBTQ+ community (Kevin DeYoung) and a pastor who makes an effort to see both sides of the issue (Preston Sprinkle) is challenging but I feel is worthwhile.  Meanwhile Christians keep on denigrating others, forgetting Jesus’ call to love.

And the church keeps on hemorrhaging members and new member recruitment seems almost impossible.

Dr. Preston Sprinkle is making the effort to understand the world of the First Century middle-east.  In my January 4^th post entitled “Exegesis: Same-Sex Texts in Ancient Times” Sprinkle explains the idea of same-sex relations in a First Century context.  Too often we read The Bible and try to understand Scripture in our 21^st Century framework and that does not accurately represent what the original writer has said.  Sprinkle’s study on this topic makes us see that concern for same-sex relations and gender identities were not uppermost on a person’s mind in the First Century.  However in my January 4^th post, he focuses on the Greco-Roman cultural context, not the Jewish.  What was Jewish First Century thinking on same-sex relations?  Jesus was a Jew and He had rabbinical knowledge of existing Jewish texts in His lifetime. 

Sprinkle states “This is one of the most important questions in the current debate.  It’s important because Christianity was birthed out of Judaism and still maintained a very Jewish perspective on most ethical questions” [64].

How does Sprinkle address this question?  He turns to contemporary Jewish writers of the First Century on the subject of same-sex relations and he researches the most socially acknowledged form of homosexual behavior [pederasty].

Two examples of prominent Jewish writers were Josephus and Philo.  Both of these writers were steeped in their Jewish heritage and they were also aware of Greco-Roman cultural practices.  Josephus writes regarding same-sex relations: “The Law owns no other mixture of sexes but that which [is] according to nature [kata physin].  Josephus is writing about marriage, with the idea that opposite sex intercourse is the only context for sex.  Josephus believes  because Leviticus 18 and 20 say same-sex relations is wrong, that means it is wrong.   Philo comments on the Sodom story and states that men lusting after men is “unnatural desire.”  Other less prominent Jewish writers have commented that same-sex practices for men “defile themselves in their relationships” and “We [Jews] are quite separated from these practices”.  It is quite obvious that the Jews of Bible times were not accepting of homosexuality. 

The most socially acknowledged same-sex practice was pederasty.  As seen in my January 4^th post, Greco-Roman culture accepted it.  Did Jewish culture?  The short answer is no.  Since Jewish custom was that Jewish women got married between the ages of thirteen to seventeen and pederasty involved boys from that age group, the practice was condemned for practical reasons.  Also, related to this idea is that the practice of sex was for procreation, not pleasure [pederasts focused solely on pleasure].  The First Century Jewish thinking on this was the human body is designed for opposite sex intercourse, not same-sex intercourse.  Sprinkle cites writers who provide reasons for this prohibition and the main reason given is “God said no.”

Today it seems like some Christians are reading a non-Jewish New Testament and clearly that type of Bible has never existed.  “Every Jew who wrote on the subject five hundred years before and five hundred years after Christ agreed on one thing:  same-sex relations were against the will of God.” 

Dr. Sprinkle is an example of a contemporary writer who is trying to find middle ground between those who advocate for LGBTQ+ people being totally accepted in the church and those who condemn LGBTQ+ practices and are willing to say these people are not fit for church leadership or receiving a Christian marriage ceremony.  Yet he has turned to the original texts and found little support for LGBTQ+ acceptance.

As we leave Chapter Four of his book* it is pretty clear that some Christians who seek to accept same-sex behaviors are reading a different Bible than those who condemn those behaviors.  Love one another [literally] does not extend to sexual relations between the same sex.  Sprinkle says it best after providing us with the context:  “If we say that Christians should endorse same-sex relations, then we will need to recreate a rather un-Jewish Jesus and an un-Jewish New Testament” [68].

Can we do that?  Society says we should, but Scriptural context says we can’t.  Maybe contemporary society has “evolved” to the point that acceptance is the norm, but a look into the thoughts of First Century writers provides little support for this evolution.  Christians may be condemned for standing against same-sex relations, but maybe it is how we choose to discuss the issue.  Can we treat others who have different orientations with respect?  Yes we can and we should.  Not feeling we can endorse other lifestyles may be justified, but hateful condemnation is not the way to show others that Jesus is our Lord.

If Christians keep expressing damnation and hatefulness, the trend of the amazing shrinking church will continue.

*Preston Sprinkle, People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue.

Can you imagine specializing in the study of same-sex relationships in Bible times?

That is what Dr. Preston Sprinkle has done.

He has tried to explore the meaning of those controversial texts in their original context. 

Why do that?

That is what more serious students of the Bible do; they try to explore the original context of the Bible as much as they can.  They recognize that the Bible was written over a 1,500 year period and those times are far removed from today.  The writers of Scripture lived in a particular time in history and a particular culture and it is certainly not our time or our culture.  Sprinkle considers such questions as what did these texts mean to the people who wrote them?  What did they think about God?  How did they understand themselves?

This is called exegesis.*

Some may say this is useless.  God’s word has eternal relevance.  It speaks to all people in all ages and in all cultures.  I would agree to a certain extent, but ignoring the fact that we can understand the Bible better with more accurate interpretation is a form of denial.  Arguing  that we can’t gain insight with increased study of ancient times and ancient cultures does not make sense.   Authors Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart don’t denigrate what they call “devotional” reading of Scripture but they do encourage “reading for learning” and “reading for understanding.”  Exegesis would be part of a Bible reader learning and understanding.

Exegesis is what Dr. Sprinkle has done in Chapter 4 of his book People to be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue, a chapter entitled “Rated R.”

First of all, we will discuss what homosexuality meant in Greco-Roman culture in this post; then we will discuss what homosexuality meant for the Jews in the next post.  

A word of warning: Sprinkle tries to take this subject and present it with a “PG” rating, but when one turns to a consideration of same-sex relations in Greco-Roman culture, the discussion can get very graphic. 

Why go there?  Why consider this culture?  The Bible is a Jewish text, the Old Testament writers were Jews and New Testament writers were Jews. 

Here’s why. 

“The Biblical writers were not writing to a modern Western nation.  They were writing to ancient people living in a time and culture different than ours.  The Old Testament writers were interacting with concepts and world views trafficked into Israel from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and other surrounding cultures, and the New Testament was written to a people steeped in a Jewish and Greco-Roman environment.  To understand what the Bible means, we’ll need to understand the world in which it was first written and read—especially with a topic as important as homosexuality.” [Sprinkle, 55].

Too often we put on a contemporary “Western” lens to view the Bible and nowhere is that more evident when it comes to homosexual behavior. Sprinkle reveals that homosexual practice was accepted in the ancient world as long as it was not among equals.  A man could have sex with another man who was of lower class or a slave and not be thought of as strange.  Sprinkle cites numerous sources to support this idea, sources from the historical period. 

Too often we think of this behavior as a sexual identity issue, that people who are attracted to members of their own sex are not masculine or not feminine.  In the ancient world, concern for sexual identity was nonexistent.  “Ancient people didn’t think in terms of sexual identity; they thought in terms of gender identity” [Sprinkle].  Homosexuality is a modern sociological term coined in the nineteenth century and gay and lesbian refers to people who label themselves based on their personal sexual attraction.

Today, there is a long-running debate about the nature of homosexual behavior.  Some declare that it has a biological origin and some declare that it is socialized behavior.  Many ancient writers did not consider this issue at all.  Again Sprinkle cites contemporaneous writers like Aristotle and Parmenides to support his assertions.  However, there is also some evidence that there was an attitude that same sex attraction was fixed at birth.  Sprinkle cites the book Love Between Women by Bernadette Brooten.  Brooten has seen in some ancient literature the discussion that same-sex desires were fixed at birth.  Brooten is an affirming author** so naturally she would hold this point of view.  Sprinkle has studied her work and declares that even though Brooten has a bias, her work has some merit.  The notion that the idea that sexual orientation occurs from birth was totally absent in the ancient world is probably inaccurate. 

In the section of his chapter entitled “Diversity in Same-Sex Relations” Sprinkle goes into an extensive discussion of the Greco-Roman worldview regarding same-sex relations.  As we have seen power differential was a main factor in this activity, with unequal power as the reason for its acceptance.  However, the attitude of sexual openness [flagrant expression of sexuality] was common in this world.  Murals were often pornographic.  Sprinkle even talked of pornographic images on water pitchers which would be passed around the family at the dinner table.  The culture was a breeding ground for sexual expression.

A practice that we would find very questionable today which was found in ancient times was pederasty or love for a younger boy by an older man.  That was not condemned in Greco-Roman culture and its practice led to acceptance of same-sex relations in this culture.  Sprinkle writes this “had a massive influence on the way people thought and lived for many years to come.” 

Lesbian relationships were written about in the literature of the period and Sprinkle cites documents that support this idea, even to the point that lesbian marriage was sometimes allowed.  Lucian of Samosata and Clement of Alexandria refer to woman as having other women as their “lawful wives.” 

After considering the wide spectrum of same-sex relations in the ancient world and the obvious acceptance of these practices, what is the relevance for Judaism on this topic?  Again, “The Biblical writers were not writing to a modern Western nation.  They were writing to ancient people living in a time and culture different than ours…. To understand what the Bible means, we’ll need to understand the world in which it was first written and read.”

But how much did the “world” influence the Jewish faith and Old Testament writers and how much did the “world” influence New Testament writers who wrote for a more Gentile audience.  Sprinkle has thoughts on this important issue that directly relate to the attitude that Christians have toward same-sex relations today.

His basic concern is this:  some of today’s Christians want to endorse same-sex relations.  Is there support for this in God’s word or are we reading the Bible through twenty-first century lenses?  Sprinkle says he has studied the ancient context.  In my next post, we learn the answer to the question, what would the Jewish Biblical writers feel?

*for a more thorough explanation of techniques of exegesis, see How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.

**an affirming author is an author who desires to affirm positive positions regarding homosexual behavior.