On the Bible and Homosexuality
Aug. 9th, 2003 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldMichael Valpy has an interesting article on the subject in the Globe and Mail.
Why same-sex marriage became a sin
For centuries, a wedding wasn't even a Christian church matter, writes Globe religion reporter MICHAEL VALPY. When the Vatican weighs in against gay unions, it's doing some rather selective reading
By MICHAEL VALPY
Saturday, August 9, 2003 - Page F2
If bears and rabbits had recreational sex, and if the ancient Romans had had less influence on early Christianity, today's furor from parts of the Christian church over the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex unions might not be happening.
There still would be Christians taking literally the Bible's seemingly steamy admonitions against inter-male sex -- men "knowing" men, as scriptural language is inclined to have it -- but a lot of the theological underpinnings about both homosexuality and marriage would be eroded.
The explanation lies largely with how Christianity's various branches approach scriptural interpretation and to what degree they embrace Aristotle's principle legacy to Christian thought -- the concept of natural law. That idea, said the late British theologian Adrian Hastings, is the great fault line between Roman Catholic and Protestant ethical theory. The Vatican is big on it; most Protestant and Anglican theologians aren't.
In any event, the Christian churches' proprietary claim to marriage and its definition in Western society is a manifestation of fudged history. Marriage in the ostensibly Christian world was a secular event -- as it increasingly is now -- until just a few hundred years ago.
No priest is recorded officiating at a wedding in the Bible. Early Hebrew law, from which Christianity descends, presented marriage as a commercial transaction: A wife was basically purchased. The Bible is blatantly contradictory on divorce.
Nothing in the Bible prescribes monogamy or, for that matter, proscribes polygamy, which is mentioned without censure more often than the Bible alludes to homosexuality (two in the Hebrew Bible, three in Christianity's New Testament -- see sidebar). Moreover, as U.S. Catholic theologian Michael G. Lawlor said in an interview, the difference between simultaneous polygamy, which is banned, and today's serial polygamy, which is rampant and condoned by most churches, is increasingly moot.
The Christian church's definition of marriage comes from the legal Digesta of the Roman emperor Justinian (483-565): "Marriage is a union of a man and a woman, and a communion of the whole of life."
Not until the Council of Trent (1545-63) did the Roman Catholic Church formally declare marriage to be a sacrament and require that marriages between Catholics be celebrated in a Catholic church.
The Church of England took another 200 years to issue the same order. European Protestants always saw marriage as primarily a secular institution regulated by secular laws. Not until the 18th century was marriage formally a religious event in all countries of Europe and, for the most part, in the Americas.
Through most of history, the Christian ideal of marriage -- as a freely consented-to union of a man and woman living together in a state of equality -- has been honoured more often in the breach than in the observance.
The big question is: How is it that different branches of Christianity can start from the same data base -- biblical scripture -- on marriage and homosexuality but arrive at different end points?
How can Pope John Paul II and the Vatican say homosexuals are "objectively disordered" and homosexual acts "under no circumstances can . . . be approved," while the 70-million-member world Anglican Communion shows signs of splitting itself in two on the issue? At the same time, Canada's largest Protestant denomination, the United Church, without difficulty ordains practising homosexuals as ministers and blesses homosexual unions.
The answer is that Christianity's branches don't all start together. And, whatever their starting point, for at least the past 500 years they have then headed off in different directions.
Rev. Ronald Mercier, dean of Jesuit Regis College at the Toronto School of Theology and a professor of moral theology, said four elements determine how a theological position is arrived at: philosophy, interpretation of scripture, church tradition and human experience.
The Roman Catholic and liberal Protestant and Anglican churches would have a roughly similar approach to interpretation of scripture, a process of seeing scripture through the prism of church tradition, reason and (for the most progressive theological thinkers) new knowledge. In contrast, fundamentalist Protestants -- Christianity's 19th- and 20th-century newcomers -- accept the authority of scripture as fixed and infallible.
But an added element influences Roman Catholic thought. What lies behind the Vatican statement is what Father Mercier calls a "dialogue" between not only scripture and church tradition, but the philosophy of natural law.
Aristotle gave birth to the concept, but it was Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), the giant of Christian thought, who gave it theological shape. He defined natural law as participation in the eternal law of the universe -- God's divine law -- by rational creatures with an inbuilt commitment to being "good" and acting morally.
In his philosophy, the human intellect is enlightened by divine law, which it can choose to reject but cannot escape. Thus, throughout Creation, rational human beings can observe that sex -- bear sex, rabbit sex, bird sex, fish sex -- is for the purpose of procreation. That means "good" and "moral" sex for humans is procreative sex (designed by God, and confined in marriage), which homosexuals cannot have.
Therefore, the Vatican finds that homosexual acts are unnatural and not moral, and the only choice for homosexuals is to be chaste.
In this case, the natural law of procreative sex is seen to re-enforce the scriptural injunction by God in Genesis that human beings should "be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it" -- a frightening concept for many ecologists.
(Fundamentalist Protestants get to the same end point as the Vatican, but from a different angle: If the Bible says men lying with men is an abomination, it's an abomination; forget the bears and rabbits.)
The late British Dominican scholar Gareth Moore -- whose posthumous book, A Question of Truth: Christianity and Homosexuality, was published last week -- argued that there are several drawbacks to the classical natural-law argument on homosexuality.
"First," he writes, "the premise that God designed sex for procreation, though it once seemed obvious, is, when questioned, difficult to justify either by empirical observation or by reason. Empirically, much sex does not result in conception; indeed, many kinds of sex cannot do so.
"The argument also tends to present Nature as a given to which human beings must simply submit, and this does justice neither to human creativity nor to the Christian freedom which is a central theme of the New Testament."
Rev. Jackie Harper, a specialist in family life ministry for the United Church (with its British Protestant Presbyterian and Methodist origins), speaks of scripture being interpretated "in the context of the reality of the community where we live."
There are two ways of looking at homosexuality in the Bible, she said. Either it's a sin -- in which case a lot of other things must be sins, such as having sex during menstruation or getting tattooed, both biblically proscribed -- or it wasn't a concept that people in biblical times understood.
She looks at the Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah and sees an allegory about hospitality -- about Lot protecting people under his roof -- not a divine warning of the punishment to be meted out for men having sex with men.
She looks at natural law, and sees not what the Vatican sees. "All of us are created in God's image," she says, "and the diversity of our sexuality is a gift of God."
What the Bible says
Five passages in the Christian Bible are construed as condemning male homosexuality (female homosexuality isn't mentioned).
Genesis, Chapter 19, is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Two male angels arrive in Sodom and Lot invites them into his house. The house is soon surrounded by the men of Sodom, young and old, "all the people to the last man," demanding that Lot send the angels outside so that the men "may know them."
Lot offers two of his virgin daughters as an alternative. "Do to them as you please," he says, "only do nothing to these men [the angels] for they have come under the shelter of my roof."
But the men insisted on the male angels, so God got mad and destroyed Sodom and nearby Gomorrah. What God would have done if Lot's virgin daughters had been accepted by the townsmen for a mass rape is not known.
Leviticus 18, verse 22 [God to Moses]: "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination."
Romans 1:27 [Paul the apostle writes]: "The men . . . gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error."
I Corinthians 6:9 [Paul writes]: "Neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals [the word used in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible; the King James Bible says "effeminate . . . abusers of themselves with mankind" and the New English Bible says "none who are guilty . . . of homosexual perversion"], nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God."
(In a footnote to the word "homosexuals," the RSV says vaguely: "Two Greek words are rendered by this expression." Queen's University biblical historian Donald Harman Akenson says the two words are, in essence, rectal fornicators.)
I Timothy 1:8-10 [Paul writes]: "The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners . . . for manslayers, immoral persons, sodomites [in the RSV; the KJB says "them that defile themselves with mankind"; the NEB says "perverts"] . . . and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine."
Why same-sex marriage became a sin
For centuries, a wedding wasn't even a Christian church matter, writes Globe religion reporter MICHAEL VALPY. When the Vatican weighs in against gay unions, it's doing some rather selective reading
By MICHAEL VALPY
Saturday, August 9, 2003 - Page F2
If bears and rabbits had recreational sex, and if the ancient Romans had had less influence on early Christianity, today's furor from parts of the Christian church over the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex unions might not be happening.
There still would be Christians taking literally the Bible's seemingly steamy admonitions against inter-male sex -- men "knowing" men, as scriptural language is inclined to have it -- but a lot of the theological underpinnings about both homosexuality and marriage would be eroded.
The explanation lies largely with how Christianity's various branches approach scriptural interpretation and to what degree they embrace Aristotle's principle legacy to Christian thought -- the concept of natural law. That idea, said the late British theologian Adrian Hastings, is the great fault line between Roman Catholic and Protestant ethical theory. The Vatican is big on it; most Protestant and Anglican theologians aren't.
In any event, the Christian churches' proprietary claim to marriage and its definition in Western society is a manifestation of fudged history. Marriage in the ostensibly Christian world was a secular event -- as it increasingly is now -- until just a few hundred years ago.
No priest is recorded officiating at a wedding in the Bible. Early Hebrew law, from which Christianity descends, presented marriage as a commercial transaction: A wife was basically purchased. The Bible is blatantly contradictory on divorce.
Nothing in the Bible prescribes monogamy or, for that matter, proscribes polygamy, which is mentioned without censure more often than the Bible alludes to homosexuality (two in the Hebrew Bible, three in Christianity's New Testament -- see sidebar). Moreover, as U.S. Catholic theologian Michael G. Lawlor said in an interview, the difference between simultaneous polygamy, which is banned, and today's serial polygamy, which is rampant and condoned by most churches, is increasingly moot.
The Christian church's definition of marriage comes from the legal Digesta of the Roman emperor Justinian (483-565): "Marriage is a union of a man and a woman, and a communion of the whole of life."
Not until the Council of Trent (1545-63) did the Roman Catholic Church formally declare marriage to be a sacrament and require that marriages between Catholics be celebrated in a Catholic church.
The Church of England took another 200 years to issue the same order. European Protestants always saw marriage as primarily a secular institution regulated by secular laws. Not until the 18th century was marriage formally a religious event in all countries of Europe and, for the most part, in the Americas.
Through most of history, the Christian ideal of marriage -- as a freely consented-to union of a man and woman living together in a state of equality -- has been honoured more often in the breach than in the observance.
The big question is: How is it that different branches of Christianity can start from the same data base -- biblical scripture -- on marriage and homosexuality but arrive at different end points?
How can Pope John Paul II and the Vatican say homosexuals are "objectively disordered" and homosexual acts "under no circumstances can . . . be approved," while the 70-million-member world Anglican Communion shows signs of splitting itself in two on the issue? At the same time, Canada's largest Protestant denomination, the United Church, without difficulty ordains practising homosexuals as ministers and blesses homosexual unions.
The answer is that Christianity's branches don't all start together. And, whatever their starting point, for at least the past 500 years they have then headed off in different directions.
Rev. Ronald Mercier, dean of Jesuit Regis College at the Toronto School of Theology and a professor of moral theology, said four elements determine how a theological position is arrived at: philosophy, interpretation of scripture, church tradition and human experience.
The Roman Catholic and liberal Protestant and Anglican churches would have a roughly similar approach to interpretation of scripture, a process of seeing scripture through the prism of church tradition, reason and (for the most progressive theological thinkers) new knowledge. In contrast, fundamentalist Protestants -- Christianity's 19th- and 20th-century newcomers -- accept the authority of scripture as fixed and infallible.
But an added element influences Roman Catholic thought. What lies behind the Vatican statement is what Father Mercier calls a "dialogue" between not only scripture and church tradition, but the philosophy of natural law.
Aristotle gave birth to the concept, but it was Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), the giant of Christian thought, who gave it theological shape. He defined natural law as participation in the eternal law of the universe -- God's divine law -- by rational creatures with an inbuilt commitment to being "good" and acting morally.
In his philosophy, the human intellect is enlightened by divine law, which it can choose to reject but cannot escape. Thus, throughout Creation, rational human beings can observe that sex -- bear sex, rabbit sex, bird sex, fish sex -- is for the purpose of procreation. That means "good" and "moral" sex for humans is procreative sex (designed by God, and confined in marriage), which homosexuals cannot have.
Therefore, the Vatican finds that homosexual acts are unnatural and not moral, and the only choice for homosexuals is to be chaste.
In this case, the natural law of procreative sex is seen to re-enforce the scriptural injunction by God in Genesis that human beings should "be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it" -- a frightening concept for many ecologists.
(Fundamentalist Protestants get to the same end point as the Vatican, but from a different angle: If the Bible says men lying with men is an abomination, it's an abomination; forget the bears and rabbits.)
The late British Dominican scholar Gareth Moore -- whose posthumous book, A Question of Truth: Christianity and Homosexuality, was published last week -- argued that there are several drawbacks to the classical natural-law argument on homosexuality.
"First," he writes, "the premise that God designed sex for procreation, though it once seemed obvious, is, when questioned, difficult to justify either by empirical observation or by reason. Empirically, much sex does not result in conception; indeed, many kinds of sex cannot do so.
"The argument also tends to present Nature as a given to which human beings must simply submit, and this does justice neither to human creativity nor to the Christian freedom which is a central theme of the New Testament."
Rev. Jackie Harper, a specialist in family life ministry for the United Church (with its British Protestant Presbyterian and Methodist origins), speaks of scripture being interpretated "in the context of the reality of the community where we live."
There are two ways of looking at homosexuality in the Bible, she said. Either it's a sin -- in which case a lot of other things must be sins, such as having sex during menstruation or getting tattooed, both biblically proscribed -- or it wasn't a concept that people in biblical times understood.
She looks at the Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah and sees an allegory about hospitality -- about Lot protecting people under his roof -- not a divine warning of the punishment to be meted out for men having sex with men.
She looks at natural law, and sees not what the Vatican sees. "All of us are created in God's image," she says, "and the diversity of our sexuality is a gift of God."
What the Bible says
Five passages in the Christian Bible are construed as condemning male homosexuality (female homosexuality isn't mentioned).
Genesis, Chapter 19, is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Two male angels arrive in Sodom and Lot invites them into his house. The house is soon surrounded by the men of Sodom, young and old, "all the people to the last man," demanding that Lot send the angels outside so that the men "may know them."
Lot offers two of his virgin daughters as an alternative. "Do to them as you please," he says, "only do nothing to these men [the angels] for they have come under the shelter of my roof."
But the men insisted on the male angels, so God got mad and destroyed Sodom and nearby Gomorrah. What God would have done if Lot's virgin daughters had been accepted by the townsmen for a mass rape is not known.
Leviticus 18, verse 22 [God to Moses]: "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination."
Romans 1:27 [Paul the apostle writes]: "The men . . . gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error."
I Corinthians 6:9 [Paul writes]: "Neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals [the word used in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible; the King James Bible says "effeminate . . . abusers of themselves with mankind" and the New English Bible says "none who are guilty . . . of homosexual perversion"], nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God."
(In a footnote to the word "homosexuals," the RSV says vaguely: "Two Greek words are rendered by this expression." Queen's University biblical historian Donald Harman Akenson says the two words are, in essence, rectal fornicators.)
I Timothy 1:8-10 [Paul writes]: "The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners . . . for manslayers, immoral persons, sodomites [in the RSV; the KJB says "them that defile themselves with mankind"; the NEB says "perverts"] . . . and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine."
