Matthew Vines` book God and the Gay Christian is a good example of a book that seeks to argue that homosexual practice and `traditional` Christianity are compatible. A friend lent me a copy; here (slightly adapted) is the response I sent him:
Hi. Thanks for lending me Matthew Vines’ book. As promised here are my thoughts.
First (as always), our aim must be to seek to be clear about what God states to be his will, and then see the more general issues of personal experience etc through that. (Vines does it the opposite way round, which in his circumstances I probably would too; but doing that inevitably risks distorting our ability to listen to God.)
So first, then, about what God actually says:
First, in chapter 4 I think Vines may be right: the Sodom incident does not show conclusively that homosexual practice is wrong. (We do need to note what Jude 7 says about the inhabitants of Sodom having `given themselves up to perversion`; it is a little hard not to see `perversion` there as referring to homosexual practice. But Sodom was also marked by serious sins such as gang rape.)
But as Vines proceeds there are too many issues he refuses to face. First, that Jesus, and the new testament generally, repeatedly prohibits `porneia` (usually translated as `sexual immorality`), and that for anyone like his audience with a strong old testament background, the meaning of `porneia` is defined by its use in Leviticus 18 and 20; and there it very clearly includes homosexual practice, alongside adultery, incest, and sex with animals.
Secondly: in Leviticus these sexual sins are not just issues for God’s old testament covenant people, as many of the levitical laws seem to have been. Rather, they are clearly (and unusually) stated to be why the surrounding pagan nations were `vomited out` of the land through the judgment of God (18:24ff, 20:23).
Thirdly, the seriousness of this issue becomes clear when we see homosexual practice described as an `abomination` (18:13). (Vines tries to undermine the force of this by listing other things that Leviticus describes as abominations and suggesting they don’t matter: but for example the NIV understands the issue he cites in Ezk 18:13 to be excessive interest, while the religious incense he quotes in Isa 1:13 is abominable to God for the same (permanent) reason as the fasting of Isa 58, ie gross inconsistency between worship and lifestyle. In some cases these may surprise us, but that’s why we let God’s Word teach us: if God says these things are abominations, they’re abominations.)
Fourthly, Vines doesn’t really face the seriousness of the fact that in Leviticus homosexual practice is one of the few sins that carry the death penalty. Of course this death penalty punishment was only for a temporary theocratic state, to show us how God feels; and it may never have been enforced – but if God instituted capital punishment for homosexual practice, it certainly shows how strongly He feels about the matter.
It’s when Vines is writing about the Pentateuch that we start to see another major problem. Vines presents himself as taking an evangelical view of the 100% reliability and authority of Scripture. But in practice he presents both the pentateuchal laws and Paul’s words in Romans 1 as perhaps impressive in a patriarchal culture (Paul’s views – not God’s revelation, one notices – `were remarkably egalitarian within his cultural context`, p.110), but nevertheless as unable to transcend fully the limits of that culture’s sexist prejudices. (In contrast, our own church’s statement of faith’s commitment is to them as being something 100% inspired; even if we recognize that in some cases God is settling at this point for less than the best (ie less than the radically holiest) because these rules were for people without the Spirit, and there were therefore limits as to how much change and holiness could be realistic.) But still God does not settle for the kinds of things that are `abominations`.
Another vital issue here that Vines refuses to face: if God defines something (for example eating certain foods, until Jesus came and explicitly told us in Mark 7 that this was no longer the case; or, likewise, breaking the Sabbath, until Jesus came and explicitly told us in Mark 7 that this was no longer the case) as an abomination, then our job is to submit in loving obedience to his will, whether or not the `why` is obvious. Because in situation after situation in the Bible God tests our obedient faith by making a command but giving no explanation for it: Eve, don’t eat the fruit; Abraham, sacrifice your son; Saul, take a risky delay. (This becomes a crucial flaw in ch6 of Vines.)
The next major flaw comes on p.86: you simply cannot reduce the issue of indispensable gender complementarity to two alternatives, anatomy and hierarchy. There is far more to what each gender needs from the other than either anatomy or `headship`.
(I simply can’t follow his argument on Deut 21:16-27 (p.91) or 22:13-21 (p.92). I guess the problem he describes must be created by his using a different Bible translation to the NIV.)
Then on p.100 his argument depends disastrously on his having misunderstood the meaning of the OT and NT words for slavery. The old testament word translated `slave` simply doesn’t mean what ours does today. When God called Israel they were all a nation of runaway slaves escaping from serious slavery of the worst sort; and so it’s not surprising that, although they inherited the near-eastern system of labour, it became transformed. In the old testament a slave can appeal to court against their boss, and the boss can even be executed if he maltreats the slave. Kidnapping and slave-trafficking are crimes punishable by death (Ex 21:16), and Deuteronomy 23:15-16 has the command, unparalleled in any surrounding culture, that a runaway slave should not be handed over – which would have undermined the entire system if indeed that were equivalent to what we call slavery. In fact Exodus arranges a ceremony for the slave who prefers the arrangement he has and doesn’t want to be free. This was not what we call slavery. Neither was the Roman system, although it was worse than the Hebrew system for which the same English word is used in the Bible. Roman `slavery` was not permanent; there was not a big separation between slave and free; it might even be entered into voluntarily as a means to a special job or to climbing the social ladder. It was a system that could certainly go very wrong (just like marriage!); but again, it was not what we call slavery. If slavery had meant then what it became later, Paul would have said something different; he is quite unequivocal that forcing someone into slavery is on the same level as killing your parent (1 Tim 1:10)).
Then moving on to the new testament passages, Romans 1: here I think Vines runs into big difficulties with the issue of what is `natural` and `unnatural`. First, he tries to argue that `unnatural` in Paul’s time had specifically to do with men or women taking on the customary sexual role of the other gender, but only a minority even of the texts he chooses to quote (pp.108-09) limit themselves to that; his first quote for example, from Plato, describes same-sex intercourse as unnatural in principle. But there is a much bigger mistake here. When he wrote Romans, says Vines, `Paul could invoke those terms as a shorthand reference for well-established usage.` This seems to me really poor interpretation. To begin with, Paul was a trained Jewish rabbi, not someone brought up in Greece, and so what he would use `natural` for would be determined much more by the old testament (ie Leviticus) than by Plato. `The established use of those terms` may have been `related [ie limited] to culture-determined gender roles` (Vines p.111), but that doesn’t mean that Paul’s usage of them is – or, let’s insist, God’s. And then secondly, the fact that ancient Greeks wrongly took what was normal in their own culture to be universally `natural` (p.108) – just as, one might add, British gay activists do today, blithely ignoring how most of the human race feels about it – doesn’t mean that there is no such thing at all as the `natural` in the sense of the creational norm. It just means that we, or any other culture, need to look to God’s revelation (sought in humility) to understand what `natural` is. As Vines quotes Gagnon saying, the language of Romans 1 takes us back to Genesis, where natural marriage is very clearly between a man and a woman.
Initially for me the only point where Vines had a stronger case is when he argues that 1 Cor 11:13-15 (male long hair is an unnatural thing, a woman’s long hair is `her glory`) is using `nature` to mean `culture`. This is a difficult text to understand (some scholars regard it as Paul quoting the Corinthians, because he never appeals to `nature` in quite this way anywhere else); but the problem is that what Vines says doesn’t work either. The whole point about Nazirites’ chosen appearance was that they were doing something clearly unnatural to show their utter commitment to God; and the reference to Absalom’s beautiful hair is hardly unambiguously positive given what Absalom then does. One might paraphrase this verse by saying there is something somewhat unnatural, unmanly, about a man (eg Shrek’s Prince Charming!) who spends too much trouble on turning his appearance, especially his hair, into a work of art; I think even in our culture most of us would have a gut feeling of some acceptable gender difference there. But perhaps Piper and Grudem (Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood p75) are more convincing, when they understand v14 as saying that nature `dictates that men feel ashamed when they wear symbols of femininity. We could feel the force of this by asking the men of our churches, “Does not nature teach you not to wear a dress to church?” The teaching of nature is the natural inclination of men and women to feel shame when they abandon the culturally established symbols of masculinity or them. Nature does not teach what the symbols should be [my italics].`
Ok: then regarding 1 Corinthians 6:9, he’s right that the meaning of `malakoi` as homosexual isn’t undeniable, although one scholarly Bible translation after another takes it that way. (Given his appeals to classical scholarship elsewhere in the book, it’s odd to find him on p.122 appealing for support to pre-1923 Bible translations [mostly ones I’ve never heard of, at that] which didn’t have access to this same scholarship.) And you may have noticed another weakness in this chapter where he says that `malakos` is used for effeminate behaviours such as being cowardly or lacking self control (though I wish he’d made it clearer where he’s actually quoting writers who use the word this way rather than ones just talking about effeminate behaviour in general). What this doesn’t do is undermine the case that in a serious use like in 1 Cor 6:9 it means homosexual, and that that is then its metaphorical or abusive use elsewhere. So if at school two boys are arguing and one calls the other a `pooftah` it doesn’t necessarily imply an accusation of actual homosexuality, rather, of effeminate behaviour such as might (to that boy’s foolish prejudice) characterize a gay person; but if a serious publication lists a selection of unacceptable behaviours – say, a newspaper job advert says `No pooftahs need apply` – we can be pretty sure homosexuality is intended (and the law is being broken).
But it’s on the crucial negative word `arseno-koitai` in 1 Cor 6:9 (and 1 Tim 1:10) that his argument falls apart. It just won’t do to say `The component parts of the word don’t necessarily tell us what it means. The English word understand, for instance, has nothing to do with either standing or being under.` No, but that’s because the meanings of `stand` and `under` are so far removed from any probable meaning for `understand`. If I invent the word `man-shagger`, anyone will rightly understand from the components what it means. And of course `man-shagger` (or `man-bedder`, if you prefer the much less likely translation) is an exact equivalent of `arseno-koitai`: as he admits (p.123), in the earliest Greek translation of Lev 20:13, the words `arseno koiten` appear next to each other. (In a long list of prohibited sexual deviations: that’s what we’re talking about.) (P.123 is very odd in the way he admits this and yet says that `the argument` [that `arsenokoites` means practising homosexual] `breaks down.`) Again, one would also have hoped he would have noticed that his argument that `man-shagger` is limited to situations of economic exploitation is weakened, not strengthened, by his quotation (p.125) of its use in the Acts of John alongside `poisoner` and `sorcerer`, which have no limitation to or automatic connection with economic exploitation. In fact on p.127 I think he gives the store away: to say `arsenokoitai` applies to homosexual practice, not homosexual orientation, is exactly our position.
The issue about `arsenokoitai` is actually pretty clear. More thorough scholarship I’ve read points out that the rabbis had `picked up part of that phrase [in Lev 20:13] “lies with a male,” made it virtually into a noun, and gave it nearly the status of a technical term. The [Hebrew] term that thus emerged and that is used frequently in this literature is mishkav zakur (lying with a male)`; meaning arsenokoites is a literal translation of the Hebrew phrase. And that is the only possible background to Paul’s usage here, because `this term never appears in the secular Greek of Paul’s day, but only in Jewish-Christian literature. It is virtually certain that this compound term was coined by the LXX translators in their rendering of Lev. 18:22 and 20:13`, implying clearly that `Paul primarily had in mind the OT Levitical background, which forbids all same-sex intercourse, not just issues of exploitation or orientation. `
It does therefore seem very clear what God is saying, and desires, about homosexual practice.
Finally with regard to some practical issues:
Vines wants to insist that change of sexual orientation simply isn’t possible. Obviously many of our gay activist friends want to believe this. Other publications such as Lisa Nolland’s God, Gays and the Church would tell a different story. I’m not on top of all the research, but what has interested me is gay activist Matthew Parris (who played a key role in bringing down Clause 28) writing in the Times a while back that, now much of the battle for gay rights has been won, we (they) can admit that actually sexuality is a spectrum along which people do move according to choice. An interesting example of that is Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo who (again in the Times) wrote describing her years as a highly sexually active lesbian and then how she’s been `fully heterosexual` (with a male husband) for 30 years. Her article showed clearly how sexual desire and orientation need not be fixed from birth, as LGBT activists are saying, but are as Parris says a spectrum up and down which people may freely choose to move (and very possibly for reasons of consistency with to their other beliefs). Similarly Dominic Davies, the CEO of Pink Therapy, has been quoted as saying `Sexuality can be quite plastic for many people… [there are] plenty of examples..of sexual fluidity over a lifespan for many LGB and T people.` And this is becoming obvious as bisexuality has grown increasingly fashionable.
Then: I’m scratching my head about his argument in ch2, which appears to be one of a rather improbable cultural relativism, that human sexuality functioned very differently from now in ancient Greece. (He says `ancient societies`, but in fact he really speaks only of a couple; and interestingly these are the two that Tom Wright argues are where homosexuality reached its greatest expression, eg with Nero.) But all Vines actually demonstrates in his classical quotations is that there were aspects of sexuality in ancient Greece that were hideous and exploitative (eg widespread pederasty). This neither justifies our own culture’s approach, nor proves that what the NT is saying is limited only to that context in a way that what it says about, say, straight sexuality is not.
And actually, doesn’t Vines’ argument here backfire completely? If he were right that `same-sex orientation` as an `exclusive sexual orientation` is an exclusively modern idea (p.40 – `our understanding of same-sex orientation is uniquely modern` p.48), then obviously that does raise the issue as to why, and whether indeed it might somehow possibly be a product of a damaged and God-rejecting culture. (And then Romans 1:22-28 starts to be highly relevant and prophetic.) Certainly – if he were right – he’s completely undermined the idea that exclusive same-sex attraction is something transcultural and `natural`. (And that is the conclusion we might also draw from the fact that, right now, the gay ideology is viewed as a bizarre piece of PC liberalism (or even legislated against in 68 countries; which I don’t support, but it’s indicative), by the majority of cultures worldwide: most of black Africa, all the Middle East, India, Russia, Fiji, China, most of east Asia; a very significant fact as to what is `normal`, one might think.)
I’m equally scratching my head about where the argument of ch3 ends up. He quotes `There are eunuchs who were born that way` (ie people who because of something very basic about them will be celibate, rather than by choice; Matt 19:12), yet then proceeds to summarize Jesus‘ teaching as being that celibacy is always to be a `voluntary choice… given, not imposed`. I can only say he’s lost me totally. `Imposed` isn’t perhaps the word I would use, but there are all sorts of life-situations (being a Christian woman somewhere where the church is tiny for example) that can mean lifelong celibacy is not voluntary (and can indeed be very difficult and painful when sexual fulfilment [eg via Tinder] is immediately to hand, provided one is prepared to sin). Once again, the issues posed here by gay sexuality are not unique. When one takes into account the deep pain of forfeiting any chance to bear children, the experience of straight Christian women can be every bit as painful.
I also don’t understand his insistence – and this is important – that we must accept that for gay people sexual orientation merges inevitably into sexual practice and cannot be distinguished; which seems to mean that, if a gay person has people they fancy, they cannot (unlike straight people) be expected not to have sex with them. (Actually, I had a close friend who was a feminist leader who told me that, if our society weren’t so sexualized, lesbian friends she had wouldn’t in fact have felt the need for their friendships to `get horizontal`.) Vines simply doesn’t face the issue that deep friendships which stop at the point of sexual celibacy may be the calling for many people, both gay and straight; as they were for the most human Person who ever lived; and that – as with other, equally tough limitations or frustrations in life – learning to live and grow with these may be highly significant for our maturing for eternity.
To be honest I also have to question the emphasis that Vines makes throughout on gay relationships as a force for moral good. It is obvious that this is something he genuinely wants to be true. The problem is that – I can only say, it seems to me, and I may well be wrong – there can be something about gay sexuality that turns to perversion or evil more quickly than straight sexuality. To take an example, a pro-gay journalist in a recent Times wrote that `tolerance of gay lives` lasts `as long as same sex couples replicate monogamous hetero marriage… And many do. But gay male culture has to conceal its wolfish side. Even the most devoted [gay male] couples I know have devised house rules: threesomes are allowed or one-night stands on the basis of don’t ask, don’t tell. When women are taken from the relationship equation, sexual mores change.` I have seen elsewhere complaints from the gay community that monogamy is an alien, heterosexual value. And this is where we have to stop being infinitely relativist and must say, Is sexual faithfulness within marriage a non-negotiable with God? And, I suspect, where fidelity is weakened, commitment is too, in many other areas of life. I suspect actually that prominent gay culture tends in the end to shape a culture forcefully against moral absolutes. The renowned culture critic George Steiner, for example, argues that if you look at the last century in European art, gay input tends to go with the dominance of style over the expression of any kind of truth. In the history of rock I think you see that with ‘80s new wave, or in literature with Oscar Wilde. So I see why Vines desperately wants to believe this, but I don’t think he’s right.
Let me say one final thing. On pp.168-69 Vines denies again the possibility of distinguishing between same-sex orientation and same sex behaviour. He goes on to say: `Gay people’s sexuality is a part of what it means to be human. Attempts to extinguish it often result in destructive, emotionally crippling ways of living.` But if we are disabled, or single, or childless, there are ways of responding to these too that will lead us into bitterness and into `emotionally crippling ways of living`: but it very clearly need not be so; nor for gay people. And I am glad to say that in our church I’ve seen (up close) how someone happy to be gay, albeit celibate, can be thoroughly emotionally healthy and very far from being `trapped in crippling ways of living`. Also, and this is important, I have said to this person that I think their sexual orientation not only means they have openings for ministry that I as a straight man do not have, but I think too that being thoroughly gay in orientation means he has certain valuable types of awareness and perception that I as a straight man do not have.
And I believe this is where churches sometimes fail: not in our refusal to affirm homosexual practice, because if we give in there, we will be seriously disobeying God; but when we do not make it clear that we do not see homosexual orientation as bad; hence, we welcome non-practising homosexuals into leadership and every other kind of ministry; and, we recognise that, as with every other age or culture group, people with this particular personality type will have something to contribute that nobody else will. This is something I’m unashamed to say; but without compromising or being foggy on the biblical issues of homosexual practice, which are likely to be the ones we face most prejudice and get into most legal trouble with in the coming decades, and which we must train future generations to be biblically faithful about; because probably they are the ones who will need to pay the price for consistent biblical obedience…
