So, eventually we get to Romans 1. When looking at the Biblical verses that speak against homosexual practice, this is the most important. I am going to take four blog posts to deal with this passage, because it is so significant for the issue of whether God affirms same gender marriage.

We’ve seen already that the other Biblical verses that have traditionally been used to show that God is against same gender marriage and sexual activity are actually talking about specific abusive and cultic sexual practices. If you’re just joining the conversation now, you might want to go back and catch up on the parts of the series you’ve missed. Romans 1 is important because it appears to do more than this – it seems to say that homosexuality is “against nature”, and therefore a direct affront to God. It also implies that homosexual desires are actually a curse from God and a sign of the moral degradation of society. This is what many Christians believe – and Romans 1 is where they go for Biblical proof.

If we’re going to change the church’s traditional view on homosexuality, we’re going to have to show that Romans 1 does not actually say what most Christians have believed it says for the past 2,000 years. But that’s precisely what I am going to do.

I’m going to do this in a few different ways.

In this post, I want to start by actually looking at the plain reading of the text, but through the eyes of a gay person committed to living to a godly life. I want you to see – without any detailed analysis of the text – that actually the plain reading of the text is not what you think it is. It talks of people consumed by lust and sexually – and morally – out of control. This is not true of most gay couples.

Continue reading The Bible and Same Sex Relationships, Part 10: Re-Read Romans 1 →

This is part 9 of a series of blog posts looking at the issue of the Bible and how Christians should approach the issue of LGBT people and same sex relationships. You can find the full index of the series here.

Words matter. The Bible wasn’t written in English. In fact, the languages it was written in are no longer used anywhere in the world. In order to understand the Bible, we therefore need to trust that the words we read today have been accurately translated for us, and that we understand their meaning and the meanings of idioms and phrases we find in the Bible. Sometimes the experts will argue – often at length – about the meanings of particular words and phrases. They do this so that we can be sure that we understand what God meant us to understand in the words of the Bible. They do this because words matter.

My New Testament lecturer when I was at seminary, Prof. Jack Wiid, had written a Masters thesis of about 600 pages on the translation of just one word in the New Testament. He consulted with the NIV translation team on that particular word, convincing them of the correct interpretation. Words matter.

Take for example two words we’re going to meet again later in this series: “helpmate” and “head”.

Continue reading The Bible and Same Sex Relationships, Part 9: The ‘Soft’ in 1 Corinthians – the meaning of ‘malakos’ →

So far, we have seen that we cannot look to the specific Old Testament references to homosexuality nor to OT stories usually associated with homosexuality for assistance in our primary goal of discovering whether monogamous LGBT relationships are acceptable to God. As we move to the New Testament, three things immediately strike the reader: (1) none of the NT authors quote or refer to the OT laws about homosexuality; (2) there are no stories of the church dealing with homosexual individuals, even though we know it was absolutely pervasive in the prevailing culture; and (3) Jesus himself has nothing directly to say on the topic.

There are, in fact, only three verses that refer directly to homosexuality in the New Testament: Romans 1:18-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and 1 Timothy 1:8-11. Most scholars agree that 1 Cor. 6 and 1 Tim. 1 are ambiguous at best, and it is to these that we now turn.

Why Did Paul Make Up a Word – and What Does It Mean?

In both of these passages, the author, Paul, uses a particular word to describe people who engaged in activities he considers to be sinful. The Greek word is arsenokoit?s and scholars agree that Paul actually made this word up. Consider this carefully. In a cultural context where homosexuality was considered acceptable and was commonplace, Paul had a number of options for the words he could have used to describe whatever was in his mind. These included, for example, paiderast?s, pallakos, kinaidos, arrenoman?s, and paidophthoros. There are also technical terms, such as the lover (erast?s), the beloved (er?menos, paidika), to give the body for purposes of intercourse (charis, charidzesthai), as well as slang terms that could have been used to indicate various forms of culturally accepted homosexuality, or even homosexuality in general. Paul doesn’t use any of these.

We saw in the previous section of this study that homosexuality was referenced extensively in ancient literature. Greek and Roman writers such as Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch all talk about homosexuality, discussing it’s merits and demerits, and none use arsenokoit?s. First-century Jewish writers, Josephus and Philo, wrote about homosexuality, including the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but did not use arsenokoit?s in their works. Early Christian writers like Tatian, Justin Martyr, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom all wrote negatively about homosexuality, but they used different words and phrases.

If it was Paul’s intention to deal with general homosexuality or any of these specific activities, he would surely have selected one of the more common and less ambiguous terms available to him. Instead, he chooses to make up a word that previously did not exist in the language. He clearly had something specific in mind. We need to be clear what that is.

Continue reading The Bible and Same Sex Relationships, Part 8: Male-Bedders – the meaning of ‘arsenokoitai’ →

We’re at part 7 of this series, and we arrive now at the New Testament. There are three verses that reference same-gender sexual activity directly, and some references by Jesus to the form of marriage (made in response to a question about divorce). Before we deal with each of these verses in turn, we need to understand the prevailing culture of the Graeco-Roman world in which the NT was written. This context is vital to our own understanding of the Biblical texts we will look at.

Some people use this cultural context to say that Paul’s commands to us today can safely be ignored. They put these in the same category as the length of men’s hair, women wearing jewellery or the repeated commands to greet each with “a holy kiss”. While it is important to understand how Biblical instructions and principles should be applied today – and we will see when we look at Romans 1 in a few posts from now that we cannot avoid the question of applicability in one key area of Paul’s “argument against nature” – I don’t rely on this line of argument to make my point. I don’t think Paul was anti-women, and I don’t think Paul was anti-gay. I think we’ve misunderstood his instructions, and in some cases even mistranslated his words.

So, to understand Paul – and Jesus – better, we need to get an understanding of how the world they lived in treated homosexuality and homosexuals – and dispel some myths in this regard. This will help us understand what they were saying when they talked about it.

The Graeco-Roman world

A few years before Jesus was born, in 27BC, Octavian became sole ruler of Rome, ended the Roman Republic and began the Roman Empire. He became Augustus Caesar, and ruled until 14AD, rapidly expanding the Roman Empire. Judaea and the Middle East were conquered in 6BC, becoming Roman provinces. In 54AD, Nero became Emperor, and he waged a brutal assault on both Jews and Christians, culminating in the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem in 70AD.

Throughout Jesus’ lifetime and the period of the writing of the New Testament (commonly held to have been completed towards the end of the first century AD), the Roman Empire, with it’s amalgam of Greek traditions and language with Roman culture and law, was the dominant cultural backdrop. The most significant issue for the early followers of Christ, who were all Jewish, was how to take the message of Jesus – a Judaean-based Jew – and make it relevant and accessible to “the Gentiles”. Paul, a Jewish scholar, trained in Greek and a religious leader held in high esteem yet also a Roman citizen, was the ideal “Apostle to the Gentiles”. Many of his writings address this specific issue, with the books of Romans, Galatians and Hebrews (who’s author is unattributed) almost entirely devoted to this topic.

Continue reading The Bible and Same Sex Relationships, Part 7: Graeco-Roman culture and homosexuality →

Before we move on to look at the two verses in Leviticus that talk of male same-gender sexual acts, we need to look again at how we deal with the Bible, especially the Old Testament Law. Many of these laws are still in place today, but many are not. We need to know what principles are used to determine which laws apply and which do not. We need to look at three specific issues: consistency, punishments and the New Covenant.

Being Consistent with the Old Testament Law

In his book, “A Year of Living Biblically”, Esquire magazine writer, AJ Jacobs, attempted to follow every law laid out in the Old Testament for a full year. Similarly, Christian author, Rachel Held Evans chronicles her attempts to live out the laws and commands for women in the Bible in “A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband ‘Master'”. Neither succeeded in their quests – often hilariously so – because the lists of laws in the Bible (not forgetting that Jewish and Christian traditions add hundreds more) are literally impossible to follow in their entirety. This should give us a clue as to their nature and purpose.

It is fairly simple to see that some of the laws of the Old Testament have fallen away. The most obvious are the dietary and food laws, and the system of sacrifices and offerings. The reason these no longer apply is because they were pointing to what Jesus would do. They showed us that God was holy and that we were not, and they showed us our need for God. When Jesus came, He became the ultimate expression of these truths. We do not need these laws anymore, and we can safely leave them as a historical record that is no longer binding on us. There are also laws related to Israel as a nation. These too have fallen away, as the New Covenant is no longer for a specific nation-state.

But there are some laws that feel universal and eternal. Like “do not kill” and “do not lie”. These are often referred to as the “moral laws” and it is claimed that we can ignore all other laws, but not these.

In theory this sounds good and reasonable. In reality, it’s not as easy to work out which laws are the laws that are strictly moral, and therefore still applicable, and which were only meant for Israel and for a time. Add to this the fact that “The Law” is usually spoken about in the singular. It was a unit, and meant to be treated as such, as James 2:10, for example, tells us, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” This is how Jesus referenced it too (e.g. Matthew 22:40) – it is meant to be taken as a whole.

So, how do we as Christians deal with a set of instructions that include prohibitions against things that are considered completely acceptable today? Do we abandon it all? Or embrace it all? Or are there some principles we can use to distinguish which we abandon and which we apply? The biggest issue we have in determining which parts of the Old Testament Law we should apply today is consistency.

The only possible way to do this is by creating categories of laws, claiming that some categories are still in force while others have fallen away or been superseded. This has been the approach of traditional interpreters of the Law. And they claim that the two laws against homosexual behaviour fall into the the “moral” category, which is universal and eternal.

Continue reading The Bible and Same Sex Relationships, Part 5: Consistency, Punishments and the New Covenant →

For over two thousands years the majority of Christians have believed the Bible to be very clear in its teachings on homosexuality (although the Bible says nothing about bisexual or transgender people, this has always been implied). It hasn’t been unanimous (as we’ll see in later posts), but it has been the accepted position. If Christians are going to change their position, we have to first deal with whether God’s instructions can change.

There are two ways to respond to this. The first is that it is possible for us to misunderstand God’s instructions and then adjust our views as we learn more or gain more insights. The second is that God might not change in principle, but His instructions to us can adapt over time.

Note: There is debate in Christian circles about a so-called open view of God, which claims that God Himself changes and adapts over time. This is an interesting conversation, but not a prerequisite for the view I am proposing. An open view of God is not required in order to accept that God’s instructions to us can change over time.

Adjustments Required

There are many examples through history of our misreading Scripture, or of imposing a deficient knowledge of the world onto Scripture. For example, ancient societies thought of the world as flat. They were able to point to the Bible to back this up. Genesis tells us that the sky is a dome that stretches to the edges of the earth. We read in Job and Psalms and elsewhere that the sky is held up by pillars. And we read in many places that the sun rises and sets (rather than the earth rotating). It was on the basis of these verses and the related theological belief that we must clearly be the centre of God’s creation that led the church to so vehemently oppose Galileo and Copernicus. Both scientists were essentially forced to recant their heliocentric worldviews. Galileo was condemned and lived under house arrest, and an apology and “release” only issued in 1991.

We’ve had to make similar adjustments to our beliefs on all sorts of issues, including the divine right of kings, the validity of war, preferred economic systems, the morality of child labour, female leadership, evolution, young earth creationism and women’s suffrage. Most of these changes have come due to advances in physical and social sciences, and advances in our knowledge of the world.

In each of these cases (not all of which have been resolved nor are universally accepted by Christians even to this day), we have realised that it was not God or the Scriptures that have changed. Rather, as our own understanding of the world we live in has advanced, we realise we had misinterpreted or just misrepresented what Scripture had been saying all along. It most typically boils down to a misuse of a particular Biblical genre – for example, reading a poem as if it was intended to be science or history.

God Engages Us Where We Are

More controversially for some, there are examples of God updating and adjusting His instructions to different people over time. Reading the Bible in chronological order, you can’t help but see these progressions in many issues.

The easiest example, possibly, is in worship practices.

Continue reading The Bible and Same Sex Relationships, Part 2: Do God and the Bible Change? →

I recently started a series in which I am going to work through the case for affirming same sex marriage from the Bible. I am not the only one doing this, and I’d like to list other resources that can assist you on this journey, as we change our view of what the Bible demands of us as Christians. I already have a list of books you can read.

I will keep an updated list of websites and blogs here. If you’d like to something to this list, please email me or put the details in a comment below.

Resources supporting the affirmation of same sex marriages from the Bible

• Gay Marriage and the Bible – by John Lein
• The Gay Christian Network – The Great Debate series – by Justin Lee, author of Torn
• Gay Christian 101 resources
• Christian Gays.com
• Gay Agenda.net’s ‘Canonical List of Rebuttals to Anti-gay Arguments Against Gay Marriage Rights‘

Other recommended resources

• Religious Tolerance website on homosexuality and bisexuality
• Believe Out Loud

I will be posting my own theological study on this blog over the next few months. The first part of that series is now available here.

One of the key themes of this blog is to outline the Biblical case for Christians to affirm our LGBTQI friends, and to affirm same sex marriages that align to the Biblical standard of faithfulness, monogamy and covenant relationship. I have not always believed this, having grown up in the home of a conservative Baptist pastor. I have no personal reason to take this stand: I am not gay (I have been happily married for nearly 30 years), none of my immediate family are LGBTQI (as far as I know and can ascertain), and all of my LGBTQI friends are perfectly capable of defending themselves (if they even feel they need to). If you want to know more about who I am, see the About tab on this blog.

I have spent over fifteen years studying this topic, and reading almost everything written about it from a Biblical and Christian perspective. I have done in-depth Biblical studies, and Greek and Hebrew analysis, have engaged in numerous discussions and forums, and participated in public events and debates to try and hone my thinking. My position has developed over that time, and for much of it, I was very tentative about making a change to 2,000 years of church teachings on the topic (although I will show later that this is not quite as clear or unanimous as you might think). But now, I am prepared to be clear and unequivocal: I believe that God has created human beings with a range of sexual expressions, and these are to be celebrated (not just “accepted” or “affirmed”). I believe that the Bible, as God’s Word, does not speak against LGBTQI people who are seeking monogamous, faithful, lifelong marriage with a same-sex partner – in fact, it invites them to covenant to each other in the eyes of God and the community, and encourages them to enjoy all aspects of their married relationships including sexual activity.

I do believe we’ve been wrong on this issue. And I believe it’s time to change. Not because we’re acquiescing to a changing culture, or because we should ignore outdated Bible verses, but very specifically because we can see God’s blessing on LGBTQI people and their marriages as we do on “straight” people and their marriages. There is no distinction to be made. And we can say this while confidently claiming that God’s Word is as relevant today as it ever was. God wasn’t mistaken, we were. The Bible is not wrong, our interpretation of it was.

Continue reading The Biblical case for Christians affirming same sex marriage, Part 1: The arguments against →