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Should We Support Gay Marriage?

NO
By Wolfhart Pannenberg

Can love ever be sinful? The entire tradition of Christian doctrine teaches that there is such a thing as inverted, perverted love. Human beings are created for love, as creatures of the God who is Love. And yet that divine appointment is corrupted whenever people turn away from God or love other things more than God.

Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…” (Matt. 10:37, NRSV). Love for God must take precedence over love for our parents, even though love for parents is commanded by the fourth commandment.

The will of God—Jesus’ proclamation of God’s lordship over our lives—must be the guiding star of our identity and self-determination. What this means for sexual behavior can be seen in Jesus’ teaching about divorce. In order to answer the Pharisees’ question about the admissibility of divorce, Jesus refers to the creation of human beings. Here he sees God expressing his purpose for his creatures: Creation confirms that God has created human beings as male and female. Thus, a man leaves his father and mother to be united with his wife, and the two become one flesh.

Jesus concludes from this that the unbreakable permanence of fellowship between husband and wife is the Creator’s will for human beings. The indissoluble fellowship of marriage, therefore, is the goal of our creation as sexual beings (Mark 10:2-9).

Since on this principle the Bible is not timebound, Jesus’ word is the foundation and criterion for all Christian pronouncement on sexuality, not just marriage in particular, but our entire creaturely identities as sexual beings. According to Jesus’ teaching, human sexuality as male and as female is intended for the indissoluble fellowship of marriage.

This standard informs Christian teaching about the entire domain of sexual behavior.

Jesus’ perspective, by and large, corresponds to Jewish tradition, even though his stress on the indissolubility of marriage goes beyond the provision for divorce within Jewish law (Deut. 24:1). It was a shared Jewish conviction that men and women in their sexual identity are intended for the community of marriage. This also accounts for the Old Testament assessment of sexual behaviors that depart from this norm, including fornication, adultery, and homosexual relations.

The biblical assessments of homosexual practice are unambiguous in their rejection, and all its statements on this subject agree without exception. The Holiness Code of Leviticus incontrovertibly affirms, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22 NRSV). Leviticus 20 includes homosexual behavior among the crimes meriting capital punishment (Lev. 20:13; it is significant that the same applies to adultery in verse 10). On these matters, Judaism always knew itself to be distinct from other nations.

This same distinctiveness continued to determine the New Testament statement about homosexuality, in contrast to the Hellenistic culture that took no offense at homosexual relations. In Romans, Paul includes homosexual behavior among the consequences of turning away from God (1:27). In 1 Corinthians, homosexual practice belongs with fornication, adultery, idolatry, greed, drunkenness, theft, and robbery as behaviors that preclude participation in the kingdom of God (6:9-10); Paul affirms that through baptism Christians have become free from their entanglement in all these practices (6:11).

The New Testament contains not a single passage that might indicate a more positive assessment of homosexual activity to counterbalance these Pauline statements. Thus, the entire biblical witness includes practicing homosexuality, without exception among the kinds of behavior that give particularly striking expression to humanity’s turning away from God. This exegetical result places very narrow boundaries around the view of homosexuality in any church that is under the authority of Scripture.

What is more, the biblical statements on this subject merely represent the negative corollary to the Bible’s positive views on the creational purpose of men and women in their sexuality. These texts that are negative toward homosexual behavior are not merely dealing with marginal opinions that could be neglected without detriment to the Christian message as a whole.

Moreover, the biblical statements about homosexuality cannot be relativized as the expressions of a cultural situation that today is simply outdated. The biblical witness from the outset deliberately opposed the assumptions of their cultural environment in the name of faith in the God of Israel, who in Creation appointed men and women for a particular identity.

Contemporary advocates for a change in the church’s view of homosexuality commonly point out that the biblical statements were unaware of important modern anthropological evidence. This new evidence, it is said, suggests that homosexuality must be regarded as a given constituent of the psychosomatic identity of homosexual persons, entirely prior to any corresponding sexual expression. (For the sake of clarity it is better to speak here of a homophile inclination as distant from homosexual practice.) Such phenomena occur not only in people who are homosexually active.

But inclination need not dictate practice. It is characteristic of human beings that our sexual impulses are not confined to a separate realm of behavior; they permeate our behavior in every area of life. This, of course, includes relationships with persons of the same sex. However, precisely because erotic motives are involved in all aspects of human behavior, we are faced with the task of integrating them into the whole of our life and conduct.

The mere existence of homophile inclinations does not automatically lead to homosexual practice. Rather, these inclinations can be integrated into a life in which they are subordinated to the relationship with the opposite sex where, in fact, the subject of sexual activity should not be the all-determining center of human life and vocation. As the sociologist Helmut Schelsky has rightly pointed out, one of the primary achievements of marriage as an institution is its enrollment of human sexuality in the service of ulterior tasks and goals.

The reality of homophile inclinations, therefore, need not be denied and must not be condemned. The question, however, is how to handle such inclinations within the human task of responsibly directing our behavior. This is the real problem; and it is here that we must deal with the conclusion that homosexual activity is a departure from the norm for sexual behavior that has been given to men and women as creatures of God. For the church this is the case not only for homosexual, but for any sexual activity that does not intend the goal of marriage between man and wife—in particular, adultery.

The church has to live with the fact that, in this area of life as in others, departures from the norm are not exceptional but rather common and widespread. The church must encounter all those concerned with tolerance and understanding but also call them to repentance. It cannot surrender the distinction between the norm and behavior that departs from that norm.

Here lies the boundary of a Christian church that knows itself to be bound by the authority of Scripture. Those who urge the church to change the norm of its teaching on this matter must know that they are promoting schism. If a church were to let itself be pushed to the point where it ceased to treat homosexual activity as a departure from the biblical norm, and recognized homosexual unions as a personal partnership of love equivalent to marriage, such a church would stand no longer on biblical ground but against the unequivocal witness of Scripture. A church that took this step would cease to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, arguably the preeminent contemporary theologian, recently retired after 27 years as professor of systematic theology at the University of Munich, Germany, and director of the Institute of Ecumenical Theology. Translated by Markus Bockmuehl for publication in the Church Times; copyright Wolfhart Pannenberg.

 

should we support gay marriage?

YES
by Tex Sample

The case of Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Church raises the issue of whether a bishop engaged in a homosexual relationship ought to be confirmed. I contend that on a matter of this kind, the primary focus of the church needs to be on marriage, and in this case, homosexual marriage.

Let's look at this question in terms of Scripture and the tradition of the church.

The term "homosexuality" as we understand it today appears nowhere in Scripture. In fact, the word was not coined until the 19th century. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Scripture addresses the matter of sexual orientation as that characteristic is now understood. In Scripture, the attention is given to same-sex practices. It is a minor concern and appears in only five passages. (I exclude two passages on same-sex rape that are not under consideration here. Rape of any kind is wrong.) Biblical scholars hotly contest all of these passages.

Two passages in the Hebrew Scriptures prohibit same-sex practices. These passages, in Leviticus 18 and 20, are known as the "Holiness Code." There is little question that a good deal of the Holiness Code has been surpassed and transformed by the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament church-for example, the code's purity guidelines and drastic punishments that are not in the spirit of Christ. Much of the code is not regarded as authoritative for the church today. To make a case against homosexual marriage, one must go beyond these texts.

In the New Testament, three passages cast same-sex practices in a negative light. I Corinthians 6:9 names two groups that will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Two Greek words are used for these groups, and their translation is a matter of contention among New Testament scholars.

One of the words, "malakoi," means "soft" and "effeminate," morally and in other ways.

The translation of the other word, "arsenokoitai," is highly contested. Its meaning is not clear. This second word is also used in I Timothy 1:10. Some claim that it refers to an active or superior man engaging in intercourse with a passive, inferior one. Others maintain that it is a reference to same-sex prostitution. Still other studies suggest that the acts cited in these passages involve some kind of economic exploitation, and so on.

In none of these cases can one move to a blanket condemnation of all same-sex practices. Too many kinds of same-sex activities fall outside these prohibitions.

The most important text is Romans 1:24-27. Here, Paul is addressing the idolatry of Gentiles. In this idolatry, God gives these Gentiles up "to degrading passions" expressed in same-sex relations by both men and women (this is the only time women are addressed in terms of same-gender sexual acts in Scripture). The same-sex practices in this passage result from idolatry.

Moreover, Paul sees sexual desire as of one kind. That is, same-sex desire is not a different sexual orientation in Paul, but rather an inordinate and excessive desire. The desire that, say, a man has for a woman is the same desire in same-sex desire, only of greater degree. So, because of their idolatry God gives up the Gentiles to this excessive desire and same-sex practices.

To be sure, sexual practices growing out of idolatry should be condemned, whether they are homosexual or heterosexual. This prohibition, however, does not address a host of same-sex practices, as it does not address heterosexual practices that do not result from idolatry.

In short, all of the references to same-sex activity in Scripture are negative. It is not condoned anywhere. Yet, each passage either occurs in a biblical context that has been surpassed and transformed (the Holiness Code), or it addresses specific instances that can't be generalized.

To address Christian homosexual marriage, one must look at the tradition of the church. St. Augustine (354-430) is the major figure in the church's teachings on marriage. For him, marriage is an office, a duty in which one serves the church and the larger society. He sees marriage serving three purposes.

. Raising children for the Kingdom of God. For Augustine this does not mean primarily having children of one's own in a biological sense.

. Enabling couples to learn faithfulness to each other and to God.

. Fulfilling a sacramental end, in which Augustine emphasizes that marriage cannot be dissolved.

These three ends are sustained in the later Middle Ages. In the Reformation, they are basically accepted, but with modifications. Marriage as an official sacrament of the church is rejected, but it continues to be sacramental-that is, it can point to God, especially in the mutuality and companionship of couples with each other.

Centuries later, when John Wesley edits the Book of Common Prayer and sends it to the United States in 1784, he keeps the section that lays out the three purposes. However, in a 1792 revision of the marriage liturgy, U.S. Methodists drop these three ends. Since then, marriage as loving companionship has been central, though fidelity and the indissolubility of marriage are not absent. The procreative end is no longer or seldom used.

The point is that marriage in the Christian tradition serves a number of purposes: procreation, fidelity, sacrament, mutual support and companionship, mutual society and loving companionship. What is striking is that all of these ends can be met by homosexual marriages, even the procreative end when the procreative end is understood as raising children for the Kingdom of God and not primarily as a function of nature.

On these grounds, it is appropriate for gay and lesbian Christians to be married in the church, and it is not in violation of Scripture or tradition.

Some Christians object to this argument by raising up Mark 10:7-8, in which Jesus states, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." The argument is then made that this is the only form scriptural marriage can take.

The issue addressed in this passage, however, is divorce. Jesus is responding to a hard-hearted test of his authority. Extending his response to a blanket denial of homosexual marriage goes well beyond the text. Moreover, it is uttered by a single Christ who did indeed leave his mother and father to engage in his incarnate mission. So long as we are dealing with a single Christ who left father and mother for a different reason, we must be open to other possible options, especially options that fulfill the ends of Christian marriage as it is traditionally understood.

Biblical teaching does not address a host of same-sex practices, among them homosexual marriage. Moreover, the ends of marriage as understood in the tradition of the church are ends that homosexual marriage can fulfill.

So the issue in the confirmation of a bishop in a homosexual relationship is not whether he or she is gay, nor even whether he or she is a practicing homosexual. The question is: Is he or she married to this partner, and if so, does this marriage meet these ends?

Tex Sample is the Robert B. and Kathleen Rogers emeritus professor of church and society at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Mo. He is an ordained United Methodist clergy person and coordinator of the Network for the Study of U.S. Lifestyles in Phoenix. In this commentary, he is indebted to the work of Daniel M. Bell Jr.

    This commentary was distributed by United Methodist News Service (UMNS). It does not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of UMNS or the United Methodist Church.



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