Does the Bible Object More to Homophobia Than to Homosexuality?

When we look at the issue of homosexuality and the question tonight ("Does the Bible Object More to Homophobia Than to Homosexuality?") I will say that the best way to say "no" to homophobia is to say "no" to homosexuality. In other words, the fear of any person is not countenanced in scripture. "Perfect love drives out all fear." (1 John 4:18)

If we're going to understand what the Bible says on its own terms, we have to do exactly that, grapple with it on its own terms. Whether we have differences of understanding about what is literal, literalistic, cultural, and so forth (and I'm glad to deal with those issues as an evangelical), I will say that the scriptures on its own terms says "no" to homosexuality from the beginning. And I know of no interpretive basis that says otherwise. So let me share with you that basis, and then from that basis I will then argue against homophobia as well, but on the basis of the prior objection to homosexuality.

First of all, if we are to understand scripture, we are to understand three basic doctrines. These doctrines are outlined for us in Genesis 1 through 3, and very simply they are creation, sin, and redemption. Another way of speaking about it is the order of God's creation, the reversal of that order which is sin, and the reversal of the reversal, which is redemption.

Now if we want to be those who are redeemed, we have to know what it is to reverse the reversal. And we cannot know how it is to reverse the reversal until first we know what the reversal is. And we don't know what that is until we know what the order of creation is. Indeed, in God's redemptive acts he is always restoring us to the promises and the ethics and the nature of God's order of creation. Therefore, it is an understanding of the order of creation in which we have to ask ourselves, what is the understanding of sexuality?

And the phrase is used often among those who call themselves homosexual and Christian, that homosexuality is God's good gift. Not only has Laurene said that tonight, but I have talked with many others who have also said the same thing. And so the question I will pose from the front is: God's good gift? Where in scripture? Not only that, but where in the order of creation? In other words, my interest in argument tonight is not to be negative against homosexuality or homosexuals, it is to be positive in favor of the image of God the way God ordained it. Then to ask ourselves honestly in the sight of scripture, what deviates from the will of God and what holds true to it. And in fact there are far more heterosexuals who sin heterosexually than there are homosexuals who do it. But on both counts I will argue that they are outside the order of creation.

In the order of creation we are made in God's image. We are made in his kind to rule over and enjoy the works of his hands. I like to sum up the qualities of God's image with what I call the POSH L's. In other words, each one of us is made to seek peace, order, stability, and hope. We are made to live, to love, to laugh, and to learn. That's just an acronym I came up with accidentally years ago to describe what it is to be made in God's image. And I have spoken with countless numbers of unbelievers as well as believers, and I have yet to find one person who will disagree with those qualities. I have yet to find one person who will disagree with the fact that in their lives they are seeking peace, order, stability, and hope, to live, to love, to laugh, and to learn. Even in the two painful cases where I had to counsel with those who ended up committing suicide, I know that even in the act of suicide they were seeking those qualities in their broken remains. It's just that they thought they had no hope to find it apart from death. So, an honest basis of the gospel in the order of creation is that all people, period, are seeking those qualities. The question is, what is it that serves the accomplishment of those qualities?

Now also in the order of creation, God makes us male and female. He doesn't make us male to have male sexuality or female to have female. He makes us male and female. And there are many wonderful reasons for that. Perhaps one principal reason is the reflection of the trinitarian character of God.

If you look at God, he is community from the beginning: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, giving to and receiving from the members of the triune God before the creation of the human race. This is in stark contrast to the Islamic view, or the monad view of Allah, who is a singular entity who has no one to communicate with. And consequently, if he has no one to communicate with, how can he even demonstrate the act of love, since both in terms of human experience and in terms of the Bible, love is always the act of giving. How can you love unless you have someone to give to? So this is God's nature from the beginning, where the three are one.

And in the crowning verse of Genesis chapter 2, when the man leaves his mother and father and is joined to his wife, and the two become one, we have a reflection of the nature of the triune God, the act of giving and receiving emotionally (right-brain, left-brain), physiologically, sexually. And in terms of the gift of life, male and female are different from each other in a complementary sense, where they need to give to each other for the gift of life to continue. God ordained that from the beginning.

I asked a question at Yale Divinity School not long ago in addressing the same issue: Is there any understanding that anyone can bring to me that homosexuality is to be found as God's gift, or even a possibility, within the order of creation? If it is not found in the order of creation, then how can it be said it is God's gift? And then we have to look at the six passages, which I can deal with if you like to, that address homosexuality, not as an overriding biblical concern, but a very simple observation that it is contrary to the order of creation in the given context in which the issue is addressed.

Another understanding that is crucial in dealing with the order of creation is the four subjects. In Genesis 1 and 2 we have four subjects which in my understanding are the basis for everything we'll ever know. Everything we need to know is understood by how these terms are defined and how they relate to each other, and especially the order of their relationship. These subjects very simply are the following: God, life, choice, and sex. "In the beginning God ..." That is the grand opening passage in Genesis 1:1. No philosophical debate, no uncertainties, rather the statement that "In the beginning God ..." Contrast that with all the pagan religious origin texts that start with an eternal universe producing finite gods and goddesses, who along with us have no eternal future. Whereas Genesis 1 says in the beginning an eternal, loving, all-powerful God spoke and the universe came into being. That is why the doctrine of God's sovereignty is the beginning point of scripture. "In the beginning, God ..."

Then the whole trajectory of Genesis 1 and 2 is that God creates the most remote and animate portions of the universe and moves until finally at the conclusion of the creation week he declares, "Let us now make man and woman in our image" to rule over the works of our hands. In other words, God is saying both in Triune community and in the presence of the heavenly host, that man and woman together equally are the crown of his creation. In fact, in Genesis chapter 2, when Adam is made first, he is not complete until woman is made. The whole trajectory is completion comes at the end. And God actually had to demonstrate to Adam he was not the full image bearer of God without woman. So in the beginning we have God, then the gift of human life made in God's image.

Then in Genesis 2:16 we have the introduction of choice or freedom. If you look at every religious origin text on the face of the planet apart from Genesis, their definitions of freedom are negative. It is freedom from being violated. The reason for this I think is fairly clear. All these texts are written by people struggling to understand themselves in the sight of the universe, but having moved away from the history of biblical revelation and the cultures that brought them forth. And therefor they had some memories perhaps of one God, but they did not understand the revelation of that God. And therefore the whole human experience was one of being violated by the gods and goddesses of the various pantheons and by one another. And therefore, their highest vision of freedom was freedom from being violated. And we can say a full, categorical amen to anyone who is seeking the freedom from being violated. I do not want to be violated. But how can you have the freedom from being violated unless you know the freedom that preceded the introduction to that violation. And this is found only in Genesis 2.

Genesis 2: "Yahweh God commanded the man, you are free to eat..." The Hebrew is more robust. "Yahweh God commanded the man, ocolt ocale..." Two tenses of the verb to eat. In feasting you shall feast from any tree in the garden. The idea from the beginning is that God gave us an unlimited menu of good choices, moral choices, aesthetic choices. And he says you are free. But, and here's the caveat, the warning, the boundary of what I call the ethics of choice. But, you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for buhyom, in the day, the moment, the time you eat of it, moth tomouth, in dying you will die, you will surely die.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an Hebraicism that meant the knowledge of everything. And only God could know everything. Only God could know evil without being polluted or tempted by it. And therefore, his goodness to us was for him to say to us, you are creatures, nothing good is withheld, have a feast. Nothing good is withheld from you in the created universe. But if you try to become God or to supplant his authority all the goodness turns upside down, will crush you and in dying you will die. Therefore, the idea from the beginning is an unlimited menu of good choices. We don't have to have sin to combat against in the order of creation. So God, life, choice.

And then sex, the crown of God's creation. God designed us from the beginning in Genesis chapter 2, one man, one woman, one lifetime. There is no death possible until sin comes into the universe, therefore no distrust, no divorce, no brokenness of relationships. Not only that, when God gives the gift of sexuality within faithful marriage, he gives the power of the image of God in the order of creation uniquely. For in the act in the relationship of marriage, and the sexual acts within marriage, we uniquely possess the power to pass on the gifts of life, choice, and sex to our offspring. That is the order of creation. And unless life was passed on to us by our parents, whether joyfully or through sorrow, but nonetheless passed on to us, we would not have life, choice, or sex. We certainly wouldn't have this debate because we wouldn't be here. That's the order of creation.

The reversal of the order of creation, which is the definition of idolatry, is instead of God, live, choice, sex, it becomes sex, choice, life, God. I will argue the number one sin in all of human experience is sex outside of faithful marriage, whether heterosexual or homosexual or bestial or whatever the nature is. Why? Because once the fidelity, once the trust between man and woman is broken, all sorts of evils come from that point on forward. Is there anyone who did not desire in their upbringing to have a mom and dad love each other first, and out of the love and respect equally to one another, to love them as their child? This is the way that God has ordered from the beginning. And when you put sex outside of marriage at whatever level, it begins the unraveling of trust in human relationships.

I was talking with a friend of mine who theologically is conservative, politically very liberal, and he said to me a while ago, John, why do you focus so much on sexual politics? I didn't think I was, but as we talked about the issues he said, you worry so much about homosexuality and abortion. I turned to him and I said, Roger, you know as well as I do that between 70% and 90% of men incarcerated for serious crimes today are the product of functionally fatherless homes. Are you telling me that marriage integrity and policies such as no-fault divorce, abortion, treating homosexuality equal to that of heterosexuality within marriage (my view of heterosexuality), doesn't have an effect? And he didn't challenge me from that point on forward because he knows my concern for the gang warfare happening just blocks from my office in downtown Hartford, and for the violation at so many levels. But once it is broken in marriage, the brokenness follows.

When sex is taken outside of marriage it will then reverse the order and make choice a subservient to sex outside of marriage, which can destroy life. It can destroy it through the ethos of abortion, it can destroy it through the lifestyles that lead to promiscuity and sexually- transmitted diseases and AIDS and things like that. Also, on that point of destroying life it is an affront against God. Therefore I will say that the incumbency upon those who argue that homosexuality is God's gift is to show it is in the order of creation and it honors the God, life, choice, sex paradigm and doesn't subscribe to a sex, choice, life, God paradigm.

Then another paradigm I think is very important is what John Wesley, an Anglican until his death, put forth: the quadrilateral basis for the Christian faith. That we base our understanding of what is Christian by scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. And I will argue as I did with John Spong (he's the first Episcopal bishop in the country to ordain practicing homosexuals), as I argued with him at Yale a couple of years ago, I argued that his whole understanding and presuppositions for homosexual activity was a reversal of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. In other words, he put at the top of it human experience, then reason, then tradition, then scripture. And consequently he would take scripture out of context and bend it accordingly.

MODERATOR: One minute, John.

JOHN RANKIN: I have one minute, thank you. So very simply, what I've done here is instead of looking at a lot of the passages, I have given a prolegomena, a preliminary discussion. I am glad to look at the passages, I have argued them, and I will look forward to Laurene's cross-examination on those passages. But I think ultimately the question I want to put before Laurene and us tonight is this. When we look at homosexuality and homophobia, I am one who studied feminist ethics at Harvard Divinity School and I've been in the midst of homosexuals for many years. I treat them with respect and dignity as God's image bearers. But I also believe that homosexuality goes against the image of God and therefore I will lobby for them to embrace the image of God on its own terms. If they don't that's their choice in the sight of God. But their incumbency, if they call themselves Christian, is to show me from the order of creation where homosexuality is provided for, or show me I am wrong in interpreting the order of creation, or to show me the order of creation doesn't relate. Thank you.

[applause]

NEXT