It is quite true that the essence of human nature remains
what it has always been, and the Bible has an explanation for that in terms of
our being created by God but having somehow fallen out of fellowship with God.
Whatever you think of the literal stories that are told about how that
happened, it seems to explain a heck of a lot of human history better than
virtually any other account I can think of. In fact, secular schemes often
founder because they expect human nature to be better than it really is.
That said, some things do change in significant ways. One of
them has to do with marriage customs. In Bible times, marriage for love was not
normative, and, what is more important cultures in all countries, pagan or
Hebrew, felt a strong need to reproduce. That was how you were cared for in you
old age, this was how you maintained the tribe's defense. So people didn't make
their gay relationships their marriage. It was, if anything, something you did
for fun and games over and above your marriage, and you basically typically
used slaves and young boys for those fun and games. The picture of
homosexuality in the ancient world was an ugly one, if you read the account of
it given in Sarah Ruden's Paul among the People. It wasn't gay people wanting
to marry the one they loved, it was whether it was OK, if you were a male who
has a wife, to get something else one the side from someone who was treated as
a plaything, whether male or female.
Ruden perceives Paul's condemnation of homosexuality as
falling under the rubric of justice. She writes:
"Paul's Roman audience knew what justice was, if only
through missing it. They would have been surprised that justice applied to
homosexuality, of all things. But many of them---slaves, freedmen, the poor,
the young--would have understood in the next instance. Christ, the only Son of
God, gave his body to save mankind. What greater contrast could there be to the
tradition of using a weaker body for selfish pleasure or a power trip. Among
Christians, there could be no quibbling about what to do: no one could have
imagined homosexuality's being different that in it was; it would have to go.
And tolerance for it did disappear from the church."
Ruden doesn't adjudicate the
issue herself. But, she leaves the Christian gay defender an avenue to come
back and say: Look, we can understand Paul as not being a blind homophobe for
saying what he did about homosexual conduct. But the world has changed. We
aren't like that. We don't want to exploit helpless victims. We are just
same-sex attracted Christian people who want to replicate the institution
Christian marriage with a same-sex partner. We in society today don't feel so
obligated to reproduce, (and many married couples don't), and we can still
practice parenthood through adoption. (Do married couples have an obligation to
at least try to reproduce?)
But it isn't quite that easy for the Christian gay defender.
The counter-argument is that it's a difficult argument to make that homosexual
acts are condemned in Scripture because of the practice is somehow done in an
unjust manner. In many passages in Scripture the acts are cataloged as wrong in
virtue of, well, their being homosexual acts. And while we might explain Paul's
opposition to homosexuality in terms of his observation of how vile the
practice was in his time, Christians hold that Paul had an Inspirer, the Holy
Spirit, who as the Third Person of the Trinity, was surely aware not only of
what homosexuality was like in the first century, but what it is like now in
the 21st. If God had intended to only to condemn the injustice of ancient
homosexual practice, He would have said so.
So I think to accept the more liberal understanding of
homosexuality along the lines suggested by the argument I sketched above, you
have to reject the kind of strong doctrine of inerrancy, for example, provided
in the Chicago Statement. Catholics, of course, are playing a different, but
similar ball game, in that for Catholics the "inerrancy" is in the
Magisterium, and Scripture for them is not considered quite so transparent.
Which goes back to whether we need an explanation for the
condemnation of homosexuality. If we feel one is needed, then we might be able
to provide one that leaves room for the possibility that gay Christians can, as
good Christians, practice homosexuality. Conservative believers, however, can
warn that given the sinful nature of man, we have to be careful of accepting
interpretations of the Bible that allow us to do what we want to do. If we are
not careful, we are going to end up interpreting everything out of Scripture
that we don't want to obey.
Like C. S. Lewis, I have never had to deal with same-sex
attraction. I respect both viewpoints on this issue. I think the more inclined
you are toward an inerrantist model of Scripture, the harder it will be to find
homosexual conduct acceptable.
