The Classical Christian View on Sexual Relationships and What it means

The Classical Christian View on Sexual Relationships....and What it means.

That's the title I've given to John Dickson's talk at Storey Hall, Swanston st on 6 September, 2012.  Below are my notes from the event. Note that this is also now available on Ridley's website. Have a listen!

(I started typing the below notes straight after the event, and am posting them anyway. If you don't have time to listen to the 35-40 minute talk then these condensed notes will work for you).

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Purpose: Not to convince you that homosexual behaviour is wrong. Not to convince you that Christians should block gay marriage. The purpose is simply this: To demonstrate that the Classical Christian view is not inherently hateful and bigoted.

In our society today, there is a dichotomy fuelled by the media. Either you are a tolerant, loving person or you are a HATEFUL HOMOPHOBE!

The high culture view for at least 10 years, and now increasingly the popular view is that Christians are just hateful bigots. Example, David Marr on Q and A.

 

1. Is this View- that Homosexual behaviour is wrong- actually what the Bible says, or has the church read it's own conditioned, idiosyncratic view into the text?

 

- Leviticus 18:20-24.

²⁰ “‘Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor’s wife and defile yourself with her.

²¹ “‘Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

²² “‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.

²³ “‘Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

²⁴ “‘Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled.

 

- Romans 1:26-27.

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

 

-( editor: Genesis 2 was performed by a Biblical storyteller before Dickson spoke. This passage also speaks of man becoming one with wife etc, not with man. Strong implicit support for traditional marriage. Dickson mentions this below also but curiously didn't mention it at this point).

 

On face value, it appears that the Bible is clear.

 

But, there are powerful minimising arguments being used against this:

 

2.1 Christians Pick and Choose.

 

The West Wing:

 

 

- However, the writers of the West Wing have conveniently ignored Bible 101, the way the Bible has always been read.

- There are TWO testaments!

- The OT has always been looked at through the prism of Christ.

- Some things are refracted, some things are intensified.

- Classic example: John 8:3-11 woman in adultery. Jesus affirmed the OT ethic but did not affirm the death penalty. Again, some things are affirmed or intensified, others are not affirmed or are refracted.

 

2.2 Homosexuality is Neurophysiologically predetermined.

- The Biblical authors didn't know this, so we should re interpret the Bible through our modern scientific knowledge.

- Some Christians respond by saying "The evidence is biased". Well, some of it probably is biased. However, I spoke to prominent Christian doctor and sexologist Patricia Weerakoon and I asked her to point me in the direction of the best current research on this topic. There are various neurophysical links with homosexuality. They are not fully understood yet, and there is no "gay gene" but it is becoming increasingly clear that there can be neurophysical factors at play- Gays don't "choose to be gay".

 

- Does this minimise the Bible's teachings? Yes and No. The church must show grace towards others who have tendencies (influence by biology) that the Bible speaks to. Example: Addictive behaviour is influenced by neurophysiology as well.

 

- Polyamory is neuro influenced too.

 

- The discussion does not end here.

 

- Example: 40 year old single gay man in my congregation in Sydney. The Bible asks him to be celibate, so he does. Others in John's congregation, who are heterosexual, are remaining celibate until they find someone. Does the hope actually make it harder day by day, or easier?

 

2.3 Jesus didn't forbid it, only Paul.

- Jesus didn't forbid many things. This doesn't mean they're alright.

- Nonetheless, Jesus does implicitly forbid it by his support for Genesis 2.

- There are more sexual practices in the Old Testament than in Playboy. Jesus knew this. The New Testament word "Porneia" doesn't refer to one thing, it refers to what went outside the Jewish norm at the time. ie: Hetero monogamy.

 

2.4 In Biblical times there were no long term gay r'ships, so the Bible can't speak to this topic

- Untrue. Eg: References: GA Williams Roman Homosexuality and K.J Dover's Greek Homosexuality

- Plutarch's Dialogue on Love

- 1st Century Gay marriage was a reality.

 

The Biblical view doesn't arise from ignorance. It arises from a view of what is Good.

 

The Christians are out of step with society because the Bible is.

 

- If The Bible agreed with every social or sexual practice of every society then this would be proof that the Bible isn't eternal wisdom.

 

- Thought Experiment: If there was an eternal book with eternal wisdom, what would it contain? It would have to be out of step with every culture at some point or another.

 

- The Bible isn't out of date, it's out of this date.

 

- (Edit: What Dickson said above is so so so true. It's worth repeating. It sounds a lot like this from Tim Keller, actually....).

 

But..are we Christians automatically homophobes? Does this view make us homophobic?

 

The Bible shouldn't necessarily lead to legislation.

 

- Classical Christians simply are unable to think of other types of marriage. There is only one kind of marriage.

 

- Everyone discriminates. Every view of marriage discriminates against another type of marriage. (Edit: For example, if you believe that gay marriage is a legitimate form of marriage, do you believe that marriage is between two consenting adults? ie: One man and one woman or one man with another man or one woman with another woman? If so, then you are discriminating against men who want to have two wives. As Bernard Toutounji says here, "Discrimination is the act of making a distinction and choosing between differences. From choosing chicken over ham on your sandwich, to the government deciding that the aged pension will be given at 67 instead of 65; these are discriminations. Without the ability to discriminate, that is the ability to state that one thing is not another thing, we could not have a democratic society. A musical note only has value because of the silence that exists before and after that note, if we were to label the silence as unfair discrimination against sound and remove it, there would only be an ongoing noise").

 

- This does not mean the church has the right to block redefinition legislation.

 

- Democracy. We all vote. This is OK.

 

- Christianity was never meant to be in power. The tools God gave us were PSP- Prayer, Service and Persuasion! No bullying or backroom deals.

 

- C.S Lewis on Divorce- may be applicable to Gay Marriage in our modern age.

 

“Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question-how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mahommedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.” 

 

(Edit: I don't totally agree here. I do agree in theory, to a point, but I think the statement needs a lot of qualification. Maybe a topic for another blog post).

 

 Losing well is a Christian specialty.

 

So...where does all of this lead?

 

- An apology. For allowing our Biblical views to lead to Unbiblical behavior. For belittling people and creating a culture of shame. The heart of Christianity is finding our faults and asking for mercy.

 

- We can't walk away from our Christian view (that homosexual behaviour is not a part of God's plan). But we can serve others.

 

- Recover the genius of Jesus. He had meals with sinners. He flexed the muscle of moral conviction and the muscle of compassion simultaneously. These days the church only does one at once. There are examples of both- Churches who are big on moral conviction and churches who are good at compassion, but we need to be good at both because that's what Jesus did. Jesus took judgement so seriously that he had to die, and he took compassion so seriously that he died for us.

 

- Tolerance is not saying "Every view is equally true and valid". (Edit: That doesn't make sense anyway!). Tolerance is deeply disagreeing and yet deeply loving. This is harder. Eg: Koran/Islam. We disagree theologically but we respect the Muslim community. We may disagree with the materialist 21st century Aussie culture, but we love our materialist, hedonistic friends. We may similarly see same sex acts as a departure from God's will, yet still serve the gay community.

 

I had a conversation with a Ferrari driving atheist at a dinner party. He told me he couldn't entertain Christianity because of it's bigoted and discriminatory attitude towards homosexuality. It's backwards, he said. I paused, and asked him: Is it possible to deeply disagree with someone but profoundly love them? He paused, and then said "Yes, we do that all the time". And then he realised what he'd just said. The blocker to Christianity was removed.

 

Is it possible to deeply disagree with someone and yet profoundly love them?

 

Question Time

(Edit: I took some notes here but not detailed notes like the above).

 

Is the airtime given to certain things and indication of God's view of their importance? Dickson: I'm not sure. But if it is, then we should be focusing more on poverty and helping the least of these.

 

How do we live out what you've suggested- by loving Gays? Individually-Friendships. Ask questions. Listen. Get head around their views. I'm giving this talk but I don't have so much authority and I'm speaking to myself too as I only have two gay friends. One mentioned earlier (church goer), the other a vocal activist. He has asked me to some gay events but my diary hasn't allowed it. I plan on going soon so I can act out some of the above.

 

For the church, welfare on a macro level.

 

Does the Bible ask us to go against our natural inclinations? In all kinds of ways, yes. Christianity asks us to. To find solice and comfort anyway, example the sweet sadness of my churchgoing gay friend.

 

Guide our leaders towards Christian ways? No.

 

Persuade, not legislate. PSP= prayer, service and persuasion.

 

Christians and politics Christians should be public Christians. That is good. We are not meant to be church mice. Make our case- ok. But I object to political tactics. They are sub christian.

 

If AUS overwhelmingly supported Gay marriage and you had veto powers, would you use them? No! But on the other hand if a journo asks me my view on marriage, I will give it.

 

 

 



Secularism or Democracy?

A facebook discussion has piqued my curiousity.

The issue was gay marriage, which is irrelevant to what I'm about to write, but I want to quote the discussion to set the scene:

Person 1:
Sorry but your comment is very disappointing. Should a Christian girl who knows Gods word really have that opinion. Just sayin

Person 2:
To me, faith shouldn't be a part of the conversation - we are talking about a legal, secular institution in a free democratic society. Government shouldn't discriminate, pure and simple. And both bills before parliament guarantee religious freedom for churches to refuse to marry gay couples if they so wish.

Ignoring the question of gay marriage, I'd like to discuss the mentioning of "secularism" and "democracy". Both ideas are highly cherished by most people in first world Western countries like Australia, but my question is: Which takes precedence?

Democracy is based on the idea that ALL people must have an equal opportunity to have their say. Therefore, if so called "secularism" is going to ignore certain views, ANY views, a priori, before the public discussion even gets started, then to agree with that form of secularism is to admit that you're being undemocratic and discriminatory.

I believe people should always have a democratic right to argue on whatever basis they want to! Then let the majority decide if they're convinced or not- this is what democracy demands. It's the fairest way to do things. If secularism says that "faith cannot be part of the conversation" and therefore any faith viewpoints must automatically be ignored (as Person 2 implied), then that form of secularism should get thrown out, because democracy demands that people must be allowed to voice their opinion (1).

Here's another reason why democracy needs to take precedence over that form of "secularism": Otherwise, we'll soon have governments acting as thought police by deciding which people are actually allowed to speak their views, which views are allowed to be spoken and which views are not. Governments are there to serve the people, not the other way around!

I take it as basically self evident that we should all want to be living in fair societies where all people are allowed to voice their views. If so, then we cannot allow ourselves to uncritically accept the idea that certain viewpoints are to be ignored from the outset.

(1) Person 2 could be taken to be implying that, and this was how I interpreted their statement on my first reading. They might not have intended to imply that. Nonetheless, there are many people who do believe that faith should not be a part of bigger public conversations, and this post was addressed at that particular viewpoint and those bigger issues. The facebook comment was merely what got me thinking about these bigger issues.

The Rally for Nothing in Particular

Larry Taunton wonders what an atheist world would really be like.

Christianity, whatever the faults of its adherents, has a rich intellectual tradition that has a comprehensive view of life. It has given rise to the West as we know it. Our laws, arts, governments, and the very framework of our thought find their meaning in Christianity. Take for example the central premise of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal.”

As Indian philosopher and social reformer Vishal Mangalwadi points out, there is nothing self-evidential about the equality of men.

But in comparison what is atheism and what is it's history?

Atheism, by contrast, has no creed, no principles, no philosophy, and can give no guidance. It is but to have a settled disposition on a single question: is there a God?

As my friend the late atheist and journalist Christopher Hitchens conceded, “atheism is nothing in itself.”

That not withstanding, atheism does have a history—a bad history. By conservative estimates, the twentieth century, an experiment in secular governance, witnessed the deaths of more than 100 million people. That is more than all the religious wars in all previous centuries combined.

It gets worse...

Proponents of a society free from religious influence can point to no nation or civilization that was founded upon atheism that we might call even remotely good. The story of those regimes is well documented and may be summarized in a word—murderous.

What they can point to are secular societies that are still running off of their accumulated Christian capital. But beware. When the fumes in that tank are spent, tyranny cannot be far away.

In his farewell address, George Washington offered a sober warning: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” This he deduced without the benefit of seeing the twentieth century. The eighteenth, it seems, was enough.

So as the rally for nothingness meets to celebrate, well, nothing in particular, reflect for a moment on the world they would give us. One need not imagine it. It has been done.

Larry Taunton, well said.

In a tweet he posted a day before the reason rally, Taunton issued a challenge.

The Reason Rally's stated purpose is to "promote secular values." Other than no God, I challenge atheists to name one of these "values."

As I've discussed before, it is reasonable to wonder whether there is even such thing as "secular values" or whether secularists are just hijacking values that were imported into modern day culture by Christianity and then claiming those values as their own.

It's also clear that many atheists have a rosy view of atheism and secularism, such that they fail to confront potential logical inferences arising from their own views, instead choosing to promote a version of secularism that is more in line with Christian thought. Julian Baggini is one such example. John Dickson's comment in his brilliant essay on religious violence, that I have quoted before, is worth repeating. In fact Dickson himself recently re-tweeted it.

Only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.

The Problem with "Universal" Values

Atheists regularly claim that they support "Universal values". This claim is often made in the context of a Christian arguing that they support "Christian values" like love, goodwill and caring for each other. The atheist will reply with something like this: "How dare you claim those as Christian values! I support those values too, and they've been around since before your ridiculous religion even got started". Sound familiar? The implication here is that those values fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking. I would like to challenge that implication.

Here I think we have a problem that we could call the social conditioning problem. We are all conditioned, to some degree by the time and place in which we live, and the influences of our society do impact on the lens with which we view the world. Everyone who lives in a Western Country lives in a location whose heritage has been strongly influenced by Christianity. So atheists have been socially conditioned to accept values that we take for granted in our Western way of thinking, which has historically been influenced by Christianity. In other words, a large part of the reason why the atheist claims that Christian values fit in with their way of thinking is because their way of thinking has been indirectly influenced by...you guessed it, Christianity. Even Richard Dawkins has referred to himself as a "cultural christian". Professor Edwin Judge makes the following comments in an interview entitled Christianity and the 21st Century:

"In Australia, very many of the ideals of the general culture, Australian values so-called, clearly come from that tradition (Edit note- ie: Christian tradition), and what the churches need to do, and what indeed the public needs to do is to inform itself better of the true sources of these things. The matter should be studied historically"

"We stand in this dual heritage from Greece and Israel but people have lost awareness of the sources of it".

"We must make the study of the Biblical tradition available to everybody, not just under church auspices but part of the commitment of our culture as a whole to the historical study of it not as a matter of personal belief but as a matter of explanation for why our values are such as they are. We should not accept that they can be declared, as people do, to be secular values".

He concludes:

"The true source of the value system needs to be clear. Everybody needs to know that, particularly people who have no church connection".

The atheist must account for the origin or basis of their values- do they have a consistent basis within their own worldview for exclusively supporting those values? Christians certainly do. The entire Bible has a consistent theme of putting others first and loving others, right through from the ten commandments to Jesus and through to the writings of Paul in the New Testament (for example see Romans 12: 9-21). When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied with the following:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40).

But what about the atheist? Can the atheist naturalist honestly claim a similar consistent basis for their values within their own view of the world? I'm inclined to agree with John Dickson, who says the following:

if human beings are only accidents in an unknowing universe, how can this choice be anything more than a mere preference, a product of ‘feelings’ as atheist Bertrand Russell famously acknowledged? On what grounds can the atheist speak rationally of the high and equal value of the poor or the weak or the asylum seeker?

Dickson concludes:

only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.

So do the values of love, compassion and goodwill really fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking? History and common sense would suggest otherwise.