A Brief Interruption: Reflections on an Outing
This week the media have been carrying the report of an anti-gay pastor who has been “outed” as a closet homosexual. A conservative Lutheran, the minister had been vocal in his opposition to the ELCA’s decision to ordain openly homosexual ministers. He is now being held up to public shame as a person who experiences same-sex attractions.
According to the publishers of a homosexually-oriented magazine, this pastor has been attending a twelve-step program for men who are trying to live celibate lives while experiencing homosexual attractions. The publishers commissioned a reporter to lie his way into the group. The magazine then published several admissions that the pastor is supposed to have made while under what he imagined to be the confidentiality of the program.
The pastor is now being denounced as a hypocrite both by those who are pro-homosexuality and those who are anti-Christianity. His ministry is in jeopardy. Most people seem to think that he is getting exactly what he deserves.
As of this writing, no one has alleged that the pastor ever actually had a sexual relationship with another man. No one has documented an inconsistency between the man’s profession and his conduct. So far, the case is very different from that of Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals who stepped down from his post after being accused of a relationship with a homosexual prostitute.
The purpose of this essay is not to determine the guilt or innocence of the pastor in question. Indeed, the essay will name neither the accused pastor nor the publication that has accused him. The episode does, however, contain certain lessons that Christians need to learn.
Those lessons begin with an acknowledgment that the problem of homosexuality cannot simply be ignored. A generation ago, this conduct was considered such a shameful perversion that it was barely mentioned in public. On the rare occasions that churches actually had to confront homosexuals, such persons were rapidly and summarily excluded. The notion of a ministry to and for homosexuals was unthinkable.
The situation is now exactly the opposite. Within the “official” culture of our civilization, homosexuality is no longer viewed as a perversion, a disease, or even an abnormality. It is simply thought of as another way of doing sex, and sexual liberty has become the most inalienable right. Any opposition to homosexuality is viewed as almost intolerable bigotry.
This change in perspective is going to affect churches for the foreseeable future. More of the people in our civilization will have at least experimented with homosexuality. More of the people in our churches will struggle with homosexuality. We are long overdue for a conversation about how we intend to minister to them.
As we conduct that conversation, one distinction needs to be made clearly. Same-sex attraction is a different matter from homosexuality. Being tempted with the sin and being a sinner are two different things.
The same is true of opposite-sex attractions, of course. Married people may find themselves being drawn to individuals other than their spouses. Such temptations are not in themselves necessarily lustful, nor are they necessarily sinful. The temptations become sin when they are harbored and acted upon.
It is possible for a person with opposite-sex attractions to live a life of chastity in mind and in body. By the same token, it is possible for a person with same-sex attractions to live a life of chastity. It is as wrong to call such a person a homosexual as it is to call a faithfully married man an adulterer.
Homosexuality is not simply a matter of desires but of obsessions and actions. Nor is homosexuality a matter of identity. Virtually everybody experiences sexual desires of some sort. Those desires, however, do not define us. Our identity consists in our relationship to God. If we are God’s children and we are in Christ, then our conduct (including the conduct in which we engage in our own inner world) needs to be brought into line with our identity.
Homosexuality is not who a person is, but what a person does. Someone who chooses not to engage in the conduct is not a homosexual. Someone who chooses to stop engaging in the conduct is no longer a homosexual. It was possible for Paul, discussing homosexuality among other sins, to say, “such were some of you” (1 Cor 6:11) Whatever their desires, these people were now washed, sanctified, and justified by Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit.
A word needs to be said about hypocrisy. One does not become a hypocrite by denouncing what one desires. We all have the experience of desiring what we know is wrong. Labeling a thing wrong when we desire it is not hypocritical. Indeed, it is an act of courage.
We do not even become hypocrites when we indulge in vices that we know and profess to be wrong. Unless someone claims to have achieved sinless perfection, we must all admit that we sometimes actually do what we know to be wrong. This admission is not a confession of hypocrisy, however, but of akrasia [editor’s note: “lack of self control,” 1 Cor. 7:5]. When we sin we are weak, but we are not necessarily hypocrites.
Hypocrisy occurs when we knowingly label good to be evil or evil to be good. To be a hypocrite is to pretend to believe one thing when we actually believe another. Hypocrisy means attempting to excuse our conduct on the basis of a principle that we ourselves do not really hold.
So what about the pastor with whom this discussion began? Should such a person be barred from ministry? Should he be expelled from the church?
My response is that same-sex attractions by themselves are no disqualification from church membership. They are no disqualification from church office. They should be no disqualification from the friendship of God’s people. In fact, same-sex attractions by themselves should not even hinder Christians from entering the marriage covenant and bearing children.
Attractions are things to be managed. They can be rejected, or they can be dwelt upon and acted upon. They can be learned and unlearned. Those who reject them and seek to unlearn them are not to be judged as if they had acted upon them.
Helping Christians learn how to respond to wrong and even perverse inclinations is an important part of discipleship. Given the increasingly positive treatment of homosexuality in our civilization, this is an aspect of discipleship that churches no longer can afford to ignore. We cannot insulate our youth entirely from the influences of our culture. More of our young people are going to find that they experience same-sex attractions.
Also, more of the people we reach will have been touched by homosexual desires and practices. When they become Christians, they will have to deal with the attitudes and activities of their past. So will we. This, too, is an aspect of ministry that churches no longer can afford to ignore.
Easter Hymn
Henry Vaughan (1621-1695)
Death and darkness, get you packing:
Nothing now to man is lacking.
All your triumphs now are ended,
And what Adam marred is mended.
Graves are beds now for the weary;
Death a nap, to wake more merry;
Youth now, full of pious duty,
Seeks in thee for perfect beauty;
The weak and aged, tired with length
Of days, from thee look for new strength;
And infants with thy pangs contest,
As pleasant as if with the breast.
Then unto him who thus hath thrown
Even to contempt thy kingdom down,
And by his blood did us advance
Unto his own inheritance—
To him be glory, power, praise,
From this unto the last of days!
This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.
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[Aaron Blumer] I think an important thing to remember when looking at historical lit. on passages is that, quite often, nobody was asking the question we’re asking now. Consequently, distinctions are missing that today’s questions bring into focus. At the time, nobody cared, so as a matter of application of Scripture to life—it didn’t matter much to anybody. Matters now.In relation to Romans 1, what questions are we asking now that they were not asking then? Why would those questions matter now but not matter then?
[RP] You’ve read the literature and should know “authorial intent” is often an euphemism for psychologizing and going behind the words to ascertain motives and other things within the author’s mental state….I don’t recall ever seeing the term used that way.
Some observations on the subject that are typical…
“God’s meaninga and revelatory-intention in any passage of Scripture may be accurately and confidently ascertained only by studying the verbal meanings of the divinely delegated and inspired human writers.” “The Single Intent of Scripture” Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. inThe Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts? ed. G. K. Beale. p. 66
[On the book of Judges] On the primacy of the authorial intent in determining meaning see E. D. Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); id., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); R. Stein, Playing by the Rules (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994). This approach differs radically from the “reader response” hermeneutic that characterizes many contemporary “metacritical” and feminist readings of Judges, which assume the meaning of a text is never fixed but depends upon the values imposed upon it by the reader. See, e.g., P. Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984)
Block, D. I. (2001). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Whether preaching thematically, theologically, historically, or biographically, the bottom line is that the Scriptures must be the primary resource and contextual guidelines must be observed. They are the expositor’s chief source of spiritual insight and teaching, the place to which he turns first before studying the many available helps. And once in the Scriptures, the expositor must take great pains to utilize them in a fashion that will reflect the authorial intent.
MacArthur, J. (1997). Rediscovering expository preaching (272). Dallas: Word Pub.
Our fifth and final commitment is the dividing line between the hard-core, committed expositor and the expositor of convenience. This commitment means that we are never welcome to preach a meaning from a text other than the one the author had or that was shown elsewhere in Scripture that referred to that text. We limit ourselves to authorial intent because we believe that words have real meaning.
York, H. W., & Decker, B. (2003). Preaching with Bold Assurance : A Solid and Enduring Approach to Engaging Exposition (28). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Abuse may occur at each stage. We must always check our motives, biases, techniques, and applications. But how do we check them if there are no boundaries to interpretations, no limits, no criteria? This is where authorial intent and textual structure provide me with some criteria for limiting the scope of possible valid interpretations.This one is especially important…
Utley, R. J. D. (1998). Vol. Volume 5: The Gospel According to Paul: Romans. Study Guide Commentary Series. Marshall, Texas: Bible Lessons International.
While historical-critical biblical interpreters differ from traditional interpreters on the issue of the nature of Scripture, they do hold in common the belief that the goal of interpretation is to understand what the author(s) intended to say. The fact that one can never establish this with certainty does not mean that the goal is not valid and important. In recent years this assumption has been called into question by postmodernists. It is interesting that philosophers as different as Jacques Derrida and W. V. Quine have come to this conclusion. Both Derrida and Quine acknowledge that meaning is a useful pragmatic concept. Yet they, for different reasons, hold that the meaning in semantics or hermeneutics lacks explanatory power. Our common-sense understanding of meaning leads us to give it the kind of reality that physical objects have, but meaning as a kind of entity does not exist.I’m sure I have better stuff in my hermeneutics texts, but I don’t have them in electronic form and indexed for quick searching.
The implication of this for biblical interpretation is that not only can we not be sure when we have the correct interpretation of a text, but there is no correct interpretation of the text. There is no authorial intent to be wrong or right about.
Brand, C., Draper, C., England, A., Bond, S., Clendenen, E. R., Butler, T. C., & Latta, B. (2003). Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (206). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[CLeavell]Good questions.[Aaron Blumer] I think an important thing to remember when looking at historical lit. on passages is that, quite often, nobody was asking the question we’re asking now. Consequently, distinctions are missing that today’s questions bring into focus. At the time, nobody cared, so as a matter of application of Scripture to life—it didn’t matter much to anybody. Matters now.In relation to Romans 1, what questions are we asking now that they were not asking then? Why would those questions matter now but not matter then?
What were they not asking? Well a central question related to Kevin’s essay, for one: is it possible to have homosexual desires without having chosen to walk down some depraved path first? Or, another variation, do people have genetic predispositions to one form of sin or another and could these include homosexuality?
(Bear in mind that I absolutely do not believe we have to obey our predispositions. I do believe we all have ‘em, though.)
But even the broader question: “Do we have ‘innocent’ desires that can be leveraged in temptation—‘innocent’ meaning, desires we are not personally responsible for or desires that are distinct from sinful acts?” It has been considered over the years, but it’s not so easy to find. I suspect there might be a gold mine of info on it in the Puritan writings.
But my view is that James is answering that question (in part—his larger question is “Where do temptations come from?”) in the text Roland and I have been going circles on.
Why would it matter now and not matter then? I believe it mattered then, too, but it hadn’t come up. It’s a bit like the history of doctrine. Nobody formulated the details of the Christology we believe in today for a few centuries after Christ because nobody was asking the questions that lead to those formulations. Until guys like Arius said Jesus was human but not divine, etc.
The Fathers are really vague and contradictory on baptism and “eaucharist,” as well. Some of these things, though clear to us in Scripture today, were not clear in the writings of Bible students until the Reformation or later.
So, doctrine does develop and how it develops has alot to do with what’s going on around us and our efforts to apply Scripture to changing circumstances.
(This is also the case with the preservation debate, btw. Many of the ancient and Reformation era writers ignored questions we consider important today. They are important today because some have chosen one translation and declared it to be the preserved Bible. So we have some relatively new questions to answer in bibliology.)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
But fleeing from “author’s meaning” to “God’s meaning” does not solve the problem for you with respect to James 1. An interpreter sill has to observe the actual words and their relationships to one another and the grammar involved. In other words, he must reason. And if the interpreter is going to assert that the text means something other than what it says, he must explain why “God” said something different from what He meant.
Let me give you an example. Towards the end of Luke and, I believe, Matthew, Jesus is having the last Passover with His disciples. He takes the bread and says “this is My body.” Later, He takes the after-supper cup and says “this is My blood.” The rules of grammar alone would point toward the Roman Catholic view of transubstantiation. So those who interpret the passage differently are obligated to explain why Jesus said something other than what He meant. Answers come in many forms, but Stallard’s article on the front page today does a good job.
My quick and simple would be
a) Jesus said “I am [something] ” many times. Metaphorical language was common for Him.
b) On the occasion of the Passover, His disciples knew that He was not speaking literally
c) He put the way He did because the message is more poignant and memorable (and remembering is clearly heavy on His mind in the context)
Anyway, if Jesus’ intent is not the goal, there is absolutely nothing for an interpreter to do with that text. Might as well say “Jesus was talking about World Cup soccer.”
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
But James 1:14-15 is not prophecy, so it isn’t really relevant, anyway.
Let’s suppose for sake of argument that authorial intent does not exhaust the meaning of even non-prophetic texts. The texts still must convey at least the author’s intended meaning and the author’s meaning is not contrary to God’s meaning.
But even if I grant for the sake of argument that James was some kind of pen-wielding shell with a blank mind when he wrote James 1:14-15, questions remain that are a problem for what you’ve been asserting:
1) How do we determine what God meant in a text? Does it have anything to do with the words and the grammar?
2) If God did not mean what He inspired in James 1:14-15, why didn’t He say what He meant?
3) Or, to put it another way, how does your alternative view of the passage make sense of the actual wording?
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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