PCUSA Moderator Goes
Awry in Her Claims of a "Deeply Pernicious Heresy"
Robert A. J.
Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate
Professor of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary,
616 N.
Highland Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15206
gagnon@pts.edu
Aug. 10, 2007
For a print copy use the
PDF version here.
When Rev. Joan Gray was
elected Moderator of the PCUSA at the last General Assembly I, as a
voting delegate, felt that, though we could done better (had one of the
other candidates been elected), we also could have done far worse (had
either of two other "Covenant Network" candidates been chosen). She is
certainly a much better moderator than a couple of recent ones. However,
recent remarks by Joan Gray should be filed under the "we could have
done better" category—unless, of course, she has the courage and
humility to acknowledge publicly her error.
Moderator Rev. Joan
Gray has declared that anyone who believes that impenitent, homosexually
active persons should not be granted church membership is guilty of "a
deeply pernicious heresy" (so the title given to an Aug. 4, 2007
editorial in
www.presbyweb.com found
here). These are very strong words, which I take to heart since I
hold the view to which she is referring. She even goes so far as to cite
the apostle Paul in support of her position, claiming that such a view
is "a form of works righteousness" that "leads us back into the bondage
Paul rails against in Galatians."
As a scholar of Paul
who has worked heavily on sexuality issues for a decade, and is nearly
finished a 100+ page annotated translation of Galatians for future
publication, I must say that her announcement about Paul in particular
and Scripture in general is 'news to me.' If there is "a deeply
pernicious heresy" here, it is the position that no repetitive,
unrepentant behavior of any sort, no matter how extreme the
departure from Jesus' teaching, can have any relevance for membership
status in the church, much less for inheritance in God's kingdom.
Rev. Gray's remarks
have prompted me to put on the web a "lost" chapter that I wrote in 1999
for my book The Bible and Homosexual Practice, entitled "Church
Policy as regards Homosexual Practice: Membership and Ordained Ministry"
(56 pgs., 36,500 words;
http://robgagnon.net/articles/homosexChurchPolicy.pdf).
In addition to this
chapter, I commend a number of responses that have already appeared as
letters in
www.presbyweb.com, particularly those by
Winfield Casey Jones,
Tom Hobson,
Walter Taylor,
Will Jackson,
Mike Armistead,
James Berkley (and in his blog
here), and
James Tony. In response to Rev. Gray, I would make the following
points and then refer her to the chapter cited above for more
discussion.
-
The early church held minimal standards
for repentance as conditions for entry into the faith. They did not
expect perfection of life but they did expect some minimal expression
of intent to abstain from extreme instances of immorality. The
Apostolic Decree insisted on this as regards porneia, "sexual
immorality," which, given allusions back to Leviticus 18 and parallel
"Noahide" laws in early Judaism, would have highlighted incest
(compare 1 Cor 5), adultery (compare 1 Cor 6:9; 1 Thess 4:3-8),
same-sex intercourse (compare Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:9), and bestiality.
The same minimal standards existed for economic exploitation of
others. Yes, all of us are greedy to some extent but there are some
actions that are so extreme in their departure from God's will as to
call into question the genuineness of a claim to repentance. For
example, only after the tax collector Zacchaeus announced, "If I
defrauded (or: cheated) anyone of anything I (will) give back four
times as much," did Jesus say, "Today salvation has come to this house
because he too is a son of Abraham" (Luke 19:8-9). Yes, Jesus reached
out to tax collectors and sinners, including sexual sinners, in an
effort to reclaim them for the kingdom of God. Yet that is an entirely
different matter from asserting that such persons became his followers
even as they continued in a self-affirming manner to engage in
extremely immoral practices. Jesus was clear: Being his disciple
hinged upon a willingness to lose one's life, take up one's cross, and
deny oneself (Mark 8:34-35). Prior to Jesus John the Baptist had
declared to the crowds that before being baptized they should "bear
fruits worthy of repentance" (Luke 3:8). For further discussion of the
importance of repentance in the early church and minimal expectations
thereof, see my Presbyweb Viewpoint, "Church
Membership, Repentance, and the Transformed Life" (July 3, 2006).
Note that Rev. Gray falsely characterizes the position
that denies membership to those actively and impenitently engaged in
homosexual practice as an insistence on "a way of life that is free of
all unrepented sin" (my emphasis). Calvin was not expecting
perfection when he said: "Those in whom the Spirit does not reign do not
belong to Christ; therefore those who serve the flesh are not
Christians, for those who separate Christ from His Spirit make Him like
a dead image or a corpse. . . . Free remission of sins cannot be
separated from the Spirit of regeneration. This would be, as it were, to
rend Christ asunder" (The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans
and to the Thessalonians [Eerdmans, 1961], 164). No, Calvin was
expecting some minimal evidence of transformation, which could not be
said to exist in the face of continual and self-affirming, gross
violations of the will of God.
-
Contrary to what Rev. Gray claims,
having minimal expectations for repentance is not the same as
promoting "a form of works righteousness," much less a so-called
"'Jesus and' heresy." Conforming to such expectations is in no sense
conceived as a meritorious act but rather as an expression of the
genuineness of one's faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. Faith is not mere
intellectual assent to the truth. It is reliance on the saving work of
Jesus Christ that leads one to die to self and live for the One who
loved us so much that he gave his life for us (Gal 2:19-20). If a
serial unrepentant participant in adult incest or adultery or stealing
or rape or murder asks to be made a member of the church on the basis
of a simple confession of faith in Christ's lordship, the church's
response is not: "You must add to your faith meritorious acts of
righteousness before you can become a member"; but rather: "Your
continuance in such gross violations of Scripture's teaching, indeed
your expression of intent to continue in them, indicates that your
confession of faith in Christ is not genuine." The church is not
saying when it takes such a stance, "Jesus and something else
saves you"; rather, "Your 'Jesus' is not the true Jesus."
-
While Rev. Gray likens withholding
membership to homosexually active persons to the requirement of
circumcision placed on Gentile converts by the 'judaizing' Christian
missionaries at Galatia, Paul himself would not have done so. Of
circumcision Paul is able to say:
If you get circumcised, Christ will be of no help to you. . . . Every
man who gets circumcised . . . is a debtor to do the whole law. You were
discharged from Christ, you who are trying to be justified by the law.
You fell out of grace. For (it is) we, (those living) by the
Spirit from faith, (who) are awaiting eagerly the hope of receiving a
verdict of righteousness (at the end). For in Christ Jesus neither
circumcision has any power, nor a foreskin, but (only) faith working
through love. (Gal 5:2-6)
An almost identical statement about circumcision appears
in 1 Cor 7:19a: "Circumcision is nothing and a foreskin is nothing"
(indeed, compare Gal 6:15a: "For neither circumcision is anything nor a
foreskin"). Yet in a chapter in 1 Corinthians that continues the
discussion of proper sexual behavior begun in ch. 5 Paul quickly
adds in 1 Cor 7:19b: "but (the) keeping of the commandments of God (is
everything; or: is what matters)" (compare Gal 6:15b: "but a new
creation [is everything; or: is what matters]"). So too here in
Galatians Paul quickly describes who these persons are who live "by the
Spirit from faith":
Walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out (the) desire of
(the) flesh. . . . If you are being led by the Spirit you are not under
(the jurisdiction of) the law. Now the works of the flesh are apparent,
which are: sexual immorality (porneia), (sexual) impurity (akatharsia;
a term used of same-sex intercourse in Rom 1:24-27), (sexual)
licentiousness (aselgeia). . . . and the things like these,
(about) which I am telling you beforehand, just as I told (you)
beforehand, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom
of God. . . . And those who belong to Christ [Jesus] (have) crucified
the flesh with its passions and its desires. If we live by the Spirit,
let us also line up with the Spirit. (Gal 5:16-25)
Note that there is no freedom from the jurisdiction of
the law for those who continue to engage in sexual immorality. They
remain subject to the law's curse because they continue to live out of
the sinful impulses operating in the flesh and the flesh is in the
domain of the law. Paul would never have said: Sexual immorality
is nothing and sexual purity is nothing. Why? Because to engage in
sexual immorality was to put oneself at distinct risk of not inheriting
God's eternal kingdom—or so Paul thought, the person to whom Rev. Gray
falsely appealed. Paul would never have said: If you insist on
not engaging in homosexual practice or incest or adultery Christ will be
of no help to you; you are discharged from Christ and have fallen out of
grace. But he could say that precise thing about those who insisted on
circumcision. What's the difference? A life lived in sexually immoral
behavior is an indication of the defective, even disingenuous, character
of one's faith, whereas the absence of circumcision is no such
indication.
The warning in Gal 5:19-21 about not inheriting the
kingdom of God if one continues in sexual immorality and other grave
offenses sounds remarkably like the warning in 1 Cor 6 which Paul
applied in the first instance to the pornos or sexually immoral
man who called himself a believer but engaged in an act of adult,
consensual incest (5:11):
Or do you not know that unrighteous people will not inherit the kingdom
of God? Stop deceiving yourselves: Neither sexually immoral persons (pornoi,
i.e. like the incestuous man), nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor 'soft
men' (malakoi, i.e. men who feminize themselves to attract
male sex partners), nor men who lie with a male (arsenokoitai, a
term formed from the Levitical prohibition of male homosexual practice)
. . . shall inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6:9-10)
As with the vice list in Gal 5:19-21, special attention
is given to sexual offenses and the warning is specifically applied to
believers. As with 1 Thess 4:2-8, these warnings were not only issued to
converts in the letter at hand but were issued by Paul on previous
occasions (1 Cor 5:9). They are warnings that Paul issued to people who
called themselves believers in Christ, not to "pagans" whose demise he
simply assumed (e.g., 1 Thess 4:13; 1 Cor 11:32). Now according to Rev.
Gray this would be a heretical "Jesus and" theology. And yet Paul held
it—an apostle who understood more about grace than any of us.
The connections between Galatians and 1 Corinthians—two
very different letters, one focusing on Christian freedom, the other
focusing on Christian obligation—continue with the line in 1 Cor 6:9:
"Stop deceiving yourselves." The exact same phrase appears in Gal 6:
Stop deceiving yourselves. God
is not going to be mocked. . . . For the one who casts seed into his
own flesh will, from the flesh, reap destruction. . . . Let us not
grow tired (or: discouraged) in doing what is good, for in due time
we will reap (eternal life), if we do not give up. (Gal 6:7-9)
What would be 'deceiving ourselves'? According to Paul it
would be thinking that we could get away with sexually immoral practices
as "believers" in Christ and still inherit eternal life—in short, the
view apparently being espoused by Rev. Gray.
-
In my view Paul would have considered a
case of serial, unrepentant 'committed' same-sex intercourse as at
least as bad, and probably worse, than a case of serial, unrepentant
'committed' adult incest (for the arguments, briefly summarized, see
Appendix 1, pp. 12-16, of my online article, "How
Bad Is Homosexual Practice According to Scripture?"). It is
likely, based on the texts cited above, that Paul would not have
accepted as genuine an initial claim to repentance and a confession of
Christ's lordship from someone who did not change his homosexual
lifestyle when allegedly moving from paganism to faith in Christ. But
if some time had elapsed between conversion and entering into a
homosexual life, then, as with the incestuous man Paul would have held
open the possibility that the person who is now "inside the church"
may be a genuine believer (compare 1 Cor 5:9-13 and the presumption of the
indwelling Christ in the analogy offered in 6:15-17). But if the
offender was a genuine believer, then he or she was at serious risk of
being "discharged from Christ." If the offender showed no sign of
repentance of sexual immorality—a state that ran a high risk of
forfeiting eternal life (2 Cor 12:21)—he would have to be removed from
the life of the community until he did repent (1 Cor 5:4-5, 9-13).
Otherwise, the corrupting effect of sexual immorality could infect the
whole community (5:6-7) and the offender would have no spur to reform
and so be saved (5:5). What would Rev. Gray have us do? Make the
offenders members and then immediately put them on church discipline,
severing contact? Would it not be better to delay membership until the
gross sexual immorality is rectified, allowing the offenders observer
status for a time in the church to let the gospel have its influence
(cf. 1 Cor 14:23-25)? Granting membership status to persons actively
engaged in egregious immorality sends the wrong message; namely, that
the offense is not significant enough to jeopardize inheritance in
God's eternal kingdom. It is precisely against this erroneous view
that Paul repeatedly warned but over which Rev. Gray appears to have
little concern.
-
There are at least two areas in Rev.
Gray's argument that she and I have partial, but only partial,
agreement. She rejects the notion that "gay and lesbian people . . .
can't be Christians"—I assume she means on the basis of
engaging in homosexual behavior since no one is arguing that the mere
experience of homosexual urges, without acquiescing to them, is a
barrier to fellowship. She is only partially right. As with the case
of the self-affirming incestuous man, such persons may or may not be
genuine believers. On the one hand, they are engaged in acts serious
enough to call into question the genuineness of faith. On the other
hand, there are number of places where Paul indicates that
once-genuine believers can engage in severe immorality that
jeopardizes their inheritance of eternal life (as the above-cited
remarks in Galatians and 1 Corinthians indicate, along with other
Pauline texts). If they are believers, though, they are believers at
heightened risk of exclusion from God's kingdom. So, again, either
they should not be made members or, if already members before entering
into such behavior, they should be put on church discipline after a
reasonable period of time allotted for repentance.
The second area over which we have partial agreement is
her reading of the
1978 General Assembly policy statement on homosexuality. On
pp. 6-7 of my online article "Robert
Gagnon to Stacy Johnson: Two Positions on Homosexual Practice, Not Six,"
I wrote: "The 1978 Definitive Guidance (and the PCUSA generally) may
have erred in giving a blank membership check to homosexual persons
or any persons actively engaged in self-affirming, grossly immoral
behavior." (Here I am, confessedly, more critical of the 1978 policy statement than is
Jim Berkley in his recent
blog.) But I also
noted—and now reiterate in disagreement with Rev. Gray's reading
but in agreement with Jim Berkley's reading—that:
"At the same time the Definitive Guidance [since 1993 "Authoritative
Interpretation"] should have applied its own logic when it said that 'As
persons repent and believe, they become members of Christ's body'
and that PCUSA membership entails 'honest affirmation to the vows. . . .
'Jesus Christ is my lord . . .' and 'I intend to be his
disciple, to obey his word. . . .'" Moreover: "even the 1978
Definitive Guidance does not preclude the administration of church
discipline on members who persist in committing self-affirming
violations of minimal standards for purity and holiness in the church."
So there is confusion and tension within the 1978 policy.
-
I strongly disagree with Rev. Gray's
interpretation of G-5.0103. G-5.0103 states:
The congregation shall welcome all persons who respond in trust and
obedience to God's grace in Jesus Christ and desire to become part
of the membership and ministry of his Church. No persons shall be denied
membership because of race, ethnic origin, worldly condition, or any
other reason not related to profession of faith (my emphasis).
Rev. Gray interprets this to mean: "Our Book of Order
makes a profession of faith in Jesus Christ the only requirement for
church membership. Refusing people membership in the church for reasons
not related to profession of faith in Jesus as savior is forbidden by
the constitution of the church." In other words she apparently
understands serial, unrepentant immorality of an egregious sort (which
is what homosexual practice is) as "not related to profession of faith
in Jesus as savior." However, as I noted last year (see also
Winfield Casey Jones' recent response to Gray) in "Church
Membership, Repentance, and the Transformed Life": "This provision
states clearly that those who are welcomed into church membership are
'all persons who respond in trust and obedience to God's grace.'
There is nothing in the following sentence that would preclude denial of
membership based on continued disobedience to minimal standards for
obedience to the gospel." "Race, ethnic origin, worldly condition" are
all inherently benign conditions void of any immoral element. Engaging
in homosexual practice, incest, adultery, and the like are not benign
conditions that are unrelated to profession of faith. This should be
obvious to all, not just our Moderator.
James Tony makes a similar case from the Book of Common Worship.
-
Rev. Gray states: "Yes, being in a
saving relationship with our Lord does require us to live a holy life.
The fact that we have significant differences about what a holy life
entails, however, does not entitle some of us to lock others of us out
of the body of Christ." I am glad that Rev. Gray acknowledges that a
holy life is a 'requirement' for being and continuing in a saving relationship with
our Lord. But this acknowledgement contradicts her assertion, noted in
point 7 above, that self-affirmed immoral behavior even of an extreme
sort is "not related to profession of faith in Jesus as savior." I
hope that Rev. Gray is not using "requirement" in the same
double-speak manner taken on by the Task Force on "Peace, Unity,
Purity"; namely, that a holy life is not an 'essential' requirement.
"The fact that some people "have significant differences about what a
holy life entails" is irrelevant. Scripture clearly assesses adult
consensual homosexual practice as immoral sexual behavior on a par
with, or worse than, adult consensual incest. The A.I. first
formulated in 1978 also declares homosexual practice of every and any
sort to be incompatible with a holy life. Nor is the church "locking
[anyone] out of the body of Christ." It is rather trying to insure
that individuals will not be locked out of the true body of
Christ through a life of self-deception (much like Paul's handling of
the incestuous man). It is the unrepentant immoral activity that locks
a person out of the body of Christ, or threatens to do so, in the
deepest sense of "the body of Christ."
-
Rev. Gray's final example on not
judging (i.e. the monk carrying a leaky bag of sand) is distressing. It takes no account of how serious a given sin
is, nor of whether the sin in question is repetitive, nor of whether
it continues to be affirmed by the offender, nor of what harm is being
done to the church body, nor of the offender's eternal destiny if
strong action is not taken. It takes no account of Paul's exasperated
word to the Corinthians in the case of the incestuous man: "Aren't you
(the church) to judge those inside (the church)" since they profess to
be under Christ's lordship? Rev. Gray has answered "No" and declared
"Yes" to be a "deeply pernicious heresy." She has given the incorrect
answer.
In conclusion I grieve over the
deeply pernicious heresy that some in our church have when they
claim that regularly engaging in immoral behavior of an extreme sort and
in a self-affirming manner is no bar to membership in our denomination.
I close with two points
that I made in my article "Church
Membership, Repentance, and the Transformed Life": First, the church
should be generous in its acceptance of the genuineness of claims to
repentance by offenders, give reasonable opportunity for the offender to
be exposed to the gracious demand of the gospel, and take action only in
cases that are particularly egregious, serial, and unrepentant. Second,
a church that disconnects completely membership requirements and minimal
expectations for a holy life is a church that is deficient in both love
of offenders and reverential fear of God. The church of today does not
love more, or better, nor is it more "pastoral," than our Lord, the
apostle Paul, or the rest of the New Testament witness.
Robert A. J. Gagnon,
Ph.D., is an associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary and author of numerous works on Scripture and
homosexuality.