“God’s will and God’s
goodness: A Reply to Harold Porter”
by
Robert A. J. Gagnon
Assoc.
Prof. of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
A
reply to the Pastor Emeritus of Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church in
Cincinnati, Ohio. Rev. Porter published a Viewpoint in Presbyweb on Nov.
12, 2003, accusing me of Scripture "idolatry," "gravely injurious conduct"
to homosexuals, turning the Bible into "nothing more than a legal code,"
and failing to substantiate Jesus' and the Bible's opposition to all
homosexual practice (http://www.presbyweb.com/2003/Viewpoint/1112-Hal+Porter--Berkley+and+Gagnon.htm).
The following appeared as a Viewpoint in the Nov. 15, 2003 edition of
Presbyweb (http://www.presbyweb.com/2003/Viewpoint/1116-Robert+Gagnon--Hal+Porter+response.htm).
I am grateful that Rev. Harold Porter is
thankful for the presence of Jim Berkley and me in the Body of Christ,
though there is some disconnect between that expression of gratitude and
the charge that Jim and I have committed both “idolatry” and “gravely
injurious” conduct. [Note: Jim Berkley is the Issues Ministry Director for
Presbyterians for Renewal; Porter was responding to a blog written by
Berkley on Nov. 10, 2003 at
http://pfrenewal.blogspot.com.] There are many other contradictions
and confusions in Porter’s letter.
Knowing God’s will.
Although Porter argues against “thinking we know God’s will,” I do not get
any sense of tentativeness in his own remarks about the will of God
concerning homosexual relationships. In fact, he is so confident that he
knows the will of God that he thinks that his own personal knowledge of
God’s will trumps the strong, pervasive, and countercultural will of
Scripture. Moreover, he is confident enough to charge others with
“idolatry” and with a “gravely injurious” conduct requiring immediate
repentance.
Apparently for
Porter only claims to knowing God’s will through Scripture are
problematic. But it is fine to make absolute claims to knowing God’s will
through the even more ambiguous source of self-interpreted personal
experience, even when that experience is at complete odds with the witness
of Scripture and of Jesus. Porter says that we should not base our
understanding of the will of God on Scripture because “it is obvious that
there are conflicting understandings of the ‘will of God’ in scriptures.”
Porter neglects to mention that there are many things in Scripture over
which no “conflicting understanding” exists, including the stance on
same-sex intercourse.
What would be
for Porter a more secure place to pin our understandings of the will of
God? “It is far better that our ethics be based on a response to God’s
goodness and God’s living presence which is still unfolding before us.” Of
course, this begs the question of what in fact constitutes “God’s
goodness” and God’s “unfolding presence.” When the biblical witness is
discarded, one increases—not decreases—the incidence of “conflicting
understandings” over such matters. So, apparently for Porter, Paul should
have acknowledged that the Corinthians were responding to God’s goodness
and unfolding presence when they tolerated a case of consensual adult
incest (1 Corinthians 5). By Porter’s standards, he certainly could not
have relied on Scripture’s longstanding witness against man-mother sex,
especially if the relationship manifested “fidelity.”
The phrase “will of God” is
an interesting one. When Paul began his moral exhortation to new converts
in his first extant letter (1 Thessalonians 4), he reminded them of the
“commands” that he had given them “through the Lord Jesus,” by which “it
is necessary for you to live and to please God.” What is the first topic
for discussion? Sex. “For this is the will of God: your holiness (or:
sanctification), that you abstain from sexual immorality (porneia).”
He goes on to caution them against committing adultery. Given his remarks
on sex in 1 Corinthians 5-7, it is clear that, for Paul, the following
behaviors also came under the heading of “sexual immorality”: same-sex
intercourse, incest, multiple-partner sex, sex with prostitutes, and
fornication. Paul undoubtedly instructed his converts at Thessalonica, as
elsewhere, not to engage in same-sex intercourse (Romans 1:24-27; 1
Corinthians 6:9). Paul was so sure about what the will of God “through the
Lord Jesus” was that he warned his converts that to violate God’s will in
these matters meant rejecting “not a human but the God who gives his Holy
Spirit to us” and incurring the wrath of the “avenger” God. This way of
thinking, which incidentally can be documented for Jesus as well (compare
Mark 3:35; Matt 7:21; Luke 12:47), is a world away from the kind of
philosophy concocted by Porter. Obviously, what “leads us into idolatry”
is not, as Porter alleges, acceptance of the teaching put forward by Jesus
and Paul on these matters but rather the rejection of such teaching.
On true legalism. Porter
has to acknowledge that the authors of Scripture, and Jesus, did seek to
declare the will of God; but, Porter claims, “we live by faith not
by legal principles set in stone.” This is absurd. The concept of living
by faith and not by “works required by the (Mosaic) law” is drawn
primarily from the apostle Paul. But Paul himself would not have drawn the
conclusion drawn by Porter; namely, that adherence to prescriptive and
proscriptive norms in Scripture constitutes legalism. Was Paul being
legalistic in the text from 1 Thessalonians 4:1-9 that I cite above? Was
Paul being legalistic when he declared to the Corinthians, in the context
of a lengthy discussion about sexual purity, that what counts is “keeping
the commands of God” (1 Corinthians 7:19), or when he lambasted the
Corinthians for tolerating a case of man-stepmother incest?
Why does
Porter think that Paul spent lengthy portions of all of his letters
commanding them to do certain things and not to do other things and
warning that to do otherwise would risk their inheritance in the kingdom
of God? The only conclusion that one can reach is that Porter thinks that
he understands the meaning of grace in relation to moral commands better
than Paul, the apostle of grace. Extraordinary. It is not just Porter’s
view of homosexual practice that is wrong. His whole understanding of the
relationship of grace and transformed behavior is patently anti-Christian.
Of course,
Porter does not uphold his position consistently: He is insistent that the
church absolutely cannot oppose committed homosexual unions and charges
those who do with idolatry and grievous conduct. So Porter is certainly
wedded to the concept of absolute commands—he is just not conscious of
this commitment.
Legalism does not come when
one obeys the clear, consistent, and strongly maintained commands of
Scripture accepted by Jesus. Legalism comes when one (like Porter)
supplants one’s own rules for the commands of Scripture (see Mark 7:6-8),
supposes that obedience earns one’s place in heaven, or elevates matters
of indifference such as diet and calendar—or biologically related
predispositions—to defining features of the faith.
Paul clearly rejected any
assumption that Christian sexual norms were matters of indifference like
dietary practices (1 Corinthians 6:12-20). So did Jesus. Jesus intensified
God’s demands in sexual ethics rather than loosened them and, in that
context, warned people that it was better to go into heaven with limbs cut
off than to go into hell full-bodied (Matthew 5:27-32). Grace is not a
take-the-money-and-run approach to life. Grace not only delivers us from
the penalty of sin but also is at work in delivering us from the
controlling power of sin. That is why Paul could say: “Sin shall not have
lordship over you; for you are not under law but under grace” (Romans
6:14). If the wrath of God is manifested already in the present time by
God’s handing people over to the control of their pre-existing,
self-dishonoring sexual passions (Romans 1:18, 24-27), then the grace of
God can be nothing less than the active deliverance of believers, through
the Spirit, from the very same passions to which they had formerly been
enslaved (Romans 6:19-23; 7:5-6; 8:1-14). To live by faith is to live by a
continual “yes” to God’s will for our lives—a will that usually runs
counter to the impulses of the “flesh.”
Porter apparently believes
that an example of legalism is being faithful to a core value of
Scripture, while living by faith is best exemplified by denying such a
core value. This is bad exegesis, bad theology, and bad logic. When Paul
distinguished between “letter” and “Spirit” he distinguished between a law
that did not empower people to do what it stipulated and the “law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” that provides just such
empowerment. Indeed, the whole argument of Romans 6-8 is that the law and
the law’s moral commands are good and that the law’s main problem was its
“weakness,” its incapacity to enable the right conduct that it legislated.
Porter uses
the language of Scripture but he imputes to it a content that is directly
opposed to the canonical context. I recommend to him that he stop using
the language altogether, inasmuch as it is pure context-less prooftexting
that gives the appearance of biblical and spiritual authority while
denying its content and power.
Asserting that Scripture
contains a number of core ethical norms that remain authoritative in our
own cultural context does not, as Porter claims, turn the whole Bible into
a “legal code.” If it did, then every writer of Scripture, and Jesus,
would be guilty of turning the Bible into nothing more than a “legal
code.” Imagine if the disciples of Jesus had responded to every command or
warning of Jesus with the words: You are turning our faith into a legal
code! Or if every one of Paul’s churches responded to his moral
exhortation and warnings with the words: You have forsaken grace for
legalism! How ridiculous and spiritually immature such a response would
be. Here I encourage Porter to read my rebuttal of Elizabeth Johnson’s
review of my book (“Gagnon on Prof. Beth Johnson’s Review: A Witness
Without Commandments?” at
http://www.robgagnon.net/Reviews/homoBethJohnsonResponse.pdf).
There is so much more that
could be said here. I recommend to Porter that he read pp. 50-56 of my
essay in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress,
2003)—the section entitled “Love and Grace from the Perspective of Jesus
and Paul,” along with the online notes at
http://www.robgagnon.net/2Views/HomoViaRespNotesRev.pdf.
The Bible and Jesus on homosexual
practice. Porter states that he does not agree with my view that
Scripture—even Paul—regards same-sex intercourse per se as sin. Yet
Porter nowhere shows how my “case” is in error, so there is nothing that I
can respond to. If Porter has a strong argument to make for his position
that Scripture does not proscribe same-sex intercourse absolutely, he
should make the argument. Otherwise, his declarations are meaningless.
Anyone can claim anything about Scripture. Substantiating such claims is
another matter entirely.
Porter tacitly
acknowledges the weakness of his contention by devoting most of his
attention to telling readers that Scripture carries no significant weight
of authority or constraining influence on freedom of interpretation;
moreover, that to regard any of its commands as binding is legalism. As he
says: “Even if the Bible declares same-sex behavior an abomination that is
not to say God does.” How about, Rev. Porter, if the Bible declared it to
be so in a manner that could be described as pervasive, strong, absolute,
and countercultural? From what I can gather, Scripture for Porter carries
roughly the same amount of divine inspiration and moral authority that
Shakespeare or Bruce Springsteen or Porter himself has. So why should he
care what Scripture says about this or any other issue?
Porter thinks that my case
for asserting that Jesus accepted Scripture’s strong proscription of
same-sex intercourse is weak. Yet what convincing arguments does he bring
forward to rebut my stance? Only that Jesus was not a “defender of the
status quo” and that Jesus “did override many of the cultic practices of
his own religious community.” Actually, historically speaking, it is not
likely that Jesus abrogated the law of Moses, even on so-called cultic
matters. Paul, however, did refer to the abrogation of the Mosaic law and
viewed temple, dietary, and calendar regulations as outside the enduring
norms of God’s will. Yet Paul obviously regarded the main sexual
prohibitions as still in place, only intensified.
So what chance
is there that Jesus, a much less vigorous critic of the law, held a
“secret” affirmation of homosexual practice that no one else in early
Judaism is recorded as holding and that none of his closest followers ever
picked up? Furthermore, we know that the way in which Jesus served as a
critic of the “status quo,” so far as sexual ethics was concerned, was to
intensify God’s demand (adultery of the heart, prohibition of
divorce/remarriage). It never seems to occur to Porter—despite the fact
that it is stressed in my chapter on Jesus in The Bible and Homosexual
Practice—that change for Jesus often meant tightening moral
requirements in the Bible and closing loopholes, especially in the area of
sexual ethics (see, for example, the six antitheses in Matthew 5:17-48).
In addition, Jesus made
back-to-back citations of Genesis 1:27 (“male and female he
made them”) and Genesis 2:24 (“For this reason a man shall . . . be
joined to his woman and the two shall become one flesh”) as
definitive prescriptive norms for defining human sexual behavior. Clearly
Jesus accepted the male-female prerequisite for sexual unions—the pairing
of “male/female” or “man/woman” stands out. One of the main points of
Genesis 2:21-24 is to show that a woman, and a woman alone, is a man’s
sexual “counterpart.” When a man and woman unite in a sexual union they
restore or remerge the sexual whole split apart from the originally
undifferentiated human. Jesus obviously understood this when he made the
further point regarding the indissolubility of marriage. Jesus’ remarks
about “sexual immorality,” adultery, Sodom, and the qedeshim
(homosexual cult prostitutes) provide further confirmation regarding
Jesus’ views. All the evidence points in the direction of Jesus’
opposition to same-sex intercourse.
Porter appears to concede
this when he says “It may be true that Jesus never [would have?] defended
same-sex [erotic] practice.” But Porter goes on to say that Jesus “would
not denigrate homosexual persons whose sexual practices reflected fidelity
to the grace of God.” No one is talking about “denigrating homosexual
persons.” Porter confuses affirmation of human worth and dignity with
affirmation of all human impulses and the behaviors that proceed from
them. To denigrate those experiencing homoerotic proclivities is to
consign them to the self-degrading practices that deny their true embodied
existence as the sexual “other halves” of persons of the other sex rather
than of the same sex.
As for the
remark “. . . whose sexual practices reflected fidelity to the grace of
God,” the very act of same-sex intercourse does not reflect “fidelity to
the grace of God.” Obviously, Porter is thinking of committed homoerotic
unions. He repeats this claim when he says that Jesus would have lifted up
the same sexual standards for heterosexuals and homosexuals (actually
Jesus did: the standard for both is an other-sex sexual partner, if a
sexual partner is to be had). What Porter does not realize is that
Scripture does not reject homoerotic behavior, at least not in the first
instance, because it tends toward relational infidelity—any more than
Scripture rejects man-mother sex because it tends toward instability.
Scripture rejects same-sex eroticism because it is erotic attraction for
what one already is as a sexual being rather than for what, on an erotic
level, would complete the sexual self.
Porter talks glowingly of
the “unbounded love of God” revealed in Jesus. Yet Porter has turned
“Jesus” into little more than a cipher or symbol for his own
anti-scriptural thought, with little connection to the figure of Jesus
that lived in history and gave concrete commands to be obeyed. Nor does he
acknowledge the wide array of Jesus sayings about the threat of judgment
that awaits those whose lives do not conform to the will of God. Porter
and those who concur with him have difficulty stretching their theological
imaginations around the notion that Jesus could both intensify
God’s ethical demand in matters of sex and money and reach out
aggressively in love to those who most violated such demands.
Hermeneutics. Porter’s
overriding hermeneutical principle comes across as: If it’s new, go for
it. Alluding to Matthew 13:52 (the scribe for the kingdom of God brings
forth new and old), Porter says that he disagrees with my views because I
allegedly “bring out little that is new on this subject.” I suppose that
we should be grateful that we are not talking about man-mother incest,
threesomes, adult-child sex, or bestiality—otherwise, I would be accused
of not bringing out much that is “new on this subject.”
Once more,
Porter uses Scripture in a way that really abuses it. For in the larger
context of Matthew’s Gospel (this saying, incidentally, is found only in
Matthew’s Gospel), the saying alludes, in part, to the “newness” of Jesus’
insistence that the loopholes in the Mosaic law were now being closed by
Jesus. The newness as regards sexual ethics is to add to the sexual
prerequisites already in place (viz., incest, adultery, same-sex
intercourse, bestiality, prostitution) a requirement that marriage be
monogamous and indissoluble, not only for women but also for men.
Again, Porter
is tone deaf to the intratextual (and intertextual) echoes of the biblical
witness. He seems unable to fathom that change can involve intensifying
God’s ethical demand. For Porter, in order for Scripture to be a living
word, we have to violate it. Porter does not give consideration to the
fact that Scripture is most a living word when we not only read it but
also submit ourselves to it by doing it. As Jesus made clear in the
parable about the houses built on rock or sand, one must not only hear
Jesus’ words but also do them, or else one faces destruction (Matthew
7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49). Jesus does not commend those who hear his words
but then come up with a different view of the matter.
Porter also gives no
consideration to the notion of “core values” in Scripture and consistent
methods for determining what constitutes core values. For him it is all
the same whether one holds on to head coverings for women or one maintains
the biblical witness against man-mother sex. In his view, to say that some
proscriptions in Scripture remain normative is to say all must be
normative, even though Scripture itself makes a distinction between some
absolutes (which it affirms) and all absolutes (which it does not affirm).
He brings up women and slavery as appropriate analogies to homosexuality
but never deals with my arguments as to why these analogies are inferior
by far to the analogy of adult, consensual, and committed incest. He
constantly talks about “God’s goodness” as if he knows—and knows better
than Jesus—what the goodness of God is.
Conclusion. According to
Porter, the church’s “treatment of homosexual persons as less created in
God’s image than heterosexuals just doesn’t fit with my
understanding of God’s goodness.” Porter’s first mistake is in concluding
that, by withholding approval of homosexual behavior, the church treats
homosexual persons “as less created in God’s image than heterosexuals.”
Does Porter also want to characterize those who have intense difficulties
with monogamy “as less created in God’s image than” those who do not, just
because the church upholds monogamy? Are men who experience exclusive
attractions for children “less created in God’s image” because the church
will not condone loving erotic adult-child relationships?
Humans are
created in God’s image “male and female.” That image is effaced not by
withholding affirmation of homosexual behavior but by endorsing such
behavior. We are not the sum total of our fleshly desires. We are what God
has created us to be and re-creates us to be in the image of Christ. If
Porter’s reasoning were applied to a host of biologically related
impulses—and let’s acknowledge the scientific fact that no one is ever, in
a deterministic way, “born” a homosexual—then every scriptural injunction
would have to be thrown out when it conflicted with a person’s contrary
biological predisposition. The stance of Scripture is the opposite of what
Porter is promoting:
We
ourselves all once lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of
the flesh and of its thoughts, and we were by nature children of wrath,
like the rest. But God who is rich in mercy, because of the great love
with which he loved us, . . . made us live together with Christ—by grace
you have been saved—and raised us up with him. . . . For we are what he
has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works. . . .
You should no longer live as the Gentiles live. . . . (You were taught)
to put away . . . the old human that is being corrupted in conformity
with its self-deceiving desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your
mind and to put on the new human that is created in conformity to God in
true righteousness and devoutness. . . . But sexual immorality and
sexual impurity of any kind . . . must not even be mentioned among you,
as is proper among the saints. . . .
Be sure of this, that no sexually immoral person or sexually impure
person . . . has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the
wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be
associated with them. For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord
you are light. Live as children of light. (Ephesians 2:3-6, 10; 4:17,
22-24; 5:3-8)
It is my hope
that Rev. Porter will renew his own mind in accordance with the teaching
of Jesus and of Scripture generally, as indeed we should all be
doing—always reforming in the direction of Scripture and putting to death
the old human. Then he will not commit his second mistake: Thinking that
his moral understanding is superior to the united testimony of
Scripture and of our Savior.
© 2003 Robert A. J. Gagnon