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Robert Gagnon on Prof. Elizabeth Johnson’s Review:
A Witness Without Commandments?
Robert A. J. Gagnon
January 2002
"One might consider as
perhaps the strongest proof of a proposition being evident the fact that
even the one who contradicts it finds himself obliged at the same time to
employ it. For example, if someone should contradict the proposition that
there is a universal statement that is true, it is clear that he must
assert the contrary, and say: No universal statement is true. Slave, this
is not true, either. For what else does this assertion amount to than: If
a statement is universal, it is false?" (Epictetus, a first-century
A.D.
Stoic philosopher, in Discourses 2.20.1-3)
On Sept. 23, 2001, I dialogued/debated about the Bible and
homosexuality with Beth Johnson (professor of New Testament, Columbia
Theological Seminary) at First Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South
Carolina. A reporter who was present at the event wrote me later: "I think
many went away feeling that you overwhelmed your opponent so much that
they wondered, ‘Is that the best the other side can offer?’ . . . It was
like watching a steam roller flatten a road in fast motion."
A short time later Johnson posted a review of my book on
the web. It can be found on at least three prohomosex websites:
http://www.witherspoonsociety.org/gagnon_review.htm;
http://www.covenantnetwork.org/johnsonb.html;
and
http://thewitness.org/archive/nov2002/biblerulebook.html.
Unfortunately, as will be shown below, there are several indications that
she did not read carefully, or at all, significant chunks of the 466 pages
of text.
Beth Johnson on My Exegesis
Johnson has an occasional nice comment about my book:
This is an impressive
volume, encyclopedic in its scope, detailed in its argumentation, and
massive in its documentation. It may well be, as its champions have
claimed, that
The Bible and Homosexual Practice
will become
the standard academic work against homosexuality. . . . There is much
to commend the descriptive task Gagnon undertakes.
Despite her own avid prohomosex stance, she acknowledges
that the Bible is consistently opposed to homosexual practice. She herself
is "skeptical about revisionist [prohomosex] exegesis."
On two exegetical points she does express disagreement.
First, she says: "I disagree with his analysis of the malakos/arsenokoites
debate (1 Cor 6:9)." However, Johnson does not disclose her reasons
for disagreeing—nor did she disclose any in her presentation in
Charleston. I can understand why. The evidence is overwhelming that the
combination of malakoi (literally, "soft men," i.e., effeminate men
who play the sexual role of females) and arsenokoitai ("men lying
with males," coined from the Septuagint translation of Leviticus 18:22 and
20:13) is correctly appropriated for our contemporary context when applied
to every conceivable type of male-male intercourse (a similar indictment
of female-female intercourse is applied). My book demonstrates this on the
basis of the use of the words malakoi and arsenokoitai both
(1) in ancient literature and (2) in the context of
• the vice list in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
• the analogous case of incest in 1 Corinthians 5 (still
in view in 1 Corinthians 6)
• the citation of Gen 2:24 ("the two [man and woman]
will become one flesh") in the prostitution analogy in 1 Corinthians
6:12-20
• the discussion of man-woman marriage in 1 Corinthians
7
• the particular use of arsenokoitai in 1 Timothy
1:10
• the discussion of same-sex intercourse in Romans
1:24-27.
The second point of alleged exegetical disagreement is
this: "I am not persuaded that first-century moralists cared as much about
procreation as Gagnon does." This comment suggests that she has not read,
or understood, my argument. Apparently Johnson thinks that I try to
justify a procreation requirement by appeal to a strong concern for
procreation on the part of Greco-Roman moralists. What I actually say is
that first-century Greco-Roman moralists critical of homosexual behavior
(e.g., Musonius Rufus and, among Jews, Philo of Alexandria; Bible and
Homosexual Practice, 164-69) generally cared more about the
necessity of procreation in marriage than Paul (or I). As I point out,
procreation among heterosexual unions factors for Paul more as one among
several heuristic clues to the unnaturalness of homoerotic unions than as
a prescriptive rule (pp. 270-73). I also make clear that even Philo, who
is very strong on a procreative prerequisite, does not reject same-sex
intercourse exclusively, or even primarily, on the grounds of its inherent
sterility (pp. 168-69, 172-76, 272). I actually criticize scholars who
pinpoint an absence of procreative potential as the main reason for the
Bible’s proscription of same-sex intercourse (pp. 132-34, 270-73). In view
of these things, it is quite odd for Johnson to say that she is "not
persuaded that first-century moralists cared as much about procreation as
Gagnon does."
Beth Johnson on My Hermeneutics
Johnson most misconstrues my work in her characterization
of my hermeneutics—moving from what the text "meant" in its cultural
milieu to what the text "means" for our own day. There are two chief areas
where she does this:
(1) Her attempt at characterizing my views regarding
sexual orientation (her second-to-the last paragraph).
(2) Her attempt at contrasting my hermeneutical
approach with her own (her third-to-the-last and last paragraphs).
(1) On the Socio-Scientific Literature Regarding Sexual
Orientation
Johnson’s description of my assumptions regarding sexual
orientation is badly garbled and suggests a need for a more careful
reading of pp. 395-429 of my book.
(a) Where she indicates that I attribute all homosexual
development to "bad parenting" (a misleading and poorly worded expression
that I nowhere use), I actually argue in my book that there are multiple
causation factors for the development of homoerotic impulses, even within
the familial-cultural realm.
(b) Where she refers to my alleged belief in an
"infinitely malleable free will," I in fact state:
The best hope for change in the sexual orientation of
homosexuals comes not in attempts to treat homosexuals after years and
years of homosexual behavior but rather in limiting the options that
young people have in terms of sexual experimentation. . . . So perhaps
a better question to ask than "Can homosexuals change?" is "Can the
numbers of self-identifying homosexuals in the population be affected
by cultural attitudes toward homosexual behavior?" The answer to that
question, I would contend, is "Yes, significantly so." (p. 429)
Johnson’s critique seems to work with a concept that
sexual "orientation" is in all circumstances and cases a fixed monolithic
reality that no amount of environmental influences (familial, peer,
macro-cultural, etc.) over the course of an entire lifetime can ever
affect, not even so much as a single shift along the 0-6 Kinsey spectrum
("my colleagues in pastoral theology have taught me . . . to take with
some salt claims that orientation can be permanently altered"). This
concept—one which incidentally Kinsey himself did not share—is not borne
out by the evidence from identical twin studies, cross-cultural and
intra-cultural studies, and various surveys, often conducted by strong
advocates for the homosexual agenda (pp. 401-23).
(c) Johnson states that I think "the biblical writers had
no concept of sexual orientation." This is news to me. I refer her to pp.
384-95 of my book where I argue the reverse of what she claims that I
argue. In the Greco-Roman world exclusive erotic attraction to one sex was
known to exist and a number of theories were floated that attempted to
explain this, including theories that suggested at least a partial
congenital causation. Paul may well have entertained such views. The
wording in Rom 1:24-27 does not preclude this. In fact, Paul describes
homoerotic desire in a manner that suggests innate, exclusive, and
controlling desires. Likewise, the reference in 1 Cor 6:9 to malakoi,
"soft men" who served as the passive/receptive partners in male-male
intercourse throughout adulthood, coheres with it the idea of lifelong
homosexual desire. Certainly the concept of a homosexual "orientation" is
compatible with Paul’s general view of sin in Romans 7. If Paul could be
transported into the twenty-first century and told that homoerotic desires
have (at most) a partial and indirect connection to congenital or early
childhood causation factors, he doubtless would have said either "I could
have told you that" or, at very least, "That fits well into my own
understanding of sinful impulses."
(2) On "Rules" In Relation to the Descriptive and
Hermeneutical Tasks
The biggest misrepresentation is her attempt to
characterize me as someone who is mired in the "static"
historical/descriptive task, while she soars ahead to the "dynamic" work
of applying the gospel creatively to our contemporary setting. The Bible
is allegedly for me a dead rulebook, for her a living compilation of
"truth telling" witnesses. I must confess that, faced with those stark
alternatives, I myself would probably side with Johnson. However, her
alternatives are little more than straw dummies of her own making.
She says:
For Gagnon, the descriptive task--what the Bible said
in its original historical context--is sufficient to determine what
contemporary believers should do. . . . The historical task is for me
the beginning rather than the end of the theological task, and I think
we encounter the Bible's authority not in its static content but in
its dynamic power to shape and reshape us as the people of God in the
world for which Christ died. . . .
The question for Gagnon boils down repeatedly to what
did or did not constitute sin in the eyes of our ancestors who
produced the Bible. The Bible is thus a rule book in which to find the
boundaries of acceptable behavior rather than a collection of what my
colleague Walter Brueggemann calls "truth-telling" texts, witnesses to
God in the midst of God's people. So long as these two profoundly
different perceptions of the Bible itself continue to divide us, we
will continue to read and interpret it differently.
Johnson’s analysis is not only a tad too self-laudatory
but also somewhat confused. If I had been content with the
historical/descriptive task as an end in itself, I would not have bothered
to devote the last third of my book to the hermeneutical challenges (pp.
341-486). I am not aware of any biblical scholar or theologian who has
dealt with this area in a more extensive fashion, including Johnson.
Johnson acknowledges the thoroughness of my work on this matter but fails
to see the logical inconsistency between that admission and the claim that
my theological vision, unlike hers, never moves beyond the descriptive and
historical. The only way that such a claim can be maintained is by wrongly
assuming that a valid hermeneutical move requires a 180-degree about-face
away from the stance of the biblical texts.
The scandalous truth is that there are indeed rules in the
Bible, often called "commandments," that are meant to be obeyed and that
continue to have normative force in our contemporary context. This does
not mean that the whole of the Bible is a rulebook, for there are many genres of
literature in the Bible, some of which are not conducive to rule
formation. Moreover, there are many rules in the old covenant that
believers in the new covenant are no longer required to follow, though
there is also considerable continuity between the two covenants and the
very fact of a covenant relationship implies kinship obligations
(duties, commandments). There are even instances of internal tensions
between rules within Testaments, occasions where some commands must be
prioritized over others (Scripture itself teaches this), and places where
New Testament rules may not be relevant for our contemporary context or
only relevant when creatively reapplied to new circumstances. I state as
much in my introduction to the chapter on "The Hermeneutical Relevance of
the Biblical Witness" (pp. 341-46).
Yet, with these caveats in place, it nevertheless remains
true that the Bible contains normative commands and rules—not just
suggestions—that often need little or no creative revision for our
contemporary life as Christians. This is the case with commands not to
commit adultery, have sex with near kin or animals, have sex with members
of the same sex, solicit prostitutes, steal, bear false witness, worship
idols, and a host of other negative behavioral proscriptions. Among
numerous New Testament texts holding up the importance of adhering to
commandments are the Markan account of Jesus’ response to the rich young
man ("What must I do to inherit eternal life?" . . . "You know the
commandments. . . ," Mark 10:17-19), the Matthean account of the words
of the risen Christ ("teaching [the nations] to keep all things,
whatsoever I commanded you," Matt 28:20), and Paul’s declaration that
what truly counts is "keeping the commandments of God" (1 Cor
7:19). (By the way, I assume that Johnson, a Presbyterian woman teaching
at a Presbyterian seminary, is not opposed in principle to the "static"
and inflexible application of some "rules," especially the polity
ordinance that PCUSA candidates for ordination who refuse to accept the
validity of women’s ordination be denied ordination.)
In cases where the biblical opposition to a specific
behavior is pervasive, absolute, and severe, and developed as such in
contradistinction to the prevailing cross-cultural ethos, the burden of
proof is entirely on those who would argue for a radical departure in
practice. Such is the burden incumbent upon those who contend for the
acceptance of homosexual behavior. In my book I treat extensively all the
main arguments that have been adduced for discounting the massive
scriptural witness against homosexual practice. In particular, I show that
the biblical rejection of same-sex intercourse is not predicated (a) on
the relative rarity of committed, monogamous homoerotic unions in
antiquity (the exploitation argument; pp. 347-61), or (b) on a desire to
keep women "down" (the misogyny argument; pp. 139-42, 361-80), or (c) on
the assumption that there are no indirect congenital or early socializing
factors to homoerotic desire (the orientation argument; pp. 380-95,
430-32).
Neither in her review nor in our debate did Johnson
provide any evidence that Scripture’s categorical rejection of homosexual
behavior is predicated on these assumptions. She has not refuted a single
hermeneutical argument of mine. The only argument that she puts forward
for why Scripture’s witness should be circumvented (found in the first
paragraph of her review) is that homosexual persons show evidence of the
grace of God in their lives. The truth is, however, that most people
constantly show such evidence even as they compartmentalize their lives to
do things that ought not to be done. It would be patently impossible to
demonstrate that all participants in various forms of immoral activity are
void of such grace. Johnson does not explain, for example, why all
committed participants in incestuous unions or in threesomes (or other "plural"
arrangements), who otherwise show evidence of the grace of God in their
lives, should be denied the church’s blessing.
The Bible rejects same-sex intercourse because sexual
intercourse was intended by God to be between two complementary sexual
others, an otherness imbedded in creation itself: "male and female he
created them" (Genesis 1:27); "a man shall . . . become attached to his
woman/wife and the two will become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). Genesis
2:18-24 provides a beautiful image of a sexually binary, or
undifferentiated, human who is split down the "side" into two parts, male
and female. Thereafter, the creation of "one flesh" from a sexual union
requires the two constituent parts split off from the sexual whole. Scripture treats this complementarity of the two sexes
as a more important dimension of intercourse than even the number of
partners involved, the non-kinship of the participants, or the
non-commercial nature of the activity. Ignoring altogether this transcultural, complementary otherness of the sexes (anatomical,
physiological, and interpersonal) leads to a high incidence of negative
effects, as regards health (physical and mental), problematic relational
dynamics (in terms of the number of sex partners and the longevity of the
relationship), and gender-identity development. For the great tragic irony
is that, even when males and females suppress the truth about God’s design
for human sexual expression evident in nature by engaging in intercourse
with a non-complementary sexual same, they continue to behave as males and
as females—only without the salutary moderating and enriching effects that
a complementary sexual (re)union brings.
At stake here is not the abandonment of a marginal value
of Scripture but a distinctly countercultural core value. In the end, for
all Johnson’s rhetoric about encountering "the Bible’s authority not in
its static content but in its dynamic power to shape" and about letting
the Bible serve as a "truth-telling" witness to God, the Bible is so
undercut by the promotion of a behavior that it strongly rejects that it
ceases to be, in any meaningful sense, both a witness to the truth and a
dynamic power to shape the lives of God’s people. Or at least this is the
case so long as Johnson chooses to be consistent in her approach.
Johnson entitles her review of my book: "The Bible: Rule
Book or Witness to God." The absurdity of this title is clear: an
integral part of the Bible’s witness involves commandments to be heeded.
Jesus, every writer of Scripture, and church tradition right up to the
present have affirmed this—including the PCUSA to which both Johnson and I
belong. In discarding completely that element of the Bible’s witness,
Johnson has, in effect, discarded the Bible’s witness. She claims that the
church should support a form of behavior that Jesus and all the writers of
Scripture would have found appalling because to do otherwise would deny
the witness of Scripture. The illogic is breathtaking.
© 2001 Robert A. J. Gagnon
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