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Robert Gagnon on Jack Rogers’ Comments: Misrepresenting
the Nature Argument
Robert A. J. Gagnon
December 2001
[See also the following more recent critique of Rogers's
work:
Jack Rogers's
Flawed Use of Analogical Reasoning in Jesus, the Bible, and
Homosexuality (Nov. 2006)
HTML
PDF
Does Jack Rogers's New Book
"Explode the Myths" about the Bible and Homosexuality and "Heal
the Church?" (May-June 2006)
Installment 1:
HTML
PDF
Installment 2:
HTML
PDF
Installment 3:
HTML
PDF
Installment 4:
HTML
PDF
Response to Rogers's Response,
Part 1:
HTML
PDF
"Bad Reasons for Changing
One's Mind: Jack Rogers's Temple
Prostitution Argument
and Other False Starts" (Mar. 1, 2004)
PDF HTML
]
Jack Rogers, emeritus professor of theology at San
Francisco Theological Seminary and moderator of the 213 th
(2001-2002) General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church (USA), delivered an address entitled "The Church We Are Called to
Be" to the 2001 Covenant Conference (Nov. 2). (The Covenant Network is the
key prohomosex lobbying group within the PCUSA.) The address can be read
at: http://www.covenantnetwork.org/rogers3.html.
In the address Rogers made the following comment about my book, The
Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville:
Abingdon, 2001), though citing neither the book nor the author by name:
[1] A recent book, being touted as the definitive
study of what the Bible says on homosexuality, is actually not based
on revelation, but on natural law. The author declares that we don’t
need biblical revelation because the Old Testament writers and Paul
said what they did because they could see that women and men were
"anatomically complementary sexual beings." So we are making
assumptions based on our human evaluation. . . . [2] Persons
supporting full inclusion of gay and lesbians [sic] people
predominantly believe that affection for persons of ones [sic]
own sex is for some people a given of their nature. . . . [3] We are
not really arguing about the Bible or the Confessions, but about
prevailing assumptions in contemporary culture. (numbers added)
This is an unfortunate, and rather blatant,
misrepresentation of my book. My response consists of three elements,
corresponding to the inserted numbers above:
(1) Clearly, in my book the authoritative witness of
Scripture is primary. A proper concept of nature coheres with this
witness.
(2) The kind of nature argument to which Rogers
appeals, not the one that I employ, stands in opposition to Scripture.
(3) We really are arguing about the Bible’s
authority. Rogers’ appeal to an "accepting Jesus" as a means of
countering the biblical stance against same-sex intercourse lies at
the root of his misunderstanding of this point.
I suppose that I should not be too surprised by
misrepresentation. In November 2000 I had asked Rogers to look over the
proofs of my book and see if he could provide a blurb as someone from the
"other side" of this issue.
One of the main examples that Rogers subsequently gave for
why he could not provide a blurb was that I claimed "the incidence of
same-sex pedophilic behavior is disproportionately high" (p. 480), whereas
the studies cited by me showed that more heterosexuals than homosexuals
molested children. I had to remind Rogers that disproportionately high
is not the same thing as higher in absolute numbers. In any
given year only about 2% of the population engages in any homoerotic
behavior so it is unreasonable to expect that there will be more
homosexual molesters, in absolute numbers, than heterosexual ones. He then
acknowledged the error but, as it turned out, it was an omen of future
misrepresentation to come.
Scripture and Nature as First- and Second-Order Arguments
Even apart from a consideration of the title (The Bible
and Homosexual Practice, not Natural Law and Homosexual Practice),
a cursory reading of the first two pages of the conclusion of my book (pp.
487-88) would make evident that the argument from Scripture is the primary
or first-order argument. The first two of four reasons that I cite for not
validating homosexual behavior are:
(1) Same-sex intercourse is strongly and unequivocally
rejected by the revelation of Scripture. . . . The biblical
proscription of same-sex intercourse, like those against incest,
adultery, and bestiality, is absolute (encompassing all cases),
pervasive (by both Testaments and within each Testament), and
severe (mandating exclusion from God’s kingdom). . . .
(2) Same-sex intercourse represents a suppression of
the visible evidence in nature regarding male-female anatomical
and procreative complementarity. Complementarity extends also to a
range of personality traits and predispositions that contribute to
making heterosexual unions enormously more successful in terms of
fidelity, endurance, and health than same-sex ones. Acceptance of
biblical revelation is thus not a prerequisite for rejecting the
legitimacy of same-sex intercourse. However, for those who do
attribute special inspired status to Scripture at any level, there
is even less warrant to affirm same-sex intercourse. (emphasis added)
Rogers misleadingly frames what is clearly a "both/and" in
my book (both Scripture and nature, with stress on the former) as a "not
this, but that" (not biblical revelation but natural law). To say that
nature itself provides sufficient grounds for rejecting same-sex
intercourse (Paul’s point in Rom 1:24-27) is not to assert that Scripture
is secondary or, worse, irrelevant. It is simply to assert that even in
the absence of Scripture there are ample grounds for disapproving of
homosexual behavior so that those who lack (or nowadays disregard)
Scripture are still without excuse when they engage in same-sex
intercourse and approve of such behavior. My third reason after Scripture
and nature, namely the series of negative effects arising from societal
endorsement of homosexual practice, further underscores this observation.
The coherence of Scripture and nature is hardly surprising
in view of the fact that the God who communicates in Scripture the
limitation of sex to opposite-sex partners is also the Creator who designs
males and females for complementary sexual pairing. If Scripture itself
makes an appeal to creation/nature, it can hardly be contrary to a
revelation-based approach to make a similar appeal (within limits—see pp.
256-57 of my book, and my point two below). But the witness of Scripture
is, of course, primary and its witness against homosexual practice is even
more unequivocal and binding than the testimony of nature.
Again, at the conclusion to my ch. 4 on the Pauline
witness I state:
With regard to Rom 1:24-27, both idolatry and same-sex
intercourse are singled out by Paul as particularly clear and
revolting examples of the suppression of the truth about God
accessible to pagans in creation and nature. People who engage in
homosexual intercourse do so in spite of the self-evident clues
implanted in nature by God; specifically, male-female anatomical,
physiological, psychological, and procreative complementarity. . . .
To be sure, Paul and other Jews derived their own opposition to
same-sex intercourse, first and foremost, from the creation stories in
Genesis 1-2 and the Levitical prohibitions, both of which have
intertextual echoes in Rom 1:18-32. Yet, Paul contended, even
gentiles without access to the direct revelation of Scripture have
enough evidence in the natural realm to discern God’s aversion to
homosexual behavior. (p. 337; emphasis added)
The point is clearly stated: the direct revelation of
Scripture is primary, but even the indirect revelation of nature provides
sufficient grounds for holding accountable those who engage in same-sex
intercourse.
On Not Confusing the Meaning of Nature
Rogers himself makes an appeal to natural law when he
alludes, apparently approvingly, to the dominant belief of pro-homosex
apologists that homoerotic desire is "for some people a given of their
nature." Unfortunately, this is precisely the kind of appeal to natural
law that the authors of Scripture would not have approved of—a fact that
puts it at odds with scriptural revelation.
Paul distinguished between innate passions perverted by
the Fall and exacerbated by idol worship (including the array of vices
listed in Rom 1:29-31) on the one hand and material creation that was
still relatively intact from its pre-Fall condition on the other hand
(male-female sexual complementarity). To argue for the innateness
of homosexual passions does not subvert Paul’s view of them as "contrary
to nature" since by "nature" Paul means God’s intended design for
creation untouched by the introduction of sin into the world. Within a
system of thought that does not presuppose that whatever exists in nature
is "natural" in the truest sense, an appeal to the anatomical and
procreative complementarity of male-female sexual bonds is more secure
than an appeal to innate passions.
Indeed, Paul viewed sin precisely as an innate
impulse operating in the human body, transmitted by an ancestor human,
and never entirely within the control of human will (Romans 5:12-21;
7:7-23). This sounds a good deal like the characterization of homoerotic
impulses given by most who approve of homosexual practice. Consequently,
regarding homoerotic passions as innate, inborn, and strong is quite
compatible with the Pauline view of sin. Yet even here we should be
careful. Socio-scientific evidence to date suggests that congenital
factors in the development of homosexual desires are at most indirect and
subordinate to familial and cultural factors (see pp. 395-429 of my book).
So the difference between Rogers’ appeal to a natural-law
argument and my own is the difference between, on the one hand, an appeal
that is very shaky as regards socio-scientific assumptions and that has no
biblical support and, on the other hand, a more reliable appeal that has
full biblical support. It is Rogers, not myself, that is appealing to a
version of natural law argumentation that contravenes the revelation of
Scripture. The natural law argument that he makes is no more credible than
contending that, because men are more visually stimulated and genitally
focused than women, society should be more permissive of short-term sexual
unions or plural marriages for males (and all the more so in cases of
homoerotic male relationships). Rogers does not advocate such
permissiveness but that is nevertheless where the logic of his argument
leads.
Arguing about the Bible and a Truncated Image of the "Accepting
Jesus"
When Rogers contends "We are not really arguing about the
Bible or the Confessions," he could not be more off target. Not only is
the biblical opposition to same-sex intercourse absolute, pervasive, and
severe, it was all those things in relation to the cultural contexts out
of which it emerged. So Jews and Christians were not naively imbibing from
the cultural well but rather operating in a distinctly countercultural and
subversive manner. If such a core position in biblical sexual ethics can
be disregarded, it is difficult to see what kind of ethical appeal could
be made to Scripture on any behavioral issue—beyond, that is, the most
general of platitudes and slogans. If Scripture is this unreliable in its
moral claims, the Presbyterian church might as well revamp its entire
self-identity and find its primary authoritative source elsewhere.
Claiming that "We are not really arguing about the Bible" is a nice way of
deflecting criticism away from a position that clearly contradicts
Scripture. People should not be misled. We really are arguing about
whether the Bible will carry any meaningful authority over the church’s
moral decision-making.
At the root of much of Rogers’ misunderstanding appears to
be his truncated portrait of an "accepting Jesus" as a lever against those
who appeal to Scripture for moral standards. In his speech Rogers paints a
picture of a Jesus whose primary opponents were "people who were
determined to uphold the law"; a Jesus who "accept[ed] and include[d]
those who [sic] the religious leaders rejected as unclean." "That accepting Jesus is the Jesus
of the Bible. We need to read it, and preach it, and share it with
everyone that feels excluded by our self-righteous, religious culture."
One problem with Rogers’ analysis is that our cultural
context, even within most conservative churches (let alone broader secular
society), is almost libertinistic by comparison with Pharisaic views of
law observance. It is surely misguided to assume that Jesus would have
focused on the "self-righteous religious" in such a new context. A still
greater problem for Rogers’ analysis is that even within Jesus’ own
cultural setting Jesus intensified God’s ethical demand in a number of
areas. He fraternized with tax collectors, who had a notorious reputation
for robbing their own people, while emphasizing the grave evils of
economic exploitation. He reached out in love to sexual sinners while
intensifying sexual ethics in the areas of divorce/remarriage (Mark
10:2-12; Matt 5:31-32 par. Luke 16:18; cf. 1 Cor 7:10-11) and adultery of
the heart (Matt 5:27-28), even charging that violation of God’s sexual
demands, among other demands, could get a person’s "whole body" thrown
into Gehenna (hell) (Matt 5:29-30; cf. Mark 9:43-48). What Rogers and
others mask in their image of an "accepting Jesus" is a figure who could
aggressively seek to find "the lost" and heal "the sick" while at the
same time elevating both the ethical demand and the apocalyptic
repercussions for violators.
With respect to self-affirming participants in homoerotic
behavior, Rogers would have us not only reach out in love to the people
involved but also provide ecclesiastical and cultural incentives for the
practices that Scripture unequivocally declares to be sin of an egregious
sort—the very thing that Jesus would never have done. An examination of
the sayings of Jesus in their first-century context provides overwhelming
inferential evidence that, had Jesus encountered homoerotic behavior as a
problem in Israel, he would have expressed unequivocal opposition to it (ch.
3 of my book). The same applies to incest and bestiality, neither of which
Jesus spoke a direct word against. As a matter of fact, there are good
grounds for arguing that in both the Bible and early Judaism only
bestiality was regarded as a more severe instance of consensual sexual
immorality than same-sex intercourse.
There is a great (unintended) irony in Rogers’
thinly-veiled comparison between the Pharisees and those in the church
today who resist any endorsement of homoerotic behavior. Some Pharisees
referred to Jesus as "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors
and sinners" (Matt 11:19 par. Luke 7:34) because they could not get their
theological system around the notion that Jesus could be both a friend to
sinners and an intensifier of God’s ethical demands. Since Jesus was a
friend of sinners, they reasoned, he had to be cutting moral corners.
Rogers’ portrait of Jesus likewise fails to get around both elements of
Jesus’ ministry, though from the other side. In failing to integrate his
description of Jesus’ message and ministry with his discussion of holiness
(Rogers only talks about the latter after leaving behind the former),
Rogers gives the impression that the first-order good is to accept the
broad strokes of what people do, and only then tinker with the whole
question of holiness. The New Testament model, however, is to love people
by encouraging radical transformation into the image of Christ: a dying to
self and a living for God.
In conclusion, any attempt to portray my book as focusing
on something other than the authority of biblical revelation amounts to a
flagrant misrepresentation—especially grievous if that attempt is made by
one who, in partisan fashion, exploits the distinguished office of
moderator. The fact that I also document in my book additional grounds for
not approving homosexual practice, based on arguments from nature and the
disproportionately high rate of problems attending homoerotic behavior, is
not evidence that my book "is actually not based on [biblical] revelation"
or that "we are not really arguing about the Bible."
© 2002 Robert A. J. Gagnon
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