Rowan Williams’ Wrong Reading of Romans
(…and John 14:6)
by Robert A. J. Gagnon
Associate Professor of New Testament
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary,
gagnon@pts.edu
April 21, 2007
For a PDF version with proper pagination
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Rowan Williams,
the Archbishop of Canterbury and titular head of the Anglican Communion,
delivered a lecture on Apr. 16, 2007 in which he suggested that the
“conservative” case against homosexual practice, based significantly on
Romans 1:24-27, has failed to give due weight to the fact that Paul in
context is primarily critical of the judgmental attitude of those in the
covenant community. Reuters has picked up Williams’ remarks—which
constitute only 424 words out of a 6358-word text entitled “The Bible
Today: Reading and Hearing”—and has formulated a screaming headline out
of it entitled, “Anglican head Williams says anti-gays misread Bible” (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1767470620070417).
This imbalance is
already a distortion of sorts, especially since Williams also once notes
that the “‘liberal’ or revisionist case” is not helped by the fact that
“everyone in [Paul’s] imagined readership agrees in thinking the
same-sex relations of the culture around them to be as obviously immoral
as idol-worship or disobedience to parents.” And yet the reporting is
not a complete distortion of Williams’ remarks. The dominant point that
Williams makes rests with “conservative” misinterpretation of the text’s
“movement,” not with the “liberal” reading. Moreover, even when he
states that his own reading is “not helpful for a ‘liberal’ or
revisionist case,” he carefully couches his language. He does not say
that Paul himself fully accepted the view of homosexual practice per se
as “immoral” (perhaps, but only perhaps, this can be assumed) but refers
instead to what Paul’s readers think and that only with regard to “the
same-sex relations of the culture around them,” leaving open the
possibility that their opposition to homosexual practice was limited
only to common exploitative forms. Then, too, he states that same-sex
relations were “as obviously immoral as . . . disobedience to parents,”
which is a distortion of Paul’s point in Romans 1:18-32. To indicate, as
Paul does, that any form of sin could get one excluded from the kingdom
of God if personal merit is the criterion of evaluation is not the same
as saying that all forms of sin are equally abhorrent to God (the latter
point Paul and Scripture generally deny categorically).
I reproduce below
Williams’ remarks on homosexual practice and put in boldface the most
relevant portions. A full copy of his address, which he delivered at an
event hosted jointly by Wycliffe and Trinity theological colleges in
Toronto, can be obtained at the Archbishop’s site at
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/070416.htm
or, for a better format,
http://www.anglican.ca/news/news.php?newsItem=2007-04-16_abc.news.
My second example [note: the first was John 14:6] is even
more contentious in the present climate; and once again I must stress
that the point I am making is not that the reading I proposes settles a
controversy or changes a substantive interpretation but that many
current ways of reading miss the actual direction of the passage and
so undermine a proper theological approach to Scripture. Paul in the
first chapter of Romans famously uses same-sex relationships as an
illustration of human depravity -- along with other 'unnatural'
behaviours such as scandal, disobedience to parents and lack of pity. It
is, for the majority of modern readers the most important single text in
Scripture on the subject of homosexuality, and has understandably been
the focus of an enormous amount of exegetical attention.
What is Paul's argument? And, once again, what is the
movement that the text seeks to facilitate? The answer is in
the opening of chapter 2: we have been listing examples of the
barefaced perversity of those who cannot see the requirements of the
natural order in front of their noses; well, it is precisely the same
perversity that affects those who have received the revelation of God
and persist in self-seeking and self-deceit. The change envisaged is
from confidence in having received divine revelation to an awareness of
universal sinfulness and need. Once again, there is a paradox in reading
Romans 1 as a foundation for identifying in others a level of
sin that is not found in the chosen community.
Now this gives little comfort to either party in the current
culture wars in the Church. It is not helpful for a 'liberal' or
revisionist case, since the whole point of Paul's rhetorical gambit is
that everyone in his imagined readership agrees in thinking the
same-sex relations of the culture around them to be as obviously immoral
as idol-worship or disobedience to parents. It is not very helpful to
the conservative either, though, because Paul insists on shifting the
focus away from the objects of moral disapprobation in chapter
1 to the reading /hearing subject who has been up to this point
happily identifying with Paul's castigation of someone else. The
complex and interesting argument of chapter 1 about certain forms of sin
beginning by the 'exchange' of true for false perception and natural for
unnatural desire stands, but now has to be applied not to the pagan
world alone but to the 'insiders' of the chosen community. Paul is
making a primary point not about homosexuality but about the delusions
of the supposedly law-abiding.
As I have said, this does
nothing to settle the exegetical questions fiercely debated at the
moment. But I want to stress that what I am trying to define as a
strictly theological reading of Scripture . . . is bound to give
priority to the question that the text specifically puts and to ask how
the movement, the transition, worked for within the text is to be
realised in the contemporary reading community.
Now I am in full
agreement that it is essential to read a specific passage in its broader
literary context; that is, to recognize (as Williams’ puts it) that the
passage in question is “part of a rhetorical process or argument” and
must be read “as a full unit,” giving due attention to “the actual
direction of the passage” and its “movement.” In fact, my critique of
Williams is precisely that he has not accurately taken into account
Paul’s “movement” in Romans and in his letters as a whole, which has led
him to a misapplication of the text. He similarly misinterprets “the
way, the truth, and the life” text in John 14:6, which I will comment on
more briefly at the end of this response.
Before I proceed
with my response to Williams, a word needs to be said about what
Williams was doing and not doing and what I am doing and not doing in
this article. What Williams was not doing in his address was settling
the question of whether Rom 1:24-27 condemns homosexual relations
absolutely, that is, even when such relations are non-exploitative and
loving, and entered into by persons homosexually oriented. This is what
Williams apparently means when he says that his reading of Romans 1-2
“does nothing to settle the exegetical questions fiercely debated at the
moment.” His remark cannot mean that he has nothing to say about the
main question raised by the passage in its context, that is, its
“movement” and “direction” of the text as it leads to Romans 2, because
Williams’ precise point in these four paragraph is to explain what this
movement or direction is and how such a movement or direction constrains
the church’s application of Rom 1:24-27. Williams’ point is that Paul’s
“primary point [is] not about homosexuality but about the delusions of
the supposedly law-abiding” who are “happily identifying with Paul’s
castigation of someone else” and oblivious to the fact of “universal
sinfulness and need,” including their own. Therefore, Williams suggests,
even if homosexual practice were absolutely rejected by Paul in a
way that would include committed homosexual unions—a point that Williams
begs off debating here—that would still be secondary to Paul’s use of
his remarks in Rom 1:24-27, namely, that one ought not to be judging
those who engage in such behavior since we are all sinners. He infers
that the church should take note of this primary point and not be
judging persons who enter into homosexual unions or making too much of
an issue of homosexual relations, at least not to a point where it may
lead to a rift between ECUSA and the Anglican Communion generally, for
we are all sinners anyway.
It is precisely
Williams’ contextual use of Rom 1:24-27 that I contest in my
article. Because Williams did not address the exegetical question of
whether Paul’s indictment of homosexual relations was absolute, I do not
address it directly here but presume it on the basis of hundreds of
pages of work that I have previously done on the subject.
See especially: The
Bible and Homosexual Practice (Abingdon, 2001), esp. pp. 229-395;
Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress, 2003), esp. pp.
74-88, 101-2, along with online notes at
http://www.robgagnon.net/TwoViews.htm; “Does
the Bible Regard Same-Sex Intercourse as Intrinsically Sinful?” in
Christian Sexuality (ed. R. E. Saltzman; Kirk House, 2003), 106-55,
esp. 128-51; “A Comprehensive and Critical
Review Essay of Homosexuality, Science, and the ‘Plain Sense’ of
Scripture, Part 2,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 25 (Dec.
2003): 179-275, esp. pp. 206-65 (online at
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoBalchHBTReview2.pdf);
“Why the Disagreement over the Biblical Witness on Homosexual
Practice?” in Reformed Review 59 (2005): 19-130, esp. pp. 62-86,
online at:
http://wtseminary.gospelcom.net/pdf/reformreview/gagnon_autm05.pdf;
“Does Jack Rogers’s New Book ‘Explode the Myths’ about the Bible and
Homosexuality and ‘Heal the Church?’” Installment 3, pp. 3-15 at
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/RogersBookReviewed3.pdf;
and “How Bad Is Homosexual Practice According to Scripture and Does
Scripture’s View Apply to Committed Homosexual Unions?” pp. 17-22,
online at
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homosexWinterResponse.pdf.
Instead, with Williams,
I focus on the literary context for Rom 1:24-27. My own point is that,
contrary to what Williams claims, the context for Rom 1:24-27 does not
suggest to the Roman Christians (or to us) that we should stop judging
sexual immorality in the midst of the community of faith. Now one might
argue that contextual analysis of a passage in Scripture is still part
of exegesis. I would agree. But the context of Williams’ own remarks
makes clear that he means by “not settling the exegetical questions
fiercely debated at the moment” only the exegesis proper of the Rom
1:24-27 itself, namely, whether it rejects homosexual unions absolutely.
Let me also say
that I respect the Archbishop as a caring person and able theologian
(though he is not a biblical scholar). There is much in his address as a
whole that is commendable, which makes his misinterpretation in these
two specific examples that much more regrettable.
Paul’s own
application of Romans 1:24-27 to believers later in Romans
Williams implies
in his remarks that leaders of the church err in opposing the
affirmation of homosexual practice in the church too strongly, not
necessarily because homosexual practice can be a moral act (whether it
is or not Williams does not say in this article though in previous work
he has said that it can be), but rather because Paul’s primary point at
the beginning of Romans 2 was to criticize persons who judge those
engaging in the sins cited in Rom 1:18-32. So Williams:
-
“It is precisely the same perversity
that affects those who have received the revelation of God and persist
in self-seeking and self-deceit.”
-
It is a misuse of Rom 1:24-27 to use it
as a “foundation for identifying in others a level of sin that
is not found in the chosen community.”
-
“Paul insists on shifting the focus
away from the objects of moral disapprobation in chapter 1 to
the reading/hearing subject who has been up to this point
happily identifying with Paul’s castigation of someone else.”
-
“Paul is making a primary point not
about homosexuality but about the delusions of the supposedly
law-abiding.”
In short, Williams
appears to be saying that so-called “conservatives”—let it be known that
opposing strongly the affirmation of homosexual practice in the church
hardly makes one a theological “conservative” (more a centrist)!—should
stop making such an issue of homosexual practice and attend to their own
sins, which are just as great. Hence, Reuters’ headline, “Anglican head
Williams says anti-gays misread Bible,” is not likely to be far off the
mark. Indeed, the headline accurately captures the primary substance and
focus of his remarks on homosexuality.
Let us begin by
affirming what Paul in his letter to the Romans was emphatically not
telling believers in Rome. Paul was not telling the Roman
Christians to avoid passing judgment on fellow believers who actively
engage in sexual immorality of an extreme sort, including homosexual
practice. To the contrary: When Paul next used the term “sexual
impurity” (akatharsia) in his letter (6:19), a term that he used
elsewhere in Romans only in 1:24-27 to describe homosexual practice, he
did so in direct address to the Roman believers. He reminded them that
believers in Christ are no longer “slaves to sexual impurity,”
for to continue in such behavior was to engage in acts of which they
should now be “ashamed” (echoing the shame language that dominates Rom
1:24-27 regarding homosexual practice). Such acts, he says, lead to
death and the loss of eternal life (6:19-23; compare 1:32). Indeed,
Paul’s entire argument around the question “Why not sin?” since we are
“under grace and not under the law” (6:15; cf. 6:1) culminates in
8:12-14 with the response:
If you
continue to live in conformity to (the sinful desires operating in) the
flesh you are going to die. But if by means of the Spirit you put to
death the deeds of the body, you will live. For only those who are being
led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
This quotation makes it
clear, if it were not already, that mouthing a few words of confession
that Christ is Lord does not exempt Christians from leading a life
consonant with that confession, nor even from the dire eternal
consequences that would arise from failing to do so. For Paul the
outcome for a believer who lives under the primary sway of sin in
the flesh is no different from the outcome for an unbeliever who so
lives. Both alike face the prospect of exclusion from God’s eternal
rule.
Again in Romans 13, Paul makes clear that sexual impurity
is definitely not one of the matters of ethical indifference,
like diet and calendar issues, that later in 14:1-15:13 Paul will warn
believers against judging fellow believers for. Paul insists in 13:13-14
that, in view of the coming day of salvation and judgment, believers
“lay aside works of darkness” such as “immoral sexual activities and
licentious acts” and thereby to “make no provision to gratify the sinful
desires of the flesh.” The Greek word for “immoral sexual activities” is
koitai, which literally means, “lyings” or “beds,” a term that
obviously links up with arsenokoitai, “men lying
with a male,” in 1 Cor 6:9 as a particular instance of an immoral
“lying.” The Greek word for “licentious acts” is aselgeiai, which
refers to a lack of self-restraint with respect to refraining from
prohibited sexual behaviors. This takes us back to the discussion in Rom
6:19-22 where Paul insists that believers stop putting their bodily
members at the disposal of the kind of “sexual impurity” cited in
1:24-27, which makes them slaves of sin and lacking in sexual
self-restraint. If Paul had wanted his converts to stop passing judgment
on fellow converts who were engaged in unrepentant sexual immorality
then he would have been a monumental hypocrite, inasmuch as he himself
regularly made such judgments (we’ll see more in a moment). It is far
more likely, though, that Williams has misinterpreted Paul than that
Paul was a monumental hypocrite, in my opinion.
The immediate
context of Romans 1-2
Indeed, nothing in the immediate context of Romans
1:24-27 suggests that Paul would have been opposed to believers making
the judgment that homosexual practice puts the offender at dire risk of
facing God’s wrath, warning in the most earnest terms those who engage
in such practice, and insisting that a church puts its status as church
in jeopardy when it affirms or tolerates such immorality (this last
point, incidentally, is not limited to Paul in the New Testament; see,
for example, the risen Christ’s warnings to the churches in Pergamum and
Thyatira in Revelation 2). For Rom 1:24-27 depicts homosexual practice
as a particularly egregious instance of “sexual uncleanness,” grossly
“contrary to nature,” and an “indecency.” In fact, Paul treats
homosexual practice as analogous on the horizontal dimension of life to
the vertical offense of idolatry since in both cases humans suppress the
truth about God and his will for our lives that ought to have been
self-evident in creation structures still intact in nature (1:19-23,
25).
Does Williams think that Paul would have chastised
believers as “self-righteous” for speaking vigorously against Christians
who worshipped gods other than the God of Jesus Christ? I would hope not
since Paul clearly regarded belief in Christ as absolutely antithetical
to idol worship. For example, he described the conversion of the
Thessalonians as a turning from idols to serve the living God (1 Thess
1:9-10). Moreover, he severely chastised the “strong” among the
Corinthian believers just for eating in a idol’s temple, to say nothing
of worshipping an idol, because it could provoke God to jealousy and
wrath (1 Cor 10:14-22). Yet, if Williams would concur with this point,
then he would have to give up his point about Paul being opposed to
“judging” persons who engage in unrepentant homosexual practice. For
Paul’s remarks in chap. 2, where Paul allegedly says, “don’t judge”
(incidentally, he doesn’t say this, as we shall see), as much
follow the indictment of idolatry as they do the indictment of
homosexual relations.
Since we noted above Paul’s stern opposition to idolatry
in 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians as illustrations of his opposition
to idolatry in all his letters, it bears mentioning that we see in these
letters an equally stern opposition to any continuance in sexually
immoral behavior. When Paul begins his moral exhortation in his first
extant letter, he starts off by warning his converts not to engage any
longer in the forms of “sexual impurity” (akatharsia) that once
characterized their lives as Gentiles; and that failure to heed such a
warning would leave them prey to an avenging God (1 Thess 4:1-8).
Similarly, in 1 Corinthians Paul’s couples idolatry and sexual
immorality as the two main offenses that led God to wipe out the
wilderness generation (10:6-12) and focuses an additional three chapters
of his letter (5-7) on the paramount importance of sexual purity for
believers. One need only compare Paul’s command to “flee from idolatry”
in 1 Cor 10:14 with his equally urgent command to “flee sexual
immorality” in 1 Cor 6:18.
Obviously, then, in Romans 1-2 Paul is not
telling his readers to stop passing judgment on severe and obvious cases
of idolatry and sexual immorality. For Paul states that idolatry and
same-sex intercourse, among other offenses, are already and in
themselves manifestations of God’s wrath (not grace). The wrath
appears initially in the form of God stepping back and not restraining
humans from engaging in self-dishonoring behavior that arises from
gratifying innate desires to do what God strongly forbids. Such behavior
degrades the human being who has received the imprint of God’s image.
The continual heaping up of such sins, Paul says, will ultimately lead
to cataclysmic judgment on the eschatological Day of Wrath (1:32;
2:3-9). Thus to accept homosexual practice in the church would be to
consign persons who engage in such behavior to the ongoing wrath of God
with the ultimate prospect of exclusion from God’s kingdom (compare also
1 Cor 6:9-10; Gal 5:19, 21; Eph 5:3-8). This is not grace but wrath.
This is not love but hate. This is not the absence of judgment but the
substitution of one’s own verdict of acquittal for God’s verdict of
wrath.
Paul in Romans 2 is debating, in the first instance, with
a non-Christian, imaginary Jewish dialogue partner or
interlocutor. Despite what Williams suggests, Paul does not tell the
interlocutor to stop judging pagans for committing idolatry, sexual
immorality, and an array of other sins (including murder, 1:29), as if
by doing so the interlocutor could escape God’s judgment of his own
sins. Rather, Paul maintains both that God’s judgment is indeed
coming on those who do such things and that the interlocutor,
when he does these or similar things, will likewise face God’s wrath if
he does not repent (2:3-4). The interlocutor as a righteous Jew may sin
less quantitatively and qualitatively than Gentiles but he knows more
about God’s will through Scripture and so the culpability level for
suppressing what truth he does suppress rises. Essentially Paul is
moving the interlocutor to the view that mere possession of the Jewish
law of Moses does not exempt him from responding to the offer of
salvation in Jesus Christ, an offer equally accessible to sinful
Gentiles (3:3-26). Everybody is in want of the atoning, amends-making
death of Jesus and the indwelling Spirit of Christ that makes possible a
life lived “for God” (compare Gal 2:19-20).
Yes, Paul has laid a trap for the Jewish interlocutor who
evaluated God’s judgment against the Gentile world as “just” and
“righteous” (3:3-8). However, it is not a trap designed to preclude
judgment of immoral behavior within the Christian community. Instead, it
is a trap designed to convince moral unbelievers that they too need the
grace of God manifested in the atoning death of Christ and the attendant
moral transformation that comes with being a recipient of such grace:
“For sin shall not exercise lordship over you, for you are not under law
but under grace” (Rom 6:14). There is also a layered trap for Christians
at Rome who judge one another over matters of moral indifference such as
diet and calendar (14:1-15:13). As we have seen, though, sexual
immorality, like idol worship, does not fall for Paul in the category of
moral indifference.
Williams thus confuses his own context with the context
for Paul’s remarks in Romans. There is a big difference between, on the
one hand, Paul chastising a non-believing Jew for using his sense of
moral superiority to consign unbelieving Gentiles to hell while
exempting himself from the need to receive Jesus as Savior (Rom 2:12-29)
and, on the other hand, Williams chastising some in the church today for
regarding the institutional affirmation of sexual immorality of an
extreme sort among its leaders by some ecclesiastical bodies a problem
for ongoing institutional affiliation.
The parallel case
of the incestuous man in 1 Corinthians 5
Just how far off the mark Williams’ theological analysis
of Paul’s views on the matter is becomes clear when one looks at how
Paul deals with the case of the incestuous man in 1 Cor 5-6. There an
exasperated Paul asks the Corinthian believers the rhetorical question:
“Is it not those inside (the church) that you are to judge?”
(5:12). Williams’ address suggests that his response to such a question
would be “no,” at least as regards the comparable case of homosexual
practice. For a “yes” for Williams would mean that one has not given
sufficient attention to “universal sinfulness and need.” But from Paul’s
standpoint “no” is the wrong answer. “No” is the answer that the
“tolerant” Corinthian believers would give, but not the answer Paul
wants them to give. Far from tolerating the case of incest, Paul
advocated temporary removal of the offending member from the life of the
community and did so not only for the sake of the purity and holiness of
the community but also for the sake of the offender who needed to be
recovered for the kingdom of God (5:3-11; 6:9-11). Paul did not take the
approach adopted by Williams, namely to caution the Corinthians against
self-righteously passing judgment on the incestuous man’s behavior. Paul
also, in the broader context, explicitly rejected any attempt to view
the morally significant issue of sexual immorality as comparable to
morally indifferent issues surrounding dietary practices (6:12-20).
Clearly when Paul spoke of judging those “inside” the
church he qualified that judgment in many ways. Judgment should be
implemented (1) in a spirit of gentleness and an awareness that one’s
own self is vulnerable to temptation (Gal 6:1); (2) in a mournful manner
(1 Cor 5:2) and with regard for the offender as a brother and not an
enemy (2 Thess 3:15); (3) out of a desire to reclaim the offender for
God’s kingdom rather than punitively condemn the offender to hell; (4)
with a zeal to restore him quickly and enthusiastically to the community
following repentance (1 Cor 5:5; 2 Cor 2:5-11; 7:8-13); and (5) in
proportion to the recalcitrance of the offender and the severity of the
offense (1 Thess 5:14; 1 Cor 5:1-2). Yet, equally as clearly, Paul
insisted that the church do its job of judging those within the
community of faith who have deviated into serious sexual immorality.
Anything less would be unloving.
Perhaps Williams would respond that a loving and
consensual relationship between a man and his mother or stepmother is
far more serious than a loving and consensual relationship between
persons of the same sex. And yet I don’t see how Williams could
demonstrate such a point from Paul, taken in his historical context. For
all the evidence from ancient Israel and early Judaism, as well as
Paul’s own description in Rom 1:24-27, indicates that Paul regarded
homosexual practice as comparable to or worse than a case of man-mother
incest, even of a consensual and loving sort. There is no evidence that
Jesus’ view of the matter would have been any different since Jesus
predicated his view on marital ‘twoness’ on the ‘twoness’ of the sexes:
“male and female he made them” (Gen 1:27) and “for this reason a man may
. . . be joined to his woman and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen
2:24; both cited in Mark 10:6-8; Matt 19:4-6). Both incest and
homosexual practice are instances of immoral sexual relations between
persons too much alike on a structural or formal level (one as regards
kinship, the other as regards the sex or gender of the participants).
The only difference between the two is that a two-sexes prerequisite for
sexual relations is more strongly grounded in the creation texts and is
more absolutely sustained in Scripture generally and in the traditions
of early Judaism (i.e. with no exceptions) than is even a prohibition of
incest. Moreover, the issue of too much structural sameness, of a
narcissistic arousal for what one already is, is if anything more keenly
felt in the case of same-sex intercourse than in the case of consensual,
adult incest. Of the two, the prohibition of incest and the prohibition
of same-sex intercourse, the prior and more foundational analogue is
clearly the prohibition of same-sex intercourse.
Partly what this boils down to is this: Williams does not
regard homosexual practice as a particularly significant sexual offense,
if even an offense at all. (I have read in the press that he may have
moderated or even changed some of his earlier strong support for
homosexual practice but the evidence for such a change is at best
conflicting.) For I can’t imagine Williams arguing that it would be
inappropriate for the church to split over the issue of, say, ordaining
bishops who were in committed sexual bonds with a parent, full sibling,
or adult child. I suspect that in such a context he would never
introduce issues such as ‘judgmentalism’ or self-righteousness or
divisiveness on the part of those who opposed ordination of such. Yet
neither he nor anyone else who talks in this way has made a convincing
case that Paul would have viewed loving and committed same-sex
intercourse involving people “oriented” to such behavior as a
significantly lesser offense than adult, consensual, and loving incest
of the first order. Until he or anyone else makes such a convincing
case, no basis exists for arguing that severing ties with a schismatic
Episcopal Church of the United States of America would be an unfaithful,
self-righteous, and anti-Pauline act. Indeed, the truly
anti-Pauline act would be a business-as-usual approach to a renegade
body that endorses sexual immorality among its leaders.
To sum it up, then,
Williams’ point in his discussion of Romans was to urge “conservatives”
who have been staunch in their opposition to homosexual practice to back
off in judging those who engage in homosexual behavior, given the
immediately ensuing context in Rom 2:1-3. He is not merely suggesting
that in the very process of judging—which the church certainly should do
in cases where believers are engaged in unrepentant idolatry and sexual
immorality—we should be careful not to be self-righteous. There is a
difference. The latter is an acceptable read of Paul generally; the
former is not. Williams begs off discussing whether Paul’s prohibition
is absolute but suggests that even if it is absolute the larger point in
the context is “don’t judge.” As I have argued above, Paul never tells
the Jewish interlocutor in Romans 2 “don’t judge idolatry and sexual
immorality” (can anyone locate for me the text where Paul allegedly says
this?). Paul himself judges idolatry and sexual immorality in Rom
1:18-32, where he indicts all Gentiles in preparation for his point that
all need Christ. Moreover, Paul himself, as I have shown, repeatedly in
his letters, including the letter to the Romans, warns believers
against engaging in sexual immorality (which for him included homosexual
practice as a particular egregious form of “sexual impurity”) because
such will not inherit the kingdom of God. So Paul can hardly be
criticizing the Jewish interlocutor here merely for the act of judging
Gentiles who engage in such acts. No, the issue here is that the
unbelieving Jewish interlocutor is using his sense of moral
superiority to exempt himself, ultimately, from the necessity of
believing in Christ. The issue is not that of the community of believers
warning another offending believer to stop engaging in sexual immorality
lest it lead to exclusion from God’s kingdom and the community even
going so far as to put such an offender on discipline. Paul affirms, not
rejects, precisely this kind of warning and disciplinary action in the
case of the unrepentant incestuous man in 1 Cor 5 and 6:9-10. Williams
wrongly understands the overarching issue or “movement” of the text of
Romans 1:24-27 as denying just such a reaction to homosexual practice.
Williams ought to have targeted the bulk of his remarks on the subject
against “liberal revisionists” seeking to validate homosexual practice
rather than to have aimed his main volley against “conservatives.”
This is not the first time that I have addressed these
context issues. Much (though not all) of the material above in a
different form can be found in works of mine already published (for full
citations see above), such as The Bible and Homosexual Practice,
pp. 277-84: “Does Romans 2:1-3:20 Condemn Those Who Condemn Homosexual
Practice?” and pp. 240-46: “Romans 1:18-3:20 Within the Sweep of Paul’s
Letter and the Situation at Rome”) and a more recent article, “Why the
Disagreement over the Biblical Witness on Homosexual Practice?” (Reformed
Review 59:1 [2005]: 19-130,
esp. pp. 83-90: “Addendum: Does Paul reject judgment of homosexual
practice?” and “Is Homosexual Practice the Diet and Circumcision Issue
of Today?”). It would be nice in the future if persons making the kinds
of claims about Paul that the Archbishop has made could at least
acknowledge the counter-arguments already made and attempt to respond to
them.
If I have misunderstood the particulars of Archbishop
Williams’ remarks in any way, then I would be happy to be corrected. I
respect him and nothing said here should be interpreted otherwise. Of
course, I would be delighted to discover that the Archbishop actually
does not believe, or has now changed his mind, that Paul warned his
converts against judging believers who were actively engaged in sexually
immoral behavior of a severe sort such as homosexual practice.
Williams’
Misreading of John 14:6: Way, Truth, and Life
A final short word needs to be given about Williams’
other illustration of the need to understand a passage of Scripture in
its full literary context. Williams suggests that Jesus’ words in John
14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the
Father except through me,” do not mean in context that “salvation
depends upon explicit
confession of Christ,” nor do they refute “any attempt
to create a more ‘inclusive’ theology of
interfaith relations.” Rather,
the actual question being
asked is not about the fate of non-Christians; it is about how the
disciples are to understand the death of Jesus as the necessary clearing
of the way which they are to walk. . . . It is about the move from
desolation in the face of the cross . . . to confidence that the process
is the work of love coming from and leading to the Father.
This is a misreading
precisely of the context that Williams wants us all to uphold. This “I
am” saying is part of a much broader witness of “I am” sayings and
identifications made throughout the Gospel of John. Jesus compares
himself to the ladder of Jacob (he is the link between heaven and earth,
especially at the moment of the cross), the well of Jacob (with Jesus
giving ‘living water,’ the Spirit, after the drinking of which one will
never thirst/die), the bronze serpent of Moses (when people ‘look on’ or
believe in him they live, eternally), the manna or “bread from heaven”
associated with Moses (people must ‘eat’ Jesus or die; that is, they
must believe on him, especially as the atonement for their sins on the
cross when he offers his flesh for the life of the world), the Passover
sacrifice (who alone takes away the sins of the world), not only the
Good Shepherd but also the Gate itself (through which the sheep must
pass if they are to have eternal life), the vine (people must abide in
him and bear fruit or they will be thrown in the fire), and so on.
Moreover,
throughout John’s Gospel insistence upon believing in this specific
being is mandated in order to receive eternal life (John 3:16 is only
the most famous of many examples). There are also various places where
those who do not believe in him are said to be facing destruction; for
example, John 3:17-19 and 36-37, which states that those who do not
believe in him are condemned already, before the Day of Judgment, the
wrath of God now remaining on them. The whole point of the Gospel of
John, in its context, is that even good Jews who believe in God and
follow Moses cannot avert God’s coming wrath apart from believing in
Jesus. If Moses doesn’t suffice, what other religious tradition would?
Although Williams states that his analysis of the context
for John 14:6 “certainly does not suggest in any direct way a more
inclusive approach to other faiths,” the key phrase in Williams’ remark
is “in any direct way,” which does not preclude “any indirect way.”
Williams is clearly arguing for interpreting the text in such a way that
believing in Christ is not necessary for salvation:
John 14:6 “is (to say the least) paradoxical if it is used as a simple
self-affirmation for the exclusive claim of the Christian institution or
the Christian system.” The comfort-factor
of the text that Williams cites as the context is not to the exclusion
of the affirmation of Jesus as the sole “the Way,” not just “a way” as
Williams suggests with his statement that Jesus’ death “is itself the
opening of a way” (emphasis added; was this a slip on Williams’
part?). Even Williams admits (paradoxically, to say the least!): “The
text in question indeed states that there is no way to the Father except
in virtue of what Jesus does and suffers.” Although Thomas’ question is
limited to the matter of where Jesus is going, Jesus redirects the
question to an affirmation of his unique identity as “the Way.” The way
to God, in other words, is not something that Jesus points us to. It is
rather something that he embodies uniquely. Thus the immediately ensuing
conversation revolves around the importance of recognizing that Jesus is
the unique revelation of God (14:7-10). This is the approach of John’s
Jesus throughout the Gospel, not just here in the context of 14:6.
Williams’ problem here—as with Rom 1:24-27 where he
stops the “movement” of the text at 2:1-3—is that he doesn’t look at the
broad movement of the whole of the Gospel of John. The broader
context of the Gospel as a whole gives further context for the statement
“No one comes to the Father except through me.” Everywhere in John’s
Gospel this is elucidated as requiring believing in him and so John 14:6
cannot be interpreted apart from that larger context. If there is
eternal life apart from believing in Christ, since the days of Christ’s
death and resurrection, God hasn’t told us about it in the pages of the
New Testament—and certainly not in the Gospel of John. We cannot assure
anyone of salvation apart from explicit confession of Jesus. Perhaps God
has something else up the proverbial sleeve that God has chosen not to
tell us about for those who do not believe in Jesus Christ. Yet it would
be wholly unwarranted to use such speculation as a substantive basis for
interfaith dialogue. When Williams claims that John 14:6 is misused when
it is “regularly used to insist that salvation depends upon explicit
confession of Christ,” he is wrong. This is not a misuse of John 14:6
but rather a correct use, understood in the broad movement of the Gospel
as a whole.