Last week, the Healthy Dialogue Series featured a documentary showing and subsequent conversation about the issues of homosexuality in the Bible. Chimes followed up with Dr. David Lincicum, Associate Professor of Theology at Notre Dame University and Dr. Jeffrey Weima, Professor of New Testament at Calvin Seminary to learn more about their perspectives and the nuances of biblical interpretation. The two scholars present opposing viewpoints on the topic of homosexuality: Dr. Lincicum holds an affirming view, and Dr. Weima supports a traditional interpretation of Scripture. Chimes does not hold an official position on the issue but hopes that everyone can benefit from rich intellectual discussion regarding human sexuality. The following interviews were conducted separately, but asked both scholars the same set of questions. The interviews were both quite extensive and were edited to fit print length. Longer transcripts of this question and answer session are available on our webpage. 

Chimes: What is your position on homosexuality in the Bible? Why, and for how long have you viewed it this way? 

Lincicum: Probably sometime over the last 10 or 15 years, I started thinking about this in a more concerted manner. Just having more people in my life who are queer or gay in in one way or another made me think, okay, I’ve got to really do something with the Bible, right? Think through this, especially given how, you know, the so-called clobber texts have been used to inflict harm and to keep people from all sorts of benefits that the Christian Church might otherwise offer them. I mean the most immediate precipitating cause for my more recent reflections has been the Human Sexuality Report that the Christian Reformed Church published. Which I was not a particularly big fan of. I mean, I mean, just purely in academic terms, I thought it could have been much stronger even as a traditional position than it was. 

Our church has had a series over the last three years about issues of human sexuality, which is culminating in our church getting kicked out of the denomination. Though, you know, I don’t know if that’s a win or a loss, but so it goes. My basic position is to think that we’ve got to think not only about the details of statements in Leviticus and the Pauline Corpus, but also about the big picture thrust of the Bible. And I think this is what we do basically anyway, with a lot of other moral issues almost unthinkingly now. 

One that came up last night, the issue of slavery, features, in both [the Old and New Testaments]. God commands the taking of slaves in the Hebrew Bible. There’s a lot of legislation about how to treat slaves, so they just sort of assume that it’s a given. Paul or at least someone in the Pauline corpus in both Ephesians and Colossians gives direction to slaveholders, to enslavers, to treat theirenslaved people well, and the enslaved, should, you know, submit to and defer to their enslavers. And so it’s really baked in, and in factthe early church is almost unanimous in failing to challenge the institution of slavery. I think we have one voice on record. I think it’s Basil of Caesarea who points out the injustice of this. So there’s a long process, a lot of evidence in both Scripture and tradition that the Christian Church failed to take a strong position against the institution of slavery as such. You know, I think there came a time where that came to a head and we had to rethink, “Is this really a justifiable institution?” And then that made us go back and reread all of those passages in light of the overarching theme of scripture that it’s designed to inculcate: love of God and neighbor. It’s very hard to love your neighbor and treat them as property at the same time. And so we had to come up with strategies for reading [those passages]. 

So also I think that’s what it is with [some of] these verses…. I suggested last night that I think at the end of the day, Paul is probably not a fan of male-to-male homosexual acts, but the precise power dynamics and contours around that I think are just murky. I think it’s very difficult to get back. I’m not convinced by a lot of the solutions that want to save Paul, that want to make him speak about cult prostitutes or about pederastic relationships. I mean, there are specific terms he might have used if he wanted to flag that, and he doesn’t do that. But I think even if Paul is dead set against male to male homosexual acts, it doesn’t mean…that he was opposing something we now know…It’s not clear to me anyway that a reading of Paul’s theology as directed toward the liberation of the sinner and the inclusion through the spirit of those people into the body of Christ [is] a kind of an anti-LGBTQ reading. Paul is going to be consonant with that vision that Paul has. So I think even Paul’s own thought gives us resources to go beyond what he might have said in a culturally limited way about these things in 1 Corinthians and Romans. And so it’s not easy. It feels uncomfortable to do that, but I think the demands of love require it. 

Weima: You may remember me saying that it’s always dangerous to talk about complex subjects, you know, in a very short time. And I guess the same thing is true for this…,

There are different ways to begin. I guess I would start off by saying that everyone’s sexuality is negatively impacted by the Fall. So I would kind of start off with a level playing field that it doesn’t matter what your orientation is, everyone’s attitudes and desires and practices are negatively impacted by the fall. That’s an important thing to start off [with], because I don’t want people to think that we are picking on one particular group of people. I do think the church has been guilty of that and that’s a danger. And sometimes, though, people use that [argument] to not have anything to say at all. That’s a reverse argument. In other words, sometimes people say, well, we don’t seem to complain about people living together and having sex outside of marriage or so cohabitation or. Maybe we don’t like adultery, but, you know, we don’t seem to. We don’t have a kind of negative stereotyping quite the same way we do for those who engage in same sex acts. So I guess that’s why it’s very important for me to say, “No, wait a minute. This is part of a biblical theology and God’s call for all people, you know, especially his covenant people. Is that there to be what he is? He says ‘Be holy as I am holy…’”

A good passage, for instance, of Paul that we didn’t talk about is 1 Thessalonians 4 …It’s a longer, kind of an extended, discussion. The reason I think of that text is because Paul uses the word holiness there. Holiness is an Old Testament idea that we’re not surprised that Paul is aware of as a Jew and one who was trained in Judaism and seemingly was surpassing other people with his faith. So what Paul is basically saying…he’s not talking about homosexuality, he’s just talking about sexual behavior in general…is that you know God’s will is that you should be holy. So there’s that principle of holiness. And the Old Testament principle of holiness is the idea of separation being different set apart. So what Paul basically says is when it comes to sexual activity and attitudes, Christians attitudes should be holy, that is, they should be set apart, different from the culture and the world around them. That’s an important concept to have in general, because that means that our attitudes towards sexuality, even for heterosexuals, will probably be sounding a little strange or weird to the people in the world, right, because they’re set apart. They’re different from culture and society. So what I’m trying to say in a long winded way I guess is that what I say about same-sex acts is equally true for non same-sex acts, right? And you know, they ought to be characterized by holiness. And so Paul, but not just Paul, but Jesus and the scriptures as a whole talk about sexual activity. So I’m distinguishing that from orientation right? Orientation means an attitude toward, a desire toward, as opposed to what you actually do. And the Bible deals with what people do – their acts. So that’s important. What the Scriptures say is that sexual acts are limited between a man and woman within the covenant bounds of a of a marriage relationship. And not just that, the Bible says that sexual acts between a man and a woman within the covenant of marriage is something that is good and holy as part of God’s good creation gift. So, that’s another important thing to kind of put it within a broader theology of human sexuality. So I guess when I come back to whatever we say about same-sex acts has to be in agreement with and in keeping with a broader biblical view of human sexuality.  

Chimes: Why is homosexuality such a difficult issue for Christians to wrestle with? 

Lincicum: I think a lot of it is grounded in traditional ways that marriage has been conceived of. The Bible, of course, doesn’t say very much about homosexuality. It says more about marriage, and actually there are different visions of marriage in Scripture as well, not just a monogamous union of heterosexual people, but also other other forms of marriage, concubinage, polygamy, and so forth. But I think it’s tough because the Christian Church has often seen marriage as directed towards procreation as one of its prime intentions by God. And so, if you have marriages that are non-procreative, sort of by default I think that is harder for Christians to think through. I mean, as it happens, there are all sorts of heterosexual marriages that are also non-procreative.I think I think that’s what kind of freights this with more difficulty; that and also the basically unanimous tradition — at least at a very broad level – of the Christian Church, until pretty recently, means that you’re having to think through a big question of human sexuality as such, not just LGBTQ issues, but broader questions of human sexuality. What is sex for? What are relationships, intimate relationships for? And you’re having to do so in a way that is in dialogue with the tradition. 

Weima: For instance, in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, the first thing that Paul says [is] that all other sins are committed outside the body. But [sexual immorality] this is something different. There are Christians in Corinth who thought it was okay to go to prostitutes and have sex with them. Sometimes culture and society says, you know, whatever two consenting adults do in the privacy of their home, or some people think that we talk about sex without any strings attached, as if it’s a kind of a natural bodily function. It brings pleasure and people can engage in it with not a lot of deep thought. Or there’s nothing more substantive at stake. And so it probably isn’t that simple. I mean, the Bible doesn’t suggest it’s that simple …

Despite what people think going in and despite whatever they may say in theory, there’s something about the intimacy of this act, right that makes it more complex, and a more complicated and potentially significant event than maybe sometimes it’s made out to be. 

Chimes: There are a lot of pieces that contribute to Christian perspectives on homosexuality—understanding those verses in context, applying verses to today, Christian tradition, personal experience, and scientific developments in how we understand human sexuality. in the Bible. As a New Testament scholar. How do you balance and weave together that complexity? 

Lincicum: Very carefully, Though I also think New Testament scholars– and here, I mean, I want to be careful–I think we have a limited role to play in the theological economy. I think some of my New Testament colleagues, I just mean some people in general think, like, “Oh, if I can prove the New Testament says it, then that settles it,” and therefore there’s a kind of authority that comes with being a New Testament scholar. If you can play that role, that’s not how you be a New Testament scholar at all. Like we play in the dirt in the 1st century. You know, we dig around in our Greek lexica, we try to figure out what the stuff means, but that’s only one part of making normative moral judgments in the present. Where I think we’ve got to use all of the tools in our intellectual repertoire to do that, right. So we’ve absolutely at least if we’re concerned with reality and not just with repeating a text from 2000 years ago, which is sacred, authoritative, important, but it’s also not a text written in our time. And for our day so that that that move toward the present has got to be taken, I think in conjunction with historians of Christianity, with philosophers, with scientists, and with people who are going to be rigorous theological thinkers and ethicists in their own right. I don’t think it’s [an issue] where the New Testament scholar gets to trump anybody. I mean, hopefully we can give our best evidence, but it should also be the best peer-reviewed evidence from all of those fields. And you know, and not just like people who already agree with what the New Testament scholar might think about a given issue. So one example, just to be concrete about it. So you know in Romans 1, Paul argues from nature, you know that he says, you know, basically men and women acted against nature in preferring someone of their own sex to the biologically other sex. Now. I think that is an invitation to us to think, well, what does nature, what does nature teach us? And so that’s not a question that we can just sit back and ask of the 1st century, right? That’s a question at least if we want to really think about nature, we’re gonna have to get scientists involved and psychologists and people who. So can help us think about the nature or nurture sorts of questions and if we come down in a different position than Paul, I think we can save the logic of Paul’s argument without necessarily agreeing with the starting points that he recedes from, right. So nature to us is probably going to look quite a bit different than what it did to Paul. But I think that’s a move that Paul would … at least should be OK with if he were here today. 

Weima: We, as Protestant Christians, have this saying, sola scriptura. Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t listen to anything else. We do listen to what science may or may not reveal to us, and we do, in a sense, also pay attention to what experience tells us. We recognize that those guidelines are on a lower plane or could [be] potentially misleading, even. But sola scriptura means that primacy. The number one position is given to Scripture. So my plea is that people, first of all, need to hear what the scriptures say. And I’m just acknowledging it’s hard to, you know, I don’t think anyone’s gonna disagree with me. We tend to go to experience [as primary evidence]  because experiences are powerful, they are. I mean, you know, the movie highlighted the experiences of these four different relationships. You know, that’s a powerful thing. And then secondly science. For instance, there are claims made about sexuality and we need to hear them, even though they also are not exact. There’s a narrative that science claims that we are ‘born that way.’ Well, it’s appropriate for us to listen to science. Although when you do, you’ll find out [that] actually, science doesn’t always say what culture and society says. It’s more complex. In fact, you know our Human Sexuality Report from the denomination highlights some significant studies. But even though we don’t ignore experience and even though we don’t ignore science above them, primary to that is scripture…

I did say there’s a difference between the then and there of the Bible and the here and now of today. We first look at what God was saying to the people then and there, and then once we have an answer for that, then we have to think carefully about how to apply it for today.  

I would argue that you take the principle that all sexual activity ought to be characterized by holiness. And it’s clear from these texts–at least the three New Testament texts–it’s clear that God’s will for his people does not allow same sex acts. And he [Lincicum] agreed too [that] Paul would believe in any kind [of same-sex activity]. Alright, so now he goes to today and he would say things like, well, we know more than Paul did. You know, science has shown us, you know, different things. … Paul didn’t know anything about orientation. And so he would argue that. Well, he didn’t quite say it so crassly. He would say that Paul was wrong… and that he was misguided, and so forth. 

And so therefore, he would argue we shouldn’t apply what Paul is saying. So Paul is against all forms. But he says, you know, Paul is in a sense, wrong or maybe softer and that misguided or whatever. Therefore, we shouldn’t apply that to today. And I just pointed out that Calvin University is part of the Reformed faith, not just Christian Reformed, but the Reformed faith. And all Protestantism, you know, highlights, sola scriptura, right. And most Christians are a little hesitant to say that a biblical author was wrong or a biblical author was misguided, or the Bible writer said this…So that’s why they say, well, “We have to go back to the exegesis.”

Chimes: Debates about homosexuality tend to focus on the seven “clobber passages.” What other, what are some other key passages that we should be considering when thinking about homosexuality or sexual ethics in the Bible? 

Lincicum: I mean, I think at the end of the day, well, OK, I’ll say 2, two different kinds of passages. So one, I think Acts 15 is a really important model. This is where in the book of Acts, Paul and Barnabas had been preaching to Gentiles and the Gentiles are starting to respond and people are like, “What do we do about this? Should we make these Gentiles obey the law? This is the way things have always been done in Israel’s history. It’s always been possible to join up with the community. You just become a proselyte. If you’re male, you’re circumcised. You take on the dietary practices, the calendrical observances and so forth.” And so the question was not can we admit Gentiles, it’s like on what grounds can we admit Gentiles? And the Council in Acts, presents the early apostles meeting together, and they deliberate, and they think about what is the Holy Spirit doing in the community of the Gentiles. And what does that experience teach us about the purposes of God in this present moment? And then they make a radical, anti-traditional decision that God is calling the Gentiles to join the people of God without observing the law. And I think actually we don’t always appreciate how radical that is and how much that went against tradition – probably because most of us are Gentiles and we think “Who wouldn’t want us?” you know? But you go back and there’s quite a bit of resistance to Gentiles as such in ancient Judaism, at least in parts of ancient Judaism, and so it is a very countercultural sort of move. This is why people didn’t like Paul in the early church, or one of the reasons why…

One thing that motivates me personally is knowing that queer young people, who have been faced some of them with the choice, “Can I be who I am, or can I be someone that Jesus can love?” You know, and I think that kind of choice between like acting in line with their nature or, you know, seeking, seeking the love of Jesus that way of putting it is so tragic. And sometimes I think, even if I’m wrong, it’s a gamble I’m willing to take on this question for the sake of not putting a stumbling block in front of the love of Christ for these people to say they can be included in the the capacious, generous, wide mercy and love of Jesus. Without impediment, that’s like a gamble I’m willing to take, even if some of the historical details are tricky. And so I think. For me that overarching purpose of Scripture, as I mentioned last night, in the Augustinian sense, as being one that is, should inculcate love of God and neighbor, I think should be a bigger picture umbrella that structures some of our interpretative decisions on disputed texts like this. 

Weima: The clobber text are four [passages] from the Old Testament and three from the New. Before we go any further, I believe that the first two, so the Genesis 19 and the judges 19 actually the Sodom and Gomorrah and a parallel event of judges don’t deal with homosexuality per say so…I know a lot of times people [say] “let’s debate about Leviticus because there are other weird things in Leviticus that we may or may not should do.” And how do we handle that? I mean I can handle that discussion. It’s a little more complex. 

But regardless of how you come out on that, those two New Testament texts– you can’t get rid of the Leviticus text–because Paul cites them [in the NT passages]. If you follow, In Paul’s mind they [the Leviticus passages] are authoritative. And so that’s how they bring those in. And that’s why it’s relevant for the three New Testament texts. Now, before I go beyond, I always make a distinction between shouting and whispering. And I’m not talking about decibel levels, cause I shout all the time. I’m talking about the degree of certainty that we can have about a given text. There are many topics that the Bible addresses in many places and they’re quite clear. And these are the things that we should shout. In other words, we’re, you know, we’re we’re clear about them. But then I say there are some topics the Bible doesn’t talk about very often, and then the few times it talks about them, it’s not so clear. So that’s a principle that I teach, and now having said that, why I’m stressing that, well, the three New Testament texts may not be so many. But they are quite clear. And they’re consistent. They not only agree with each other, but with what the rest of Scripture says. And because they’re clear and consistent, they are compelling. Alright, so. So in other words, I want people not to too quickly dismiss any of the so-called 7 clobber texts…

It’s often said that Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality. In fact, I’ve seen people with posters “what did Jesus say?” because they think he said nothing. And what’s more, some people want to put Jesus over against Paul and say, “Jesus is all love and kindness” and so forth, and “Paul is all law and harsh,” and they try to pit the two against each other. And Orthodox Christianity has always argued against that. We don’t have a Bible within the Bible, as if the red letters are more important than the black letters. So anyway, that Matthew 19 text is one important window into what Jesus did actually seem to believe about [homosexuality]. And then another text is in Mark 7. Jesus says there’s a bunch of things, that are bad you shouldn’t do anyway. He uses the word in Greek porneia…porneia is the Greek word for sexual immorality. It’s not always translated that way. In English, sexual immorality is a singular, but actually in the original Greek it’s plural, sexual, sexual immoralities. And so in other words, Jesus must know that there’s more than one way to be guilty of sexual immorality. Now he doesn’t say what those other ways are. But again, he’s a Jew and he knows the Old Testament pretty well. Almost certainly he’s thinking of [homosexuality] because in Leviticus 18 and 20 there are a whole bunch of sexual sins along with the homosexuality.  

Chimes: The 1946 documentary focused a lot about translations and like the power that specific words hold and how we read the Bible. How does the process of human translation fit into our understanding of the Word of God as divinely inspired? 

 Lincicum:I think the Christian Church, in my view, has always kind of held two positions at once, which might seem in tension with one another. One, it’s that the translations are the Word of God. You know in Islam, the Koran at some level is untranslatable because they’re the very words of Allah. And you know, I certainly respect that tradition, but that’s also not the route that the Christian Church took. And so, you know, even some of the bad translations still contain the Word of God, and Christians can be totally firm in those and in fact most of the translations that are – I mean, certainly all the translations that are — mass produced even if I might quibble here, they are very, very good indeed…On the other hand, I think the other position the Christian Church has taken is that there’s something significant about going ad fontes – back to the original – and thinking ourselves, as hard as we can, back to what these things meant, and then rethinking our translations. Yeah, I think every generation has to write its own books, and every generation has to think about its translations. 

Weima: I have another ‘Weima-ism’: “every translation involves interpretation.” That’s an important principle. However, our Bible translations take those two Greek words, malakoi and arsenokoitai. They’re not just translating them. They’re also interpreting them. And that’s important because Christians today, on one hand, they should be open to the idea that whatever their translation says, that may or may not be the best translation or the right translation…But then, you shouldn’t go overboard the other way and have so much skepticism that you can’t trust it…Yes, there is a translation issue to take into consideration, but that issue doesn’t prevent us from hearing and heeding, you know, the authoritative voice of God in scripture. 

Chimes: 

Due to recent synodical decisions, we’re talking a lot about homosexuality in the CRC and especially at Calvin. What advice do you have to navigate those conversations? 

Lincicum: I’m actually the chair of our council at the moment, as we’ve been going through this process of forcible disaffiliation. And I think it’s very difficult. So maybe the first one of your advice would just be to recognize how deeply emotional these conversations are for a lot of reasons to a lot of people. And so I think we should be charitable and honest and clear, and we should also probably not expect to convince everybody, maybe not very many people at all.I hope that the CRC can find a way ahead. I wouldn’t say I’m overly optimistic about its prospects, having been to some classis meetings and having followed Synod. It doesn’t seem to me like the level of debate is all that elevated or sophisticated, but I hope that it’s better than I fear, and I hope there will be good things yet to come. If so, maybe that will come out of Calvin. Calvin might need to be the place for that. 

Weima: First of all, I mentioned truth and love, right. So maybe I could bring those up again since I mentioned them then. Let’s take the love side. What that means is however we engage in this discussion, it can’t violate the principle of love. If you demean somebody, that’s violating the principle of love, right? If you claim arguments from your opponents that are not true, and sometimes people do that, right? …It’s frustrating when you hear people supposedly say what I believe or what a committee, you know. So again, that would violate the principle of love, right. 

Sometimes I joke about The Beatles, you know, because The Beatles said, “All you need is love.” And there is a kind of Beatles theology that a lot of people still have, you know, love is love, right? It doesn’t matter. Love is love. And so that’s why I said there are biblical texts that say that actually all you really need is not love. You also need truth. And so, you know, truth also requires speaking the truth and love. And so I guess the challenge is for those of us on one side, you know, I try to say you have to know what your default value is, and then play to your weakness. You have to compensate for the area you’re weak on. And then I can’t force someone else to do the same thing, but I’d like them to do that too.