What does the Bible say about Homosexuality?

What does the Bible say about Homosexuality?

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In our Judeo-Christian society, the documents known as the Bible serve as the primary guide on most issues. It is interesting that many Christians take literally the references to homosexual acts while interpreting other text with great flexibility. One person reported listening to a nationally known woman speak in her campaign against homosexuality. She spent much time quoting impressively from Leviticus. the listener accepted much of what the speaker had said until realizing that by Levitical standards, the crusader had herself broken many biblical laws; women speaking in church, women teaching men, wearing a dress made of cotton and polyester, and probably others of which he was unaware.

What does the Bible really say about homosexuality? Actually, very little. Jesus said nothing at all, which is most significant. Considering the relatively small amount of attention the Bible gives to the subject, we must ask ourselves why this is such a volatile issue while other subjects (e.g. judgment, pride, hypocrisy) about which the scriptures say a great deal, receive much less passionate attention. Before looking at specific passages, let us note that everyone understands the scriptures on and through the light of what they have been taught. The Bible was not written in a cultural void, and many of its instructions and laws we simply classify as less relevant today (e.g. prohibition of eating pork).

Nowhere in the Bible is the idea of persons being homosexual addressed. The statements are, without exception, directed to certain homosexual acts. Early writers had no understanding of homosexuality as a psycho-sexual orientation. That truth is a relatively recent discovery. The biblical authors were referring to homosexual acts performed by persons they assumed were heterosexuals.

The Sodom Story

A chief text for condemnation of homosexuality has been the Sodom story. This story has often been interpreted as showing God's abhorrence of homosexuality. In the story, two angels in the form of men were sent to Sodom to the home of Lot. While they were there, all the men of the city, "both young and old, surrounded the house --everyone without exception," and demanded that the visitors be brought out, "so that we might know them" (verse 5). Lot begged the men to leave his guests alone and take his daughters instead. The men of the city became angry and stormed the door. As a result, they were all struck blind by the angels.

There are several problems with the traditional interpretation of this passage. Whether or not the intent of the men of Sodom was sexual, the inhospitality and injustice coming from the mob and generally characterizing the community were "the sin of Sodom". Jesus himself refers to the inhospitality of Sodom. If, indeed, the men were homosexuals, then why would Lot offer them his daughters? What is threatened here is rape. The significant point then is that all rape is considered horrible by God. The story deserves another reading by all of us.

It should be noted that all of the men of Sodom could not have been homosexual or there would have been no need to destroy them since they would have all died off with no heirs. Quite likely they were a mixed group of evil men attempting to be abusive to people who were different. Ironically, lesbian and gay people are often the victim of that sin.

Although the traditional interpretation of the Sodom story fails as an argument against homosexuality, there are several other Old Testament passages which do condemn homosexual acts. Again, it should be noted that these passages do not deal with same-sex orientation, nor is there any references to genital love between lesbian or gay persons.

Homosexual Acts

Of thousands of Old Testament passages, only two make explicit reference to homosexual acts; Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13. Both of these passages are a part of the Levitical holiness code which is not kept by any Christian group. If it were enforced, almost every Christian would be excommunicated or executed. It has been logically argued that science and progress have made many of the Levitical laws irrelevant for us. For example, Tim LaHaye states that, although Levitical laws prohibit intercourse during menstruation, medical authorities do not view it as harmful; and, therefore, it should not be viewed as sinful. He further explains, "those laws were given 3,500 years ago before showers and baths were convenient, before tampons, disinfectants, and other improved means of sanitation had been invented". With that, LaHaye makes this law irrelevant and rightly so. Ironically, though, in his book, The Unhappy Gay, the Levitical laws are one of the chief cornerstones. Much of the holiness code is now irrelevant for us as moral law. Thus, having children which was of exceptional importance to the early Hebrews is now made less relevant by overpopulation, just as the prohibition against eating pork and shell-fish has been made irrelevant by refrigeration.

The Bible never addresses the issue of homosexual love, but has several examples of same-sex love. David's love for Jonathan was said to exceed his love for women. Ruth's relationship with Naomi is certainly an example of a deep, bonding love. The Bible does value love between persons of the same sex.

Jesus' Attitude

In the context of the New Testament there is no record of Jesus saying anything about homosexuality. This ought to strike us as very odd in light of the great threat to Christianity, family life, and the American way that some would have us believe homosexuality is. Jesus saw injustice and religious hypocrisy as a far greater threat to the Realm of God.

Episcopal priest, Dr. Tom Horner has written the Gospels imply in two places that Jesus' attitude toward lesbians and gays would not have been hostile. The first is found in the story of Jesus healing the Centurion's servant. The word used for the servant is "pais" which in the Greek culture referred to a younger lover of an older more powerful or educated man. Clearly the story demonstrates an unusually intense love, and Jesus' response was wholly positive.

The other hint of Jesus' attitude is seen in his comments about eunuchs. Jesus opposed divorce in opposition to the abuses experienced by women. It is in the context of marriage which Jesus said that "some eunuchs were born so; others had been made eunuchs and still others choose to be eunuchs for the Kingdom's sake."

Jesus' remarks about celibacy and castration are clear, but a male child being born without testicles is a rare birth defect. It is only in our day that the Kinsey Institute has demonstrated that sexual orientation is likely determined prior to birth. It could well be that those to whom Jesus refers as being "born eunuchs" are the people we call lesbian or gay.

Jesus' attitude toward eunuchs differed greatly from the fundamentalist Pharisees of his day. To them, eunuchs were excluded from the covenant and barred from worship and participating in the community of faith. Jesus' graceful approach to eunuchs is beautifully pictured in the promise of the prophecy of Isaiah 56:4-8, "To the eunuchs...I will give them an everlasting name that will not be taken away."

In Jesus' day there were three types of persons called eunuchs: celibates, those who were slaves and were castrated so that children would not be born to them, and those who were "born eunuchs" or homosexuals. Royal and wealthy households would use castrated slaves to work with and guard the concubines and women slaves. However when assigning slaves to female members of the royal family they would choose homosexual slaves. With female members, the concern was not just unwanted pregnancies, but also rape.

It is against this background that we must read the story found in Acts 8:26-40. In this passage the Holy Spirit sends Philip the Deacon to witness to and baptize an Ethiopian eunuch of Queen Candace of Ethiopia. One of the earliest converts to Christianity was a person excluded for sexual reasons from the Old Testament community.

Paul's References

Paul's statement in Romans 1:18-32 has been taken as the strongest New Testament rejection of homosexuality. He is concerned about the influence of the pagan culture on the Roman Christians. After giving a detailed description of a world that "exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator, " he continues, "Therefore, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lusts for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty of their perversion."

What Paul was referring to was homosexual temple prostitution which was performed by various cults (though far more cults used heterosexual prostitution). Again, Paul is not referring to same-sex love, and he clearly has no concept of persons for whom this lifestyle is "natural."

Paul's other reference to homosexual acts is similar to that of 1 Timothy 1:8-11. Both passages contain lists of persons to be excluded from the Realm of God. The interpretation of these passages depends on two Greek words which have always presented a problem for translators. In the King James Version, they are translated "effeminate" and "abusers of themselves with mankind." In the Revised Standard Version, they were combined and rendered homosexuals; however, these are not the Greek words for homosexual, so that translations reflects the scholars' bias. The New International Version illustrates the difference in these two words by translating them "male prostitute" and "homosexual offenders". The Jerusalem Bible uses the terms "catamites and "sodomites". Catamites were youth kept especially for sexual purpose; they were usually paid large sums of money. Neither passage refers to persons of same-sex orientation, but to people who used their sexuality for personal gain.

The Love of Christ

Jesus did a great deal to change many social customs and ideas. He elevated the position of women, and they were ultimately his best and most faithful disciples. He did this by example and by commandments which were absolutely inclusive of the rights of all people. Yet, in the name of the Christ whose love encompassed all, the Church has been the most homophobic of all institutions. This should not be surprising when we realize that the Church is still the largest institution which is primarily racially segregated.

The final and central message of he New Testament is that ALL persons are loved by God so much that God's Son was sent as a means of redemption from a disease by which we are all afflicted. The cure for this disease cannot be found in any set of actions. Neither homosexuality nor heterosexuality is redemptive. God's love through Christ was given to all people.

The Theological Reflection

For the Christian, sin must be understood as a disease which results FROM a broken relationship with God and which results IN a broken relationship with one another and with ourselves. Hence, Jesus' supreme command is to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Christianity is not a religion with new rules and laws, but is rather a new relationship with God. Those things which the legalists are fond of labeling "sins" are actually just symptoms of the much deeper disease of alienation and estrangement. Much of the energy of the Church has been spent dealing with symptoms while leaving the disease intact. Jesus did not seem overly concerned about the legal transgressions of those to whom he ministered. Rather, he was much more concerned with healing the physical, spiritual, emotional, or relational brokenness of people. Perhaps if the Church would again give itself to the healing/reconciling ministry of Jesus, then some of the symptoms about which we are so concerned would begin to disappear.

That brings us to the question: Is homosexuality a symptom of brokenness? In some few cases perhaps so. Yet, obviously pointing fingers of blame and accusation is not Christ's way. Rather, Jesus accepted people as they were and allowed love and acceptance to work its miracle. However, most lesbians and gays have been lesbian or gay for as long as they can remember. For them, it is a much a natural characteristic as their eye color or their handedness. Kinsey Institute research has suggested that homosexuality may well be genetic or a least linked to some prenatal factors. Certainly most competent psychologists would concur that sexual orientation is set prior to the age of five in most persons. It is, therefore, not a matter of choice, so it cannot be a moral or ethical issue.

Many Christians insist that God can change/cure the homosexual. In the book, The Third Sex, there are six reported cases of homosexuals whom God has "cured". Of these six, at least four are known to have returned to their gay life style. Many lesbians and gays spend most of their lives trying, with no success, to persuade God to change them. It is like trying to get God to change your eye color. What option then is left to these persons? They have been told that they can't be gay and be Christians; and since all efforts have failed in their struggle not to be gay or lesbian, then their only recourse, according to the Church, is that they can't be Christian. So the Church has discounted or discarded as much as 10% of the population.

If they are excluded from the life of the Christian community, who then will tell them of God's inclusive love and of Jesus' reconciling death? Are they left to assume that God is so narrow-minded as to exclude them for something over which they have no control and for a choice they did not make? When will the Church finally be brave enough to say with Paul, "in Christ there is neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female," gay or straight. God has enough love for all!

Rev. Michael Piazza

Were the Gnostics the Original Christians?

Were the Gnostics the Original Christians : Part Three Enlightenment

Entire article found at: http://www.awitness.org/journal/gnostic_enlightenment.html


In part one of this discussion I made the case that the violence and threats of the Christian conversion experience leads to a traumatic stress disorder common to victims of violence, which then evolves into a Paranoid Personality Disorder. In part two I discussed the origins of the doctrine of sin, since it is the fear inculcated by this doctrine that creates the disorder. This disorder is regarded as very difficult to treat, but the treatment involves the gradual introduction of doubt. Given the harmful effect of the doctrine of sin (paranoia) and the irrational inconsistency of the doctrine (it is reactionary) a satisfactory conclusion can be drawn the revolutionary doctrine of Gnosticism was the original Christian doctrine in that, unlike the doctrine of sin, its revolutionary philosophy is match (rather than a hindrance) to the cross symbol.



Gnosticism : Knowledge and Enlightenment
Revolution and reaction in the early church
A mini commentary on the Gospel of Thomas
In a desert in Egypt around the middle of the previous century a collection of previously hidden documents was discovered (now known as the Nag Hammadi library). The books were written by persecuted early Christians, and are often referred to as the Coptic Gnostic texts. Gnosticism was not one monolithic movement but rather a number of different groups are typically classified under the blanket umbrella of Gnosticism.

It was the attractiveness of the gnostic teachings and their resulting popularity that made necessary the persecution of this early gnostic movement on the charge of heresy, and scholars have discovered extant copies of manuscripts that were once previously known only through the polemical attacks launched against them in writingsb the early church Patriarchs.

Anyone who first reads these ancient Christian texts is at first struck by how incomprehensible, how utterly foreign is the language of these documents. The view of the world represented by the Gnostics was so completely oppressed, and so thoroughly was every trace of their thought removed from our collective history that their ideas have become so alien to our culture's way of thinking that it seems that they can no longer be understood.

The defining difference between gnostic Christianity (the word gnosis means ‘knowledge' or ‘insight') and what came to be known as Orthodox Christianity is a controversy over the meaning of ‘salvation'. In what became orthodox thought the world is to be understood in terms of sin and punishment or redemption and reward. To the Gnostics what was important was knowledge, insight and understanding which then led to enlightenment. Their Gnosis (knowledge or insight) was not of the scientific sort but rather consisted of an intuitive, very personal way of knowing something, in the same way that through personal experience you might know another person (and one of the highest goals is to know yourself, since if you knew yourself you gained an understanding of human nature that resulted in prophetic insights into the course of the future as well as an understanding of the nature of God, since your nature was a product of the working of God, and thus to know oneself was to know God). The problem with the world then was a kind of ignorance, rather than ‘sin', and in Gnostic thought then ‘salvation' consisted of enlightenment.

As orthodox Christianity developed as a patriarchal hierarchy, there was an emphasis placed on the authority of certain sources of ‘divine revelation' which were located outside the individual (situated then in some authority figure) while to Gnostics the most important source of revelation was to be found by each person embarking on a search for enlightenment within themselves (in this way Gnosticism developed in a way which was not hierarchical).

The difference in outlook between these two viewpoints can then be seen in the political and social order which would result from the application of these two divergent ideologies. Buddhism was another ideology which emphasized ‘enlightenment' rather than a doctrine of ‘sin and atonement' (and it is this viewpoint that characterizes the historical differences meant when comparing ‘East' and ‘West'). According to the Buddha's doctrine crime was the result of poverty. At the time, the Eastern Kings regarded crime as ‘sin' and dealt out severe punishments which were then criticized by the Buddha because they were unjust in that they failed to deal with the fundamental problem. In this way the Orthodox Christian doctrines of ‘sin and punishment versus redemption and reward' can be seen to be a proxy for a system of punitive justice which characteristically ignores all the root causes of social problems and focuses instead on punishing individuals while the doctrine of enlightenment emphasizes a collective social responsibility. An analysis of such things as the intransigent violence surrounding the conflict over resources in the world's poorest nations would then be seen as a problem with ‘individual sinners', a world view which logically results from viewing the world from the perspective of ‘sin and redemption', and in this way it can be seen that what has been called ‘Orthodox theology' actually perpetuates class divisions and inequality, focuses on treating symptoms, and if we ask whose interests are served by such an approach this leads to the conclusion that the doctrine of ‘sin and redemption', with its characteristic dualistic polarity between good and evil, between judge and sinner, mimics the polarity of a society with rigid class divisions, and in that sense is actually an elitist doctrine. The fact that this doctrine was formulated by elitist priests, who were then granted authority by the ultimate elitist, Caesar, and who then ruled as part of the elite alongside Caesar, can be seen as logically connected, in that elites created a doctrine which in the end protected the interests of the elite. The doctrine of sin then cemented into place class divisions by rationalizing the subjugation of lower classes who were ‘defective' by their very nature (having been ‘born sinful').

It can then be understood that the Gnostics were persecuted, and eliminated, not because their doctrine was ‘heresy', but rather because the political implications of the doctrine of ‘enlightenment' was that this would result in a challenge to the class structure of Roman society and would also result in the loss of influence of religious authorities, who placed the emphasis on the outside, in outside sources of revelation, such authorities as ‘scripture' and ‘canon law'. When an individual looks within themselves for Gnosis, religious hierarchy is nullified, and this nullification of the religious elite only mirrors the inevitable political challenge to the Roman elite in general, since if all individuals can seek revelation, then all individuals must be equal and all supposed differences in authority or equality between individuals must be artificial. This classless analysis of social problems would lead to a critique of society at large, and demands for sweeping reforms in the system (of the type demanded by the Buddha, as one example) in contrast to the focus on ‘individual sinners' which is the logical outcome of the opposing doctrine of sin and redemption, which then serves to perpetuate inequality and hierarchical class divisions in society by ignoring root causes and focusing on an erroneous analysis of the symptoms (with the root cause, it is claimed, being ‘inherited sinfulness', such an evil nature being it is claimed the natural state of all humanity apart from the saving intervention of powerful religious elites...that such a thing is a self serving doctrine which perpetuates a power structure should be self evident upon even a cursory examination).

This difference is emphasized in the opening verses of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, where we are told not to look outside oneself for enlightenment and thus ‘salvation', but rather to look within. To turn away from outside revelation is considered the most natural course of action (since it is suggested that by nature this is what the birds and the animals do) and in this sense then what we have here is an argument which insists that God must have created the world correctly (in opposition to the doctrine of ‘sin and redemption' which incongruously attempts to make the argument that humanity is ‘defective and sinful' from birth, while at the same attempting to uphold the contradictory doctrine which states that God is perfect and thus incapable of error...on this matter the Gnostic doctrine provides a more intellectually satisfying description of the nature of reality than Orthodox thinking ever has).

According to the Gnostics, salvation, we are told is to be found both inside of oneself and can also be discerned in the natural world, being displayed without any doubting or second thoughts, without the need for any leaders, by such creatures as the birds and the animals and the fish. The Gnostics mad a call to people to ignore the religious leaders, and then draw the conclusion that by rejecting their necessarily authoritarian doctrines the path would be open to ‘come to know yourself' which would then lead enlightenment, this enlightenment being the only ‘salvation' people require in Gnostic thought, with the implication being that religious leaders and authority figures are actually an impediment to human salvation, since it would appear then that people need to be saved from religion. There is no doctrine of ‘punishment' in Gnostic thought, but rather if you fail to achieve enlightenment, you pay the price by living a life of inner ‘poverty'. When you achieve enlightenment then you will realize that you were not born an incomplete or somehow defective ‘sinner', and thus in the need of authoritarian religion as a form of social control, but rather you are by your very nature children of God. On the other hand, it is implied, if you continue to listen to your religious authorities then you become an impoverished pauper as a result of accepting their doctrines, which are hostile to your very nature, and to the nature of the world around you (which is very true of Orthodox doctrines of ‘corrupted nature' and ‘fallen Eden' and ‘hereditary sinfulness').