As an evangelical Presbyterian I’m committed to maintaining our denomination’s current ordination standards, including G.60106b, which prohibits the ordination of self-affirming, unrepentant practicing homosexuals.  As an evangelical Presbyterian I am also committed to fostering the peace, unity and purity of the church.  Part of practicing peace, unity and purity involves learning how to cultivate a culture of conversation where we can vigorously debate our differences as Presbyterians, all the while recognizing that most of us, including those with whom we disagree, are struggling to be faithful.

I have greatly benefited from conversations with friends “on the other side of the aisle” on the question of ordination standards.  As someone committed to being part of a reformed church that is always being reformed according to the Word of God, I am most attentive to arguments based on biblical interpretation.  Some of my friends challenge the Scriptures I take to be central with regard to homosexuality.  They say that texts like Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:10 are not the place to go to find the answers to the current questions being raised about homosexual practice.  Instead they point me to Acts 10 and Acts 15, claiming that practicing homosexuals are akin to 1st-century Gentile believers, and that I resemble the Jewish believers who were trying to exclude those Gentiles from participation in the Church.  Advocates of the ordination of practicing homosexuals are seen as following in the footsteps of Apostles like Peter and Paul who were willing to relax traditional standards for the sake of expanding gospel fellowship.  I appreciate the willingness of my progressive friends to thoughtfully engage the biblical text.  However, I am not convinced that the analogy between 1st-century Gentiles and 21st-century practicing homosexuals is one that holds water.

There are some key differences between the Gentiles of the 1st century and practicing homosexuals in our own day.  “Gentile” is a self-definition based on a permanent and unalterable reality that is completely hereditary.  “Practicing homosexual” is a self-definition that is not always permanent and that is alterable, in many cases even without therapy or a desire for change.  Being a Gentile was only incidentally linked to practices that the church found morally problematic (i.e. idol worship, sexual immorality).  On the other hand, being a practicing homosexual is directly related to practices that Scripture categorically prohibits.  The Church’s inclusion of Gentiles in the 1st century involved welcoming persons.  The ordination of self-affirming practicing homosexuals would involve condoning behaviors, behaviors that the Bible consistently proscribes.  The inclusion of 1st-century Gentiles into the community of faith had some Old Testament precedent, and wound up being the consensus position of the New Testament. Indeed, the inclusion of the Gentiles was the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that he would be a blessing to the nations, a theme running throughout the Old Testament.  Yet there is no biblical promise of a moral inclusivity that would consider homosexual practice honoring to God; considering homosexual practice a normative form of sexual expression for Christians has no precedent in either the Old or New Testament. [1]

The analogy falls apart at another level as well.  Just as Peter was able to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Gentiles like Cornelius, so can I recognize the Spirit’s work in the lives of GLBT members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  Just as Peter, Paul and eventually the other Apostles were willing to count as members of the covenant community anyone who confessed Christ as Lord, repented of sin and sought the newness of life that Christ offered, I am willing to embrace as brothers and sisters all GLBT persons who trust in Christ alone for salvation and seek to be his disciples.  The question of whether or not the Church ought to embrace homosexuals is settled.  Homosexual desires are no worse than any other sinful inclinations and do not disqualify one from joining the community of the baptized who desire to turn from sin and seek newness of life in Christ. Any gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered person who desires to repent of sin and experience personal renewal in Christ cannot be denied a place in Christ’s church. To fail to extend such an offer to our GLBT brothers and sisters would be to practice a less than biblical form of inclusion. 

Affirming homosexual practice would also be practicing an inclusion that falls short of the biblical model.  The Gentiles were welcomed into the Church in the first century, but Gentile idolatry and sexual immorality were not.  The same New Testament authors that welcomed the Gentiles could speak of their “former ignorance” which was the root of deceitful desires and passions that led to lives that didn’t reflect the transformative power of God’s grace (1 Pet 1:13-14; Eph 4:17-18).  Affirming homosexual practice would be to extend Jesus’ inclusive embrace of the sinner without including his admonishment to go and sin no more (John 5:14; 8:11).  It would be to offer to GLBT persons less than the fullness of the Gospel.

I am grateful for the willingness of my friends on the other side of the ordination question to wrestle with Scripture.  But their current use of a faulty analogy between Gentiles and GLBT persons leads them to advocate for an inclusion that cannot be called “biblical” and is less holistic and compassionate than the radical inclusion practiced by Jesus, an inclusion reflected in our current ordination standards.

Notes

[1] For these comparisons I am indebted to Robert A.J. Gagnon’s contribution to Dan Via and Robert Gagnon’s Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003), 43, a book that offers fine brief presentations of each side of the debate.  A thoughtful presentation from an evangelical point of view can also be found in Stanley Grenz, Welcoming But Not Affirming: An Evangelical Response to Homosexuality (Westminster John Knox, 1998).