The Reformed Fundamentalist

Today’s post is taken from a blog on another website that I stumbled across. Actually, it’s more of a blog series on this topic. The author of these pieces is Dr Frank Tupper, formerly on the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and presently with Wake Forest.

The gist of the blog posts, is that the CBF(Co-operative Baptist Fellowship) needs to have a discussion on this issue, to prepare pastors to bring this issue before their own congregations. Sadly, Dr Tupper doesn’t present his own view on the subject, he simply presents the four main viewpoints held on Homosexuality within a church context, and gives his rationale for having this discussion within the CBF.

Baptists, Homosexuality, and the Church

Fifteen or sixteen months ago I sent a workshop proposal on “Homosexuality and the Church” to Bo Prosser and Dan Vestal, and I attempted to explain the rationale behind the proposal. Homosexuality is the single most significant, emotional, and divisive issues in the United States today, and Baptists are talking about it along with everyone else. However, we Baptists remain silent, i.e. we do not discuss the issue anywhere in the congregational life of the church. Consequently, neither extensive Bible study or an analysis of the options before the church are discussed openly as an issue that we must think about and attempt to understand each other. Therefore, the sole purpose of my workshop proposal was to lay out different options the church faces in its endeavor to understand and address the problem.

Option 1: The Rejection of God’s Design-Homosexuality as a Perversion

Option 1. The Rejection of God’s Design for Creation: Homosexuality as a “Perversion”-
The proponents of this historic but fundamentally negative understanding of homosexuality demonstrate the complete rejection of homosexual activity as well as the homosexual person, because a person is bound together with and cannot be distinguished from his or her behavior. Since God’s design for creation is the marriage of one man and one woman for life, marriage is a relationship of covenantal union that endures until death. (Genesis 1-2).

Option 2: Welcoming Persons, but Not Affirming Homosexuality

The second option shifts the argument by distinguishing between homosexual behavior and homosexual persons. The advocates of this viewpoint generally accept the biblical warrants against homosexual activity characteristic of church tradition, but it does not reject homosexual persons as “perverts.” “Welcoming but not affirming” is an affirmation of Christian love that requires openness, receptivity, and kindness to all human persons—regardless of any other factor, including the particularity of any kind of human sin.

Option 3: Accomodation

It has become increasingly clear that the homosexual orientation is not essentially a choice or an environmental production: It is more than an orientation because it roots in the personhood of the homosexual male or female. Human “genetics” not only accounts for the sexual distinction between male and female in a heterosexual person, but it is constitutive for the sexual identity of a homosexual person, male or female. Therefore, the activity of God in creation that accentuates the norm of male and female complementarity for the purpose of marriage and the reproduction of human offspring does not exclude the activity of God in the sexual identity of the homosexual person.. Although homosexuality does not fulfill the normative purpose of God in creation for human personhood, homosexuality is an unintended given in emergence of human life in the world.

Option 4: Welcoming and Celebrating

Like celibacy, homosexuality is a variation in creation that does not diminish the authenticity of a person’s humanness. Unlike celibacy, neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality entails a choice: It is a genetic (and early environmental) given. Like the heterosexual orientation of life, the homosexual way of being human is the gift of God to be celebrated: It is not the disorder of human fallenness. Homosexuality—the homosexual orientation precisely in its variation—belongs to God’s declaration of the goodness of creation.

The last post is the one that got my attention.
A Devout Uncertainty: Homosexuality and the Church

Most of the older leadership of the church finds the open attitude of the younger generations to toward homosexuality to be causal and uninformed. They have not listened to the teaching of the Bible in areas of sexuality fidelity, and they have absorbed the contemporary cultural attitude that they have experienced at school and elsewhere. A word of caution at this point: The younger generations in church life are not naïve, for they know what their elders think and why they think it. The older generation has lived through the civil rights movement and seen the partial dismantlement of Jim Crow segregation; they observed the woman’s sexual revolution and their experience of freedom in the life of the church; they often experienced the public “embarrassment” of divorce, especially in the church. The younger generations think and say to one another: “Our church was wrong on every issue—racial segregation in schools and public facilities; the pain of divorce but worth of the divorced person; women’s rights extended beyond voting to education and opportunity; unanimity in support of war, any war.  These younger believers often do not know the Bible in any fashion comparable to their elders. They have concluded: “All of them found in the Bible what they already believed. Nothing else.”

These young people have not engaged in any serious Bible study about the subject of homosexuality, of same-sex relationships. Bible study did not help their parents, teachers and preachers on the crucial issues they faced. However, they love their gay friends, and the circles of friendship continue to grow beyond public school to university life to their participation in young adult classes in other churches. They look at their parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, beloved Bible teachers and Baptist advocates: They have asked them many questions over the years about the attitude of “white people” toward “black people” during the Jim Crow years of segregation and the murder of civil rights activists. Since one of their parents has been divorced, a Christian parent, they do not understand the contradiction of the words of Jesus and Paul with the relatively recent acceptance of divorce in church life and leadership. In the last decade or so they have seen their churches elect women as deacons and elders, though some remain quite opposed to women preachers and pastors. The churches, its teachers and preachers, those who guided them in their younger years—they sometimes admit that they were “partly wrong” in the turbulent years of significant social change, but they explain it was “a different time,” not much more. Why do the same people who opposed school desegregation, open public facilities, the leadership of divorced persons in church life, the continuing role of women in church worship—why are they so sure now that they are right now about the exclusion of “gay persons” from the friendship of Jesus?

The question raised in this part is particularly important, because there are young people who think and feel this way. But more importantly, can we simply reject what older Christians think, because they were wrong in some areas? What is important in this type of conversation? I’d like to say first and foremost, what a person thinks and feels on the issue is NOT important, unless it is grounded in God’s word.

As Christians, what the Scriptures have to say on any issue should be first and foremost. Particularly in a conversation of such enormous consequence. I want to deal with particularly a couple of questions that I think should be raised from the last post that I linked to above.
1. Because our parents and grand-parents were wrong on certain areas, does that mean that we should ignore their opinions on other subjects? I think the answer to this is no. People can be wrong, sometimes tragically so, in some areas, and yet be right in many others. Attitudes concerning segregation/racism, for example, were probably primarily learned behavior, coupled with seeking the Scripture for support for such attitudes. One can find Scriptural support for almost anything they want if they approach Scripture with their own prejudices/sin patterns, and if they approach Scripture without an understanding of Biblical hermaneutics.
2. On the issue of divorce, is the current attitude within the church the correct attitude? In most cases, no. Divorce, in Scripture, is permissible in two cases. Sexual sin, and abandonment of a saved spouse by an unsaved spouse(Matt 5:32; 1 Cor 7:10-15). Within the church today, there are large numbers of people who divorce one another for unbiblical reasons. And the Church has largely been silent and even accepting. This too, is sinful. What the Church ought to be doing, is to be exercising church discipline on those who seek divorce without biblical backing.

Now, what does the Bible say about homosexuality, or any sexual sin for that matter?
Let’s start with adultery. The Bible condemns adultery as a sin continually throughout Scripture(Ex 20:14; 1 Cor 6:9-10). Christ also condemns lustful thoughts towards women, which can lead to adultery(Matt 5:28).
Sex outside of a marital relationship is also forbidden(1 Cor 5:1; 6:13, 18; Eph 5:3).
Homosexuality is never singled out as the great sin, although it is one of the sins that is said to be “against nature”. But Scripture does indeed condemn homosexuality. Let’s look at some Scripture.
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
(1Co 6:9-11 ESV)
Note in the above passages, first and foremost, that homosexuality is not named first, nor last. It’s somewhere in the middle. But, it is a sin. Now some would say that this is simply the “unenlightened view of Paul, who didn’t understand what we know now.” Such persons unwittingly reveal their disdain for Scripture in such statements, showing that they do not believe Scripture, except where it suits them to do so.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
(Rom 1:26-28 ESV)
Again, Scripture tells us that homosexuality is a sin. In this particular passage, we are being told that when people continually reject God, it leads to deeper and deeper sin among them.
Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.
(1Ti 1:8-11 ESV)

Can it be said that Scripture endorses homosexuality? No, not unless one twists and perverts the plain meaning of Scripture, or unless they simply discount these Scriptures as irrelevant.

So what do we do on this issue? Well, we pray for our homosexual friends and neighbors. We point them to Christ first and foremost. But then the question is raised, “Can one be a homosexual and a Christian?” So then what do we answer? Can one practice homosexuality in a monogamous relationship and be a Christ-follower? While it is possible for a believer to fall into any type of sin, particularly one that he or she struggles with that is a thorn in their flesh, I would hesitate to call someone who continues in their sin a Christian. Whether that sin be homosexuality, fornication, adultery, stealing, etc, one who practices their sin without repenting and turning from their sin should not be accepted into the life of the Church. A person who has illicit heterosexual sex outside the confines of marriage should be placed under church discipline if they refuse to repent and stop. At which point they should be considered non-believers, and witnessed to and urged to turn to Christ. The same goes for a homosexual within the church, and for a person who seeks divorce without cause. Of course, many churches today don’t practice church discipline, which inevitably leads to error penetrating into the church. A practicing homosexual should not be admitted to life within the church, based on the plain teachings of Scripture. Neither should a practicing fornicator or adulterer. I realize that this view may seem narrow and prejudiced, but it is based in Scripture.

How should homosexuals be approached? Quite simply, the same as any other sinner. Homosexuals are created in the image of God, the same as any other person. They have worth, because of that. But as with any other sinner, their sin is offensive to God. They must be pointed to Christ. We can accept a person whose particular sin is homosexuality, without accepting their sin. We must be loving, but firm in our stance. Sin separates us from God, all sin, not just homosexuality. The homosexual is no worse than the fornicator, or the thief. When a homosexual is saved, and they have repented of their sin, what then should be done? Well, what should be done? The floor is yours, post something in the comments.