Transcript

Is the Bible Anti-LGBT? Uncovering Same-Sex Love in Scripture -

(00:01) so just by way of background when we think about sexual orientation inborn sexual orientation you know there is a very big difference in awareness because of the development of modern sciences modern biology and so forth between where we are and what we know today in the 21st century and what people knew in the first century of the common era and indeed in the centuries preceding that and so for thing for example things like DNA the existence of DNA that was obviously completely unknown prior to the modern era that doesn't mean there wasn't DNA it just

(00:44) means that nobody knew it existed or what it might do or how it affected uh people's development and so it was also unknown 2,000 years ago or before actually the last century that sexual orientation is inborn sexual orientation then is the inborn characteristic of what um gender an individual person um may be physically and romantically attracted to and so while of course people in antiquity were able to observe and realize through personal experience that some individuals expressed attraction to others of their same gender they were not as aware of

(01:32) they hadn't studied it broadly they weren't as aware of the causes and it certainly was not understood that a certain minority of people were simply born with innate and natural same-sex orientation and instead you know uh they had all sorts of other antique ancient you know natural philosophy what they thought of as science at the time explanations the um the science of humoralism so the idea that your humors needed to be in balance different uh humors being out of balance caused different proclivities um they

(02:10) also as indicated by this diagram here felt that that was also interconnected with the movements of the stars maybe and so here's a diagram that we have showing the biology being controlled by the constellations of the zodiac and so forth um this is the kind of understanding about um natural biology that people had 2,000 years ago and so though although inborn orientation therefore was unknown like I say same-sex activity was observable and so very famously for example in ancient Greece uh the Greek culture

(02:52) um both recognized and often celebrated male male sexual relationships and in particular there was a tradition called pedarasti where an older man would take on an adolescent man as a um or boy even as a to in order to mentor them and this was recognized as you know something there were people argue against it some people but by and large this was an accepted part of the culture in ancient Greece however what we need to understand from our perspective now in the 21st century now that we are aware of inborn sexual orientation

(03:36) we have to understand that when there is a widpread practice like this by far and away the majority of everybody involved in this are actually um heterosexually oriented so in other words there's the same percentage of people by and large back then who have innate homosexual orientation but the culture um is one of the reasons that causes this activity to happen culturally as opposed to um you know as opposed to biologically and so it would be the same sort of thing that um you know why throughout time and even in the present

(04:15) um in all male naval ships there is a tradition of you know men having sex with men because there are no women present in the ships or in prisons in all male prisons the same kind of thing um so this is a response a cultural response to the inavvailability of women as sexual partners for men who are heterosexually oriented so in other words this activity that we talk about in ancient Greece is not gay it is simply same-sex activity similarly um the existence of what we now think of as interex individuals which is actually a big wide category so

(04:56) that was known again through observation in antiquity because there's always been a small percentage of children for example that are born with both sets of sex organs and so in ancient Greece this was understood and explained mythologically through the character or the god of hero of Hermaphroditis who is a uh child of Hermes and Aphrodite and then in artwork and myth uh the character had both male and female traits so even though that's known though the idea that there may be many individuals who are born with let's say what are typical physical traits of one gender

(05:42) and yet they themselves internally understood themselves to have the identity of the other gender in other words someone who externally people assume is male they understand themselves innately to be female that idea of gender identity was not particularly understood in antiquity and indeed this idea of um being transgender is you know much more widely um kind of more widely being explored and understood in the last couple decades than it even ever was when um when I was coming out as a gay man back in the early 1990s so some of this is still being uh

(06:29) understood in the present uh in real time so the fact that underlying orientation was unknown it means that nobody in antiquity was actually aware of the existence of gay lesbian and bisexual individuals in a biological sense nor was anyone aware of gender identity and the existence of what we think of as transgender individuals so as a result no ancient author at all including all of the biblical authors none of them are actually even able to be anti-LGBT people because again like I say they're ignorant of the underlying biology

(07:09) they're ignorant of the existence of this the same way like I say that they're ignorant they're not anti-DNA they're not anti um all of the different ideas of modern science they just didn't have those ideas so although um and then this is also there's also true that now we have inherited a significant misunderstanding of the Bible so although the New Testament itself proclaims Christ to be the word of God so that's very clear in the preface to the gospel of John many Christian fundamentals fundamentalists

(07:47) give that title to the Bible so the word of God you know they will call the Bible the word of God as opposed to Christ and many uh Christians are very insistent on using words like infallible and inherent to describe the Bible which I think fundamentally misunderstands how the Bible came to be compiled and canonized the books that were left out and so forth so when we think of the Bible some people think of it as a history or a science book written with one voice that is internally consistent and yet it is not a science book it's not a history book it is a library of religious books it is speaking in many

(08:32) voices and many of those voices directly contradict one another they are in dialogue with and indeed argument with each other and we've seen that in lecture after lecture so if we just look at the different uh texts that are ultimately assembled together none of these texts is written with the idea that is going to be part of a Bible the way we now think of a Bible and the earliest of these texts written you know prior to uh the fall anyway portions of which anyway are written prior to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the original iron age kingdom of Judah uh a whole bunch of

(09:16) the other ones are written in the early Persian period of the second temple period before uh the conquest of Alexander and the entire coming of Helenism and still finally we get into into um for the Christian texts the New Testament you know all written within uh a Roman era when there is a vastly different worldview than existed back several centuries earlier at the early with the earliest texts so in other words each one of these voices not only has a unique perspective on themselves but they're written in such completely different um time and place that their

(09:55) context is also different so let's look at some of these direct um arguments that I'm talking about within biblical within the biblical cannon but different texts so one author may seem somewhere in the Bible to make a straightforward declaration on a given subject and so the apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians his first letter to the Corinthians he has this very famous prohibition on women taking an active part in church kind of speaking in church and so forth so he says in 1 Corinthians 14 women should be silent in the churches for they are not

(10:39) permitted to speak but should be subordinate as the law also says if there is someone they want to uh if there is someone I'm sorry if there is something they want to learn let them ask their husbands at home for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church so you know this is a pretty I don't know i mean I disagree obviously with this entirely this is a a pretty stark and terrible perspective from Paul here but it's not like that we have to take this as authoritative because this is all we have other biblical authors

(11:16) directly contradict this perspective that is either Paul's own or is attributed to Paul here through an interpolation so for example at the beginning of the gospel of Luke in chapter 2 Luke the author of Luke portrays Anna a woman who is identified as a prophet and Anna actually prophesies in the temple itself a sacred precinct that stands in for church you know as the uh gospel of Acts and I'm sorry Luke and then Acts continue forward so there was a prophet we read Anna the daughter of Fanuel of the tribe of Asher she was of great age having lived with her husband 7 years

(12:02) after her marriage and then as a widow to the age of 84 she never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer day and night at the moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to whom all were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem so here she is speaking and praying and praising God in the holy sanctuary itself in the temple and she is one of the first prophets then who identify the infinite Jesus as the Messiah so we likewise have another precedent at the beginning of the chapter of acts

(12:41) also written by the same author as Luke in the Pentecost story where um the author affirms that women in the early Christian community are prophesying and Peter himself declares in this text uh a fulfillment of prophecy from the Old Testament prophet Joel where he quotes him and says in the last days it will be God declares clares that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams even upon my slaves both men and women in those days I will pour out my spirit and

(13:26) they shall prophesy so all of this then directly contradicts in in a story first at uh Jesus birth and coming to the temple for the very first time and then uh at a meeting you know of the entire Christian community the early Christian community as described in acts 50 days after the first Easter um the exact opposite of of Paul's statement in Corinthians is played out so in that sense then fundamentalist Christians who cite 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 in support of a goal of limiting women's participation in church saying women can't be in priesthood or women can't be pastors women can't preach and so forth

(14:14) they're absolutely ignoring precedents that exist like the one I just read in Luke and Acts which say that both women and men should preach and prophesy and did preach and prophesy in the early Christian community so New Testament authors like Paul and like the other ones that I just read they are not laying out commandments to be followed legalistically indeed Christianity the New Testament throughout the go the um the whole of the New Testament texts condemns that kind of style of religion the idea that text is putting out rules and then you have to literalistically legalistically follow those rules that's

(15:00) cons condemned as as the practice of the Pharisees as phariseaic that's not how any of these should be read including Paul so despite the advice even that Paul gives to individual creations I'm sorry individual congregations he himself is aware of that ideal that men and women are to be equal and disciples in Christianity so Paul's um used in that prohibition against women he says "Well even the law agrees with me here.

(15:36) " and he'll sometimes do that where he cites the law in order to back up back him up on some idea he has but then other places he is pretty much condemning the idea of following the law that is to say old testament commandments and so he says concerning that the law Mosaic law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith now that faith has come we are no longer under a guardian we don't need toutelage of following written law like this so in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ so there is neither Jew nor

(16:20) Gentile neither slave nor free nor is there male or female for you are all one in Christ Jesus if you belong to Christ then you're Abraham's seed and hes according to the promise this is to be a um inclusive community where all are part of the body of Christ so as we're going to go through now and look at um you know LGBT questions and the Bible this is the scope of presentation this evening so I want to talk about Old Testament law that Paul was just quoting and then saying we don't need because we're not under the tutelage of anymore

(17:04) we then want to look at Old Testament stories um and how they are interpreted to as if they are about LGBT questions both in a negative stories and also positive ones then I want to look at Jesus direct statements about same-sex activity and spoiler alert he doesn't say anything on that topic explicitly at all so we have to go instead to his general um teachings and the entire spirit of the inclusive gospel proclaimed by Jesus in the New Testament and then finally I do want to look at problematic statements made by Paul

(17:50) that touch on LGBT questions and also there's a statement potentially by u one of Paul's enemies in the epistle of Jude which does the same all right so that's going to be our path for tonight so let's start with our look at Old Testament law so Christianity has a important relationship with what Christianity considers the Old Covenant the Old Testament um but it's something that Christians have wrestled with the entire time as well so of of the Old Testament the Pentatuk the five books attributed to Moses the part

(18:38) also called the Torah that was compiled by the returning Judean exiles at the beginning part of the second temple period that is after the Babylonian captivity as um people return to Jerusalem with the uh with the uh authorization of the Persian emperor uh in order to rebuild the temple under the rule though of uh Persia as a minor and poor Persian province so some components um of the Torah of the Pentatuk you know the there are source texts that date probably to the first temple period and during to the exile um but in either

(19:24) case there are very um this is very far removed time period and time frame and worldview from where we are today so 2500 years ago uh the law code ostensibly as written so the these five books the Torah is called the law and it includes lots and lots of rules that law code ostensibly was meant to govern the wandering tribes under Moses um as as the people who are actually writing this are looking back to a mythic past of the Exodus but in practice it was written for the priests who were rebuilding the temple so that they have a connection to their identity

(20:07) they're having an identity story that explains you know who they are what they came from what they're supposed to do in terms of the ritual practices that they're reestablishing um in Jerusalem and so the Persian official the Jewish Persian official Ezra the scribe may have been the person who helped compile the Torah and it may have reached close to its present form as of 444 before the common era so um the Mosaic laws focus is on what we call ritual purity and so I mean ritual purity can in include things like um you know washing but it doesn't

(20:50) necessarily make you you know really clean when you wash because ritual water you know can actually get pretty dirty because you have to have um you know you have to have gathered this pool you can't draw the water you can't put it in buckets you have to have uh a sistern that uh where the water collects naturally and if you're doing lots and lots of bathing it may get kind of muddy so in other words it's something that makes you ritually clean it may not make you actually clean so there's a focus therefore on ritual and what it means to

(21:20) be pure when you go through those rituals so the priestly code in Leviticus isn't interested in ideas like equity or inclusion really instead it's focused on ancient notions like I say of ritual purity so for example it forbids whole bunches of classes of people from serving in priesthood we read in Leviticus 21 the Lord spoke to Moses saying speak to Aaron and say "No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has any blemish may approach to offer the food of his God." So indeed no one who has a blemish

(22:01) shall draw near whatever that you may even consist of a big birthark or anything else no one who is blind or lame nobody who's mutilated or deformed no one who has a broken foot or a broken hand or a hunchback or a dwarf or a man who has a defect in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles you know there is all of these different things that excludes you from priesthood we're not having um disabled people or people who don't seem to be perfect from our understanding of ritual purity uh in priesthood um the Mosaic

(22:38) law prohibits lots and lots of things and so for example in Leviticus uh we read that tattoos are forbidden in Leviticus 19 you shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you i am the Lord no tattoos leviticus 11 lists off a host of animals that are ritually unclean so that not only prevents you from eating pork and shellfish if you are um following Levitical law it also condemns people who touch puppies and kittens so all that walk on their paws among the animals that walk on on floor on all fours they're unclean for you so they're unclean because they're ritually impure

(23:22) moreover punishments in Leviticus are harsh so we're very aware of the phrase that it includes you know an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but many fractions actually require the death penalty including for example if you go and have an overnight with your friends as a teenager and you guys get out a Ouija board and you start communicating with the spirits and finding out what the messages they're sending uh about what boy likes you or whatever it is um we read in Leviticus 20 "A man or a woman

(23:54) who is a medium or a spiritualist shall be put to death they shall be stoned to death their blood guilt is upon them." So you know these little few examples that I just cited here but many many others that are similar they're the necessary context for understanding two verses from Leviticus that are sometimes incorrectly quoted as prohibiting Christians from same-sex activity so for example Leviticus 18:22 reads "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman it is an abomination.

(24:38) " And Leviticus 20:13 reads "If a man lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed an abomination they shall be put to death their blood guilt is upon them." All right so what do those two verses what do these Levitical rules about ritual purity have what bearing do they have on Christians and the answer is none whatsoever that has nothing to do with uh Christianity so as with the prohibitions on tattoos and puppies and Ouija boards all the rest eating pork delicious pork all of these verses from Leit Leviticus have no bearing on Christian practice because

(25:23) the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that Christians are to reject adherence to old covenant law you're not supposed to do uh follow the works of old covenant law according to Paul and instead you're supposed to embrace and live out the new covenant in Christ so Jesus himself the sermon on the mount uh overturns and corrects Mosaic law so we have that famous passage in Leviticus 24 anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return fracture for fracture eye for eye tooth for tooth the

(26:08) injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered but like I say in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5 Jesus quotes this Levitical rule and explicitly overturns it you have heard that it was said "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you do not resist an evildoer but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other also so it's not going to be an eye for an eye anymore in the new covenant john 8:es 1-1 I think records you know a famous story that exemplifies Jesus model uh where he is personally against using

(26:54) Levitical law to judge the personal lives of your neighbors so we read there uh beginning in verse three the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and making her stand before all of them they said to him to Jesus teacher this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women what do you say so you know as he is being set up here um you know these people are using this woman in order to try to um uh discredit

(27:36) Jesus jesus nevertheless does not take the bait he does not call uh for obedience obedience to Levitical law instead Jesus models the new covenant response which turn turns the judgment back on the accusers jesus said to them "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

(28:05) " And so one by one all the accusers eventually put their stones down walk away and Jesus says,"Woman is there no one to accuse you?" And she says "No." And he says "Neither do I accuse you." So Jesus teachings to Christians in general on these sort of matters are pretty clear so judge not he implores uh the audience you know his disciples in Matthew 7 and he also of course enjoins them to love your neighbors as yourself and so even though all of these kind of models that Jesus makes and the teachings that he have are pretty clear I think nevertheless throughout Christian history many people including church leaders have fallen prey to do the very opposite

(28:50) to create a bunch of rules to police people's personal sex lives to become obsessed um with sex as though sex was the main uh thing that sin is as opposed to things like sexism which is actually uh the sin that we should be worrying about injustice is the sin that we should be worrying about um just as modeled by Jesus in this story in the gospel of John more than that um the authors of the New Testament speak with one voice that the old covenant the laws uh in Leviticus Mosaic law are obsolete for Christians

(29:32) so the anonymous author of the epistle to Hebrews gives his perspective about why Mosaic law has been replaced and should no longer be a part of Christian practice and so beginning in chapter 8 6 we read jesus has now obtained a more excellent ministry and to that degree he is mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on the basis of better promises for if that first covenant the Old Testament Mosaic law had been faultless there would have been no need for a second covenant the new covenant in Jesus Christ in speaking of a new

(30:15) covenant Jesus has made the first one obsolete and what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear we are not to um follow Levitical law paul is even more plain about the need for Christians to reject adherence to Mosaic law so in 2 Corinthians 3 he says such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us our qualification is from God who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant not of the letter but of the spirit for the letter kills but the spirit gives

(31:09) life so we're not to be literalists we're not following these rules world by word we are looking for what is the spirit telling us about the underlying principle here we're to follow this model and the story that we read in John 8 so Paul continues "Now if the ministry of death chiseled in letters on stone tablets came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses' face because of the glory of his face the glory now set aside how much more will the ministry of the spirit come in glory?" So Paul here this is very powerful imagery he is equating Mosaic law other

(31:57) words the ten commandments chiseled on stone tablets with the ministry of death and Paul's condemnation of Christians adhering to Mosaic law is even stronger in his letter to the Galatians where he says "No one will be justified by the works of the law." If you are following um Mosaic law if you're following all those Levitical commandments which I bet you aren't you're only quoting two of them out of context you will not be justified before the bar of heaven if justification comes through the law Paul says then Christ died for nothing

(32:40) so if you are obeying or calling for obedience to Levitical law then Christ died for nothing according to Paul so Christians who continue to I say all Christians continue to accept the Old Testament as scripture not so that you can obey Levitical law but because of our belief that the Hebrew prophets testify and speak of Jesus and that Jesus fulfills Old Testament law nevertheless quoting Levitical laws in order to discriminate against persons that is not a part of Christianity in fact it is a rejection of Jesus

(33:23) teachings it is not following Jesus's model it uh is also uh voiding the new covenant and rejecting Christ it's saying in Paul's words that Christ died for nothing so that's more or less where this guy is in the with the sign so that's um what I have to say about Old Testament law and the fact that it has no bearing in place at all in terms of uh adherence within Christianity and indeed there are no Christians who follow all of Mosaic law they are not all doing the the shellfish and tattoo and whatever all those other things that are in there the hundreds of commandments they're only quoting a couple out of context when they want to

(34:06) okay next let's look at some Old Testament stories and the negative and positive ways that they are um frankly repurposed in order to make them seem like they're about LGBT questions when they probably were not intended that way originally so we'll begin with the big one the myth of Sodom and Gomorrah uh the five cities of the plain known for their special wickedness that are destroyed in the book of Genesis and thereafter are used um throughout the Bible as examples of wickedness but generally when it's referred to by all

(34:49) the different prophets and even in the New Testament it's an unspecified type of wickedness what exactly um they did you're just expected to know the story so in the book of Genesis Abraham the progenitor he has a nephew named Lot lot and his family are living in the city of Sodom and uh because of the special wickedness of the inhabitants of Sodom Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain mythologically this is ideologically um supposed to have been a place before the Dead Sea was there and so this is

(35:28) actually an ideological myth that explains why there's this um wasteland around the Dead Sea the Sultan wasteland around the Dead Sea in uh Israel Palestine um so God has decided that he's going to destroy the inhabitants abraham has this uh story where he barters with God if he can just find x number of people you know would God actually spare the city and in a in a way it's a academic argument because they're not able to find anybody uh who's not wicked other than Lot's family who is uh told to depart so we read in

(36:03) chapter 19 of Genesis two angels came to Sodom in the evening and Lot was sitting by the gateway of Sodom when Lot saw when Lot saw them he rose to meet them and he bowed down with his face to the ground he said "Please my lords turn aside to your servants's house and spend the night and wash your feet then you can rise early and go on your way.

(36:36) " So Lot is expressing um the host relationship in this allimportant guest host relationship uh in the Middle East and antiquity uh the angels however says no we will spend the night in the square uh but Lot urged them strongly so they turned aside to him and entered his house and he made them a feast and he baked unleavened bread and they ate but before they laid down the men of the city the men of Sodom both young and old all the people to the last man surrounded the house and they called to Lot "Where are the men who came to you tonight bring them out to us so that we may know them." And and this is no in

(37:17) the biblical sense that is it's a euphemism that the the J source the Yahwist author uh one of the sources or voices in the um in the Pentetuk uh has for sex so um the men of Sodom you know angels may not have any gender but the men of Sodom identify them as men uh and so they want to know them they want to have sex with them and so although the action though that is planned by the men of Sodom is same-sex sex the actual act the fact that they want to sexually assault and gang rape these guys you know that's a crime regardless of what

(37:59) gender is involved so assault is assault whatever gender whatever sex and so forth it's already assault the original author of the story is not intending a blanket condemnation of same-sex activity uh the earliest writers indeed in the Bible interpret the crime actually as an abrogation of the responsibility of a host or they don't or they're just vague about what the actual problem what the sin of Sodom actually was um and so for example in the book of Ezekiel the prophet compares present day Jerusalem uh which has been destroyed with Sodom

(38:43) and he notes as I live says the Lord God Jerusalem your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done this was the guilt of your sister Sodom she and her daughters had pride excessive food and prosperous ease but they did not aid the poor and the needy so that is the sin of Sodom according to the prophet Ezekiel so um the same interpretation of the story in Genesis the idea that the inhabitants of Sodom had violated their responsibility as hosts that they hadn't given hospitality they hadn't given charity and so forth that is also found among the rabbis rabbitic Judaism in the

(39:33) Talmud as it starts to be written down in the fourth and fifth sixth centuries of the common era that doesn't mean that nobody interpreted this sexually the reinterpretation of this story to focus on sexual activity had definitely become current as of the first century of the common era and so we've had before um lectures on Josephus who is a uh Jewish Roman historian and also Pho of Alexandria who is a Jewish Roman um theologian and philosopher and both of them interpret the story of Sodom through the lens of sex

(40:17) but they are also part of the context of their time um in this age of Helenism ism and now Roman Hellenism of the Grecoman world where it has become fashionable to see sex as part of a base material world and to celebrate celibacy as relating to a higher spiritual platonic ideal and certainly um many centuries of Hellenism exposure to um pagan Greek culture has caused um for example Judeans even helanized Judeans to interpret and believe incorrectly that um that well certainly for the activity it's it is quite true but not not in

(41:08) terms of uh innate orientation but in other words that that the Greeks have been imposing foreign ideas on them and that they also opposing them in that sense because they're contrary to their uh indigenous customs so the ideas the Greeks have of um education and athletics in the nude in the gymnasium you know this practice again of pedarasti that we talked about and so forth so unfortunately then these contemporary henistic biases that are forming both within helanized Judeian society but also among Greek philosophers in general

(41:48) uh against sex as being kind of base and low that affected New Testament authors including especially Paul who has a very complicated but largely negative attitude about sex in general as we'll Um but there is also a reference uh to Sodom and interpreting Sodom in a sexual um through a sexual lens in the very short book of the Bible the Epistle of Jude um so the Epistle of Jude is primarily um a condemnation that Jude is writing to members of their own Christian community and warning them about um rival Christians that uh they

(42:36) think are not uh that have strayed from the truth and so um in verse seven of this is just one chapter long book um we read Sodom and A Gomorrah and the surrounding cities which in the same manner as they indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire so again this definitely is a um a place in the New Testament that reinterprets the story so that the situ the um the sin is not um hospitality it's not about assault and gang rape it's about sexual immorality

(43:20) and unnatural lust so in other words presumably the idea here uh this based on a Roman idea of what is natural or not um that is or a attraction of this one sex to the other nevertheless in this um interpretation the author of Jude representing the interests of the Jamesian or the Jacob and community we've had a whole lecture on um the Jacob and churches the churches that are uh looking to James the brother of Jesus and then his successors as sort of the leaders of the early Christian community as opposed to the Pauline churches

(44:04) so um this author is representing those Jamesian interests and he does seem to be making this point like I say to condemn rivals who go unnamed so he says certain intruders have stolen in among you people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly people these fake Christians who are intruding in among you they pervert the grace of our God into debauchery and they deny our only master and lord Jesus Christ so so this letter is primarily concerned with condemning these rivals and um you know it does so

(44:47) in all kinds of uh kind of bombastic comparisons so not just Sodom and Gomorrah but he compares them to Balum Cain Kora all the great villains of the Bible even also the devil so this notion though that these rivals are perverting grace into debauchery um is maybe a hint that the people that the author of Jude is talking about is Paul and Paul's uh church the leaders of Paul's church so the idea that Jude's rivals you know like I say are perverting grace um that is maybe a tell because grace is central to um Paul's theology so Paul has condemned and has

(45:34) told Christians to transcend obedience to Mosaic law and he says instead that we're justified by grace not by law we've already read that so the folks here in Jude's community are probably saying "No we have to continue to obey Mosaic law as well because if we lose that and we just rely on grace that more or less is getting rid of the law that means we're going to be able to have you know any kind of debauchery.

(46:06) " And so the reference to Sodom and sex may therefore be an espersion against Paul also because he is known uniquely for having male missionary companions instead of traveling like the other apostles like Peter and John uh with married wives because um there is this interpretation that is current when the New Testament is being written in the first century of the common era you know whatever Jude meant the coded reference locked many Christians into uh what I would say is a bad interpretation of the Sodom story for many centuries and it has a legacy with terrible results um the idea of sodomy the

(46:50) equation of of sodomy as a major sin and equating sex with sin and sex certain sexual practices and indeed um I don't know condemning everything condemning a lot of things underneath this and that has been you know ongoing laws still exist uh in the world that reference sodomy um due to this interpretation all right so that's one of the stories that was not about samesex relationship but was interpreted that way and you know had with that kind of result and legacy want to also look at a story in the Bible that has been similarly pulled

(47:33) out and used as inspiration which is also a myth the myth of Jonathan and David which has you know also similar similar issues so there's an incredible bond between Jonathan and David so David is one of the central figures in the Bible he ultimately becomes the king and is the model for kingship and indeed um Jesus in the New Testament is called the Messiah which is a you know a reference of a son of David in other words the line of David and both Luke and Matthew invent genealogies for Jesus in order to

(48:13) make him a descendant of David so David begins his life though as a shepherd boy who miraculously kills the giant Goliath with the aid of his faith in God and immediately after he does that he goes and speaks to the Israelite King Saul whose son and heir Prince Jonathan immediately becomes enamored with David as we read in 1st Samuel 18 so it says there the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul saul took David that day and would not let him return to his own

(48:59) father uh Jesse's house so then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as his own soul and Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing and he gave it to David and his armor and even his sword and his bow and his belt he gave all those to David so um this continues and uh and their relationship remains very very close and strong uh nevertheless there's a lot of drama god God's countenance has already been withdrawn from Saul so Saul was the duly appointed king but he displeased

(49:40) God and so God told the prophet Samuel to anoint another in his place and Samuel has anointed David to be the new king even though Saul is continuing to reign as king and so this sets up a background rivalry and nevertheless even though there is this potentially egregious dynastic dispute going on Jonathan and David's friendship persists and ultimately when Saul dies and is killed and Jonathan is also killed in a battle David mourns for Jonathan as we read in 2 Samuel chapter 1 he laments with the famous phrase "How

(50:18) the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle jonathan lies slain among your high places i am distressed for you my brother Jonathan greatly beloved were you to me your love to me was wonderful passing the love of women so um once again the story here is composed you know long before the awareness of inborn sexual orientation so that's not what any of the authors are aware of however you know this ideal because it's in literature this ideal of male love that is surpassing the love of women you know that has caused the relationship the literary relationship

(51:02) between Jonathan and David to be seen as an ideal depending on what the poet and the writer or whoever is reading it and reading into it so this can be an ideal for male male platonic friendship so straight guys being great and incredible friends together and having a bond that's more than they have even with their wives but it has also been uh viewed as an ideal for um men who are in love so same-sex love matches and that same tradition goes back for millennia um I think the one of the sad parts that we have right now in the 21st century that hopefully

(51:42) we'll be able to get past before too long is you know in the in the aftermath of the um the gay coming out component of the gay civil rights uh movement you know that was coupled by a a homophobic reaction where um where straight male gender identity involved having to also not be seen as gay and so therefore um you know there has been a a u there had been a lot more ways for straight guys who are friends to show affection for each other much more easily prior to that time period and part of the ongoing and increasing isolation that happens I

(52:32) think in the straight male community you know is the inability to you know have these kinds to show this kind of affection because the old-fashioned fear of being seen as gay people need to get over that now who cares if people think you're gay or whatever it is instead you need you know hopefully there's going to be a way to model um uh for to model straight male identity that also includes being able to um show affection for your friends and so like I say in this case this story provides a potential model and influence for both uh both types of relationships so that's

(53:12) how I those stories i want to look at Old Testament stories that in some ways are not really about um uh LGBTQ things but have been interpreted that way for negative and positive in negative and positive ways uh now we'll look at Jesus direct statements about samesex activity so what does Jesus have to say in terms of um prohibiting people from same sex activity or anything like that and of course the answer is nothing nothing is said on that at all so uh for people who think that this is the the biggest thing in the world or a huge source of sin or

(53:51) anything like that that's certainly not something that was um if so it's not something that was mentioned nor does uh nor does that frankly fit with what we have in terms of the entire spirit of the inclusive gospel proclaimed by Jesus and so let's look a little bit at that so although many ancient people expected the savior or the messiah to be born as a worldly king to rule a political kingdom that's not how uh the Jesus is born either as a historical Jesus nor in um the literary version in the gospels

(54:33) and ultimately when Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God on earth he does not do so in a way that gives preference on the basis of noble birth gender status wealth he's not born you know into the Heesman or Makabe dynasty or into the imperial family in Rome um doesn't immediately go and preach to kings or preach to kings at all he doesn't say hey you you men we're going to be a um we only you can be disciples women are also disciples and certainly in terms of uh wealthy people who want to follow him um he sort of famously told them well

(55:19) then take all your possessions sell them give the proceeds to the poor and come follow me that's a tough uh thing to do if you have a lot of wealth and so Jesus um was definitely more about saying actually blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom you know Jesus in his ministry is continually reaching out to groups that are marginalized by his society so people who are viewed as unclean like people suffering leprosy people who are seen as collaborators with the Roman state doing unclean activities like tax collecting that prevents them from being part of the congregations

(56:03) synagogues people who are sex workers like prostitutes whose um employment is seen as being sinful so Jesus does not exclude them in from his ministry and indeed he includes them without judging them and his goal is to heal their relationships with the community so for example in the Gospel of Luke chapter 7 a character named Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus to his home for dinner and while Jesus is reclining there a sinful woman we read essentially a female prostitute comes and anoints Jesus feet with precious oil simon observing this

(56:50) he says "If Jesus were a true prophet he'd know this woman's nature he'd realize immediately that uh that she was sinful he'd stand up and condemn her." But the fact that he doesn't do it he must mean he's not he doesn't even get it he doesn't realize he doesn't know what I even know he must not be a true prophet but Simon's reasoning is all wrong jesus knows who the woman is and knowing who she is he does not condemn her rather he condemns Simon his host because he says this woman here she has offered hospitality the kind of hospitality that Simon ought to have given him as a host

(57:29) which Simon didn't do so Jesus is not inquiring into the private life of this woman he's not condemning the woman he's actually um lauding her and he's uh who would otherwise would have been marginalized and you know left out of the out of the congregation and instead he condemns uh the guy who has the status and wealth jesus also taught his disciples to love your neighbors and when someone in a multitude in Luke chapter 10 uh in response to that uh commandment in the in in that teaching I mean um asks the question of Jesus well who is my

(58:13) neighbor jesus tells the very celebrated parable of the Samaritan and although a lot of people um have have listened to that story and thought that the point of that story is that Christians should help people they find in the road actually the story is teaching that even though Samaritans the traditional ethnic rivals or the Judeian people even though you normally would not expect anything good of them uh the Samaritan is the one who actually behaves as a neighbor and so Jesus is actually inviting his listeners to um

(58:55) overturn their own biases look at their blind spots realize wait a second um I we're not sitting around here condemning Samaritans anymore samaritans are going to be included in this new Christian community and indeed um we have a lot of indications for example in the gospel of John that many Samaritans have joined the Johannian community the community that produces that gospel um there's another u emblematic story of inclusion inclusion of a Samaritan when Jesus comes and invites uh or preaches the gospel to you know oneonone to a Samaritan woman at the well

(59:37) so in John chapter 4 Jesus deliberately travels to Samaria which is a region that's between Judea and Galilee the home of the Samaritans who like I say have been um during the second temple period uh rivals of the Judeans and he sits down by the well of Jacob both the Samaritans and the Judeans consider Jacob uh who's also biblically known as Israel to be their ancestor and indeed the heartland of Jacob is Samaria um and Jesus there encounters a Samaritan woman at the well who has come to draw water jesus says to her "Give me

(1:00:20) a drink." And the Samaritan woman said to him "How is it that you a Jew ask of me a drink of me as a woman of Samaria?" So so in this just little conversation here Jesus is breaking social convention three times over jesus is not concerned with social conventions but what he's doing here he's sharing his message with a Samaritan so that's one time and she's also a woman which you're not supposed to do an unaccompanied man and woman shouldn't be speaking but then also point number three this particular woman is living an unconventional lifestyle

(1:00:58) that again would cause her to be seen as sinful presumably so Jesus says to her "Go call your husband and come back." The woman answered him "I have no husband." Jesus said to her "You're right in saying,"I have no husband for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband what you have said is true.

(1:01:29) " And when he describes her life to him the woman says to him "Sir I see you are a prophet." So she knows she can see that he knows things about her that uh he otherwise should not have the ability to know so Jesus does not tell the Samaritan woman who is living with a man who is not her husband who is co cohabitating he doesn't say you're living in sin repent you know go and sin no more or anything like that even you know he doesn't condemn that cohabitation he's not concerned with policing the private lives the private sex lives of people quite the opposite he instead um preaches the gospel to her

(1:02:05) she recognizes him as the Messiah she gets a testimony and she immediately she leaves her jar behind and she immediately goes to her town and starts to uh become an Christian apostle herself converting many Samaritans to Christianity so um it has nothing to do then with this kind of sto social norms that are intrinsic you know to the society that Jesus is reforming um we have another story in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus heals a slave boy of a centurion so like I said although Jesus does not explicitly speak about same-sex sexual

(1:02:49) activity uh anywhere in the gospels in this story in Luke he does interact with a Roman official in Capernaum uh city little town in Galilee and that we we can imply or infer maybe that that uh centurion may be engaging in a same-sex sexual relationship so we read a centurion there in Capernium had a slave whom he valued highly who was ill and close to death and when that centurion heard about Jesus he sent some Jewish elders to Jesus asking him to come and heal his slave so you know by by right by law Roman noblemen had total control over their

(1:03:36) enslaved over enslaved persons that are in their households and it was very common for them to use enslaved people both female and male sexually and that is not something that Romans um judged that was within bounds that's a different society that that we were we are living in so if the centurion highly valued his slave because he was engaged in such a relationship a sexual relationship that would have been very normal and legal under Roman law and although you know we several scholars have made the suggestion that that's what we're seeing here we can't know the nature of the relationship why because

(1:04:15) Jesus again does not inquire into the centurion's personal life lots of people might expect that that's what's going on uh just based on the context that doesn't interest Jesus instead he uh has the boy healed and then he praises the centurion's faith turning to the crowd that were following behind him Jesus said "I tell you not even in Israel have I found such faith as this centurion has displayed.

(1:04:51) " And when those who had been sent returned to the house of the centurion they found the slave in good health so that is not it was not a repent and then then we'll see about it or something like that or anything like that rather it is taking people who are not allowed into the um congregation synagogue because of they're seen as sinful and saying no all are going to be able to be part of community so um that's my description anyway and summary of this inclusive gospel proclaimed by Jesus modeled by Jesus and so on um and that brings us to um finally problematic statements that are made by Paul and his enemies um so we

(1:05:39) already read potentially a statement um by Paul's enemy in the uh epistle of Jude if indeed that's what is being talked about in that coded um letter but Paul himself has samesex sex on his mind along with a lot of other ideas he has about sex so like I say Paul devotes significant attention to sex in his letters and I think these um statements that he makes betray his general bias against sex and he's definitely um promotes as an ideal living a life of celibate that see that's is um not engaging in sex with

(1:06:24) anybody and that is the way he is living his life as he says in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 7 he says to the unmarried and the widows in the congregation I say it is good for them to remain unmarried the same way that I'm unmarried But if they are not practicing self-control in the old sex department then they should marry for it is better to marry than to be a flame with passion so you know if you are living this higher platonic philosophical life like I'm doing you know where you're exercising total self-control and just

(1:07:06) um being a celibate and not having sex at all then that's the ideal if you if you can't if you don't have that kind of self-control then the the get out of jail free card for making this um sin into not sin is having it just between a married couple so go ahead and get married so like I say celibacy for Paul is the ideal but um you know he advises people who don't have the kind of self-control to marry that same you know general bias about sex then is the context for his condemnation of a whole bunch of sexual

(1:07:43) activities in that same letter in chapter 6 so we read he says "Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God do not be deceived the sexually immoral idoltors." So um Paul often associates idolatry that is to say paganism worshiping the pagan gods with sexual immorality as we'll see so sexual immor immoral adulterers adulterers people um having sex with married people outside of marriage um male prostitutes we'll put a little star on that word and how do we translate it men in who engage in illicit sex little obelisk there

(1:08:32) along with thieves the greedy drunkers revelers swindlers bunch of other people who are doing things that are bad in Paul's eyes those are probably all are all bad things the last ones none of these will inherit the kingdom of God so um the two words on this list that I put a little star next to where we're translating in the New Revised Standard Version update edition are being translated as male prostitutes and men who engage in illicit sex so these are the words in the first place Malacos and uh arenocoes

(1:09:09) and so these are both very unusual words they are very rarely used the second one is actually coined by Paul and hadn't didn't exist before Paul said it and so as a result of that whenever we have a a word that is really unusual it's subject to some debate you might translate it a number of different ways because we don't have a lot of other context to see how it's translated so malacose um the root of this word it's not usually in this form but at the root of it carries the meaning in Greek of soft or luxurious or dainty and people who

(1:09:47) are using related words in Paul's day generally are using it as a projorative and so you know it can variously be translated as being affeminate or being you know something a word that you would apply to male prostitutes or catamites and so that's how it's sometimes translated and so we can easily see that you know um you know we just have seen Jesus's example of not condemning prostitutes and here Paul is you know potentially condemning you know prostitutes male prostitutes but the idea I presume presumably would be Paul's idea is that

(1:10:27) they need to reform and stop being a prostitute um our senuitees here though that like I say is probably coined by Paul the word wasn't used before he uses it and people afterwards use it quoting him um and so the roots are meaning like male and bed and so it's like male bedding um and so this may be coined by Paul because of that um verse in Leviticus if a man lies with a man um that uses in the Greek translation that Paul would have been reading it by arenos quaint so it's using those two words and he maybe has has glombmed them together in order to try to echo

(1:11:13) Levitical law and so this is would then be a example of where Paul you know is often inconsistent he when he's talking about things that he wants to um condemn in the law and practices he doesn't want people to do so he doesn't want people to get circumcised even though um even though that's commanded in the law and he doesn't want them to you know keep kosher and not be able to share meals with with non u non-Israelites people who are not keeping kosher he he will return to the law like this in order to um condemn things that he's opposed to

(1:11:51) like sex so like I say since this word is original to Paul it's not one of the normal Greek words for same-sex sex as you could imagine there's a lot of same-sex activity in ancient Greek and so they have words for this thing you don't need to make up new words the way Paul did it's impossible to really confirm what Paul is intending to this so some scholars say well maybe what he means here is um a man raping another man or something like that and so in which case it would be more like the the Sodom story when you're talking about a rape or an assault that's a crime

(1:12:25) regardless of what the genders are so that same word you know so nuites makes its way into a second laundry list against sex and other sins that's found in first Timothy so first Timothy is a pseudopigrial letter that is written in Paul's name we read in chapter one of that letter the law is laid down for the righteous uh is not laid down for the righteous but for the lawless and disobedient for god for the godless and sinful for the unholy and profane and for those who will kill their father or mother or for murderers it's for the

(1:13:02) sexually immoral it's for men who engage in elic sex thieves the greedy drunkers re revelers swindlards none of these will inherit the kingdom of God you know so once again um even though elsewhere in authentic writings of Paul um he has a big formulation against law and why we're not under the law and that we're not justified by the law nevertheless um when he wants to condemn certain things he'll fall back on the law and use it this way and so does his uh follower who is uh forging a letter in Paul's name here in first Timothy so whatever

(1:13:42) meaning of the exact terms um you know if we go back to that list in Corinthians that includes adulterers and sexually immoral immoral so regardless everybody who's you know engaging in sexual activity outside of marriage at all is on Paul's uh bad list uh again because of his personal bias in favor of celibacy and so beyond these references we also have Paul's thoughts in his letter to the Romans where he again connects idolatry that is Greek paganism and sex and he is describing that as part of the general state of the

(1:14:22) world that the world has fallen into after um Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden of Eden so this is in a way a pre-formulation for what uh Augustine will later call original sin so Paul says "Ever since the creation of the world God's eternal power and divine nature invisible though they are have been seen and understood through the things that God had made so they are without excuse for though they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless

(1:15:02) hearts were darkened claiming to be wise they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the mortal immortal god for images resembling a mortal human or birds or for-footed animals or reptiles so this is Paul's um mythical u thought experiment about how paganism came to be so people you know aren't able to see uh the invisible god and so seeing creation they become foolish they assume that all of the forces uh are the result of gods and then they make statues like the Greek uh statues of gods or you know in the case of

(1:15:49) Egyptians ones with animal heads and so forth um and that's how paganism arises therefore God gave them over in their desires of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who was blessed forever amen so so they are again now worshiping gods and gods are essentially um you know they're false gods it's just a creature it's just a an image a statue um no matter how handsome and beautiful Greek

(1:16:30) statues are they're they are a lie according to Paul for this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions their females exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural and in the same way also the males giving up natural intercourse with females were consumed with their passionate desire for one another males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the due penalty of their error and so you know this is Paul's again description of his caricature of Greek paganism you know

(1:17:05) with its um same-sex customs and why does this happen according to Paul well they've they've created these false images of gods that are very attractive and so they become naturally attractive to those images and he's also then building this on his perspective about what is natural and what is unnatural and this is just a basic context behind around him so ancient perspectives you know about what is unnatural are not of course informed by modern knowledge of biology so we're aware of inborn sexual in orientation

(1:17:52) and so if we were if we were to characterize what's natural or not if you you know are male and you are have samesex orientation you know it would be natural for you to be attracted to another man and maybe we would then say unnatural for you to be attracted to a woman you're not the reason why you're not attracted to it because of your orientation and so that's entirely natural as we understand it but of course it's certainly not the understanding that they had in the past when they're unaware of a lot of these things so in his review Paul is not

(1:18:26) giving a revelation about what God sees as natural or unnatural rather he is simply relying on ideas about nature that are current in his context in his background the Greco Roman world and so for example Romans believed that it was natural for men to penetrate that is like a a very big idea in in um Roman philosophy but also culture men penetrate women are penetrated and indeed this is why Romans for Romans it's not a big deal um for a Roman nobleman to have sex with a slave boy because he's still penetrating someone whereas it would be a scandal and was a

(1:19:14) scandal in the Roman world for men to take the female role that is to be penetrated because that was viewed as unnatural based on their completely you know not biologically based understanding of what is natural and unnatural and Greek philosophers you know including Plato also um talked about similar ideas like this though it was different but in any event um this idea of natural and unnatural is a contemporary idea based on Grecoman thought Henistic thought Henistic Jewish thought that Paul is it was Paul's

(1:19:54) context it is not something that God is telling him by revelation nor is it meant to be read that way although many people who read it in the Bible take it that way today so again Paul's reliance on contemporary false Greco Roman no not notions about the nature of sexuality you know it's really akin to the vision of the world presented by Old Testament prophets so the Old Testament book of Genesis for example when it's describing the flood and so forth the authors perfectly much believed based on their present- day context that the world was flat that it was covered by a um a

(1:20:34) hemispheric dome that was called a firmament and so on the fact that these prophets though believe the world was flat doesn't mean that the world was flat although some people in modern times would like to revive this flat earth theory that has been you know completely discredited as of New Testament times to the present um nor though does it mean that their religious teachings are false rather it reminds us that the Bible is not a science textbook and so these prophets don't know calculus they don't know geography they don't know nature in terms of human

(1:21:11) sexuality and nothing that they say on that topic is therefore informed so Paul also um as we many people have pointed out has his own struggles with temptation he's living as a celibate man um Paul associates idolatry with like we saw in the letter to Romans desire for samesex sexual activity and so the fact that Greeks created these statues of male gods that were incredibly attractive he believes or what caused male pagans to develop dishonorable passions paul though also struggled with a persistent temptation which in his second letter to the Corinthians he describes as a thorn given me in the

(1:22:01) flesh so that's a um a metaphor but we don't know what it's a metaphor for because he doesn't say so plenty of scholars have speculated that this thorn might refer to inborn same-sex attraction which in turn would account for Paul's particular focus on sex in general on same-sex sexuality in particular and indeed on his personal developing his personal ideal of celibacy and if that is the case if um if Paul kind of was in that boat and had had struggles with it even though there's no indication that he wasn't anything but celibate then it may well be that when his enemies

(1:22:49) um are referring to Sodom in the Epistle of the Jude if that's indeed what is happening like I say that may be a swipe at uh Paul and saying that the reason why he wants to eliminate law is so that um and just be justified by grace uh may be because he wants to be less is the the this argument so like we said Paul's reflections on same-sex attraction have led a bunch of scholars including um the late bishop John Shelby Spong to conclude that the apostle was in fact a celibate gay man it's very hard to determine that for historical figures but this was Spong's uh conclusion so he says that Paul was a

(1:23:37) rigidly controlled gay male he believes who taught the Christian church what love the love of God actually means and that comes from his book rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism so whatever is the case with Paul he is an influential voice but he is not a lawgiver paul's communities thrived over time and over time Christians began to read his letters to congregations as general scripture and it eventually becomes canonized as a New Testament and added to a Bible however viewing these texts or indeed any part

(1:24:15) of the New Testament canon as religious law to be followed strictly you know pharisaically you know that completely misses the point of Christianity that Paul generally argues for that Jesus argues for in the Gospels that the other writers of the New Testament argue for in other words um Judaism and Islam are largely about law and interpretation of law christianity is about Christ and uh and and the principles and following the spirit as opposed to rigidly looking for a new list of commandments and in scripture

(1:25:00) so what can we say then about u the Bible and what it's talking about any of these things um this is the Bible is an ongoing is a dialogue that is ongoing for Christians so there are many additional voices that are part of the conversation in the New Testament and they directly counter Paul's personal idiosyncrasies about a host of things but including sex and so as we read in the um various gospel accounts where I was showing you know some of how Jesus behavior is modeled in the gospels the focus on these is of inclusion jesus having a personal disinterest in

(1:25:40) policing personal sex lives he's also instead condemns those who do focus on such things inviting he who's without sin to cast the first stone and telling people to judge not condemning as um as hypocrites people who uh are so busy seeing the moat in their neighbor's eye that they don't see the beam in their own eye so all of these examples condemning judging others counters um Paul's various condemnations of of section people's personal lives and so through all of this hopefully we've covered through kind of the scope of the presentation that I wanted to hit an analysis of Old

(1:26:27) Testament law and why um it is not incumbent on Christians why Christians absolutely should not be adhering ing to Levitical law and should not certainly not be quoting a couple of verses out of it in order to um uh abuse others which is itself a sin um we also looked at the Old Testament stories of Sodom and Gomorrah how that is been misinterpreted with negative legacies we uh looked at the story of Jonathan and David as an ideal that has been interpreted again maybe misinterpreted but but with as a

(1:27:07) positive ideal for both platonic straight male friendships and for um literarily among poets and so forth for um for gay people who were living in oppressive times certainly that was um a model that I had even growing up as a kid when um when you know it was a darker time and I hadn't come out to myself yet or anyone else uh we also look at the fact that Jesus doesn't have any direct statements condemning same-sex activity but in general is instead telling people um positive pronouncements love everyone love others God is love and so forth

(1:27:49) and we also went through the entire inclusive spirit of the gospel proclaimed by Jesus which was all about bringing people on the margins of society people had been incl excluded by the synagogue by the congregation um for things that included um um private sexual lives and things like that that were uh that you even public things in terms of sex workers things that precluded them from being part of society otherwise or brought in and not condemned by Jesus and finally we tried to work our way through these

(1:28:31) problematic statements of which much is made uh that Paul makes in Corinthians that his um one of his followers makes in Timothy and then Paul kind of dwells on in kind of a an interesting but in a way strange way in Romans that may also give us a window into him and him his own um issues and of course then there's also the interpretation of the Sodom story that's given in the letter of Jude and so the Bible's multiple voices all coming from a place of you know actual biological ignorance nevertheless give

(1:29:09) competing messages on LGBT topics and like I say we are then invited into the dialogue and so that is my take on is the Bible anti-LGBT i'm going to get uh a glass of water as Landro compiles your comments and questions it's probably I presume a very good discussion on this this is not a controversial topic at all so So uh Phil thank you for your support fire Ever Living thank you for your support anderson Tan thank you for your support dave Anderson thank you for your support magi Mike thank you for your support magi Mike also asks "Do you

(1:29:56) think um there is conflation between moral violation and social taboss in modern times some have visceral reactions to homosexuality that do not correlate with unethical behavior." Yes absolutely so again once um so there's always social taboss there's always um uh the inher the inherited um social norms and separating um separating ethics from those kind of things is is kind of very hard to do and certainly um you know even you know even as you know radical as uh Jesus Jesus's movement is presented in the gospels you

(1:30:44) know but especially by the time um the church becomes extremely institutionalized when it becomes patronized by the Roman emperors and then ultimately becomes state religion in late antiquity and throughout the middle ages then the church really is in the um becomes it's in in the business of policing social norms uh and so then so then there becomes a complete conflation between um between social taboss and and and morality and so as a result I mean I think we have had to in modern times um separate the words

(1:31:23) ethics from morality because people's morals are so confused by the inheritance of of social norms which have nothing to do with ethics uh often or but are simply in fact actually are often and very unethical because they are um uh entrenched you know supporting entrenched uh inequities like in most cases all of these that relate to sex the entrenched uh inequity is patriarchy so every time a Christian leader wants to uh police the sex lives of of of somebody in their um in their congregation that is ultimately something that is done in support of

(1:32:04) patriarchy it's ultimately sexist so it's ultimately um based on that kind of a sin unfortunately on the part of the the person who's doing the policing not the person being policed uh Anders and Alistister says "Do we have any evidence that Jewish people carried out death sentences for offenses like adultery in Roman and pre- Roman times could the Jews execute people in some instances and not in others?" So like for example in that story Andrew I think you're like talking about the um you know the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8 and so lots of commentators will say that you know

(1:32:46) Jesus is not alone in um in how in how he's uh he's he's doing this a special way the way he did this was a was an innovative response uh to the people that were coming to test him uh about what he was going to say about the law but but there were all sorts of other ways that um that other Jewish leaders at the times would have been able to get out of um out of executing their neighbors and so you have to have uh witnesses there has to be all kinds of um you know two witnesses there has to be all kinds of

(1:33:24) um of details and the people would be able to um be able to subvert the the legal requirements to the extent that that the the execution or the stoning is very rarely or almost never going to happen and so that is was also probably pretty common in the background so it's not like everybody um you know it's like in the life of Brian it's such a great movie you know like where uh where all you know all the old man uh Matias did was he's having dinner and he says that piece of halibet was good enough for Jehovah and the fact that he said Jehovah is a stoning offense and so then

(1:34:01) they're all you know going to go stone him there isn't there isn't like all of these uh gravel shops where people are going to stonings all the time uh the way it's described in you know in the in in the life of Brian and so so to your point I think that there isn't there it isn't happening a whole bunch nevertheless there are stories uh given in Josephus where you know at times of turmoil especially um uh people are getting executed in some cases by mobs there's uh uh there's stories preserved in Christian tradition like um in the

(1:34:38) book of acts where uh where Steven who's called the proto martyr is is stoned for things he says so um so there is it's I think that some of this is happening but it isn't like it's it's hugely widespread or anything like that and there are other ways that the Pharisees for example are working to ameliorate things to make um the practice more fair and more just uh le Leslie uh uh says "Hey Leslie good to have you here with us.

(1:35:16) " He says "How can we avoid judging same-sex relationships do you have an idea how we can carefully deal with the persons and still maintain our respect and care for them?" Scripture references or elsewhere um well so I mean one of the I mean a scripture reference about judging and things like that is you know you know judge not so we can avoid but we we it may be difficult culturally um because we innately judge people so you may not you know no matter how much um I want to not judge people I have all kinds of inherented biases that I have and so when I walk around the streets of the city and um

(1:35:58) people are let's say very close to here we have across the you know in the block away we have one of the um uh the safe injection sites for drugs and so when people are in just a terrible condition on the streets because of drugs you know you innately immediately kind of want to judge them and we should instead of making these kinds of blanket judgments be um thoughtful of the individual in the case of um breaking down our biases about same-sex relationships the best way Leslie I think has been to always um

(1:36:37) just talk to individual people and hear their stories um one of the the whole ways that we had progress in you know North America and plenty of other places in terms of um LGBTQ human rights movement um which I've been involved in since the 90s um is because of the coming out uh strategy so where people who were gay but who were hiding that life came out and and and lived in public um like I've done my whole life since uh again the early 90s and and then just telling your story and we certainly did that in this

(1:37:18) church so as this church was working on moving to be more affirming and more inclusive um uh we had the uh Harmony which is our LGBTQ um affiliate charity um helped publish I helped publish with them uh two books that shared the stories of how for example um the church was hurting people who were members of the church who wanted nothing other than to um you know to be accepted to worship God and so on uh and so that those stories sharing those stories changed hearts and minds and I think that that kind of thing is the best strategy um Raymond Ortiz says "Is it Paul or the

(1:38:10) author speaking for Paul I'm sorry is is it Paul or the author speaking for Paul sharing their own opinion on how they feel of certain issues?" Um so so yeah I mean in some cases you know what you know what is Paul trying to do so Paul like I say or the author of Timothy those guys are not um writing books that they imagine are going to be pages that are bound together in a Bible um so Paul may not in some cases just simply be writing a a a letter to his congregations that he's planted he is writing um letters for public consumption and he's using all the skills of Greek rhetoric to do that he's

(1:38:54) arguing for his own vision of how Christianity should be lived but but yeah it's his own vision for how Christianity should be lived and that's why I say you have to also put you know his vision up against the vision of the author of Luke and Acts or the author of Matthew or the author of John the authors of John and so so that we can see that they aren't all agreeing with each other and in some cases you know seemingly for example the author of Jude may be very antagonistic to Paul and so forth and so um and so it's not that what they've crafted

(1:39:35) so what they've crafted they were not trying to craft some kind of rule book that we're going to uh to all be experts on the law as we are trying to be obedient to verses as if they were a law rather they are laying down principles and showing how we are to um be one in Christ and live accordance in accordance with the spirit interpreting what is the what is good and just to do in our day based on those principles and so that so in that sense yeah Paul is giving his vision to congregations that he's planted about how he feels on certain issues but um it's been then

(1:40:15) interpretated interpreted authoritatively as if it's some kind of a rule book and that's not what it was intended and it's not what it is darthur Rama um do you think the Jonathan David story is reminiscent of the epic of Gilgamesh so in some sense yes because um because again the that epic of Gilgamesh is um the ultimate archetype or the archetype the original for the um u the perfect male friendship so so Gilgamesh is um you know a wild man and he's powerful and uh and there's nothing that can stop him and so the the gods um you know make

(1:40:58) a a companion for him and Ku and Ku is the wild man actually anyway to um in order to to use up some of his his energy in a positive way and so then they become you know incredible uh close friends and warrior companions they're they have a love then together that um surpasses that of love for that either one of them have for women um and then Enkitu loses his virtue with the woman but anyway they all they all um uh Enkitu dies in in battle which then finally gives Gilgamesh his um his idea that he himself is also mortal and

(1:41:42) so he also mourns then in Kedu in the same way like you say then ultimately David who's the the hero of the David cycle has to mourn when and Jonathan is also lost as well so yeah I think that there's parallels for sure uh and Balarai says "Why do you think um conservative Christians hold on to being anti-LGBTQ based on Leviticus etc even though they had no problem negotiating away slavery corporal punishment for children and so forth um so it's just one of the um it's just one of the the list of things that got on a

(1:42:20) list uh and even abortion is one of these things this was not a high um high on anybody's priority list in the in the 40s or 50s or something like that when the culture wars began happening in the 70s when um when there became to be this this kind of big break uh between uh the fundamentalist evangelical uh right and the progressive left they started defining each other off against a bunch of issues and that included things like female ordination LGBTQ stuff um all of these kinds of things and so at a certain point you get stuck in that and so um we're now getting to a place where

(1:43:04) uh I don't know denying women leadership roles is becoming I think increasingly preposterous but you you get kind of locked into something and then you then you and then you continue to have that so I think that that's why um you know it's a almost a random collection of things that got put on a list and it could have been any number of other things um but in in part it was based on things were coming to a four right at that particular moment and so you know in the same way that you know the the Catholics kind of locked in on the anti-abortion thing too right at at like

(1:43:41) a kind of a pivotal moment in the 60s and if um if it hadn't quite happened at that time they could have been obsessed with something else so I think it's a it's a historical happen stance what what gets on the list and what doesn't uh Ninhopteep says "As clothing conventions have changed so much over time wouldn't that alone invalidate the taboo on males wearing female clothing and vice versa?" Absolutely so um that's another one of these Levitical uh Levitical verses that people like to uh to quote again has no

(1:44:18) not incumbent at all on um on Christians like no none of these Levitical commandments there's nevertheless misused in that way by people sometimes uh and in terms of that it again you're you're like you're pointing out the reality is that social norms are constantly evolving the thing that you might be holding to as so incredibly important as if you think that that's been the way it's been for 2,000 years or something like that ever since the Garden of Eden And it's not you're you're inheriting something the entire um you know uh idea of the nuclear

(1:44:55) family with the you know the the woman staying home taking care of the two kids the man going out to work this is a um a a a blink in history that anything like that existed uh and not something that the way it always was or anything like that same thing as you point out with um with clothes so so as of um the 19th century um the the colors for uh little baby boy was was pink and the little baby girls was baby blue because red was seen as the masculine color and blue as the as the feminine color but over time those flip-flopped and so and

(1:45:38) so again trends just change and fashion changes and so um there the idea of it was um well for one thing the idea of a levitical commandment people don't aware that that change is happening at all so the authors of Levitical commandments are not aware of change or in as much as there is change they're trying to stop change so it comes from unawareness of how life actually works kinetic says "If Paul um was throwing out the letter of Mosaic law why would he still consider homosexual acts a sin to the level that it keeps his mind humble in the face of

(1:46:19) revelations given to him by God?" So um so kinetic like I was saying um so when he is in focused on his big ideas then and when he's also fighting with rivals who um are trying to say look all of your non-Jewish um pagan converts who have become into Christianity they all have to start adhering to uh Jewish law and Mosaic law in the limited ways that we understand that as early mid 1st century Christians and Paul says no they don't have to they can be part of the commun community by simply you know uh

(1:47:00) following the understanding and precepts that we have now within Christianity and people who are Jewish Christians they can maybe continue to maintain um those practices but those are distinctive or ethnic practices those are not moral practices and so so when he is arguing with his rivals and saying those kinds of things he will um uses big ideas and big lens and condemn the law of Moses he says it's uh you know again chiseled in stone it's the it's the um it's the law of death or the the religion of death the covenant of death um whereas though

(1:47:39) um his he he is himself you know he's been a Pharisee he has been a person who zealously studied the law and so it's deeply imbued in his own thinking and so when he's making basic justifications for his own things that he's interested in that are not those big um arguments that he's making with his rivals where he's undercutting you know uh obedience to the law generally he'll just fall back on saying "Well it says in the law you should do this.

(1:48:10) " And so he'll use that to justify his his various um notions that he has that he's trying to push um Fire Ever Living says "What's the best way to build at least a bit of common ground with biblical literalists on this issue since they will reject most of what you've said in this lecture?" Yeah that's it's not easy right um so again I would use that same um you know that same strategy that I that I talked to uh to Leslie about you know so I think that in general sharing stories is a way to open hearts um I think that um I think that when you're just doing these kinds

(1:48:54) of Bible verse um yelling at each other or whatever it's it's again coming from a such a misconception of what the Bible is that it's you are only going to ever be able to talk past each other um unfortunately um there is not a lot of common ground so for my pos my position is that biblical literalism is akin to Bible worship it's Bible idolatry and so it is worshiping the Bible as an idol which is preventing you from actually uh being in relationship with Christ and God and so that's not common ground so

(1:49:32) but I mean we're in very different places um and so you can make um common ground personal human arguments or connections by by sharing stories and by um by having you know goodwill even if you even if you can't agree on on essentials uh due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what u what the Bible is uh Josh Bedford I'm for gay marriage and I have seen how gay couples can be pillars of the community more generally what principle can we have for discerning good community guidelines we without becoming adamistic uh libertarians

(1:50:15) well so so I don't think that any of this you know I know that anytime um there is an argument against literal and strict legalism that um that people you know there's a baby the bathwater argument or whatever that once we once we let up um you know the the strict rules and suddenly you know everything's going to turn to want and debauchery and that is certainly the argument that is made in in the epistle of Jude which says if you believe that um uh that you're justified by grace if you think that um that Christ came to save everybody then that

(1:50:54) is the and that you don't have to obey Mosaic law then that's a the the quick road to debauchery but it doesn't have to be um a road to debauchery and it certainly doesn't have to lead to um libertarianism because uh the whole principle expressed um in the Christian gospel is building sacred community being part of uh a kingdom of God a kingdom of heaven on earth and that is when we are um experiencing all of these things together by loving neighbor as self so um when we are in that kind of right relationship with one another that's you

(1:51:37) know kind of the opposite of of total self-focus and only focusing on your own individual um liberties and making sure that no one is constraining uh your personal rights because you're instead u motivated by selflessness you are you are seeing Christ in the faces of others in your in your neighborhood and you are um acting out of a sense of wanting everyone to be um doing better so that the whole world the whole community can be uh a better place so um I think that that's you know how we kind of kind of if we keep our focus on that on motivation motivation uh for wanting to

(1:52:19) do good for goodness's own sake not just for your own um self-interest although it's in your self-interest uh loving others because you love love you love that idea um as opposed to just so that you can be loved in return whereas but you probably may well be when you're a loving person also receive love so so the self um is still fulfilled you don't have to operate um you know as a martyr in doing this because um there are going to most likely be good results even if you're not you know kind of radically policing your own um your own self-interest and

(1:52:59) making sure that no one's infringing on you um Prashant Sharma says "What is the significance of Jesus sitting on the ground to write something before uh speaking to the woman who was taken in adultery is he writing some new law regarding sexuality?" There is nothing um in the story to indicate that he's writing a new law i would say he's certainly not doing that um we don't know what he's writing so there's it's not said that's not supplied in the story so um you know lots of people have have decided or you know propo made proposals of what's going on what he's doing um it is a it is a wellcraftrafted

(1:53:41) narrative and so essentially um what's happening is you know again when when these people who have are coming up to confront him um the uh scribes and Pharisees that are accusing the woman are not actually interested in the woman they are using her in order to test Jesus according to the story they're trying to trap him and so he is refusing to fall into the trap so he doesn't answer them and so the significance of him pausing sitting writing on the ground and things like that is showing that he is not um you know not going to be you know playing their game and so

(1:54:21) forth and so then and so then when they they press him afterwards that's when he he turns the accusation back on them and then as you say at the end he hasn't he hasn't um questioned the woman he does not care about what her life was like what she was doing how she came to be in this circumstance he addresses her though as an individual once they're gone and then he says you know where are your accusers you know are does no one is there no one here to accuse you and she says no one sir and he says "I do not accuse you

(1:54:52) either." And so and so he's not so he's not writing a new law about sexuality but it's part of the in a way the dramatic pause what is exactly being said is speculative yeah it's uh the whole thing as you say John there's like a certain dramatic way that Jesus is you know he has the attention of all the all the public all the all the people at the temple and he kneels down and he stands up and as he does that that's when when these things are happening and you know and then one by one people are leaving once again like in a like a very theatrical exit yeah yep exactly yeah so

(1:55:32) it's a it's an it's one of the most well-crafted narratives in the New Testament it's really spectacular um Anton says uh how was female homosexuality thought of in biblical times it's interesting that Leviticus doesn't mention it at all though Paul does so yeah um so so the Levitical code is especially interested in you know it's it's a purity code for priests and and so it is somehow the priests haven't thought of this that you know I mean if if anything that they think of they condemn but they failed to think of um of of female you know lesbianism to in order to condemn

(1:56:13) it as you say Paul Paul does mention it so that's the only mention we have in the Bible um is that that passage I read from um uh uh from Romans and so essentially that's part of Paul's interpretation of why um samesex activity and also why um uh paganism evolved and of course it's a false it's a false history that he's made up um of you know of course paganism predates anybody believing in you know like one god you know which is a later development um Richard Martin says "My family keeps saying their pastor is reading passages from the Bible that prophesy about um

(1:57:03) the conflict in the Middle East could we get a lecture on that?" Yeah um we should talk about that so that's a that's an important one so the um we we talk about we've talked about in several lectures apocalypticism and the end of the world but maybe we should um do one specifically on on the battle of Armageddon you know and people's belief that um and unfortunately one of the pressures that is actually is causing um conflict in the Middle East is a huge uh community of um Christianists in the United States who are engaged with the

(1:57:41) you know the idea that they want the state of Israel to um to start a huge apocalyptic war so that Israel can get destroyed and everything can get destroyed and Christ will come back literally um as a result of that uh total destruction and so we should do a lecture on that yeah thanks uh Thumper says uh regarding relationships in general how does the Bible deal with the positive values uh informed consent duty of care and so forth so I mean I think that that's in some in some sense you know like with

(1:58:22) informed consent and some of these other ideas we're going to be um let's say further out in advance you know there uh of where people were in in biblical times frankly where people were 30 years ago if you watch old TV um I I was actually uh for whatever reason I was on YouTube and got prompted to watch an episode of the Love Boat which I hadn't done since I was a kid and this old TV show where about a cruise liner uh where all these guest stars come on this boat and it is essentially a a non-stop um uh

(1:59:02) sexual harassment fest you know where people are are are making propositions to each other that are are completely especially men to women that are completely uh inappropriate and so these are that I think was just part for the course back in the 70s I guess in any event um we're more aware of uh hopefully about informed consent maybe than we have been ever in the past um but hopefully also you know other other kinds of things continuously um the principles like thinking of the other you know loving other as self those principles are embedded in the Bible and certainly Jesus teachings and the gospel and so

(1:59:44) forth but um but we'd probably have to to do you know a search to immediate kind of see some of those particulars and try to try to find resonance in in some of the verses for some of those uh Jeremy Brown says "I'm far behind." But is John familiar uh with the idea that in Jude 1:7 the Greek words translated as pursued unnatural lust is more literally pursued other flesh and that the crime is maybe sex with angels and so yeah that's that is um I am aware of that so that's why it's not entirely clear um you know Jude 1 is the epistle of

(2:00:28) Jude is very wide ranging and um and so that pursued other flesh and the crime of sex with angels is the um you know is is a is another potential way to interpret uh you know their their interpretation of the Sodom story in other words it doesn't necessarily focus on same-sex uh ideas but it in fact is talking about men trying to rape angels which would be like you say other flesh but even so whatever the this thing means and like I say Jude is is very coded so we can't know precisely what it means what the way it's been interpreted unfortunately the legacy that it's had

(2:01:09) has been to um to have Christians read the Sodom and Gomorrah story through a very narrow lens that is almost especially focused on you know condemning same-sex all samesex uh sexuality unfortunately okay and Darthur Rama says "As a Star Trek fan what do you think about Dharmach Angelott Tanagra?" So the episode Dharmach is one of my favorite episodes out of the Star Trek the Next Generation and so in this story um um Captain Bicard and a and an alien who is inscrable who can't whose whose um whose language can't be translated

(2:01:56) unlike the normal magic of Star Trek with the universal translator because it is emerges that um that the entirety of the language is told through metaphor and so um and so the this captain um uh of the Tamrian vessel um decides that he wants to have an adventure or have an experience with um uh with Captain Bicard and that that they will learn together the way in their own mythic past the figures of Dharmmach and Galad came together and fought a beast at Tanagra and that allowed these two heroes to come together and form a new beginning the same way that uh Peicard

(2:02:40) and Dayan at Elodrell when they face a beast uh are able to have a new beginning for the children of Tama and for the Federation and so it's an amazing um episode where Picard um tells the story of uh of the Epic of Gilgamesh and he does a better job than I did when I tried to uh do it earlier in this in this lecture so so I I'm I'm I very much uh love that episode so next week a historian and theologian react to The Passion of the Christ i'm just going to I mean I've not seen it ever and but I'm I'm just I'm scared watching it and I'm

(2:03:20) just going to say I can't imagine that I'm going to like it as much as I liked Dharmmach so anyway we'll see you next week