What Does the Bible Say?
Part of a 7 week course called "Sense and Sensuality" by Rev. Gary Blobaum
Love and the Commandments: Conflict or Correlation? Wengert’s Reflections Comments Hultgren’s Reflections The Bible in the New ELCA A Word from Martin Luther Timothy J. Wengert’s Reflections: see HYPERLINK "http://www.elca.org" www.elca.org “Reflections on the ELCA Churchwide Assembly” at Journal of Lutheran Ethics Comments In responding to Timothy Wengert’s “Reflections,” I hope it will not be too tedious to proceed by commenting paragraph by paragraph on the development of his argument. The theme of his argument is that 1.) There are circumstances in which the commandments of God may be set aside for the sake of the greater command to love the neighbor, and that 2.) The historically unique circumstance of homosexuals living in lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships is such a circumstance. Wengert believes that the biblical writers had no notion of a marriage-like relationship between homosexuals and that, therefore, the command to love the neighbor “trumps” the commandments prohibiting homosexual sex. |
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Wengert’s first paragraph is an exhortation to the church to keep the eighth commandment (You shall not bear false witness) instead of casting “aspersions on those who disagreed with us.” But if all we had to go on were the logic Wengert develops in his essay, we might decide it is more faithful to cast aspersions than to keep the commandment against casting them. Wengert will develop a logic that permits human beings to decide under what circumstances they will regard a commandment as valid and under what circumstances they will override that commandment in order to serve a larger purpose. How compelling is Wengert’s plea to keep the eighth commandment when, in his ninth paragraph, he will tell us Jesus himself broke the third commandment?
Wengert’s second paragraph insists that the argument of the social statement to bless homosexual sex was “grounded in Scripture.” But what he means by that phrase and what the typical Christian means by the phrase are quite different. The first ELCA study document on sexuality (1991) was a revisionist document. But it still recognized only two sources of authority in the church: Scripture and tradition. It tried to develop “a sexual ethic that is faithful to Scripture and our tradition.” By 1994, Dr. Timothy Lull, one of the early proponents of same-sex blessings in the ELCA, admitted to a largely gay and lesbian audience at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis that “we have not succeeded in developing a biblical argument for same-sex blessings and, without that, ordinary Lutherans are never going to accept this.” But by 2003, the gay activists had largely despaired of creating a convincing argument from Scripture alone. Therefore, the 2003 study document “Journey Together Faithfully: Part Two” grounded its argument in “experience, the Bible, and our traditions” (page 34). Readers were informed that biblical understanding is “a product of our experiences, the words in the Bible, and the Holy Spirit” (page 8). They were asked to reach a decision on sexual questions based on “your experience, your reading of the Bible, and the discussions from preceding sessions” (page 30). According to “Journey Together Faithfully: Part Two,” when people experience themselves in a way that “does not seem to correspond with…the Bible” they should “appeal to the experience of their own sexuality” (page 17). In other words, “experiences of life that we have as male or female, as members of a social class, as rural or urban dwellers” (page 8) are a source of authority that can override the authority of Scripture. Timothy Wengert was a member of the Task Force that produced “Journey Together Faithfully: Part Two.” When he now says the argument of the social statement “was grounded in Scripture” that does not necessarily mean it was grounded in Scripture alone. As we shall we, he develops an argument for same-sex blessings that places the authority for judging God’s commandments into the hands of sinful humans.
Nothing said in Wengert’s third paragraph requires rebuttal. But we should pay attention to what is not said. He says: “The social statement on sexuality began with reference to the question posed to Christ about the greatest commandment.” Probably only a theologian would notice how odd this is. In Lutheran theology, discussions of sexuality have always begun with creation: with Genesis, not with Jesus. The topic of sexuality has always taken Lutherans first to the creation of male and female and has evoked praise for the gift of marriage and for the honor of sharing in God’s on-going work of creation through the one-flesh mystery. But the new ELCA dispenses with such praise. Instead, the study document explains in a footnote: “Justification and incarnation provide the theological framework for this discussion of human sexuality. This may surprise some, but because sin has intervened, Christians cannot ground their understanding of sexuality in nature or creation itself” (page 47). But we wonder: if sin is so important to an understanding human sexuality, why does the statement mention it so infrequently? Could the Task Force actually have avoided Genesis for a quite different reason: its thorough-going heterosexuality? We saw previously how the ELCA documents steer clear of discussing the “one-flesh union.” And because the final study document ignores creation, it also avoids phrases like “males and females,” “women and men,” husbands and wives,” “boys and girls,” and “mothers and fathers.” One might expect to find such phrases in a document on human sexuality. But we find instead only “couples,” “partners,” “engendered persons,” “parents,” and “children.” In the new ELCA, the topic of sexuality assumes a homosexual perspective.
In paragraph four, Wengert says, “The debate over sexuality in the ELCA in some ways ‘hangs’ on these words of Jesus,” namely, the words about the commandments to love God and love the neighbor as being the greatest commandments. But if the debate in the ELCA “hangs on” those words of Jesus, it hangs there only because the Task Force framed it that way. The debate should really hang on the question of whether or not the way God wants to love homosexuals is by blessing homosexual sex. That obviously is the fundamental question in the debate. But the Task Force did not want to raise that question. The Task Force was not concerned with how God loves homosexuals; it was only concerned with how, in its view, Lutherans ought to love homosexuals: by voting their sexual activity into a state of blessedness. But in order to do that, Lutherans would first have to vote them out of a state of disobedience. And in order to do that, Lutherans would have to overturn some commandments.
This is what Wengert sets out to do. He begins by changing our position in relation to the commandments. Instead of being in the position of hearing and obeying God’s commands, Wengert puts us in the position of interpreting God’s commands. The only commands we are not in a position to interpret are the commands to love God and the neighbor. But those commands become the criterion by which we are now to judge “every other command.” Therefore the only way to remain “truly faithful to Scripture” is to evaluate all God’s other commands by asking, “How does this commandment enhance love for God and neighbor?” But who decides whether or not a given commandment enhances love for God and neighbor? Who decides, therefore, whether or not a given commandment should be obeyed? We do. We get to decide which commandments ought to be obeyed and which ought to be rejected. What Jesus once said to the Pharisees could be said to the new ELCA: “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God…” (Mark 7:9).
Wengert’s fifth paragraph is a refutation of the opposite position, namely, the position that we should obey the commandments themselves without routinely evaluating the likelihood of their enhancing love of God and neighbor. Wengert wants to refute the position that, instead of debating and voting on the commandments, we ought to trust God and obey them. In specific, Wengert wants to refute this sentence: “There are commandments in Scripture referring to homosexual activity; these determine how we must love God and neighbor; therefore we cannot change church policy.” But before exploring that sentence, let’s scrub it clean of its subtle deceptions. More honestly worded, that sentence would read: “There are commandments in Scripture prohibiting homosexual activity; these determine how we are to love God and neighbor; therefore because we may not change God’s commandments, we cannot change this church policy which reflects those commandments.” It is odd that Wengert wants to refute a statement like that because in 2003 he helped write the ELCA study document which said: “Furthermore, we seek to follow God’s will as revealed in the commandments of the law out of love for God and for the neighbor” (page 9). In 2003, Wengert was not in favor of overturning commandments based on a human assessment of their likelihood for enhancing love of God and neighbor. At that time he was still content to trust that the commandments themselves revealed God’s will as to how best to love God and neighbor.
The deception in Wengert’s sixth paragraph comes to light in the word “rigorously.” Wengert wants to make the point that, just as Luther could claim that commandments concerning the Sabbath and tithing cannot be “rigorously applied to Christians;” modern Lutherans can claim that commandments prohibiting homosexual activity cannot be applied to homosexuals in “lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships.” But such an analogy would only be valid if Luther had claimed that commandments concerning the Sabbath and tithing did not apply at all to sixteenth century Lutherans. But Luther did not make that claim. He opposed the rigor with which Karlstadt applied the commandments. He did not oppose the application of the commandments themselves.
In his seventh paragraph, Wengert wants to show that the ELCA “takes Scripture very seriously” when it declares that prohibitions of homosexual activity in Leviticus and Romans do not apply to homosexuals in “lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships.” Wengert discounts the commandments in Leviticus because they are “aimed at…very specific issues,” namely, “standards of holiness that set the people of Israel apart from the pagan temple cults.” Why Wengert thinks such standards of holiness should be obsolete in a modern society with its own share of pagan cults is a long theological story. But the pervasiveness of that story can be measured by the near absence of language about “holiness” in mainline Protestantism. From the pulpit in preaching and the pew in liturgy, we seldom hear a call to holy living. The absence of specific references to holiness in sexuality can be observed by thumbing through the services of marriage in recent Lutheran hymnals. In the Service Book and Hymnal (the old red book), the rite was called “Holy Matrimony” and the liturgy referred to marriage as a “holy estate.” In the Lutheran Book of Worship, (the green book) the husband and wife were commended to a life of “holy love.” In the liturgy for marriage in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (the new cranberry book) the word “holy” does not appear.
But the disappearance of language about holiness in our churches represents a profound mistake. The word “holy” and cognate terms occur in the New Testament 275 times. Marriage is referred to as holy in I Corinthians 7:14 and I Thessalonians 4:4. Both an explanation for the absence of the language of holiness in mainline Protestantism, and an argument for the restoration of the call to holy living, would involve a longer discussion than we have time for here. Let me simply quote an Anglican theologian who is working to restore holiness language in contemporary church practice, Marcus Bockmuehl: “…New Testament Christianity retains a vital concern for the moral purity of believers – i.e., above all in the cardinal areas of idolatry, sex, and bloodshed” (I Am the Lord Your God, page 118). I believe Wengert is simply wrong when he discounts the relevance of the Levitical prohibitions to modern homosexual activity.
He is also wrong when he dismisses the references to homosexuality in Romans as irrelevant in the twenty-first century. Paul writes: “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men… Romans 1:26,27). Wengert’s argument is that these verses do not apply today because they refer to “coercive relations of male-on-male sexual activities.” But it is obvious these verses do not only refer to coercive relations. First, there is nothing to indicate coercion in the lesbian relations Paul mentions. Wengert recognizes that fact but ignores its implications. Yet when Paul then segues from female homosexuality to male with the words “and in the same way also the men,” this implies that God opposes female homosexual activity and male homosexual activity for the same reason. Furthermore, Paul depicts both male and female homosexuals as exchanging or giving up “natural intercourse.” The problem is not coercion; it is departure from what is natural, from the created order. Thirdly, Paul describes male homosexuals as being “consumed with passion for one another.” If the homosexual activity had been coerced, Paul would not have used the phrase “for one another.” “For one another” implies mutual passion.
In his eighth paragraph, Wengert offers another false analogy. He tells how the Wittenberg church insisted that communicants receive both the bread and the wine following Luther’s restoration of that practice. Luther supported the principle (Christians should commune by receiving both bread and wine) but he did not support the practice (the insistence that they receive both bread and wine). Wengert is distinguishing here between principle and practice. But the analogy would only be valid if Luther had overthrown the principle of receiving both bread and wine. Clearly Luther did not do that. Luther upheld the principle, but believed the practice of love and patience would commend the principle more effectively than the practice of insistence and demand. In the case of homosexuality, Wengert does not want to commend the principle (the commandment against homosexual activity); he wants to abolish it. The analogy fails.
In his ninth paragraph, Wengert tells us that Jesus broke the third commandment. He wants to authorize breaking the commandment about homosexual activity based on the example of Jesus breaking the commandment about the Sabbath. But did Jesus actually break the third commandment? Wengert says that Jesus “broke specific, God-given laws for the sake of the neighbor.” And then Wengert submits as an example of this law-breaking Jesus’ healing of a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:12). The Pharisees accuse Jesus of breaking the third commandment because he performed work on the Sabbath when work was not supposed to be done. But were the Pharisees correct? Wengert clearly assumes the Pharisees were correct because he says that if Jesus would wait to heal the man until the following day, “…the man would be healed and the Sabbath would be kept holy.” Obviously Wengert assumes the Sabbath had not been kept holy and that Jesus was the one who had failed to keep it holy, in other words, that he broke God’s commandment.
But that conclusion ignores Jesus’ own argument. Jesus tells the Pharisees: if, according to your tradition, you are permitted to pull a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath, how much more am I permitted to heal a man’s hand on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:10-12)? Jesus didn’t think he had broken the third commandment; who is Wengert to say he had? Furthermore, the word that gives the lie to Wengert’s conclusion is the word “traditional.” Wengert says “the traditional response of a physician would” have been to wait to heal the man after the Sabbath. That response would not have been based on the commandment per se, but on human traditions that had sprung up around the commandment. Jesus did not “trump” the commandment (as Wengert would have us believe); he trumped human tradition.
To “trump” a commandment is to override, overrule, or negate it. But God does not trump his commandments with his love. He trumps his judgment with his mercy. God judges us for living outside the good life he created for us, the life of which the commandments are a picture. Through repentance and forgiveness, God overcomes his own judgment of us and embraces us in his mercy instead. God’s judgment is gone, but the commandments remain. The commandments stand witness against our sinfulness, give structure to human life, and help us picture the goodness for which we and the world were created. We need them and, as we grow in holiness, we want them. Wengert would have us believe the commandments are in conflict with love. Actually they are correlated with love. We do not truly love people in same-sex relationships by blessing their sexual activity (much less officiating their weddings). We love them with endless patience. We love them by picturing the goodness for which they were created even when they either cannot picture it or refuse to. We love them as sinners love sinners: by lifting our eyes together to the One who knows us better than we know ourselves and who nevertheless delights in us. Love does not “trump” the law. As Paul said, “…love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).
In Wengert’s tenth paragraph, he correlates the law and love more accurately, more biblically, because he reiterates the biblical distinction between “the letter of the law” and the “spirit of the law.” Nevertheless, the spirit of the law does not contradict the letter of the law. The illusion that there is such a contradiction remains the basis of Wengert’s “biblical” argument.
Wengert’s eleventh paragraph offers two examples of the ambiguities and euphemisms marshaled by revisionists to obscure and disguise the truth of their proposals. Wengert asks, “Can one support [homosexuals] with the prayers of the community and the promises of God?” One is inclined to answer “yes, of course” without realizing that such “prayers and promises” are the way revisionists euphemistically refer to “blessing of same-sex relationships” and “consecrating same-sex marriages.” The social statement and study documents seem replete with such duplicitous ambiguities. Likewise, when Wengert asks, “Can one open to them places of leadership in the ELCA?” we need to know he is talking about ordination to public ministry and elevation to the office of bishop.
Hultgren’s Reflections: see Stephen Hultgren at www.lutherancore.org
IV. The Bible in the New ELCA
In one of our sessions, the question was asked: “Will the ELCA make changes in the Bible?” It already has. To prepare congregations for reception of the new worship resource, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, an introduction to the current ELCA understanding of worship was sent to pastors and congregations. One of the major themes of that small volume was the inclusivity of worship. In many and various ways, the ELCA tells us to include everyone, to recognize no distinctions, to permit no boundaries between church and world. To deploy the Bible in its goal of “invitation and welcome to all people,” the volume offers this sentence: “As followers of Christ, we are called to welcome others as Christ has welcomed us (Rom. 15:7).” Now it may be a small point, but that is not quite how the verse reads. Paul is not really speaking in this verse about welcoming others, namely, those outside the church. He is speaking of relationships within the church. He says: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.” Ah, but it would have been so much more convenient had the verse said “welcome others;” surely that is what Paul meant! And if he didn’t mean others, he should have! In any event, we can change it. Once you get the hang of overriding Scripture, you can do it without thinking.
More ominously, in a Lutheran resource called The Lectionary for the Christian People, an editorial mark is placed beside biblical texts that have been judged too sexist for reading during congregational worship. Karl Donfried reports that in “The Lectionary for the Christian People, the symbol S is placed before Ephesians 5:21-23. This and other similar texts are described as ‘essentially sexist in speaking specifically of a subordinate position of women. Such problematic lessons are translated faithful to the original, with the hope that future lectionary revisions will choose other readings as more appropriate for today’s church.’ …Why should the people of God be deprived from hearing biblical texts without editorial filters? Because a results-based feminist hermeneutic has declared that it is in conflict with its ideological premises” (Donfried, Who Owns the Bible, pages 12,13).
We can also note the revisions to the Psalms in Evangelical Lutheran Worship. In order to avoid masculine pronouns, the editors of the ELW took the liberty of switching from third person statements about God (“he”) to second person addresses to God (“you”). For example, whereas the twenty-third psalm actually reads, “He restores my soul,” the ELW changes this to “You restore my soul, O Lord.”
Is it unreasonable to imagine that the ELCA will eventually alter the exact words of Scripture in its references to homosexuals?
V. A Word from Martin Luther
“It is the duty both of preachers and of hearers first of all and above all things to see to it that they have a clear and sure evidence that their doctrine is really the true word of God, revealed from heaven to the holy, original fathers, the prophets and apostles, and confirmed and commanded to be taught by Christ Himself. For we should by no means ever let doctrine be manhandled according to the pleasure and fancy of the individual who adapts it to human reason and understanding. Nor should we let men toy with Scripture, juggle the Word of God, and make it submit to being explained, twisted, stretched, and revised to suit people or to achieve peace and union; for then there could be no secure or stable foundation on which consciences might rely.” (sermon by Luther)
Go to Sex and Salvation
Wengert’s second paragraph insists that the argument of the social statement to bless homosexual sex was “grounded in Scripture.” But what he means by that phrase and what the typical Christian means by the phrase are quite different. The first ELCA study document on sexuality (1991) was a revisionist document. But it still recognized only two sources of authority in the church: Scripture and tradition. It tried to develop “a sexual ethic that is faithful to Scripture and our tradition.” By 1994, Dr. Timothy Lull, one of the early proponents of same-sex blessings in the ELCA, admitted to a largely gay and lesbian audience at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis that “we have not succeeded in developing a biblical argument for same-sex blessings and, without that, ordinary Lutherans are never going to accept this.” But by 2003, the gay activists had largely despaired of creating a convincing argument from Scripture alone. Therefore, the 2003 study document “Journey Together Faithfully: Part Two” grounded its argument in “experience, the Bible, and our traditions” (page 34). Readers were informed that biblical understanding is “a product of our experiences, the words in the Bible, and the Holy Spirit” (page 8). They were asked to reach a decision on sexual questions based on “your experience, your reading of the Bible, and the discussions from preceding sessions” (page 30). According to “Journey Together Faithfully: Part Two,” when people experience themselves in a way that “does not seem to correspond with…the Bible” they should “appeal to the experience of their own sexuality” (page 17). In other words, “experiences of life that we have as male or female, as members of a social class, as rural or urban dwellers” (page 8) are a source of authority that can override the authority of Scripture. Timothy Wengert was a member of the Task Force that produced “Journey Together Faithfully: Part Two.” When he now says the argument of the social statement “was grounded in Scripture” that does not necessarily mean it was grounded in Scripture alone. As we shall we, he develops an argument for same-sex blessings that places the authority for judging God’s commandments into the hands of sinful humans.
Nothing said in Wengert’s third paragraph requires rebuttal. But we should pay attention to what is not said. He says: “The social statement on sexuality began with reference to the question posed to Christ about the greatest commandment.” Probably only a theologian would notice how odd this is. In Lutheran theology, discussions of sexuality have always begun with creation: with Genesis, not with Jesus. The topic of sexuality has always taken Lutherans first to the creation of male and female and has evoked praise for the gift of marriage and for the honor of sharing in God’s on-going work of creation through the one-flesh mystery. But the new ELCA dispenses with such praise. Instead, the study document explains in a footnote: “Justification and incarnation provide the theological framework for this discussion of human sexuality. This may surprise some, but because sin has intervened, Christians cannot ground their understanding of sexuality in nature or creation itself” (page 47). But we wonder: if sin is so important to an understanding human sexuality, why does the statement mention it so infrequently? Could the Task Force actually have avoided Genesis for a quite different reason: its thorough-going heterosexuality? We saw previously how the ELCA documents steer clear of discussing the “one-flesh union.” And because the final study document ignores creation, it also avoids phrases like “males and females,” “women and men,” husbands and wives,” “boys and girls,” and “mothers and fathers.” One might expect to find such phrases in a document on human sexuality. But we find instead only “couples,” “partners,” “engendered persons,” “parents,” and “children.” In the new ELCA, the topic of sexuality assumes a homosexual perspective.
In paragraph four, Wengert says, “The debate over sexuality in the ELCA in some ways ‘hangs’ on these words of Jesus,” namely, the words about the commandments to love God and love the neighbor as being the greatest commandments. But if the debate in the ELCA “hangs on” those words of Jesus, it hangs there only because the Task Force framed it that way. The debate should really hang on the question of whether or not the way God wants to love homosexuals is by blessing homosexual sex. That obviously is the fundamental question in the debate. But the Task Force did not want to raise that question. The Task Force was not concerned with how God loves homosexuals; it was only concerned with how, in its view, Lutherans ought to love homosexuals: by voting their sexual activity into a state of blessedness. But in order to do that, Lutherans would first have to vote them out of a state of disobedience. And in order to do that, Lutherans would have to overturn some commandments.
This is what Wengert sets out to do. He begins by changing our position in relation to the commandments. Instead of being in the position of hearing and obeying God’s commands, Wengert puts us in the position of interpreting God’s commands. The only commands we are not in a position to interpret are the commands to love God and the neighbor. But those commands become the criterion by which we are now to judge “every other command.” Therefore the only way to remain “truly faithful to Scripture” is to evaluate all God’s other commands by asking, “How does this commandment enhance love for God and neighbor?” But who decides whether or not a given commandment enhances love for God and neighbor? Who decides, therefore, whether or not a given commandment should be obeyed? We do. We get to decide which commandments ought to be obeyed and which ought to be rejected. What Jesus once said to the Pharisees could be said to the new ELCA: “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God…” (Mark 7:9).
Wengert’s fifth paragraph is a refutation of the opposite position, namely, the position that we should obey the commandments themselves without routinely evaluating the likelihood of their enhancing love of God and neighbor. Wengert wants to refute the position that, instead of debating and voting on the commandments, we ought to trust God and obey them. In specific, Wengert wants to refute this sentence: “There are commandments in Scripture referring to homosexual activity; these determine how we must love God and neighbor; therefore we cannot change church policy.” But before exploring that sentence, let’s scrub it clean of its subtle deceptions. More honestly worded, that sentence would read: “There are commandments in Scripture prohibiting homosexual activity; these determine how we are to love God and neighbor; therefore because we may not change God’s commandments, we cannot change this church policy which reflects those commandments.” It is odd that Wengert wants to refute a statement like that because in 2003 he helped write the ELCA study document which said: “Furthermore, we seek to follow God’s will as revealed in the commandments of the law out of love for God and for the neighbor” (page 9). In 2003, Wengert was not in favor of overturning commandments based on a human assessment of their likelihood for enhancing love of God and neighbor. At that time he was still content to trust that the commandments themselves revealed God’s will as to how best to love God and neighbor.
The deception in Wengert’s sixth paragraph comes to light in the word “rigorously.” Wengert wants to make the point that, just as Luther could claim that commandments concerning the Sabbath and tithing cannot be “rigorously applied to Christians;” modern Lutherans can claim that commandments prohibiting homosexual activity cannot be applied to homosexuals in “lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships.” But such an analogy would only be valid if Luther had claimed that commandments concerning the Sabbath and tithing did not apply at all to sixteenth century Lutherans. But Luther did not make that claim. He opposed the rigor with which Karlstadt applied the commandments. He did not oppose the application of the commandments themselves.
In his seventh paragraph, Wengert wants to show that the ELCA “takes Scripture very seriously” when it declares that prohibitions of homosexual activity in Leviticus and Romans do not apply to homosexuals in “lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships.” Wengert discounts the commandments in Leviticus because they are “aimed at…very specific issues,” namely, “standards of holiness that set the people of Israel apart from the pagan temple cults.” Why Wengert thinks such standards of holiness should be obsolete in a modern society with its own share of pagan cults is a long theological story. But the pervasiveness of that story can be measured by the near absence of language about “holiness” in mainline Protestantism. From the pulpit in preaching and the pew in liturgy, we seldom hear a call to holy living. The absence of specific references to holiness in sexuality can be observed by thumbing through the services of marriage in recent Lutheran hymnals. In the Service Book and Hymnal (the old red book), the rite was called “Holy Matrimony” and the liturgy referred to marriage as a “holy estate.” In the Lutheran Book of Worship, (the green book) the husband and wife were commended to a life of “holy love.” In the liturgy for marriage in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (the new cranberry book) the word “holy” does not appear.
But the disappearance of language about holiness in our churches represents a profound mistake. The word “holy” and cognate terms occur in the New Testament 275 times. Marriage is referred to as holy in I Corinthians 7:14 and I Thessalonians 4:4. Both an explanation for the absence of the language of holiness in mainline Protestantism, and an argument for the restoration of the call to holy living, would involve a longer discussion than we have time for here. Let me simply quote an Anglican theologian who is working to restore holiness language in contemporary church practice, Marcus Bockmuehl: “…New Testament Christianity retains a vital concern for the moral purity of believers – i.e., above all in the cardinal areas of idolatry, sex, and bloodshed” (I Am the Lord Your God, page 118). I believe Wengert is simply wrong when he discounts the relevance of the Levitical prohibitions to modern homosexual activity.
He is also wrong when he dismisses the references to homosexuality in Romans as irrelevant in the twenty-first century. Paul writes: “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men… Romans 1:26,27). Wengert’s argument is that these verses do not apply today because they refer to “coercive relations of male-on-male sexual activities.” But it is obvious these verses do not only refer to coercive relations. First, there is nothing to indicate coercion in the lesbian relations Paul mentions. Wengert recognizes that fact but ignores its implications. Yet when Paul then segues from female homosexuality to male with the words “and in the same way also the men,” this implies that God opposes female homosexual activity and male homosexual activity for the same reason. Furthermore, Paul depicts both male and female homosexuals as exchanging or giving up “natural intercourse.” The problem is not coercion; it is departure from what is natural, from the created order. Thirdly, Paul describes male homosexuals as being “consumed with passion for one another.” If the homosexual activity had been coerced, Paul would not have used the phrase “for one another.” “For one another” implies mutual passion.
In his eighth paragraph, Wengert offers another false analogy. He tells how the Wittenberg church insisted that communicants receive both the bread and the wine following Luther’s restoration of that practice. Luther supported the principle (Christians should commune by receiving both bread and wine) but he did not support the practice (the insistence that they receive both bread and wine). Wengert is distinguishing here between principle and practice. But the analogy would only be valid if Luther had overthrown the principle of receiving both bread and wine. Clearly Luther did not do that. Luther upheld the principle, but believed the practice of love and patience would commend the principle more effectively than the practice of insistence and demand. In the case of homosexuality, Wengert does not want to commend the principle (the commandment against homosexual activity); he wants to abolish it. The analogy fails.
In his ninth paragraph, Wengert tells us that Jesus broke the third commandment. He wants to authorize breaking the commandment about homosexual activity based on the example of Jesus breaking the commandment about the Sabbath. But did Jesus actually break the third commandment? Wengert says that Jesus “broke specific, God-given laws for the sake of the neighbor.” And then Wengert submits as an example of this law-breaking Jesus’ healing of a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:12). The Pharisees accuse Jesus of breaking the third commandment because he performed work on the Sabbath when work was not supposed to be done. But were the Pharisees correct? Wengert clearly assumes the Pharisees were correct because he says that if Jesus would wait to heal the man until the following day, “…the man would be healed and the Sabbath would be kept holy.” Obviously Wengert assumes the Sabbath had not been kept holy and that Jesus was the one who had failed to keep it holy, in other words, that he broke God’s commandment.
But that conclusion ignores Jesus’ own argument. Jesus tells the Pharisees: if, according to your tradition, you are permitted to pull a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath, how much more am I permitted to heal a man’s hand on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:10-12)? Jesus didn’t think he had broken the third commandment; who is Wengert to say he had? Furthermore, the word that gives the lie to Wengert’s conclusion is the word “traditional.” Wengert says “the traditional response of a physician would” have been to wait to heal the man after the Sabbath. That response would not have been based on the commandment per se, but on human traditions that had sprung up around the commandment. Jesus did not “trump” the commandment (as Wengert would have us believe); he trumped human tradition.
To “trump” a commandment is to override, overrule, or negate it. But God does not trump his commandments with his love. He trumps his judgment with his mercy. God judges us for living outside the good life he created for us, the life of which the commandments are a picture. Through repentance and forgiveness, God overcomes his own judgment of us and embraces us in his mercy instead. God’s judgment is gone, but the commandments remain. The commandments stand witness against our sinfulness, give structure to human life, and help us picture the goodness for which we and the world were created. We need them and, as we grow in holiness, we want them. Wengert would have us believe the commandments are in conflict with love. Actually they are correlated with love. We do not truly love people in same-sex relationships by blessing their sexual activity (much less officiating their weddings). We love them with endless patience. We love them by picturing the goodness for which they were created even when they either cannot picture it or refuse to. We love them as sinners love sinners: by lifting our eyes together to the One who knows us better than we know ourselves and who nevertheless delights in us. Love does not “trump” the law. As Paul said, “…love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).
In Wengert’s tenth paragraph, he correlates the law and love more accurately, more biblically, because he reiterates the biblical distinction between “the letter of the law” and the “spirit of the law.” Nevertheless, the spirit of the law does not contradict the letter of the law. The illusion that there is such a contradiction remains the basis of Wengert’s “biblical” argument.
Wengert’s eleventh paragraph offers two examples of the ambiguities and euphemisms marshaled by revisionists to obscure and disguise the truth of their proposals. Wengert asks, “Can one support [homosexuals] with the prayers of the community and the promises of God?” One is inclined to answer “yes, of course” without realizing that such “prayers and promises” are the way revisionists euphemistically refer to “blessing of same-sex relationships” and “consecrating same-sex marriages.” The social statement and study documents seem replete with such duplicitous ambiguities. Likewise, when Wengert asks, “Can one open to them places of leadership in the ELCA?” we need to know he is talking about ordination to public ministry and elevation to the office of bishop.
Hultgren’s Reflections: see Stephen Hultgren at www.lutherancore.org
IV. The Bible in the New ELCA
In one of our sessions, the question was asked: “Will the ELCA make changes in the Bible?” It already has. To prepare congregations for reception of the new worship resource, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, an introduction to the current ELCA understanding of worship was sent to pastors and congregations. One of the major themes of that small volume was the inclusivity of worship. In many and various ways, the ELCA tells us to include everyone, to recognize no distinctions, to permit no boundaries between church and world. To deploy the Bible in its goal of “invitation and welcome to all people,” the volume offers this sentence: “As followers of Christ, we are called to welcome others as Christ has welcomed us (Rom. 15:7).” Now it may be a small point, but that is not quite how the verse reads. Paul is not really speaking in this verse about welcoming others, namely, those outside the church. He is speaking of relationships within the church. He says: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.” Ah, but it would have been so much more convenient had the verse said “welcome others;” surely that is what Paul meant! And if he didn’t mean others, he should have! In any event, we can change it. Once you get the hang of overriding Scripture, you can do it without thinking.
More ominously, in a Lutheran resource called The Lectionary for the Christian People, an editorial mark is placed beside biblical texts that have been judged too sexist for reading during congregational worship. Karl Donfried reports that in “The Lectionary for the Christian People, the symbol S is placed before Ephesians 5:21-23. This and other similar texts are described as ‘essentially sexist in speaking specifically of a subordinate position of women. Such problematic lessons are translated faithful to the original, with the hope that future lectionary revisions will choose other readings as more appropriate for today’s church.’ …Why should the people of God be deprived from hearing biblical texts without editorial filters? Because a results-based feminist hermeneutic has declared that it is in conflict with its ideological premises” (Donfried, Who Owns the Bible, pages 12,13).
We can also note the revisions to the Psalms in Evangelical Lutheran Worship. In order to avoid masculine pronouns, the editors of the ELW took the liberty of switching from third person statements about God (“he”) to second person addresses to God (“you”). For example, whereas the twenty-third psalm actually reads, “He restores my soul,” the ELW changes this to “You restore my soul, O Lord.”
Is it unreasonable to imagine that the ELCA will eventually alter the exact words of Scripture in its references to homosexuals?
V. A Word from Martin Luther
“It is the duty both of preachers and of hearers first of all and above all things to see to it that they have a clear and sure evidence that their doctrine is really the true word of God, revealed from heaven to the holy, original fathers, the prophets and apostles, and confirmed and commanded to be taught by Christ Himself. For we should by no means ever let doctrine be manhandled according to the pleasure and fancy of the individual who adapts it to human reason and understanding. Nor should we let men toy with Scripture, juggle the Word of God, and make it submit to being explained, twisted, stretched, and revised to suit people or to achieve peace and union; for then there could be no secure or stable foundation on which consciences might rely.” (sermon by Luther)
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