Keeping Faithful: Homosexuality and Ordination

Preface

Ever since the days of the apostles, the three prerequisites for active church life have been, “Repent, believe and be baptized.”

When addressing the question of homosexuals in membership, ministry and ordination, the real question is, “Shall this lifestyle be accepted as a natural and acceptable alternative way for a Christian to express his or her sexuality, and shall the church, in turn, cease to consider it a lifestyle from which one should repent and renounce in order to be able to serve in the leadership of the church?” By keeping faithful to the message handed to us by the apostles and prophets, the church’s call to repent and believe speaks a healing and redeeming word to the homosexual, rather than one of painful resignation.

But note: the facts to be presented are not impersonal: neither pronouncements nor diatribes. Rather they help the church define how to address the personal issue: how shall we minister to and among homosexual persons?

This article is structured for quick reference, even while in the midst of debate. After overviewing a resolution presenting the homosexual cause, every one of the major arguments proposed by the homosexual community is briefly explained, the Keeping Faithful response is given, and quotable quotes from qualified sources follow. The manuscript concludes with a counter resolution.

As They Might Put It: A Resolution Summarizing the Gay and Lesbian Cause

1. WHEREAS, when creating all life, almighty and loving God declared good the whole creation including those created homosexual as well as those created heterosexual, and

2. WHEREAS, homosexual desire is not chosen but rather is an orientation that is inherited at conception, and

3. WHEREAS, rejection by the larger heterosexual population has forced homosexuals to try to do the impossible, namely, to suppress or transform their own natural sexual desires, and

4. WHEREAS, Christians historically have quoted a few isolated verses of Scripture with sledge-hammer force against homosexuals, all the while disregarding the personal experience of countless victims of such repression, and

5. WHEREAS, those Scriptures’ seemingly scornful references to homosexuality, when properly understood, actually condemn not same-sex intimacy but inhospitality, infidelity and promiscuity by persons of all sexual orientations, and

6. WHEREAS, the Bible’s call to fidelity means maintaining faithfulness to one’s present intimate partner in a relationship that reflects justice-love, not necessarily the lifelong heterosexual marital relationship espoused by the church through its centuries of xenophobic chauvinism, and

7. WHEREAS, according to the Book of Order, membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is open to all who profess Jesus Christ as Lord, and one of the rights guaranteed all Presbyterians is that of being ordained to serve the church as minister, elder and/or deacon as called by God and the church, and

8. WHEREAS, numerous sincere Presbyterian gays, lesbians and their families have suffered deeply due to years’ long discrimination and hatred in spite of the church’s historic commitment to overthrow discrimination in all its forms, including that of homophobia,

RESOLVED, that the 208th General Assembly declare invalid any impediment to the ordination of those practicing homosexuality and affirm the full exercise of the right and responsibility of presbyteries and congregations to discern, elect, ordain and install ministers, elders and deacons.

1. The Creation-is-Good Argument

Pro-gay position

A theology of creation provides the fundamental basis for the acceptance of homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. Simply put, God made all things good—and many species of animals exhibit homosexual behavior.

Since, in fact, all of creation is good in God’s eyes, and since many sexual beings were created to be homosexual, they are just as good as their heterosexual counterparts. How can others condemn some for living according to their own created nature?

Keeping Faithful response

Indeed, God created the world good. But the entrance of human sin brought the fall of creation. Not only do we see natural catastrophes like hurricanes and earthquakes, not only do we suffer birth defects and unexplained diseases, but we also bear in our human nature the guilt, pollution and estrangement brought on the human race by original sin. Accordingly, natural human instincts and desires do not intrinsically bear evidence of God’s approval and design. Unfortunately, contemporary culture would have us believe that we should just follow our natural desires and fulfill our needs. But Scripture teaches the opposite.

Authorities speak

Presbyterian General Assembly’s Definitive Guidance of 1978: “We conclude that homosexuality is not God’s wish for humanity. In many cases homosexuality is more a sign of the brokenness of God’s world than of willful rebellion. In other cases homosexual behavior is freely chosen or learned in environments where normal development is thwarted. Even where the homosexual orientation has not been consciously sought or chosen, it is neither a gift from God nor a state nor a condition like race; it is a result of our living in a fallen world.”

Presbyterian Elder Tim Stafford: “The gay movement is a logical result of the modern belief that desire—all desire, and particularly sexual desire—is natural, unchangeable, healthy. If that is so, then there is nothing wrong with homosexuals. They are merely different. Their desires reveal their basic make-up, just as surely as a person’s desire for food reveals that he must have food or die. … Yet as we have seen, Jesus did not treat desire as purely natural. Christians can never presume that a desire—any desire, whether for sex or possessions or glory—is normal and naturally good. Our ‘natural self’ as we know it is out of kilter with its true created nature.”1

Dr. Marion L. Soards, Professor of NT, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, regarding Romans 1: “Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention because he regards it as providing a particularly graphic image of the way in which human fallenness distorts God’s created order. God the creator made man and woman for each other, to cleave together, to be fruitful and multiply. When human beings engage in homosexual activity, they enact an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality: the rejection of the Creator’s design. They ‘embody’ the spiritual condition of those who have ‘exchanged the truth about God for a lie.’”2

2. The Scientific Research Argument

Pro-gay position

Scientific research (studies of hormone balance, the size and shape of the hypothalamus and the existence of a “gay gene”) has proven that homosexual orientation is built into the very fabric of individuals from the moment of their conception. If God created such people with no choice but to be homosexual, how could we possibly condemn them for fulfilling their natural destiny?

Keeping Faithful response

Several scientific studies have been published and touted broadly as evidence of the genetic origin of homosexual orientation. However, the media largely has overlooked the fact that every one of the studies has since been refuted or discredited. In fact, attempts to substantiate the original research consistently have ended up overthrowing the very conclusions originally claimed.

Authorities speak

Drs. Wm. Byne & Bruce Parsons, Professors of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons: “Recent studies postulate biologic factors as the primary basis for sexual orientation. However, there is no evidence at present to substantiate a biologic theory.”3

Dr. John Money, “The dean of American sexologists,” Professor of Psychology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Director of Psycho-hormonal Research Institute: “Whatever may be the possible unlearned assistance from constitutional sources, the child’s psychosexual identity is not written, unlearned, in the genetic code, the hormonal system or the nervous system at birth.”4

“Regarding Dr. LeVay’s research on the hypothalamus in the brain: ‘Of course it (sexual orientation) is in the brain. The real question is, when did it get there? Was it prenatal, neonatal, during childhood, puberty? That we do not know. … Other problems with [LeVay’s] findings include: (1) all 19 of the homosexual men [whose corpses were used in the study] had died of AIDS, something that many researchers believe could very well account for or contribute to the differences; (2) there was no way to know the sexual history of the “heterosexual” men; (3) there is no way to determine if the smaller hypothalamuses were the ‘cause’ or the ‘result’ of homosexuality; and (4) Dr. LeVay, a homosexual himself, admitted that his study was not entirely a dispassionate scientific endeavor.”5

Sexologist Wm. H. Masters, Co-director of the Masters & Johnson Institute: “The genetic theory of homosexuality has been generally discarded today. Despite the interest in possible hormone mechanisms in the origin of homosexuality, no serious scientist today suggests that a simple cause-effect relationship applies.”6

Dr. Charles Socarides, Attending Psychiatrist and Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine: “The major challenge in treating homosexuality from the point of view of the patient’s resistance has, of course, been the misconception that the disorder is innate or inborn.”7

3. The Suppression of Natural Drives Argument

Pro-gay position

A person’s sexual orientation is not chosen but discovered. One’s only real choice is to accept that orientation or to fight in a vain attempt to suppress the way God intends to be revealed through that person. In fact, all such attempts by homosexuals have utterly failed. Once gay always gay.

Keeping Faithful response

Orientation does not mean license. All people are predisposed to behaviors contrary to God’s design, from food addictions, to lust, to kleptomania. Nevertheless, Scripture repeatedly affirms the necessity of bringing our behaviors and desires into conformity with biblical standards of morality and ethics. Moreover, the power of redemption applied by the Holy Spirit, has enabled numerous homosexuals to be liberated from that behavior in order to live out God’s true intentions.

Authorities speak

Confession of 1967 from the Book of Confessions part of the Constitution of the PCUSA: “The relationship between man and woman exemplifies in a basic way God’s ordering of the interpersonal life for which he created [humankind]… Reconciled to God, each person has joy in and respect for his [her] own humanity and that of other persons; a man and woman are enabled to marry, to commit themselves to a mutually shared life, and to respond to each other in sensitive and lifelong concern; parents receive the grace to care for children in love and to nurture their individuality. The church comes under the judgment of God and invites rejection by humans when it fails to lead men and women into the full meaning of life together, or withholds the compassion of Christ from those caught in the moral confusion of our time.”8

Dr. Philip Turner, Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University: “…the chief problem with the view of the new reformers is that it fails to recognize that a sexual self, liberated from undertakings that have a moral claim upon it prior to any of its particular intentions and choices, has no satisfactory way to make moral judgments about what it intends, chooses, promises and then undertakes. The loss connected with the modern view of the self is that … the self has only the option of following the prompting of its own depths. It therefore appears in the unattractive guise of a dog chasing its tail. … It need not search out the nature of the undertakings God has appointed for it and then struggle to conform its desires, intentions, choices, promises and undertakings to those appointed ends. … To take this view is to adopt the very dubious proposition that if one has desires and inclinations and they are powerfully presented from the depths of the self, they are, by virtue of the strength of their presentation, both ‘natural’ and ‘good.’ To take this view is to condemn the self to what Auden once called ‘promiscuous fornication with its own images.’”9

Dr. Stanton L. Jones, Chair of Psychology Department, Wheaton College: “But the existence of inclinations, orientations or preferences have little to do with God’s moral call upon our lives. Social science is finding many powerful factors that shape character and influence morally laden choices. Alcoholism, anxiety-proneness, ill-temperedness, and even the propensity to violence are made more likely by the presence of genetic and family variables. Is it unfair, then, for God to hold up sobriety and moderation, restraint and respect, as moral values?”10

Dr. Marion L. Soards, Professor of NT, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary: “God’s purpose for humanity as Paul and others knew it from created order, scripture, and perhaps the words of Jesus, was for man and woman, male and female, to find fulfillment in the complementary sexual union that guaranteed the continuation of God’s own creation.”11

Dr. Reuben Fine, Director of NY Center for Psychiatric Training: “I have recently had occasion to review the results of psychotherapy with homosexuals, and been surprised by the findings. It is paradoxical that even though the politically active homosexual group denies the possibility of change, all studies from Schrenck-Notzing on have found positive effects, virtually regardless of the kind of treatment used…Whether with hypnosis…, psychoanalysis of any variety, educative psychotherapy, behavior therapy, and/or simple educational procedures, a considerable percentage of overt homosexuals became heterosexual. … If the patients are motivated, whatever procedure is adopted, a large percentage will give up their homosexuality. In this connection public information is of the greatest importance. The misinformation spread by certain circles that ‘homosexuality is untreatable by psychotherapy’ does incalculable harm to thousands of men and women.”12

Dr. Irving Bieber, former President of the American Academy of Psychoanalysts: “We have followed some patients for as long as 20 years who have remained exclusively heterosexual. Reversal estimates now range from 30% to an optimistic 50%.”13

Dr. Edmund Bergler, Assistant Director of Freud Clinic and lecturer at Psychoanalytic Institute in NY: “The homosexual’s real enemy is… his ignorance of the possibility that he can be helped.”14

4. The Victims-of-Pain-and-Suffering Argument

Pro-gay position

Homosexuals are people who hurt. No, it is not due to anything intrinsic to being homosexual. It is due to the persecution, the gay-bashing that is inflicted upon them by the heterosexual community. And many of the most hateful homophobes are Christians who quote a few isolated verses of Scripture to accuse homosexuals of all kinds of wickedness, thereby heaping undeserved shame and recriminations upon them. If God loves us all just the way we are, how can so many—in the name of Christ—act so shamefully and hatefully toward such a minority as the homosexual population?

Keeping Faithful response

Indeed, the pain felt by homosexuals deserves a compassionate response. The gay-bashing to which many have been subjected is unchristian and despicable. However, their pain, in large part, originates from living contrary to God’s design for them. More significantly, while listening to the experiences—including hurts and suffering—of homosexuals, no one’s personal experience can take precedence over Scripture when attempting to analyze and prescribe human behavior. Only God’s Word can have prescriptive authority, and anything that contradicts Scripture is in error.

Authorities speak

Rev. James R. Edwards, Ph.D., Chair, Dept. of Religion & Philosophy, Jamestown College: “The Reformed tradition has been a vital tradition, … not because of a professed dogma of the authority of Scripture, but because of its practice of obedience to Scripture. It is meaningless and gravely injurious to faith to assert the authority of Scripture, and yet to ignore (or worse, to seek to repudiate) the claims of that authority that stand at variance from the social or ideological context in which the church finds itself. … We believe that the church is particularly tempted in our time to grant normative status to changing social conditions in sexual matters and to the latest conclusions from the social sciences. From its inception, however, the Reformed tradition has held that sin results not only in moral error but also in intellectual error. This means that contemporary conclusions from the social sciences, no matter how “objective” they appear, and from changing social conditions, no matter how compelling they seem, which countermand the revealed will of God in Scripture, cannot be either true or according to God’s will.

…While all available pertinent knowledge and experience should inform thinking about such matters, the priority accorded to what is known of God through the Holy Scriptures cannot be surrendered.”15

Donald W. McCullough, President, San Francisco Theological Seminary: “In our recent debate about human sexuality, we seem to be flirting with a new partner. Until recently we were faithfully married, through our confessional commitments, to the sola Scriptura of our Reformed heritage; we understood the Bible to be uniquely authoritative, both in witnessing to Jesus Christ and in guiding us in faith and practice. Though we have not yet filed for divorce, we show the signs of being seduced into a new liaison: we seem ready to jump into bed with experience.

…Now, listening to the experiences of others may lead to understanding, certainly, and may help us grow in the grace of compassion. But we need to be careful. Guidance for faith and practice must come from God’s Word, not from human experience; it’s a one-way street and we ignore the flow of traffic at our own peril.

…Thank God for a relentless Word that will not compromise with our feelings! We need so much more than the fulfillment of our desires; sometimes we need deliverance from our desires. Only a transcendent, transforming Word can do this, and this is why our Reformed parents remained committed to sola Scriptura.

Have we basically given up finding biblical guidance for sexual practice? … have we now retreated to the more comfortable arena of shared experiences? Have we turned our backs on the hard work of theological reflection in favor of listening to one another tell stories? If so, we can only hope it’s a brief affair. For nothing any General Assembly ever decides about anything will be half so significant as a divorce from sola Scriptura in order to run off with experience.”16

5. The Corrected Exegesis Argument

Pro-gay argument

For centuries the church has promoted the view that the Bible condemns homosexuality. They have supported that condemnation by holding up a half-dozen passages of Scripture, in much the same way that people once held up Bible verses to support keeping slaves. However, properly understood, those Scripture passages do not actually condemn homosexuality. Rather, the sins were violence, rape, idolatry, inhospitality, prostitution and sexual exploitation. Also, while the writers of Scripture appropriately condemn homosexual behavior by heterosexuals, those writers did not address the issue of homosexual orientation and the homosexual behavior that naturally issues from it.

Keeping Faithful response

The Scriptures do not speak often about homosexuality, but when they do, they are absolutely united in one response: it is a horror before God. In OT passages, homosexual behavior brings absolute condemnation. In the NT era, when homosexual behavior was widespread, its mere existence is cited as proof-positive of how terribly far humanity has fallen in its rebellion against God.

Authorities speak

Dr. Thomas Gillespie, President of Princeton Theological Seminary in his introduction to the Presbyterian General Assembly’s Definitive Guidance of 1978: “Our interpretation of the Scriptures in this regard is thus predicated upon the central biblical theme of creation, fall into sin, and redemption in Jesus Christ into the fellowship of His Spirit. We have attempted to understand the Scriptures not legalistically but evangelically, that is, not as a law-book of proscriptions but as a message-book of God’s re-creation of [God’s] fallen world. We believe that all human sexuality, both heterosexual and homosexual, stands in need of this redemption.”17

Dr. Bruce Metzger, NT Professor, Princeton Theological Seminary: “Naturally the original documents of the Bible do not use this modern term (homosexuality), but it does not follow that the biblical writers were unacquainted with those who indulged in homosexual practices. The occurrence of same-sex activities in the ancient Near-Eastern cultures and, still more, in the Greco-Roman empire was notorious, and both the Old Testament and New Testament writers are forthright in condemning such practices.”18

Dr. Marion L. Soards, NT Professor, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary: “As Paul discerned and declared God’s relationship to humans, homosexual acts were outside the boundaries of God’s intentions for humanity. Homosexuality was one vivid indication of the real problem of sin, and Paul states bluntly that all humans are sinners. On the matter of homosexuality, we should see clearly that the biblical understanding of homosexual behavior is univocal (although this issue is at most a minor concern): homosexual activity is not consistent with the will of God; it is not so much a sin as evidence of sin, but there is no way to read the Bible as condoning homosexual acts.”19

Dr. Elizabeth R. Achtemeier, Adjunct Professor of OT, Union Theological Seminary, VA: “In short, all six of the texts in the Bible that deal with homosexuality express unqualified disapproval of it, and there is no legitimate way in which the Bible can be used to support the practice. Only if one turns to other authorities besides the Scriptures can one approve the practice, but then, of course, the church’s one authority for faith and practice, namely the Bible, has been abandoned, and we are adrift on every sea of fancy and folly…”20

6. The Corrected-Concept-of-Fidelity Argument

Pro-gay position

Homosexuals have often been accused of being promiscuous, having multiple relationships. On the other hand, promiscuity thrives in the heterosexual community. Moreover, heterosexuals have made an idol out of the one husband-one wife lifelong covenant, as if that were the only way to express one’s sexual self. What is fidelity? It is the keeping of promises to whom you make them.

As More Light Presbyterian Minister Chris Glasser suggests in his book Come Home! Reclaiming Spirituality and Community as Gay Men and Lesbians, fidelity does not mean being sexually exclusive and monogamous; fidelity really means only keeping your promises. So if a gay Christian companion promises to have only five other lovers per year, he is being faithful if he stays within those limits.21

Keeping Faithful response

Promiscuity is rampant in the homosexual community. Lifelong monogamous relationships are uncommon among lesbians and are extremely rare among gay men. Homosexuality by its nature is non-fulfilling, so an endless pursuit of a new partners is the natural result. Further, to minimize the concept of lifelong fidelity by narrowing it down to the “keeping of promises” totally distorts the whole biblical teaching on fidelity.

Authorities speak

Researchers Bell and Weinberg: “The famous Bell and Weinberg study (Homosexualities) suggested that about a third [28%] of gays have had over 1,000 sexual partners in their lifetimes. Very few gays are in committed, long-term relationships; Bell and Weinberg found that less than 10 percent of gays are in such relationships. Those who are in stable relationships do not tend to be sexually monogamous.”22

Researchers McWhirter and Mattison: “McWhirter and Mattison (The Gay Couple) found that 0 percent of the 165 stable male couples they studied were sexually monogamous after being together for five years. The authors of that study, themselves a gay couple, said that to be gay is to be non-monogamous, and that monogamy is an unnatural state that some gay men attempt because of their internalized homophobia; so when you finally grow to accept your own gayness, ‘you shed monogamy like a butterfly sheds a cocoon.’”23

Dr. William Foege, Director of the Centers for Disease Control: “‘The average AIDS victim has had 60 different sexual partners in the past twelve months.’ In contrast with this, ‘the average heterosexual male has— throughout his life—from five to nine sex partners.’”24

7. The Right of Membership Argument

Pro-gay position

The Book of Order explicitly states that one of the rights of all church members is that of holding church office (G-5.0202). There is nothing in the Book that says that a murderer cannot be a church officer. Neither does it single out thieves, rapists or prostitutes. It is absolutely arbitrary and unconstitutional to single out a whole class of Presbyterians as being ineligible for ordination. You might as well deny them the right to become members, because the present policy creates a two-class membership system: full-members and half-members. If the Book of Order does not shut out homosexual Presbyterians, how can the church itself shut them out?

Keeping Faithful response

The Presbyterian Church has always ordained contrite, repentant sinners to its offices but also has always forbidden self-avowed practicing sinners of all kinds from serving as its officers.

The first half of the Presbyterian Church(USA)’s Constitution, The Book of Confessions, states many of these kinds of sins, including that of homosexual practice. In so doing, the Church reflects the standards established in Scripture. The only reason homosexual behavior has been specifically prohibited by the Presbyterian Church(USA) is that ever since the mid-1970’s, a small number of Presbyterians have been challenging the Church’s standard in this one area.

Authorities speak

Presbyterian General Assembly’s Definitive Guidance of 1978: “As persons repent and believe, they become members of Christ’s body….There is room in the church for all who give honest affirmation to the vows required for membership in the church. Homosexual persons who sincerely affirm ‘Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior’ and ‘I intend to be his disciple, to obey his word, and to show his love’ should not be excluded from membership.

“To be an ordained officer is to be a human instrument, touched by divine powers but still an earthen vessel. As portrayed in Scripture, the officers set before the church and community an example of piety, love, service and moral integrity. Officers are not free from repeated expressions of sin. Neither are members and officers free to adopt a lifestyle of conscious, continuing and unresisted sin in any area of their lives. For the church to ordain a self-affirming, practicing homosexual person to ministry would be to act in contradiction to its charter and calling in Scripture, setting in motion both within the church and society serious contradictions to the will of Christ.”

Book of Order part of the Constitution of the PCUSA: “The General Assembly constitutes the bond of union, community, and mission among all its congregations and governing bodies. It therefore has the responsibility and power… to warn or bear witness against error in doctrine or immorality in practice in or outside the Church.” (G-13.0103)

Kenneth Sawyer, Assistant Professor of Church History and Reference Librarian at the Jesuit-Krauss-McCormick Library at McCormick Theological Seminary: “Our history shows that we have often inverted the wise counsel of our own tradition, often losing sight of the biblical mandates of generosity and hospitality. But within this denomination, our discussions must speak more often of obligations, constraints and responsibilities, rather than of freedom from obligation and restraint.

Issues of leadership provide an excellent example of restraint: serving the people of God is less an outworking of the charter of freedom, than the taking up of one’s cross. In our deliberations concerning leadership, our tradition has always made sharp distinctions between freedoms of membership and the constraints and costs of leadership.

We are counseled to judge with special charity all those who confess our Lord, though they may be very different from us. And we are counseled to judge with special severity all those who seek ordination, though they may be very similar to us.”25

8. The Justice-Discrimination Argument

Pro-gay position

The Presbyterian Church (USA) makes lofty pronouncements against discrimination and class hatred. However, Presbyterians in the past have actually been defenders of slavery, racial discrimination and gender discrimination. It is time for the church to take the lead in the justice issue of the 1990’s, the acceptance of homosexuals and lesbians as our brothers and sisters. If we are committed to pursuing justice and mercy, then can anybody think that such a pursuit can bypass the homosexuals among us?

Says lesbian minister, Jane Spahr, “We are not subhuman. The holocaust is over. They killed three-quarters of a million of us that they know. … I must be in that church that says ‘Yes’ to people, no matter what their color, no matter what their race, no matter what their sexual orientation. Now that’s what I know. And that’s the God I know. So maybe we’re talking about a different God.”26

Keeping Faithful response

The homosexual community would have us believe that denial of ordination due to their sexual behavior is comparable to denying ordination due to undeniably genetic differences, like race or gender. In fact anybody who disagrees with them is, by definition, homophobic. That is like saying that anybody speaking out against drunkenness hates all people who drink alcohol.

As has been already shown, the claim that homosexual behavior is genetically predetermined has not been substantiated. The Scriptures compel us to speak the truth in love in order that we all might grow up into Christ. Certainly, that is a tall order. It is easy to shout out truth with no care to be kind, and it is easy to speak lovingly while neglecting the facts. But to speak the truth in love demands, in this instance, that the church embrace the homosexual person, invite him or her to walk the Christian pilgrimage in the church, and to invite that person to begin to discover that there is a freedom available, such that they can walk away from the homosexual lifestyle. When Christ sets free, we are free indeed. To proclaim anything less, truly would be unjust.

Authorities speak

Dr. Stanton L. Jones, Chair of Psychology Department, Wheaton College: “The current movement to see gay persons as a social group that must be loved and accepted as they are is the latest form of an old challenge— the challenge to diminish the authority of God’s revelation, to understand people on their own terms rather than by God’s view of them, and fundamentally to amend the nature of Christ’s call to take up our crosses and follow him.

In this difficult time, there are two things that we must do. They are two things that do not naturally go together. We must exhibit the very love and compassion of Jesus Christ himself. And we must fearlessly proclaim the truth that Jesus Christ himself proclaimed and embodied. … A certain degree of natural revulsion to homosexual acts per se is natural for heterosexuals. … But a revulsion to an act is not the same as a revulsion to a person. If you cannot empathize with a homosexual person because of your fear of, or revulsion to them, then you are failing our Lord.

[…However,] if we truly love, we will not shrink from speaking God’s view of homosexual behavior. Do not be deceived: increasingly today we are defined as unloving, solely for viewing homosexuality as immoral, regardless of the compassion we exhibit. Nevertheless, we must strive to be loving when we voice our opposition. Compassion in no way entails an acceptance of the gay lifestyle, any more than it entails affirming an adulterer’s infidelity.”27

The Resolution

RESOLVED, that the 208th General Assembly declare invalid any impediment to the ordination of those practicing homosexuality and affirm the full exercise of the right and responsibility of presbyteries and congregations to discern, elect, ordain and install ministers, elders and deacons.

Pro-gay position and Keeping Faithful response

As stated throughout this paper, this resolution is untenable.

Epilogue

So what’s the big deal? We have long acknowledged that nobody is perfect; nobody is sinless. Even if we admit that homosexuality is not God’s will for humanity, why has this one sin been singled out as so significant?

The answer is truth. Presbyterians take seriously the study of science, psychology and other academic disciplines. However, we have always treated with utmost importance our commitment to truth, and specifically, our need to be faithful to a well-reasoned biblical theology. Those who urge the church to endorse the practice of homosexuality as a legitimate, alternate lifestyle, do violence to theological themes that are central to the truth revealed by God.

Creation

In the biblical account of creation, God’s first command to humanity is “Be fruitful and multiply…” Then, however, God acknowledges that the first man is alone, lacking a good “helper as his partner.” After presenting all the animals to the man, none of whom is deemed suitable to fill the need, God creates the woman. As is observed in the text, she is the perfect complement to the man, such that through posterity, they shall leave father and mother and cling to one another, thereby becoming one flesh. In other words, as is so obviously demonstrated in human physiology, the man and woman are created with a potential for partnership, capable of reproducing—and all by God’s decree.

The practice of homosexuality overthrows the significance of God’s intention for creation. It disallows the possibility of reproduction. It denies the physical—and by implication, the psychological—complementarity of male and female. Instead, it treats the experience of pleasuring as the only purpose for human sexuality. Ultimately, it disregards God’s intention for sexuality.

A doctrine of creation that is faithful to Scripture and the Confessions of the faith cannot abide the legitimization of homosexuality any more than it could abide polygamy or bestiality.

Fall and Sin

When humanity chose to rebel against God, all manner of human relationships and desires were corrupted. The lack of daily communion with God leads to moral and ethical wretchedness, with humans developing an almost insatiable desire for sensuality, violence and greed. Accordingly, God instituted the Law, providing an objective standard that defines human sin in ways that one’s own conscience cannot, and calling humanity to live by that Law, rather than the laws of fallen human nature.

In contrast, when homosexuals say, “I just feel these feelings, so they must be all right,” they are rejecting the objective standard of God’s Law. In its place they are merely approving one of the many corrupted feelings that tend to result from human fallenness.

The historic doctrines of the fall and sin look skeptically at the appropriateness of human desires and hungers, and admit that only the dictates of Scripture can accurately and objectively determine right from wrong. Indeed, Scripture states that faithful, monogamous male-female marriage is right. It also states that homosexual and adulterous sexual relationships are wrong.

Redemption

The central biblical doctrine is that of redemption.

The whole purpose for the incarnation, cross, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ is that of redemption. That is to say, the whole Christ-event transpired in order to forgive the sinner, to heal the sick, to free the oppressed, and to break down the alienation between divinity and humanity— all toward the purpose of granting people the knowledge of God. The gracious work of the Lord toward those ends, presumes humanity’s helplessness against sin but offers the gift of salvation which is powerful enough to change damaged persons into the children of God, and progressively, into the image of Jesus Christ.

When the homosexual says, “This is what I am, I cannot be otherwise,” she or he is saying that redemption is powerless against such a lifestyle. Homosexual desires and behaviors, so to speak, are irredeemable.

The church must never allow any limitation to the power of redemption. If Christ can forgive the prostitute, can heal the leper and can free the demoniac, he certainly can lead the homosexual to sexual freedom. The reshaping of habits may call for therapy and effort and self-discipline, but the power of redemption makes it all possible.

So what’s the big deal? The big deal is the need to keep faithful to the Christian gospel. We could be debating other lifestyles, such as polygamous marriage or the dumping of toxic wastes. Regardless of the issue at hand, either we acknowledge that all things were created by God for God’s purpose, that human sin has led to the corruption of human desires and behaviors, and that Christ can redeem that corruption, setting people free from its bondage—or we declare the gospel null and void. That is the big deal.

As We Might Say It: A Resolution on Keeping Faithful

1. WHEREAS, from the beginning, almighty and loving God has created human beings male and female in order to provide suitable and complementary partners capable of and empowered to procreate the race within the God-ordained covenant of marriage, and

2. WHEREAS, homosexual orientation tends to develop as a result of emotional trauma and/or deprivation, and

3. WHEREAS, the Scriptures teach the need for people to exercise control over their sexual desires and

4. WHEREAS, the Holy Scriptures, being studied on their own terms, must always be given priority in all formulations of Christian doctrine and practice, even at the risk of alienating sincere individuals whose personal experience and practice does not conform to the teachings of Scripture, and

5. WHEREAS, those Scriptures consistently speak of sexual acts between any individuals outside the heterosexual marriage covenant as unnatural, aberrant, contrary to God’s design and sinful, and

6. WHEREAS, the Scriptures call upon husbands and wives in such marriage covenants to maintain fidelity to one another for as long as they both shall live, and

7. WHEREAS, the Presbyterian Church(USA)’s Constitution, namely, the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order, affirm that the offices of minister, elder and deacon are open not simply to all church members but particularly to those who live an exemplary lifestyle, especially as regarding fidelity to God-ordained relationships, and

8. WHEREAS, the Presbyterian Church (USA), who in its attempts to defend the plight of those victimized by discrimination, nevertheless has never confused the defense of basic human rights with that of endorsing aberrant lifestyles nor with granting the privilege and calling of serving in the offices of church leadership,

RESOLVED, that the Presbyterian Church(USA) reaffirms its practice of proscribing from the office of minister, elder and deacon those persons engaging in unrepentant sexual behavior outside of the one husband-one wife covenant of marriage.

This article was reprinted in Theology Matters, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Mar/Apr 1996).