Pressures Toward Toleration

From many quarters we are being pressed to abandon the traditional Christian conviction that homosexual practice is morally wrong, and to tolerate it.

Recently TV’s Donahue in interviewing a popular evangelist regaled his sophisticated audience with some clips of the preacher’s Biblical denunciations of homosexual practice. Donahue’s closing remark was that when preachers see how public attitudes are changing regarding this subject they will fall into line.

A news item reported how Palo Alto ministers had largely supported a gay rights ordinance which, to their surprise, was rejected by the voters.

The official defense of homosexual conduct as acceptable, by the Dutch mother churches of many of us has become notorious. An editorial in the March 16 Wachter informs us that the Dutch government is considering passing a law which would outlaw job discrimination against people who live together without being married or people who engage in homosexual practice. When some Christian school administrations criticized the proposed law as an infringement on their freedom, the administration of the Reformed Churches’ (the GKN’s) Kampen theological school and that of the Theological Faculty of the Free University at Amsterdam defended the law and expressed their outrage with the, in their opinion, un–Christian attitude of those Christian school boards.

There are also comparable signs of a growing tolerance regarding these matters in our own circles. The December 11, 1981 Calvinist Contact reported on an interview with Rev. John Vriend, pastor of the Grand Rapids Christian Reformed Church of the Servant, regarding steps taken in his church toward creating a “climate of acceptance” toward homosexuals. The minister said, “One of the more significant things we have done is to invite the chairman of a local organization called ‘Dignity,’ a Roman Catholic organization for homosexual people, to speak to our congregation about ‘Why Christian gays are angry with the church.’” Vriend expressed his satisfaction with the sensation this incident created and the progressive attitude it was promoting.

In the October, 1981 issue of Dialogue, published by Calvin College’s Communications Board, two editors reported on a discussion with a professed homosexual student, a philosophy professor and a college chaplain. In the discussion the interviewed student expressed the opinion that though homosexual conduct might be the result of sin he did not think it was sinful. Although some disagreed, the tenor of the discussion was toward a less critical attitude toward homosexuals. References were made to Lewis B. Smedes’ book Sex for Christians, which, although it acknowledged the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual practice, softened and qualified that with the suggestion that certain “constitutional” homosexuals seek to achieve an “optimum morality” with one other person as “preferable to a life of sexual chaos” (Smedes, p. 73).

It is no secret that the faculty of the AACS’ Toronto Institute for Christian Studies was internally divided and demoralized by a long and painful controversy about this same matter.

The Christian Reformed Synod of 1973 adopted a study committee report which, while it condemned homosexual practice, did so only after critically questioning the Biblical condemnations on which such a church decision, if it is valid, has to be based. The report began with accepting uncritically the opinions of some current psychologists on the nature of homosexuality (distinguishing sharply between a homosexual condition and homosexual practice), and proceeded from that starting point to consider the passages in the Old Testament that condemn the practice. It stated “Whether the judgment which the Old Testament makes on homosexualism would be the same if such a distinction had been known we cannot say at this point. But therefore we cannot simply apply the Old Testament prohibition without considering whether our knowledge of homosexuality may not modify to some degree our moral judgment about the homosexual practices of such persons.” Proceeding to the New Testament it said, “But again we need to ask whether the judgment of Paul applies to those who are homosexuals as we have defined them, i.e., those who are constitutionally homosexual. . . .” Its final conclusion condemning homosexual practice is also qualified by the stated principle that “biblical injunctions and prohibitions are to be honored in every instance where they are not overborne by either external necessity or by a higher value.” (Is it surprising that ministers trained in this kind of “critical” handling of the Bible are uncertain about their convictions on this as well as many other moral questions?)

Whether we consider the trends in our society, the precedent of our mother churches or the trends and decisions in our own, we can see the mounting pressures to move from the traditional and Biblical condemnations of homosexual practice to a more tolerant acceptance of it. Isn’t this movement the necessary adjustment to “progress” which many assume it to be?

   

The “New” Acceptance Is Not New

First of all the assumption that an “accepting” attitude toward homosexual practice is new or in any way real “progress” has to be criticized in the light of a long history which contradicts it. Our synod’s report says of the practice “It was known in ancient times and in every subsequent era” and “Homosexualism had a long history in the hellenistic world. It was already practiced and approved by Plato. . . .” The “new” understanding and therefore the tolerance of it are not (as the synod committee assumed) a new discovery of some present day psychologists. Even the evidence cited by the committee shows them to be simply a return to pagan attitudes which were commonplace among the sophisticated Greeks of Plato’s dialogues*—and the degraded Canaanites which Israel encountered in Palestine.

We Must Begin With the Bible

The Old Testament laws which deal with this subject cannot be fairly criticized because (as the synod committee alleges) they were formulated in ignorance of our contemporary insights. On the contrary, God gave His people these laws with their stern warnings to deliver them from and safeguard them against exactly these false and foolish pagan notions which are now being promoted as new discoveries.

The trouble with the “new” views (and with our synod committee’s report in as far as it accepts them) is that they begin by accepting the claim of some contemporary experts and then criticize the Bible from that point of view. As evangelical Christians we must learn to turn matters around—to start with the Bible and then criticize the opinions of the experts from that point of view. As Bill Bright said at the recent San Diego Congress on the Bible, “The key issue is very simple. Either the Bible stands in judgment over every man’s mind, or every man’s mind stands in judgment over the Bible.”

Old Testament Revelation

In effort to summarize what the Old Testament says about our subject, we first recall in Genesis 1:26–28 and 2:18–24, God’s good creation and His revealed purpose in creating man male and female to form a unity in heterosexual marriage. After the Fall we see various perversions of this, as of all other created relationships. In the laws which God gave to Israel, as His people, He restated and outlined His order in these relationships and warned against the various pagan perversions of them. Leviticus 18:22 lists homosexual relations among the “abominations” which God detests, going on to explain (vv. 24ff.) “Do not defile yourselves by any of these things: for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have visited its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not do any of these abominations . . . so that the land may not spew you out, should you defile it, as it has spewed out the nation which has been before you. For whoever does any of these abominations, those persons who do so shall be cut off from among their people.” Later in chapter 20 these warnings are reiterated with the death penalty prescribed for a number of these offenses including homosexuality (v. 13). In the light of God’s revealed detestation of these practices we ought also to consider and understand his commands to Israel to exterminate the degraded Canaanites’ society and take over their country. That development, not yet appropriate in the days of Abraham, “for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16), was now ordered by God.

The Lesson of Sodom

In this same light we ought to consider the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and its important role in Biblical history. Abraham must be informed of it and the reason for it even before the event occurred “since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” “For I have chosen him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice in order that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him” (Gen. 18:17ff.). In other words, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah must be an unforgettable lesson to warn God’s people through the future generations of what He in His justice is going to do to nations, and ultimately the whole world that persists in rejecting Him and His laws. A survey of the many references to that event in the Old and New Testaments shows that that is exactly what the event became throughout Biblical history.

New Testament Warnings

The New Testament restates the same emphatic warnings about God’s invariable hatred of homosexual and other perversions of His creation and His laws. Especially the Corinthian Christians who were under special pressures to conform to the easygoing, notoriously immoral life-style of their environment (very similar to what ours is becoming) were warned, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals . . . will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9, 10; cf. also Eph. 4:17–5:8). 1 Tim. 1:10 includes homosexuals, translated in the RSV as “sodomites,” among those who are breaking the law of God and living “contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God.”

The Romans I Explanation

Most revealing in helping us to get a proper Christian understanding of homosexuality is Paul’s treatment of it in Romans 1. There he introduced his gospel as “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (v. 16). He went on to show (in a way copied by our catechism) why it is of utmost importance to everyone. All need it. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (v. 18). All have enough revelation of God the Creator in His creation to make their rejection of Him completely inexcusable. Despite that revelation they deliberately substitute for the “glory of the incorruptible God” a humanistic and naturalistic “image.” How is God’s “wrath” shown against such inexcusable religious apostasy? Three times we are told that “God gave them over” (vv. 24, 26, 28) to doing what they wanted to do in progressively worse and more degenerate forms of vice. First (v. 24) “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them.” Presently, in a further state of this revelation of His “wrath,” “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire towards one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error” (vv. 26, 27). In this passage homosexual practice is exposed as both calling for the retributive judgment of God, and as part of the execution of that judgment in the accelerating degeneracy of those who reject Him.

These clear biblical teachings leave no possible room for the easy toleration and even welcome of homosexual activity that is now being advocated.

How can one account for the sudden upsurge of homosexual activity in our society and the publicity and support being given it in news media, movies and even the courts? That is no mystery to anyone who considers this Biblical explanation. As our society progressively and deliberately throws off the shreds of Christian influence that remains in our laws, customs and culture, rejecting all of God’s standards especially in the areas of education and public life, God’s wrath is increasingly shown in His abandoning us to the old pagan vices which have destroyed past civilizations. The upsurge of homosexual vice in our time is just one of the more ominous symptoms of a civilization which, like that of Israel’s old Canaanite neighbors, is rapidly becoming ripe for extermination.

“The Power of God for Salvation”

When we accept this grim Biblical evaluation of homosexual practice haven’t we lost all compassion and hope for the practicing homosexual? We certainly have not. The apostle Paul was showing why such individuals, as well as everyone else, desperately need the gospel which is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (v. 16). In the Corinthian letter which warned that “homosexuals . . . shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9, 10) he immediately added, “And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (v. 11). The Lord can and does deliver from every kind of sin and vice. We will not help the world, or the church or the homosexual person if we let ourselves be persuaded that sin is no longer sin and vice is no longer vice. We will only be really helpful if we see and show how God exposes and denounces sin for what it is and calls us all to Himself as the Savior of sinners.**

*At one point in the Symposium Alcibiades expressed his amazement at Socrates’ remarkable refusal to indulge in this common pastime.

**Particularly helpful in dealing with this subject is the section in Jay E. Adams’ The Christian Counselor’s Manual entitled “How to Counsel Persons Involved in the Sin of Homosexuality” fpp. 403–412; cf also in his Competent to Counsel pp. 35, 36 and The Big Umbrella, pp. 219–221).