Introduction
One of the Biblical scholars
promoting ‘LGBT’ culture in the Church is Walter Brueggemann, whose writings in Old
Testament studies are well known.
Intriguingly, he does not dispute that the Biblical texts speaking to
the issue are clear: homosexuality is a sin.
He opposes these texts by other means than exegesis. The present essay's response to him examines
his arguments in three parts.
Brueggemann’s Ways of Dismissing Scriptural Teaching and Authority
Referencing Leviticus 18.22;
20.13 and Romans 1.23-27, Walter Brueggemann says, ‘It is impossible to explain
away these texts.’[1] With this admission, Brueggemann then
proceeds to find a way to dismiss them.
They are ‘old traditions,’ which, in our context, is not a term of veneration
and respect but disparagement. Those who
cite them are ‘loud voices.’ Seeking to obey the Scripture is dismissed as 'biblicism.’ The ‘Bible contains,’ he
alleges, ‘all sorts of voices that are inimical to the good news of God’s love,
mercy and justice.’ Biblical texts that
fail this ‘gospel’ test are not worthy of ‘gospel attentiveness.’
Several responses to this line of
thinking may be offered. The New
Testament is not some alternative, new tradition on sexual ethics from the Old
Testament. Even on this specific topic,
Romans 1.18-28 in the former is an interpretation of creation in the latter:
people descend into an unnatural ignorance of God with their idolatry as they
do with human sexuality with their homosexuality.
1 Corinthians 6.9 and 1 Timothy 1.10 call homosexuality ‘man-bedding’ (arsenokoitai), using language from
Leviticus 20.13. Jude 7-8 and 2 Peter 2
interpret Sodom’s sin not as inhospitality, pride, luxury, violence, or
something else but as a sexual sin.
(Sodom’s sins were many, but sexual disorder was certainly one of
them). The relationship of New Testament
texts to Old Testament ones on this issue shows respect for the authority of
Old Testament teaching rather than a dismissal of it as something old.
Another problem with Brueggemann’s
perspective seems to be with his representation of the Gospel. The ‘good news of God’s love, mercy, and
justice’ is not good news that sin is no
longer sin but that Jesus’ died for our sins to make us righteous. Brueggemann’s definition of the Gospel, at
least in this article, lacks any soteriology.
John wrote in response to a faction that distinguished themselves from
the apostolic faith by saying they had no sin, did not need Jesus’ death for
sin, and did not need to live according to God’s commandments (1 John
1.5-2.6). This is what those rejecting
God’s commandments on sexuality and interpreting the Gospel as simply good news
of welcoming acceptance rather than good news of justifying sinners are doing.
Furthermore, Brueggemann’s
attempt to reduce Scripture’s relevance for the Church to his understanding of
the Gospel is a restriction unknown to New Testament authors, let alone the Church
through the centuries of interpretation.
Paul established the alternative hermeneutic: ‘All Scripture is breathed
out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness’ (2 Timothy 3.16).
Brueggemann’s Subjectivism
A second line of argument for Brueggemann
is subjectivity. He mixes a powerful sedative
of subjectivity. One no longer needs to
be or even can be alert to the meaning of texts, the canonical voice of
Biblical theology, or the reader’s ethic to listen attentively to the historic
Church’s witness. Rather, he claims from
his postmodern podium, (1) the text is never without the filter of human
experience. (2) The ‘Bible does not
speak with a single voice on any topic.’
(3) Readers are products of their traditions. To argue against any of these propositions is
futile, since anyone opposing him can be summarily dismissed as a mere product
of his or her own subjectivity, choosing one group of texts instead of another,
or arguing from a different tradition.
Yet Brueggemann’s claims of
subjectivity are not claims of relativism.
As early postmodernity morphed into a later version, the relativism of
existentialism gave way to the cancel culture of critical theory. Thus, Brueggemann is an advocate for same sex unions of some sort that deconstruct orthodoxy. To
oppose him on this matter means that one is exposed as from the wrong
interpretive tradition, one promoting purity (holiness) rather than
justice. To oppose him means that one is
stranded in an old world of ‘white male power’ rather than going with the flow
of the ‘current politico-cultural struggles’ for ‘a multiethnic, multicultural,
multiracial, multigendered culture’ that comes to terms with ‘the other.’ The old must be cancelled, the new must be
embraced. Traditional Christianity’s
approaches to multiethnicity through the worldwide mission of the Church,
multiculturalism through the translatability of the one Gospel into different
cultures, multiracialism through not privileging any race over another, and its
biological understanding of genders (male and female) are summarily dismissed. Claiming the moral high ground in all such
matters, Brueggemann disparages orthodox Christianity rather than attempts, as
an earlier postmodernity might have tried to do, to incorporate contradictory
voices. This is somewhat peculiar,
however, since Brueggemann gets to his end game of subjectivity by insisting on
the presence of different voices in the Biblical texts, canon, and readers or
interpreters. The polyvalence of
meaning, it turns out, is a way of deconstructing orthodoxy in order to replace
it not with another meaning but with a new orthopraxis of ‘politico-cultural’
activism. Interpretation is not necessary
when subjective readings and traditions govern the conversation, but they are
not welcome when a politically correct position needs to be affirmed and not
argued.
Scripture, of course, nowhere
opposes justice and holiness. These are
not two, alternative trajectories for appropriating Biblical texts. Even so, the justice that Brueggemann has in
mind, as noted, is not Biblical justice but something recently invented in the
West’s postmodern and post-Christian culture.
Scripture, moreover, does not reject holiness but understands it as the mark of one who has been
converted to the Christian faith. This
may be illustrated in Peter and Paul, and in Jesus’ teaching.
As Peter writes, repeating Mosaic
Law (Leviticus 11.44),
As obedient
children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15
but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16
since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1.14-16).
Christians are to be built up
into a spiritual house, into a holy priesthood and nation (1 Peter 2.5, 9).
This is also Paul’s understanding
of the local church in 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul addresses the case of a man
living in sexual relationships with his father’s wife and then expands his
point to other matters of moral purity. The
church is a people celebrating the Passover sacrifice of Christ Jesus by
cleansing themselves from the ‘yeast’ of malice and evil (1 Corinthians
5.7-8). He then expands his point in
reference to any man bearing the name of brother (one claiming to be a
Christian) who is sexually immoral, greedy, an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or
swindler. In other words, people who
continue to live sinful lives as proscribed in Scripture are to be excluded
from Christian fellowship. The Gospel is
not about license to sin or a perverted form of grace to welcome sin but about
the power of God to save and transform sinners.
The case in point in this chapter
of 1 Corinthians is a man living sexually with his father’s wife. This was forbidden in the Law in the same
chapter that forbids homosexual acts, Leviticus 18 (cf. vv. 8 and 22). In fact, as Paul’s argument continues in
chapter 6, he alludes to homosexuality in wording (arsenokoitai) taken from
the Greek version of Leviticus 20.13, a verse echoing Leviticus 18.22. Thus, Paul has no intention of rejecting Old
Testament laws on homosexuality any more than on a man living with his father’s
wife. He reinterpret sexual ethics with
some malleable, abstract principle of justice that sets up an opposition to
holiness in the way that Brueggemann does.
Brueggemann’s Postmodernism
Third, Brueggemann insists that
‘the Bible does not speak with a single voice on any topic.’ This, too, contributes to his affirmation of
subjectivity as a postmodern person.
Postmodernity, with its ‘incredulity towards metanarratives,’[2]
is uncomfortable with unity and celebrates diversity—but diversity of a certain
kind. In Brueggemann’s world, the unity
of texts in Scripture on the matter of homosexuality, let alone sexuality, is
problematic. Yet he finds a way to
create dissonance. If one moves up the
ladder of abstraction far enough, one can then set some vague value like
‘justice’ or ‘love’ in opposition to concrete texts. One can then use such a value to contradict
another, like holiness, and thereby one can discount the ‘inimical’ texts in
Scripture.
Oddly, Brueggemann’s claim that
the Bible never speaks with unity on a given topic. The elephant in the room is where such a
statement is made is the very issue under discussion. Different authors in different contexts
writing in different genre over hundreds of years say with that dreaded ‘single
voice’ of Scripture that homosexuality is a sin. Worse, for Brueggemann, Scripture’s opposition
to homosexuality cohered with its overall sexual ethics—its view on gender,
sex, marriage, and what was said to be sinful.
Making matters still worse for him, the Jews and early Christians all
affirmed this interpretation of Scripture, and it was held in opposition to the
Ancient Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman cultures. One struggles to imagine what
could constitute a better example of the ‘single voice’ of Scripture on a given
topic.
In truth, Brueggemann has himself
fairly well covered. He can dismiss any
challenge to his position without having to argue about the meaning of texts. Any debater pressing subjectivity in an
argument thinks his position is only strengthened when someone opposes
him. The mere presence of difference,
even when easily disproven, is considered proof of subjectivity. This ismay be
why Brueggemann does not spend time addressing the Biblical texts that he is so
eager to dismiss. That would be to
consider one interpretation true and another false.
However, he does run into some serious
trouble with this view. First, no
Biblical author supports his hermeneutical view. Paul, for example, was concerned with what
Biblical texts—including the Old Testament Law—said. He also does not oppose justice or love to
such texts, as Brueggemann does. He is
concerned to show the consistency of the Biblical view of creation with the
Law’s view on homosexuality, and he alludes to the Law in his own list of
things not to do, including homosexuality.
Paul’s understanding of Christian theology and ethics is that they are,
through and through, a matter of Biblical interpretation. Brueggemann’s view is that an abstract
principle or two, given some form from the current culture, should shape
current practices that stand in opposition to Scripture.
Jesus, furthermore, did not
oppose the supreme laws of the love of God and the love of neighbour to all the
laws and the prophets but said that all the laws and the prophets hung on them. He did not take Brueggemann’s antinomian
stance, who disparagingly dubs the concrete commandments of Scripture ‘texts of
rigour.’ Sometimes He opposed the scribes and the Pharisees for relaxing commandments by means of their
creative interpretations (e.g., Mark 7 regarding korban). He expanded certain
Old Testament laws that merely prohibited outward actions to include matters of
the heart (Matthew 5.20-48). If an Old
Testament law placed restrictions on divorce (Deuteronomy 24.1-4), He tightened
the law in light of God’s intent in creation for marriage and the demand for
perfection in the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19.1-9; 5.31-32, 48), eliminating any
accommodation for sin. Sinners were
welcomed in the waters of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, not for their
sins. He did not come to abolish the Law
and the prophets but to fulfill them, and not one small part of the Law was to
pass away until all was accomplished (Matthew 5.17-18).
Conclusion
In his interpretation of
Scripture on the issue of homosexuality, Brueggemann’s approach is reminiscent
of the surgeon who lost a patient on the operating table. When confronted in court about his
malpractice, he insisted that he had actually saved her because he had kept some
DNA tissue and could even improve on what she had been with some future
experiments. One may certainly appreciate
Brueggemann’s readers asking for their Bible back, the disparaging charge of ‘biblicism’
notwithstanding. What stands out most
clearly from Brueggemann’s approach to the subject of homosexuality are his
ways of rejecting Biblical authority.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, ‘Walter
Brueggemann: How to read the Bible on homosexuality,’ Outreach (4 September, 2022); online: https://outreach.faith/2022/09/walter-brueggemann-how-to-read-the-bible-on-homosexuality/
(accessed 1 July, 2023).
[2] This is the famous
definition of Francois Lyotard, The
Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B.
Massumi (Manchester University Press, 1984), p. xxiv.
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