A pastor friend, in response to

‘You have the Bible bashing fundamentalists on one side and the warm fuzzies on the other, liberal side. In the middle are those who stand for everything and nothing.’

wrote…

As one of those somewhere in the middle I am sick of the dishonesty from the extremes in which unpalatable information is simply blocked out so that proponents can feel comfortable.

Let’s begin with some basic information. In the few places where it is mentioned in the Bible, homosexuality is seen as a morally evil choice. In the light of modern medical research, homosexuality is increasingly seen as being biologically determined. These two contradictory factors set up the inevitability of conflict for our times, and denial of the conflict is usually the result of bad theology.

How does God speak to us? There are a number of answers. For example, “God speaks to us authoritatively through the Church. So what does the Vatican say?” Sounds to me like the Roman Catholic position. After two thousand years of abominable church history and a modern sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, this view wouldn’t cut much ice with me, even if I wasn’t a Protestant. Then we have the fundamentalist view – ‘Sola Scriptura’ – the Bible alone. The irony about this position is that it is unbiblical. Even a casual reading of St Paul shows that he appeals to Nature for an indication of God’s will.

In the late Medieval period a comprehensive Christian theology began to be clearly articulated. In it there are two sources of revelation: the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. Seeking God through the “Book of Nature” gave rise to science and most of the great scientific minds of the second millennium were religiously motivated people seeking God through Nature. Contrary to popular propaganda, the Church gave rise to Western science. However, there were the roots of fundamentalism even then which promoted the Book of Scripture to the point of bibliolatry and denigrated the Book of Nature as having nothing relevant to salvation. Clearly the latter were wrong! The Book of Nature has come back to sting them.

To deny that God speaks through Nature is a revival of ancient Gnostic heresy, which denied that God was the Creator of this natural world. Following in St Paul’s tradition of appealing to Nature, Hugh of St Victor (d.1142) declared that the whole material creation consisted of letters written ‘by the finger of God’. In the words of historian Peter Harrison, “Albert the Great (c.1200-1280), sounding rather like an eighteenth century British empiricist, announced that all universal knowledge arises out of sense experience. His famous protégé, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274), agreed that ‘all our knowledge takes its rise from sensation,’ and that ‘it is the knowledge we have of creatures that enables us to refer to God.’ “

If indeed “the whole material creation consists of letters written by the finger of God”, then we must accept the findings of science as the word of God, as much as anything in the Bible. For even St Paul himself appeals to Nature (1 Corinthians 11:13-14).

Of course, here is the source of the conflict. Paul’s appeal to Nature can rightly be turned against his own judgement on the issue of homosexuality. We consequently have to ask, did Paul consider his own judgements on the issue timeless infallible tomes, or did he consider his appeal to Nature as an exemplary methodology by which others could make their own decision? His appeal to the Corinthians to “judge for themselves” (1 Cor. 11:13) suggests the latter.

The stubborn nature of a biologically determined homosexuality has its pastoral counterpart. The experiences of deep clinical depression and suicide of those who are caught between their biblically motivated aspirations to be heterosexual and their biologically determined inability to do so, has dreadful impact not only on themselves but on those who pastorally care for them. To continue to place such demands on them arises from a “Sola Scriptura” theology, which is ultimately bad theology.

On the other hand, those of us caught in the middle will make enemies on both sides of the extreme. One cannot consider whatever Nature dishes up as the will of God, otherwise congenital heart disorders and all manner of disease would be seen in the same light. At its primary level, sexuality is about reproduction, and homosexuality suggests that something in Nature has gone awry because sexual organs are asked to function in their reproductive capacity in a way that is ultimately futile. The Book of Nature will not please either extreme.

Some will not agree with the arguments I have offered above. However, I think they are sufficient to demonstrate that those of us in the middle are not those “who stand for everything and nothing”, as Terry would have us believe. We are rather those who like to consider all the information and live with the conflict it contains, rather than deny that the conflict exists.

Related Articles:

• THE NEW EVANGELICALS: HOW CHRISTIANS ARE RETHINKING ABORTION AND GAY MARRIAGE
• Theologians, like parents, are invited to be humble as well as (frequently) ignorant…
• The Jesus Driven Life
• INCARNATION
• Virgin Birth: ‘God degraded Mary?’

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