Pastor Jeff Allen, an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene, was challenged by a homosexual activists to identify any liberal Ph.D. scholars who agreed with the Biblical prohibition of homosexuality. Allen was surprised to find several liberal scholars who agreed that the New Testament taught against homosexuality, gathering quotes from various books and articles of Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, the premier expert on the subject of homosexuality and the Bible.
The Bible unequivocally and in no uncertain terms condemns homosexual practice and even the best liberal scholars agree.
Dan O. Via, professor emeritus of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, a pro-homosexual advocate, whose research and teaching have focused on various aspects of New Testament theology, ethics and issues of interpretation theory, writes in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views, that Scripture condemns homosexual behavior “unconditionally” and “absolutely.” According to professor Via, “The Pauline texts. . .do not support this limitation of male homosexuality to pederasty. . .arsenokoites refers to a man who engages in same-sex intercourse. . .First Cor. 6:9-10 simply classifies homosexuality as a moral sin that finally keeps one out of the kingdom of God.”
Louis Crompton, emeritus professor at the University of Nebraska and author of Homosexuality and Civilization, is a self-identified homosexual and a pioneer of gay studies. He writes that “according to one interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at ‘bona fide’ homosexuals in committed relations, but such a reading, however well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstance. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early Christian.”
Bernadette Brooton, a New Testament scholar and Chair of the Department of Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, a self-avowed lesbian, writes in Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, “I see Paul as condemning all forms of homoeroticism as the unnatural acts of people who had turned away from God.”
William Schoedel, professor emeritus of Classics and Early Christianity at the University of Illinois, supportive of homosexual unions, refutes the false claim that Romans 1:26-27 refers only to “same-sex acts performed by those who are by nature heterosexual, in Homosexuality, Science and the Plain Sense of Scripture. “We would expect Paul to make that form of the argument more explicit if he intended it. Paul’s wholesale attack on Greco-Roman culture makes better sense if, like Josephus and Philo, he lumps all forms of same-sex eros together as a mark of Gentile decadence.”
Martti Nissinen, professor of Old Testament at the University of Helsinki, a pro-gay advocate, writes in Homoeroticism in the Biblical World “Paul does not mention tribades or kinaidol, that is, female and male persons who were habitually involved in homoerotic relationships, but if he knew about them, and there is every reason to believe that he did, it is difficult to think that, because of their apparent orientation, he would not have included them in Romans 1:24-27. . .For him, there is no individual inversion or inclination that would make this conduct less culpable. . .Presumably nothing would have made Paul approve homoerotic behavior.”
Walter Wink, a well-known liberal scholar and late emeritus professor of New Testament at Auburn Theological Seminary, and ordained minister in the “flat-line” United Methodist Church, reviewed Robert Gagnon’s book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice. Wink was forced to concede that “efforts to twist the text to mean what it clearly does not say are deplorable. Simply put, the Bible is negative toward same-sex behavior, and there is no getting around it.”
Abraham Smith, professor of New Testament at Southern Methodist University in the Perkins School of Theology, was the editor for the New Interpreter’s Annotated Study Bible, and specializes in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and Thessalonians. Among his recent publications are several introductions and annotation for the Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd edition, and the Oxford Access Bible. “The statement that such acts are against nature [Romans 1:26] refers to the created order in Genesis and suggests that these acts show a disruption of the natural subordinate/superordinate relations between male and female ordained by God in creation. Paul’s cultural interpretation of the Genesis traditions would indeed have left him with only one option for sexual relationships – that between a man and a woman.”
If a homosexual decides to reject the Bible on the basis that it forbids same-sex activity, that’s one thing, but, if they want to twist the Word and engage in self-deception to validate their perverse lifestyle, that is another thing entirely.
It is time to stop distorting the Word once and for all and admit that “gay” Christianity is an oxymoron.
