Transcript of Mark Achtemeier's address at the Spring President's Colloquium at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary The Layman Online Monday, June 18, 2007 Audio files Audio files of the address by Mark Achtemeier at the Spring President's Colloquium are available on the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary's Web site: P. Mark Achtemeier, part 1 P. Mark Achtemeier, part 2 P. Mark Achtemeier, part 3 Thank you, Ted, for that gracious introduction. It's an honor and a privilege to be invited to be here with you today. I particularly want to express my appreciation for the opportunity to share a podium with Jack Rogers. You know, in life as a scholar and a theologian, you don't always have a lot of choice about which aspects of the truth chose to elect you. You know, Jack has found himself in his career in the uncomfortable position of being possessed by a truth that members of his longtime friends and colleagues did not want to hear. I, well, one does have a choice in these kind of circumstances about what one does with a situation like that, and it's overwhelmingly tempting simply to retire to one's closet and keep the bad news to oneself here. Jack has had the courage to bring the truth he has been given before the church at large for our edification and scrutiny, often at great personal cost. And so whether you agree with him or not, I think all of us should give thanks to God for Jack Rogers' ministry and thank Jack for being with us today. We are gathered here to talk about the lightning rod issue that is at the center of so much controversy in the churches. The question occurs to me why sane people would want to do such a thing. This question presses itself with particular force upon many of us evangelicals who are accustomed to insist that Scripture is clear on this subject, that the relevant discussions have already taken place, and that the only purpose of further talk would be to lead to mischief. So it is with considerable fear and trembling that I come before you today to say that I do not think this issue is settled. I think aspects of the current situation in the church, in fact, ought to be deeply unsettling to all of us who confess the authority of Scripture and the Lordship of Christ. My goal today is to share some of my own unsettlement with you – misery loves company after all. And my hope and prayer is that God will be at work among us to bring forth from it either a renewed comfort or else a deepened distress for the purifying and up-building of Christ's church. The first unsettlement I want to lift up before you is pastoral. I believe we have a huge pastoral problem on our hands in the Presbyterian church and one that goes right to the heart of gospel faithfulness. Our current church policy assumes that homosexual practice is something that people can and should turn away from. It might be difficult, as life this side of glory frequently is, but with the assistance of divine grace and the caring of fellow Christians, it is what our church calls gay and lesbian people to do. We conservatives in particular have made it a hallmark of our position to say "trust in Jesus and just say no." That's essentially the pastoral stance which conservatives have taken. But the pastoral reality is that there are many gay and lesbian believers who see that "just say no" as a kind of impossibility that is completely out of their reach. Countless gay and lesbian persons showing up on the church's doorstep do not believe that there is any alternative path available to them other than the way they are on. Now there are reasons for this. Many have built lives of faithfulness with partners to whom they have been committed for many years. I try to think sometimes what my own response would be if the church said to me I had to leave Kat, my dear wife who I've been married to almost 25 years. I wouldn't think a request like that was difficult. I would think it was immoral and unfaithful. And so there are a lot of people who deep in their hearts do not believe there is any moral or practical possibility of their ceasing to be gay. We could perhaps talk about whether they are mistaken or not in that belief, but to have any integrity, such a conversation would surely have to be with them rather than just about them. But rather than beginning even at that level, the first and primary word these folks hear coming from our sex-obsessed church is that they are fundamentally unacceptable to God unless and until they make this change in themselves which they see as either immoral or impossible. Now, yes, many times they meet with a certain generous toleration which at least invites them to join the church for worship. But the church's ruling that they are categorically unqualified for ordination communicates loud and clear the message that even in a church of redeemed sinners, they are uniquely unacceptable no matter how faithfully they may try to live out this hand they have been dealt. And the tragic result – the unsettling result – is that countless thousands of gay people turn away from Jesus in despair. They leave the church convinced that the Christian God is against them, that Jesus has nothing to offer them, that the body of Christ is their deadly enemy. Now should this picture of shattered souls turning way from Jesus in despair raise some unsettling questions for us as a church? Is the snuffing out of faith and hope the good fruit of the gospel that Scripture would lead us to expect when the church faithfully engages its mission? Is this harvest of despair consistent with the ministry of Jesus who broke bread with outcasts and promised life to all who trust in him? I don't see how Biblically serious Christians could not be asking these kinds of questions. Wait a minute, you say, the church can't just declare God's approval willy-nilly of anyone who walks in the door. What if all the alcoholics banded together and said "we see no realistic possibility of becoming sober, so the church needs to tell us that's OK and ordain us anyway, lest we turn away in despair?" Is it un-Christian to insist that God wants all of us to change? Well, in answering this, I think perhaps we conservatives need to read Genesis 1 and 2 and a bit more carefully than we have been. You remember the creation story – how God creates the world in six days and after each day pronounces what he has done very good. But there is one aspect of the original creation that the Lord declares not good. Do you remember what it is? Genesis 2:18: "Then the Lord God said it is not good that the human being should be alone. I will therefore make a helper corresponding to him." Human existence, as the Bible portrays it, is fundamentally oriented toward intimate communion with an other as the good gift of God. This creation of nuptial fellowship with another person is not a choice that could simply be unmade or undone. It is deeply inscribed in our nature as the good gift of our Creator. Now I would submit that a proper Biblical description of homosexuality has to acknowledge this orientation toward life with another – this good gift of the Creator – and it has to concede that this gift has not been done away with or overruled in gay and lesbian people. It has been shifted toward persons of the same gender. Now we can certainly ask an alcoholic to work on becoming sober because there is nothing like an innate disposition toward drunkenness built into the fabric of human nature. But to ask someone to renounce the possibility of life lived in nuptial communion with another, that is asking them to renounce a piece of their humanity that God has placed in all of us as a good and gracious gift. Now the Bible does recognize the possibility of a celibate existence of some people – Jesus and Paul are both examples of a way of life that departs from the norm in Genesis 1 in which this other to whom life is oriented is God rather than another human being. But both Jesus and Paul insist that this is not a possibility given to everyone. The Protestant Reformers picked up on this and insisted that it is Biblically unfaithful to try to impose celibacy willy-nilly on whole classes of people as a permanent way of life. Which brings us back to our unsettling questions. Is there something Biblically questionable about a church that calls gay people to a solitary existence which God has declared not good, and in the process drives large numbers of them away from Jesus in despair? Obviously, as we seek to grapple with this or any pastoral dilemma, there are limits on how much church teaching can and should bend. In situations where you have a clear and consistent word spoken in the Old Testament that is subsequently taken up and repeated in the New, there is no question that Christians who take the Bible seriously must respect the plain meaning of the text. For that reason, I take it as a given that the church cannot in good conscience ordain people who violate the Biblical commandments by accepting interest payments on their money. What you don't like that? It is the clear testimony of Scripture – five different passages in the Old Testament unanimously condemn lending with interest and Jesus personally – unlike with homosexuality – gives this tradition His stamp of approval when He commands His disciples to lend expecting nothing in return. So how is it that Presbyterian Christians have come to see ourselves as exempt from this clear and consistent witness of both Old and New Testaments? Presbyterians are required to participate in the interest-bearing pension plan for goodness sakes. Well, responsibility for this un-Biblical state of affairs falls squarely on the shoulders of that notorious liberal John Calvin, who addressed himself to the question in a famous letter which you can find in a little volume titled Calvin's Ecclesiastical Advice. And Calvin argues that it is not enough to judge this matter simply in accordance with a few passages of Scripture – interesting phrase. Calvin believes rather that in order to arrive at an accurate and faithful understanding of the Biblical commandments, we must go beyond a mere surface reading of the text and consider instead the intention of the law giver that stands behind them. It's not enough just to focus on what the sentences on the page say. To interpret Biblical commandments faithfully, we have to think about what God is trying to accomplish in giving them. Well, so what's God trying to accomplish with this prohibition against receiving interest payments on your money? Well, Calvin notes in the context of the Bible, these commands seem to have something to do with concern for the poor and destitute, and it is the case that in Biblical times, the reason you would give someone a loan is that he or she was a poor person who had run out of resources and was in danger of starving, and so the reason charging interest is so heinous in God's eyes is because it makes a profit on the backs of poor people and in the process makes their plight even worse. By the time you get to the 16th century, however, despite the unanimous judgment of tradition against receiving interest payments, a different set of social and economic circumstances have started to take hold. Calvin observes that in his day, you have people loaning money to wealthy merchants who then use the loaned money to make even more money. Calvin argues that the applicable principle here is not the usury commands in the Bible, but basic laws of fairness. If I loan you a pot of money and you make a handsome profit on it, fairness requires that you share with me some of this profit you've made as a result of my generosity. So you see what's happening here – interpreting the commandments in the light of the intention of the law giver allows Calvin to see that the commercial lending taking place in his time was something fundamentally different from the kind of interest payments that the Biblical writers knew about and prohibited. When the bank pays you interest on your savings account, it is not the same thing as the exploitative lending that the Biblical writers were prohibiting even though superficial descriptions might make them sound similar, and that's why Presbyterians administer a pension fund in good conscience. Now, does Calvin throw out the Bible with his argument, or water down Biblical morality, or overturn Biblical authority? I think the answer to that is no. The Scriptural prohibitions are still fully in force. Interest payments that take advantage of poor people are still absolutely prohibited by the Bible, but Calvin's analysis of the intention of the law giver allows him to argue in his own social context for a faithful exception to a set of Biblical commands that on the surface appear to admit of no exceptions. Now if any of you think that he was wrong about that, I trust you will quickly close out any interest-bearing investments you may own. Well, for those of us who seek to interpret the Bible as faithfully and carefully as Calvin did, this raises another unsettling question. Could it be that this disturbing pastoral situation we have noted might result from a mistaken application of the Biblical commandments on homosexuality? On the surface level, the Biblical case against homosexuality is almost as strong as the one against charging interest. The difference is, again, we have no direct word from Jesus about same-sex behavior. But, with the one exception, the two cases are really pretty similar. All of the direct Biblical references are disapproving of the practicing question. But is it possible that new circumstances have arisen in our own day that would require us to say along with Calvin that while the Biblical commands remain fully in force, some of what we see happening around us in our own time is not the same thing as what the Biblical writers rightly condemned? That is an unsettling question. But I think that is a reasonable and important one and one we ought to be talking about. We do know there are big differences in what same-sex behavior looked like in Biblical times compared to our own day. Recent studies lifted up in Jack's book and the one that's come out from Stacy Johnson draw our attention to a large body of historical scholarship that shows there simply was no available cultural space in Biblical times for anything remotely resembling some of the same-sex practice we see today where ordinary citizens can live out a committed, marriage-like relationship in the context of a relatively tolerant civil society. It just, there's no room for that in the Biblical world. The historical evidence suggests that the same-sex behavior familiar to the Biblical writers would have been overwhelmingly different from this. Homosexual acts were what you did to foreigners, or slaves, or prisoners of war in order to humiliate or dominate them. We also know that homosexual prostitution was a feature of some of the worship in idolatrous pagan cults. So the committed, faithful same-sex behavior we see today appears greatly different from anything the Biblical writers would likely have been familiar with. Does that make a difference in how we understand and evaluate it? Some scholars argue that this difference is irrelevant and that the Biblical prohibitions are categorically ruling out all forms of such behavior. Other people like Dr. Rogers argue that the difference is hugely significant. How would we navigate our way through that standoff? Well, as a conservative who seeks to interpret the Bible faithfully and responsibly, I don't know of any better place to turn for help with this than to Calvin with his insistence that we have to interpret the Biblical command with reference to the intention of law giver. In the present context, that would suggest that we cannot interpret isolated reference to homosexuality responsibly without first having a clear understanding of God's intention in giving us this gift of sexuality and marriage. What we need, in other words, is a comprehensive Biblical sexual ethics as the proper context for responsible teaching and responsible interpretation of the Bible teaching about homosexuality. Now, we don't have time for such a project in this forum but let me suggest some key features that I believe any responsible treatment would include. If you want to see a powerful and Biblically profound example of such an ethics I would steer you to the Theology of the Body by the late Pope John Paul II. T here are all kinds of passages we can turn to in the Bible in asking about the God's intention in establishing marriage and sexuality in human life, but one that works very well to kind of sum up a point that's been common through the Christian tradition is Ephesians 5:21-33. This is a passage we sometimes skip over because it contains some off-setting, off-putting first-century assumptions about the properly submissive role of wives in a marital relationship. But beneath these first-century cultural trappings, there is a profound and hugely important insight. Marriage, the apostle says, is meant to be a kind of image or icon of the self-giving love that unites Christ to the church. The nuptial bond is a means of grace, if you will, for bringing forth the loving gift of one's whole self to another person in the pattern of Christ's self-giving to us. Now, clearly procreation is also a part of the divine plan for marriage and sexuality. But neither the Bible nor the Christian tradition treat procreation as a make-or-break factor in establishing the validity of the nuptial bond. We do not consider it immoral, for instance, if people past the age of child bearing decide to get married. We would be aghast at the suggestion that an infertile couple should refrain from marrying because it would be out of keeping with God's procreating intention for marriage. So the key factor in God's intention for nuptial communion seems to be its capacity for bringing forth from us a loving, Christ-like gift of the self to this other person. Now a sign that we may be on the right track with this claim is the way it starts to make sense of all the Bible's commandments about sexuality. We can easily understand why adultery is prohibited for instance, because adultery represents a divided loyalty that completely undermines this total gift of self that God is seeking to cultivate. Similarly we can see how premarital sex would undermine the intention of God because it represents a total bodily self-giving, but one that is not matched by a corresponding gift of life and promise and commitment in which thereby falls short of this complete and loving gift of self that God intends. Similarly, sex with children or animals would be inconsistent with God's intention because you would not have the kind of free and responsible agent you need in order to enter authentically into this mutual gift of self. So this understanding of God's purpose for sex and marriage is a powerful instrument for helping us understand the reasons underlying Biblically sexual morality. But the unsettling thing about this understanding of God's intention is that the Bible's prohibition of same-sex relationships doesn't seem to fit. There appears to be nothing about a faithful life-long, same-sex relationship that would render it incapable of promoting this kind of Christ like self-giving that God intends. So why then would the Bible prohibit it? Well, that prohibition makes perfect sense if it applies to the particular kinds of same-sex behavior that the Biblical writers would have been familiar with. Domination over slaves and captives, idolatrous pagan rituals – all of these things run absolutely counter to the mutual loving gift of self that is at the heart of God's intention for our sexuality. It is completely obvious why the Biblical writers would condemn those kinds of practices as running counter to God's will and intention for us. So the pieces of the puzzle fit together beautifully if we understand the Bible's prohibitions as referring exclusively to the exploitative and idolatrous sorts of same-sex behavior that the Biblical writers would have known in their own setting. Which returns us to Calvin's question. Is what we see around us today – faithful marriage-like gay and lesbian partnerships – is that the same thing as the same-sex behavior which the Bible rightly condemns? If we say yes to that, if we say they are exactly the same thing the Biblical prohibitions hold across the board, well then it is hard to see how we are going to be able to hold together the whole body of the Bible's teachings in any kind of unified and coherent framework. If we say no, what we see today is not the same thing as what the Biblical writers condemn, well then we have a beautiful way of understanding the consistency and coherence of the Bible's teaching of sexuality but we will also be faced with the deeply unsettling prospect of a church whose official policy toward gay and lesbians is urgently in need of rethinking in order to bring it faithfully into line with the intentions of God revealed to us in the Bible. Well, there is a lot more we could talk about here but that is more than a sufficient helping of unsettling questions for one day, I think. I know full well how uncomfortable it can be when the Bible turns around and starts asking us questions that cast a shadow over our established conclusions and customary ways of looking at things. It is also the case, though, that the Bible's questioning of us is one of the clearest and most compelling signs I know that God has not abandoned the church, that Christ continues to be our ruler and head, and that the Holy Spirit continues to speak the word of life to us through the voice of Scripture. God is at work among us. It is not our habitual conclusions or our established ways of seeing things that are the final authority for our lives. Our final authority is Jesus Christ as he is attested in the Holy Scripture, the one word of life which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. May Christ continue to speak his unsettling word powerfully in our midst. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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