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Sunday, December 07, 2008

Newsweek Misrepresents Homosexuality And Polygamy In Judaism And Christianity

Lisa Miller of Newsweek has written a misleading article on religion and homosexual marriage. There are many false or misleading claims in the article, and a lot of relevant evidence is ignored. I don't intend to respond to the article in depth, but I do want to recommend some resources to consult. Here are some examples of how she argues her case:

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so....

First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes....Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

In the Old Testament, the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found. Marriage was critical to the passing along of tradition and history, as well as to maintaining the Jews' precious and fragile monotheism. But as the Barnard University Bible scholar Alan Segal puts it, the arrangement was between "one man and as many women as he could pay for." Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world....

Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere in the New Testament either. The biblical Jesus was—in spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise—emphatically unmarried. He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels. There will be no marriage in heaven, he says in Matthew....

If the bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course—specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, "possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male entry)."...Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?...

In his book "The Arrogance of Nations," the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God." In any case, one might add, Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument)....The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites....

Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century; husbands' frequent enjoyment of mistresses and prostitutes became taboo by the beginning of the 20th.


In contrast to such critical comments on the traditional Christian view of homosexuality, Miller is much less critical of the weak Biblical case for homosexuality:

Here [in David's tribute to Jonathan], the Bible praises enduring love between men. What Jonathan and David did or did not do in privacy is perhaps best left to history and our own imaginations....

In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace....The great Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: "There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ." The religious argument for gay marriage, he adds, "is not generally made with reference to particular texts, but with the general conviction that the Bible is bent toward inclusiveness."

The practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity, indifference—all these biblical values argue for gay marriage....

We want our children to grow up in stable homes. What happens in the bedroom, really, has nothing to do with any of this. My friend the priest James Martin says his favorite Scripture relating to the question of homosexuality is Psalm 139, a song that praises the beauty and imperfection in all of us and that glorifies God's knowledge of our most secret selves: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." And then he adds that in his heart he believes that if Jesus were alive today, he would reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for "Jesus does not want people to be lonely and sad."


Miller's reasoning could also be applied, in part or in whole, to polygamy, incestuous marriage, marriage between adults and children, marriage between humans and animals, etc. As I said above, though, I don't want to analyze all of Miller's arguments or respond to her line-by-line. These issues have already been addressed in the archives of this blog and elsewhere.

What I primarily want to do in this post is recommend a couple of resources in particular from our archives. Miller doesn't say much about early Jewish and early post-apostolic Christian tradition regarding homosexuality and polygamy, even though that early tradition is much more significant than the more recent tradition she discusses. A source like Aristides or Justin Martyr is more likely to reflect an apostolic view of homosexuality or polygamy than a pastor or theologian of the nineteenth or twentieth century. Remember, Miller makes claims such as that "Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century; husbands' frequent enjoyment of mistresses and prostitutes became taboo by the beginning of the 20th."

The evidence we have from ancient Jewish and Christian sources suggests that polygamy was much less accepted than Miller claims and that there was widespread agreement on the unacceptability of homosexuality. When Jesus discussed marriage, He used language that suggests that He sided with the anti-polygamists of His day, and there was widespread early post-apostolic agreement among Christians that both homosexuality and polygamy are unacceptable. See my article on early Jewish and Christian views of homosexuality here and my article on polygamy here. Both articles address the Biblical data to some extent, not just extra-Biblical sources.

16 comments:

  1. I would also like to recommend this blog post by Rob Bowman titled:

    "Fallacies of Same-Sex Marriage Polemics".

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  2. Triabloguers,

    Have you seen this video with a star-studded cast mocking and misrepresenting the supporters of biblical marriage?

    How many sheeple do you think will be mislead by the polemics of folks like Lisa Miller in the meanstream media and the GLBT Hollywood media?

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  3. I don't think anyone will be influenced by the musical. I cringed so much watching it that my face actually hurts.

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  4. If anybody is interested, there are some ongoing discussions in the two threads I've linked above. A couple of advocates of polygamy have been posting in the polygamy thread. I've posted some responses. Some of you may find the discussions helpful.

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  5. "The evidence we have from ancient Jewish and Christian sources suggests that polygamy was much less accepted than Miller claims and that there was widespread agreement on the unacceptability of homosexuality."

    How much of this results from the fact that most people are heterosexual and have a tendency of enshrining their prejudices in religious language?

    I grew up being told that interracial dating was not just distasteful but immoral (and I'm not even old enough to have seen the 60s). Bob Jones University seemed to support that notion for years until they finally ended the ban in 2000. While not all Christians thought this way, you must concede that racial prejudices were accepted and promoted by many within the Christian tradition and insisted on those prejudices as being Scripturally sound.

    The Jewish people were highly prejudicial in their treatment of "outsiders". I don't see why the originators of that tradition should have thought any differently in terms of those who were different in sexual orientation.

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  6. James writes:

    "How much of this results from the fact that most people are heterosexual and have a tendency of enshrining their prejudices in religious language?"

    I responded to some similar comments you made in the homosexuality thread linked above. Why are you ignoring what I wrote there?

    The issue under consideration here isn't whether you can speculate that ancient Israelites or ancient Christians were motivated by "prejudices". The issue, in part, is what the Bible teaches on these subjects. That's why I said that a source historically closer to the apostles, such as Aristides or Justin Martyr, is more relevant than a pastor or theologian of the nineteenth or twentieth century. I was responding to the case Lisa Miller made in her Newsweek article. How is your reply relevant? Who denies that people might have had bad motives for believing something, and that we shouldn't agree with them if there isn't reason to do so? If Lisa Miller suggests that Jesus or the apostle Paul might not have opposed homosexuality, then the issue on the table at that point is what Jesus and Paul believed. Objecting that they might have held their belief for bad reasons is another issue. Whether somebody believed something and why he believed it are two different issues. If you want to know why people trust sources like Jesus and Paul, instead of concluding that they had bad motives for holding their beliefs, then read some of the hundreds of articles in our archives concerning the evidence for Jesus' deity, the evidence for the reliability of Paul, etc.

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  7. Jason, I did not intentionally ignore your post. I just couldn't find it as I thought it was on this thread.

    In terms of Paul, let's assume that every statement attributed to him is historical fact (I can accept that). I don't think we also can safely assume that every thing he uttered was endorsed by God merely by the fact that Paul uttered it. Other events occurred in Scripture that may not necessarily imply a tacit endorsement by God (take the multiple wives of Solomon or King David that seemed to escape any mention from God, for example). Paul declared himself the "chief of sinners": are you saying that Paul's beliefs and words were infallible despite that statement in ALL cases, just in cases where his words were recorded or just when his words are consistent with other elements of Scripture?

    Either way, I do find it ironic that so many conservative Bible-believing Christians jettisoned Paul's admonitions about women having authority over men (within or outside the Church) to support Sarah Palin. Do YOU think St. Paul would have said: "Oh, women must cover their heads, be always submissive to their husbands and shouldn't teach, but being second-in-command of the most powerful nation on Earth, hey, that's A.OK"?

    If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.


    In terms of Christ, I don't know what Christ believed. He didn't mention homosexuality or polygamy at all (which I find curious), but He did condemn both considering and actually taking another's wife, though.

    He also insisted His followers leave their families behind to follow Him to preach the Gospel, something which I don't think any Christians in modern times have taken Him up on (at least ones that are not Catholic). I don't think the urgency of preaching the Gospel is any less than it was 2,000 years ago, do you?

    So you see, this inconsistencies are not just found among the liberal theologians.

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  8. JAMES SAID:

    “I don't think we also can safely assume that every thing he uttered was endorsed by God merely by the fact that Paul uttered it.”

    You don’t seriously think Jason is going to present his entire case for the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, do you?

    “Other events occurred in Scripture that may not necessarily imply a tacit endorsement by God (take the multiple wives of Solomon or King David that seemed to escape any mention from God, for example).”

    That’s totally irrelevant to the traditional case for inspiration. Who have you actually read on the subject? Have you ever read Warfield, for example?

    “Paul declared himself the ‘chief of sinners’: are you saying that Paul's beliefs and words were infallible despite that statement in ALL cases, just in cases where his words were recorded or just when his words are consistent with other elements of Scripture?”

    That’s the point of inspiration: a safeguard against the errors that would otherwise creep into an uninspired statement.

    “Either way, I do find it ironic that so many conservative Bible-believing Christians jettisoned Paul's admonitions about women having authority over men (within or outside the Church) to support Sarah Palin.”

    We discussed that issue at the time. If you continue to raise objections which we’ve already addressed, as if they’ve never been dealt with, then it’s time for you go away. We have better things to do with our time than repeat ourselves for such an indolent commenter.

    “In terms of Christ, I don't know what Christ believed. He didn't mention homosexuality or polygamy at all (which I find curious), but He did condemn both considering and actually taking another's wife, though.”

    We’ve also discussed that issue on more than one occasion at Triablogue. Don’t be lazy. Don’t expect us to put more effort into answering questions than you are prepared to put into listening and remembering.

    “He also insisted His followers leave their families behind to follow Him to preach the Gospel, something which I don't think any Christians in modern times have taken Him up on (at least ones that are not Catholic). I don't think the urgency of preaching the Gospel is any less than it was 2,000 years ago, do you?”

    There is no dominical command to all Christians to leave their families. Peter traveled with his wife, not to mention the fact that there are many injunctions about family life (household codes) in the NT letters which presuppose that most Christians had or would have a normal family life.

    “So you see, this inconsistencies are not just found among the liberal theologians.”

    The “inconsistency” is generated by your willful ignorance.

    We’re not here to hand feed you. Either pay attention to preexisting answers or go away and don’t come back.

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  9. Steve, I have a job. Between the five or six of you, there's more put out on this site than I have time to read in one day, let alone every post in the entire Triablogue archives.

    Look, I don't know any of you personally. I have no clue as to what theological and/or intellectual objections you've personally addressed and rejected OR accepted (has there ever been an instance of the latter?).

    In a sense, though, isn't every challenge a "waste of time"? I'm sure every conceivable objection has been raised and answered by various theologians. In that case, I'm not sure what point there is in having a blog at all. The book is closed.

    Personally, I like to dialogue with people who have differing views and beliefs. Sometimes I come to think about things in a different light, sometimes I don't. I was under the impression that by having a public blog and making it available to "everyone", you were interested in the same thing.

    You're the boss. If you're not interested in responding, you're free to ignore my posts. If you prefer I just shut up, then I'll look for dialogues elsewhere. I'm not that pig-headed.

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  10. James wrote:

    "Jason, I did not intentionally ignore your post. I just couldn't find it as I thought it was on this thread."

    You then go on to ignore much of what I've already said in this thread and in the two linked above, as well as what we've said about issues like Biblical inerrancy and Sarah Palin in previous articles.

    You write:

    "In terms of Christ, I don't know what Christ believed. He didn't mention homosexuality or polygamy at all (which I find curious), but He did condemn both considering and actually taking another's wife, though."

    As I explain in my article on polygamy linked above, Jesus does condemn the practice in Matthew 19, and His view of the Old Testament implies His agreement with the Old Testament passages that oppose polygamy. The same is true of the Old Testament passages that oppose homosexuality. Jesus also anticipated the authority of the apostles, an authority He founded, and the apostles wrote against polygamy and homosexuality.

    Why would it be "curious" if Jesus hadn't discussed these subjects or that He didn't discuss them as explicitly as others did? It's not as though He would have been encountering a lot of polygamists or homosexuals during His public ministry. He doesn't explicitly address rape, child molestation, or marriage between adults and children either. Do you find that "curious" as well?

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  11. James wrote:

    "Personally, I like to dialogue with people who have differing views and beliefs."

    No, your typical behavior is more like what I described in another recent thread:

    - You avoid discussions of the evidence for Christianity, such as fulfilled prophecy or the historicity of Jesus' resurrection.

    - You look for opportunities to complain about Christianity in a simplistic manner, such as by objecting to a simplistic concept of Hell or objecting to infant damnation, even if you have to turn the discussion in a tangential direction to get there.

    - Your posts are usually short, with little or no supporting argumentation or documentation.

    - You frequently leave discussions without interacting with significant counterarguments.

    - You repeat claims that have already been refuted in your presence, even directly in response to you.

    - You often portray yourself as having taken the moral high ground in your rejection of Christianity and in your criticism of individual Christians, even though your behavior in these threads is far from the moral high ground.

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  12. Jason asks: "He doesn't explicitly address rape, child molestation, or marriage between adults and children either. Do you find that 'curious' as well?"

    You seem to make this statement as if these issues are morally unambiguous, that Christ needn't mention anything because it should be clear to anyone what is right (whether it's rape or homosexuality or whatever).

    However, consider the traditional Jewish definition of being "marriage worthy" (http://www.shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/08-index.html):

    "One can marry as soon as they reach majority, which has been defined since well before the first century as age 12 for girls, 13 for boys.

    In the early biblical period, they instead defined majority as having two pubic hairs (with some extra rules for people who couldn't grow any). The change in definition is rabbinic, and therefore doesn't apply to some biblical matters, such as conversion. However, it does apply for marriage. However, in those days a father had the right to marry off his minor daughter at any age, with the assumption that he knows what's in her best interest, and that's part of caring for her."

    Sure, there might be 12-year-old girls ready to marry, but I know quite a few who are also barely out of Veggie Tales at that age.

    In terms of rape, if we define it as the forceful taking of someone for the purposes that include sexual activity, I'm not sure there's a blanket condemnation of this in Scripture in all circumstances: the Midianite virgins were to be forcefully taken by the Hebrew invaders (Numbers 31). The record of the Midianites is that they were a barbaric race, no doubt, so this is not an attempt to smear the Hebrews in this instance because the women could perhaps have been integrated into a less dangerous and brutal society.

    What it does seem to imply is that there are moral ambiguities in denying the personal freedoms of some people, even in the matters of marriage and sexuality. If these ambiguities are present when discussing "rape" or "child marriage", I'm not sure why that should not also be the case when discussing homosexuality.

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  13. Mark Pendray: "I don't think anyone will be influenced by the musical."

    I wish that were true. I think plenty of people will be influenced by that Prop. 8 musical video, just like plenty of people will be influenced for the worse by Lisa Miller's Newsweek article.

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  14. James wrote:

    "You seem to make this statement as if these issues are morally unambiguous, that Christ needn't mention anything because it should be clear to anyone what is right (whether it's rape or homosexuality or whatever)."

    That's not what I said or suggested. My point was that we can reasonably conclude what position Christ held on some issues even if He didn't explicitly address those issues in His comments recorded in the gospels. I was also making the point that His not addressing issues like homosexuality and polygamy explicitly isn't problematic for the traditional Christian position on those issues. I gave some examples, and you've ignored all of them. Citing something like Numbers 31 or some extra-Biblical claims about the appropriate age of marriage doesn't refute anything I said. If people disagree about whether marriage should occur in the early teenage years or later, for example, the fact remains that there's agreement over the inappropriateness of a thirty-year-old marrying a five-year-old, for instance. No reasonable person should conclude that Jesus held no position on or was approving of marrying a five-year-old, forcing a twenty-year-old girl in your neighborhood to have sex with you against her will, molesting a three-year-old boy, etc. just because He doesn't explicitly discuss such subjects in the gospels. The fact that people disagree over the definition of a term like "child" or "rape" in some cases doesn't change the fact that they agree in other cases and that Jesus could have held a position on the issue without having addressed it explicitly in the gospels.

    You still haven't explained to us why Jesus' comments in the gospels supposedly are "curious" in the manner you referred to earlier. And you haven't interacted with my evidence for Jesus' position on homosexuality and polygamy. You keep making claims you don't and can't support, keep ignoring what people write in response to you, and keep trying to change the subject from post to post.

    You write:

    "there might be 12-year-old girls ready to marry, but I know quite a few who are also barely out of Veggie Tales at that age"

    As if ancient Israel was comparable to the immature culture of America. Your comment is both irrelevant and anachronistic.

    You write:

    "If these ambiguities are present when discussing 'rape' or 'child marriage', I'm not sure why that should not also be the case when discussing homosexuality."

    What does that have to do with what we were discussing? There are ambiguities associated with heterosexual marriage between two adults, yet Jesus discusses the subject in the gospels. Surely you weren't arguing, earlier, that the absence of a comment on a subject from Jesus in the gospels is a result of that subject being ambiguous in some manner. How does the fact that people disagree over some issues related to rape or child marriage, for example, support your previous comments?

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  15. I see that James hasn't yet responded to my post above, but found time to enter another thread to object to the doctrine of Hell. He's been warned many times about his behavior by a few different people on staff. He's now banned.

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  16. I think that Newsweek would even address this means they don't understand that this is not simply a Christian moral issue - it is a cultural and judicial / legal issue as well, and a vote is an expression of the will of the people, of which Christians are only a faction.

    I linked to your piece, "Homosexuality and Delusions of Grandeur" in my blog, "Life in the Big Democracy" on my site, www.sophiesladder.com - where I go on to elaborate what some of those issues are. My point is, this issue hinges on more things than the biblical perspective.

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