(Fourth post on same-sex relationships.)
Creation: male and female
In the two creation narratives we encounter exactly that, namely narrative. We do not encounter a set of commands and prohibitions. The central question that we have to answer is whether these accounts are prescriptive or descriptive. Regarding the sexual bond that we read of in those narratives there is a limit that restricts such a bond to hetero-examples. If, however, we were to make these texts prescriptive we would then run into all kinds of issues.
Be fruitful: but what about couples that are childless (indeed in some Jewish commentaries a husband was obliged to divorce his wife if they were childless after 10 years – NB the patriarchal perspective, with the husband able to divorce the wife!)? And the ‘be fruitful’ mandate hits a huge barrier of application to those who are single. If the narrative is to be understood in a prescriptive manner we hit those immediate issues.
Better to take it as descriptive. God created humanity1; humanity carrying the image of God. If we were tempted to suggest that there is in the text a binary definition of humanity (either male or female) we immediately run into difficulty with the language within these passages regarding other aspects of creation, for in the wider context we read God that created night and day… this does not imply that s/he only created night and day, and that dusk and dawn owe an origin to another source other than God! This use of two contrasting examples we also use in English: ‘I searched high and low’ does not imply that I would have found the lost item if only I had searched at a level other than high or other than low. High and low mark the two ends and include everything in between. This is what is termed a merism.2
God blesses those who marry and move out from their parents and have children, but God can, and does, also bless those who don’t fit that particular pattern. There might be a norm (in the sense of majority experience) but to suggest a norm does not imply something that does not fit the ‘majority-norm’ is therefore automatically an aberration, nor to suggest ‘less in the image of God’. The creation narratives are better taken as being descriptive, and we would push them too far to use them to restrict expressions that do not fit with the ‘norm’.
Sodom and Gomorrah: Genesis 18, 19
The story is fairly well known. Two angels arrive on a mission to the city of Sodom. Lot, Abraham’s nephew lives there and he welcomes them, persuading them to stay the night and so he offers them hospitality. News gets out that they have arrived and are staying with Lot, and the men of the city come out saying:
Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them (Gen. 19:5).
It is all but universally accepted that the reference to knowing the men (angels) is a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
The situation is resolved by the angels intervening and the inhabitants being struck blind. (A strange side-note is that Lot had sought to resolve the situation by offering his (virgin) daughters to satisfy the men.)
There is clearly a major reference to the desire of these male inhabitants to have sex with these men, but it is interesting how other biblical texts refer to this situation. There are a few texts that refer to Sodom and the main one in the OT is Ezekiel 16 with central verses being vs. 49 and 50.
This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.
There might be a reference to sexual sin in the phrase ‘abominable things’ but this is certainly not the central focus of the critique. At the centre is the injustice and oppression of the poor.
There are some clear parallels with Judges 19 where we read of the demand for sex was met by the gang-raping of the Levite’s concubine. Both texts are horrendous, and the issue in both situations is that of gang-rape. From the texts it is not possible to suggest that the homosexual element adds anything to the judgement, and as mentioned that aspect is not picked up by the other texts.
In Matt. 10:14-15 and Luke 10:10-12 we have a reference to Sodom and that the judgement on the cities that did not offer hospitality to the disciples (those sent on a mission) will be stronger than the judgement on Sodom.
If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town (Matt. 10:14-15).
Hospitality was an expected cultural norm of the middle east, and it is this aspect that Jesus drew out from the Sodom and Gomorrah situation. They not only did not offer a welcome to those who visited but they sought to abuse them.
If we narrow in on the homosexual aspect of Sodom and Gomorrah we are centring on something that the rest of Scripture does not focus on. Injustice, oppression of the poor and a refusal to open their hearts with hospitality are at the centre. The sexual sin that was threatened was likewise an oppression, that of threatened gang rape, the powerful against the powerless.
In Jude 6, 7 it says that Sodom pursued sex with ‘unnatural flesh’. In the immediate context this is compared to angels having sex with women (Gen. 6) and as the book of Jude is heavily dependent on the book of Enoch that elaborates the strange myth that we read of in Genesis as being a story of 200 angels who took humans as wives, so the reference to strange flesh is probably not a reference to something homosexual but to desiring sex with angels. The context and background suggests that we are reading of a condemnation against Sodom and Gomorrah for attempting to have intercourse with angels, just as angels were condemned for having intercourse with humans.
Sodom and Gomorrah then is a critique (along with injustice) to imposed, forced sex, to rape and in the situation to gang rape, and to extend it beyond that is to go beyond the biblical testimony.
1. We could say that a person is ‘created’ by the sexual intercourse between the parents, and I am not using the term ‘God created’ in the sense of creationism vs. evolution, but that God is intimately involved with each person. Neither am I using the term ‘created’ to suggest that the origins of humanity were across a spectrum from male to female, but that humanity, in the image of God, is across a spectrum, and that humanity cannot be neatly restricted to a binary expression. An individual can appear anywhere on the spectrum and that where they ‘sit’ on that spectrum does not increase or decrease how they reflect that image.
2. I use s/he as in a paper on sexuality it seems more sensitive, God being non-sexual (both in terms of ‘biology’ and gender).
3. Other examples are God / Jesus as ‘the alpha and omega’, the ‘first and the last’.
“There might be a norm (in the sense of majority experience) but to suggest a norm does not imply something that does not fit the ‘majority-norm’ is therefore automatically an aberration, nor to suggest ‘less in the image of God’.” Worth reading for that sentence alone, which could beneficially be applied to so many scenarios from the playground to the grave, from family to international politics.
High praise. I should have copyrighted that sentence… However. I guess there are some out there that are better, so for now I will just take the ‘pat on the back’. But as you say it could be applied far and wide for the benefit of all. Trust you are well.