Particularly high-profile debates are currently in progress, predominantly in North America and Britain, concerning ordination of self-avowed, practicing homosexuals to ministry and the blessing of homosexual unions.[1] ‘Homosexuality is a subject of debate in the church today because faithful Christians who understand themselves as homosexual and seek fulfilment of their sexual needs in same-sex relationships have insisted that their identity and practice as gay men and lesbians is consonant with, and even expressive of, their identity as Christians.’[2] This essay aims to address and assess some of the issues involved in moving from the biblical material to modern Christian practice in the light of such debates.
A decade or two ago, participants in the debate tended to tackle the relevant biblical texts (especially) head-on. In 1994, Siker could refer to the ‘general agreement’ that the relevant Pauline passages were exclusively concerned with exploitative sexual relationships such as pederasty and male prostitution, and hence that these passages were inapplicable to committed, monogamous, homosexual relationships.[3] Earlier, Williams could argue that ‘the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous biblical texts.’[4] However, in the more recent scholarship this approach has almost completely collapsed under the weight of exegetical evidence.[5] The grounds of the debate have shifted; exegetical issues are now largely irrelevant.[6] Almost everybody agrees that ‘the biblical texts that deal specifically with homosexual practice condemn it unconditionally.’[7] Rather, ‘[t]he argument we see raging in the church is really about hermeneutics, about the interpretation and use of Scripture.’[8] ‘[T]he Bible is negative toward same-sex behaviour, and there is no getting around it. The issue is precisely what weight that judgment should have in the ethics of Christian life.’[9]
There is plenty of scope for debate, given the disagreement about the nature of ‘hermeneutics’: its purpose (why are we interpreting the Bible?) and its object (what is this Bible that we are interpreting?).[10] This is inextricably linked with questions about the nature of biblical authority, and the nature of the Bible itself. Roughly speaking, there are two broad views that give two sets of answers to these questions. The first view that I will outline has serious flaws; while the second (outlined further below) is a much more appropriate approach to the biblical texts.[11]
The first view sees the Bible as the record of a progressive dialogical witness to the truth about God in particular believing communities. It emphasizes the Bible’s diverse, multivocal nature; its ‘irreducible pluralism’.[12] In this view, the Bible’s authority rests in the compelling nature of its witness to the truth, not in the text itself.[13] Thus, ‘to approach the Bible as the sole and absolute source of revelation is idolatry, the worship of a text rather than the one true living God who was definitively revealed in Jesus Christ and continues to be revealed in history.’[14] As fresh and more existentially compelling revelation comes to us via the Christian community’s shared experience, aspects of the biblical witness (e.g. the condemnations of homosexual behaviour) need to be discarded while others are retained.[15] For example, Via believes that ‘we can justifiably override the unconditional biblical condemnations of homosexual practice’ on the basis of John 16:12-13 which speaks of the Spirit ‘guiding’ into all truth,[16] Romans 14:14 and Mark 7 which overturn clean / unclean distinctions,[17] and the Johannine category of ‘abundant life’ which ‘is such an all-embracing idea that it can include the specific actualization of whatever bodily-sexual orientation one has been given by creation’.[18]
Seitz points out that much of this first view contains historical-critical presuppositions about the linear development of history that illegitimately privileges the ‘new’ over the ‘old’, as well as circular and self-serving argumentation.[19] Greene-McCreight points to the theological problems with this approach.[20] It arrogantly assumes that we are closer to truth than the early Christians, which is an unwarranted eschatological assumption. Furthermore, it offers no coherent account of the relationship between the two testaments, in light of the centrality of Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of the Scriptures, and thus is devoid of any sense that Christ is the greatest and most central revelation of God. It is no longer, therefore, identifiably Christian.
The second view may be labeled ‘critical realism’. Rather than assuming irreducible pluralism in the Bible, it sympathetically assumes coherence and seeks to determine this coherence and treat it as authoritative revelation. Although this view has been caricatured as ‘faulty’ because it relies on an unwarranted a-priori assumption of absolute biblical authority,[21] and completely divorces the Bible’s words from their literary and social context,[22] it is not naďve, nor exclusively a-priori. Rather, it takes into account the diversity and complexity of the biblical witness while at the same time assuming (with good warrant from Christ himself—e.g. Matthew 5:17-18—and from centuries of Christian thought) a coherent message. The Bible is ‘innocent until proven guilty’ of the charge of incoherence. Gagnon, for example, perceives that Scripture has a central Christ-focussed message, the gospel of ‘the grace and love of God as manifested in Christ’s atoning death and the Spirit’s liberating power’ which produces holiness, transformation and obedience.[23] The Bible also has certain ‘core values’ which inform such transformation and obedience, including the limitation of sex to intercourse between male and female. Such core values cannot be overturned without an extraordinary burden of proof.[24]
The gospel provides the parameters of any discussion about biblical law and its relationship to grace. Justification by grace alone and not by works of law does not deny that the Old Testament law is an expression of God’s will (especially in the area of sexual ethics), that grace empowers one to do right and that being ‘in Christ’ and under grace by faith implies conformity to God’s will.[25] In view of the gospel of Christ, the Christian’s relationship to the law is complex but coherent. This relationship is expressed in article VII of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles which distinguishes moral, civil and ceremonial laws. While we are not bound by the civil and ceremonial, we are ‘not free from the commandments which are called Moral’. While there may be problems in formally identifying ‘the commandments which are called Moral’ given that there is nowhere in the Bible a list of such commandments, the principle is understandable and is thoroughly in line with the gospel’s message. Those aspects of the law which served to mark out the nation of Israel as a nation (the civil aspects, e.g. the food laws) and regulate its sacrificial and cultic worship (the ceremonial aspects) find their fulfilment in the ‘True Israel’, Christ the Son of God who died as a sacrifice our sins.[26] As Christians, we ‘fulfil’ these aspects of the law simply by being in Christ. On the other hand, the moral aspects of the law find their fulfilment in both Christ’s sinlessness and in Christians’ moral obedience to Christ in light of God’s revealed moral will.
This gospel should, therefore, inform our reading of the whole Bible, including the passages that deal explicitly with homosexual activity. Hays lists four aspects of the wider biblical framework that need to be taken into account: God’s creative intention for human sexuality (heterosexual marriage), the fallen human condition, holistic redemption (not simply from sinful acts but from sin itself) and the eschatological tension between now and not-yet which means that we do not experience the fullness of redemption, raising the possibility that abstinence may be the only viable alternative to expressing a disordered sexual desires.[27] Redemption is meant to restore God’s creative intention (albeit imperfectly), not overturn it.[28] Thus Genesis 2 is both foundational and normative: male-female complementarity is part of ‘nature’.[29] This is reflected in the prohibitions on homosexual activity in Leviticus. It also informs Romans 1:24-27, which is an indictment of homosexual activity in the context of the general indictment of fallen humanity. Hays points out that homosexual activity is in itself the judgment of God for the prior sin of idolatry. It is ‘a particularly graphic image of the way in which human fallenness distorts God’s created order.’[30] Yet homosexual activity still carries an implication of culpability. Sin awaits a final judgment.[31] Similar themes are picked up in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10.
This biblical theology, informed by the gospel, sensitive to the diversity of the Bible and yet committed to its coherent unity, helps us to understand how the rules about homosexual acts in Leviticus are not abrogated by the New Testament while other rules about ritual purity, which occur in the same context, no longer apply. Leviticus does not distinguish in any obvious formal way between impurity and sin.[32] Via claims this is because the rules in Leviticus are based on clean / unclean distinctions which are aimed at keeping categories in the created order distinct—and thus none of them should apply in the New Testament. Yet Paul continues to use the Levitical idea of uncleanness (akatharsia) to describe sin, especially sexual sin.[33] Does the gospel warrant a redefinition of ‘cleanness’ such that the parameters of sexual behaviour remain virtually unchanged while food laws and other laws (such as the weaving together of two different fabrics on a garment) are abrogated? According to Richardson, ‘there are some things in the Law which simply served almost arbitrarily as ways to mark out the Israelites as God’s people.’ The food laws, for example, were one of the ‘boundary markers’ of God’s people.[34] Yet, of course, Israel was also to be distinguished by its moral holiness, its moral ‘cleanness’ as separate from the sinful nations. The civil and ceremonial clean / unclean distinction was integrally related to, but dependent upon, the clean / unclean distinction between what was moral and what was sinful.[35] In the prophetic recapitulation of the law there is a movement towards a ‘hierarchy of significance’ within the Law which puts the Law’s moral aspects ahead of the ceremonial.[36] Jesus himself continues and strengthens this trajectory in his teaching.[37] The ‘cleansing’ of the Gentiles themselves through Jesus’ death is the event that finally removes the need for such food laws. The uncleanness of the food had been linked to the uncleanness of the Gentiles. But the cleansing of the Gentiles involves coming into Christ, where the moral law still applies. Thus Siker’s analogy between Gentile inclusion and homosexual inclusion falls down at this point, for it has no root in the gospel event that brought about Gentile inclusion.[38]
Attention is often drawn to the importance of ‘context’, of both the biblical texts and the modern readers. The difference between these two contexts is emphasized as a reason for exercising great caution in applying the biblical texts to our contemporary situation. However, the difference between the original context and our own is frequently exaggerated. Fredrickson, for example, makes the philosophical Greek background of Paul’s day decisive for his interpretation of Romans 1:24-27.[39] According to Fredrickson, Paul is critiquing passion itself (which is dishonourable in the philosophic tradition), not any violation of a male-female norm. Since this ancient philosophical context is alien to us, Paul’s critique is inapplicable. However, as Seitz points out, Paul’s primary context in Romans is not philosophy but the Scriptural canon.[40] Because, as we have seen, the Scriptures speak of the universal human circumstances of creation, fall and redemption in Christ, Paul is speaking to our context as well as his own.
The uniqueness of our own context is also cited as a basis for disregarding the biblical negativity towards homosexual activity. Allegedly, the scientific ‘discovery’ of sexual orientation, which was unknown in the ancient world, should have priority over the ancient text’s direct meaning:[41] ‘Paul seems to have agreed with the generally held belief of the ancient world that there is only one sexual nature. If Paul then could be confronted with the reality of homosexual orientation, consistency would require him to acknowledge the naturalness of homosexual acts for people with a homosexual orientation.’[42] Gudorf claims that Paul’s implicit endorsement of natural law should be used in the light of modern science to override his assumption of heterosexual ‘nature’.[43] Appeals are made to the precedent of the wisdom literature, which incorporated natural empirical discoveries into biblical revelation,[44] and even overturned conventional revelation (in the cases of Job and Ecclesiastes).[45]
This is highly problematic for three reasons. Firstly, there is great uncertainty in scientific circles about the cause, prevalence and changeability of ‘sexual orientation’. Despite the fact that the ‘findings of science’ are often appealed to in sweeping claims that homosexuality is a fixed intrinsic orientation, ‘sexual orientation’ is a much more murky concept than the obvious natural categories of male and female.[46] Secondly, Gagnon points to a concept of sexual orientation in Plato’s Symposium, rooted in a mythological description of different ‘natures’ in the original creation.[47] Various passages from the Symposium point to detailed knowledge of the concept of caring, committed, lifelong homosexual relationships in the ancient world, with careful distinctions between exploitative and non-exploitative homosexual relationships.[48] Thus Paul was most likely aware of, while rejecting, notions of natural sexual orientation. Finally, the wisdom literature does not overturn previous revelation. The starting point of wisdom is God the creator, which comes by special revelation.[49] Job and Ecclesiastes, in fact, argue against overriding revelation in the light of experience. In Ecclesiastes, God has set such strict limits for wisdom that we cannot by ourselves see a large enough picture of reality (especially in the light of human sin) and must turn to God’s commandments .[50] Yahweh’s revelatory theophany leads to humility for Job, but his sufferings remain unexplained.[51]
There is confusion here about the very meaning of the biblical concept of ‘nature’. This confusion is related to a low view of the effects of the fall. Homosexual ‘orientation’ cannot be regarded as homosexual ‘nature’, unless it can be demonstrated that such orientation is related to creation and not to sin. ‘The ancients recognized the existence of defects in nature; how much more a Judeo-Christian worldview like Paul’s that gave prominence to an anthropological fall from grace. By “contrary to nature” Paul meant anything that did not accord with the divinely intended, well-working processes of nature—including such intractable and congenital sinful impulses as covetousness, envy, and arrogance.’[52] Via attempts to show that homosexual orientation can be placed in an understanding of creation rather than sin by using the concept of bodily ‘destiny’;[53] but his argument fails to come to grips with the biblical witness to the devastating effects of sin on our very bodily existence in our ‘flesh’.[54] Via claims that Gagnon and Hays rely simply on a naďve absolutization of ‘rules’ for behaviour, as if character or inner nature is completely irrelevant to the discussion.[55] But this is a serious misreading. According to Hays, homosexual activity (in) is wrong precisely because it is ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality: the rejection of the Creator’s design.’[56]
We have seen that the hermeneutical issues surrounding the current debate about human sexuality are related, not to the exegesis of individual passages, but to the approach that participants to the debate have taken to the Bible as a whole. Those who come to the Bible assuming that it is flawed, outmoded and pluralistic often come away rejecting its clear proscriptions of homosexual behaviour. However, if we come to the Bible sympathetically, assuming that it speaks univocally and coherently through diverse human authors, we can find a way of accounting for its proscriptions of homosexual behaviour which make sense of its message as a whole. The decision to accept or reject particular teachings about homosexual behavior is an outworking of the prior decision to accept or reject the gospel message of salvation from sin through Christ’s death that gives the Bible its inner coherence.
Bird, Phyllis A. ‘The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation Concerning Homosexuality: Old Testament Contributions’. Pages 142-76 in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture. Edited by David L. Balch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Fredrickson, David E. ‘Natural and Unnatural Use in Romans 1:24-27: Paul and the Philosophic Critique of Eros’. Pages 197-222 in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture. Edited by David L. Balch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Fyall, Robert S. Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job. New Studies in Biblical Theology 12. Downers Grove: IVP, 2002.
Gagnon, Robert A. J. ‘The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Key Issues’. Pages 40-92 in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views. Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003.
_______. ‘Response to Dan O. Via’. Pages 99-105 in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views. Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003.
_______. The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics. Nashville: Abingdon, 2001.
Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel and Wisdom: Israel’s Wisdom Literature in the Christian Life. Biblical Classics Library. Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995.
Greene-McCreight, Kathryn. ‘The Logic of the Interpretation of Scripture and the Church’s Debate Over Sexual Ethics’. Pages 242-60 in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture. Edited by David L. Balch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Gudorf, Christine E. ‘The Bible and Science on Sexuality’. Pages 121-41 in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture. Edited by David L. Balch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Hall, B. Barbara. ‘Homosexuality and a New Creation’. Pages 142-56 in Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God. Edited by Charles Hefling. Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1996.
Hays, Richard B. ‘Awaiting the Redemption of Our Bodies: the Witness of Scripture Concerning Homosexuality’. Pages 3-17 in Homosexuality in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate. Edited by Siker, Jeffrey S. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994.
Jones, Stanton L and Mark A. Yarhouse. ‘The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science in the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates’. Pages 73-120 in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture. Edited by David L. Balch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Plato. ‘Symposium’. Pages 69-117 in Great Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Eric H. Warmington and Philip G. Rouse. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse. New American Library. New York: Mentor, 1956.
Poythress, Vern S. ‘God’s Lordship in Interpretation’. Westminster Theological Journal 50 (1988): 27-64.
Richardson, John P. What God Has Made Clean: If we Can Eat Prawns, Why Is Gay Sex Wrong?. Biblical Application Series. Baulkham Hills, Sydney: MPA Books, 2003.
Seitz, Christopher. ‘Sexuality and Scripture’s Plain Sense: The Christian Community and the Law of God’. Pages 177-96 in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture. Edited by David L. Balch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Seow, Choon-Leong. ‘Introduction’. Pages vii-xii in Homosexuality and Christian Community. Edited by Choon-Leong Seow. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996.
_______. ‘A Heterotextual Perspective’. Pages 14-27 in Homosexuality and Christian Community. Edited by Choon-Leong Seow. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996.
Siker, Jeffrey S. ‘How to Decide?: Homosexual Christians, the Bible, and Gentile Inclusion’. Theology Today 51/2 (1994): 219-34.
Via, Dan O. ‘The Bible, the Church and Homosexuality’. Pages 1-39 in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views. Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003.
_______. ‘Response to Robert A. J. Gagnon’. Pages 93-98 in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views. Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003.
West, Mona. ‘Reading the Bible as Queer Americans: Social Locations and the Hebrew Scriptures’. Theology & Sexuality 10 (1999): 28-42.
Williams, Rowan. ‘The Body’s Grace’. Pages 58-68 in Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God. Edited by Charles Hefling. Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1996.
Wink, Walter. ‘To Hell with Gays?’. Christian Century 119/12 (2002): 32-34.
[1] Choon-Leong Seow, ‘Introduction’, in Homosexuality and Christian Community (ed. Choon-Leong Seow; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), viii; Robert A. J. Gagnon, ‘The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Key Issues’, in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003), 40.
[2] Phyllis A. Bird, ‘The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation Concerning Homosexuality: Old Testament Contributions’, in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (ed. David L. Balch; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 143.
[3] Jeffrey S. Siker, ‘How to Decide?: Homosexual Christians, the Bible, and Gentile Inclusion’, Theology Today 51/2 (1994): 227-28.
[4] Rowan Williams, ‘The Body’s Grace’, in Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God (ed. Charles Hefling; Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1996), 68.
[5] Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), has provided a comprehensive and unchallenged exegesis of the relevant texts which argues that all same-sex intercourse is condemned. This is summarised in Gagnon, ‘Key Issues’, 64-88.
[6] Bird, ‘Old Testament Contributions’, 144.
[7] Dan O. Via, ‘Response to Robert A. J. Gagnon’, in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003), 93.
[8] Kathryn Greene-McCreight, ‘The Logic of the Interpretation of Scripture and the Church’s Debate Over Sexual Ethics’, in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (ed. David L. Balch; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 245.
[9] Walter Wink, ‘To Hell with Gays?’, Christian Century 119/12 (2002): 32; see also Christopher Seitz, ‘Sexuality and Scripture’s Plain Sense: The Christian Community and the Law of God’, in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (ed. David L. Balch; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 180.
[10] Vern S. Poythress, ‘God’s Lordship in Interpretation’, Westminster Theological Journal 50 (1988): 31-32, 39-40.
[11] This is, of course, a simplification. Note, e.g., the radical ‘Queer’ reading of the Bible that is radically committed to the idea that readers make meaning of texts (Mona West, ‘Reading the Bible as Queer Americans: Social Locations and the Hebrew Scriptures’, Theology & Sexuality 10 (1999): 28-42). It employs a self-consciously ‘unfair’ reading strategy that assumes wherever remotely possible that a biblical character or group is gay, lesbian or bisexual. For example, Exodus is read, literally, as a ‘coming out’ story by a self-consciously selective ‘hearing’ of the gay dilemma in certain elements of the story.
[12] Bird, ‘Old Testament Contributions’, 144.
[13] Dan O. Via, ‘The Bible, the Church and Homosexuality’, in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003), 2.
[14] Christine E. Gudorf, ‘The Bible and Science on Sexuality’, in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (ed. David L. Balch; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 121.
[15] Bird, ‘Old Testament Contributions’, 143, 45, 65.
[16] Via, ‘Bible, Church and Homosexuality’, 38.
[17] Via, ‘Bible, Church and Homosexuality’, 10.
[18] Via, ‘Response’, 96.
[19] Seitz, ‘Plain Sense’, 177-80.
[20] Greene-McCreight, ‘Interpretation’, 242-60
[21] Via, ‘Bible, Church and Homosexuality’, 2.
[22] Bird, ‘Old Testament Contributions’, 143.
[23] Gagnon, ‘Key Issues’, 50.
[24] Gagnon, ‘Key Issues’, 42.
[25] Seitz, ‘Plain Sense’, 183-85.
[26] Seitz, ‘Plain Sense’, 186-89; John P. Richardson, What God Has Made Clean: If we Can Eat Prawns, Why Is Gay Sex Wrong? (Biblical Application Series; Baulkham Hills, Sydney: MPA Books, 2003), 11-15
[27] Richard B. Hays, ‘Awaiting the Redemption of Our Bodies: the Witness of Scripture Concerning Homosexuality’, in Homosexuality in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate (ed. Siker, Jeffrey S.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 10-11.
[28] pace B. Barbara Hall, ‘Homosexuality and a New Creation’, in Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God (ed. Charles Hefling; Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1996), 142-56.
[29] Gagnon, ‘Key Issues’, 61.
[30] Hays, ‘Redemption of Our Bodies’, 8.
[31] Hays, ‘Redemption of Our Bodies’, 10.
[32] Hays, ‘Redemption of Our Bodies’, 6.
[33] Gagnon, ‘Key Issues’, 55.
[34] Richardson, What God Has Made Clean, 12.
[35] Gagnon, ‘Key Issues’, 66.
[36] Richardson, What God Has Made Clean, 15-16.
[37] Richardson, What God Has Made Clean, 16-17.
[38] Siker, ‘How to Decide?’, 229-34.
[39] David E. Fredrickson, ‘Natural and Unnatural Use in Romans 1:24-27: Paul and the Philosophic Critique of Eros’, in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (ed. David L. Balch; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 197-222
[40] Seitz, ‘Plain Sense’, 192.
[41] Hall, ‘New Creation’, 142.
[42] Via, ‘Bible, Church and Homosexuality’, 15.
[43] Gudorf, ‘Bible and Science’, 134-35.
[44] Bird, ‘Old Testament Contributions’, 168; Choon-Leong Seow, ‘A Heterotextual Perspective’, in Homosexuality and Christian Community (ed. Choon-Leong Seow; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 14-27.
[45] Via, ‘Bible, Church and Homosexuality’, 23.
[46] Stanton L Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse, ‘The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science in the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates’, in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (ed. David L. Balch; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 73-120
[47] Gagnon, Homosexual Practice, 350-61.
[48] Plato, ‘Symposium’, in Great Dialogues of Plato (ed. Eric H. Warmington and Philip G. Rouse; trans. W. H. D. Rouse; New American Library; New York: Mentor, 1956), 87-88.
[49] Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom: Israel’s Wisdom Literature in the Christian Life (Biblical Classics Library; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), 139-40.
[50] Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 110.
[51] Robert S. Fyall, Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job (New Studies in Biblical Theology 12; Downers Grove: IVP, 2002), 70.
[52] Gagnon, ‘Key Issues’, 80.
[53] Via, ‘Bible, Church and Homosexuality’, 26-33.
[54] Robert A. J. Gagnon, ‘Response to Dan O. Via’, in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003), 104.
[55] Via, ‘Bible, Church and Homosexuality’, 27.
[56] Hays, ‘Redemption of Our Bodies’, 8.