I posted this a week ago to my personal blog and intended to cross-post it here without too much delay, but I’ve just realized that I never got around to it.
There’s a particularly bad argument against those who accept the biblical prohibitions against same-sex sexual acts, and I think I’ve just realized something new about the argument. The Torah prohibitions on male-male sex acts are declared to be an abomination. There are those who want to reconsider how to interpret the biblical texts who want to minimize this statement. They point to the fact that eating shellfish is also an abomination in the Torah, which means it can’t be all that bad to be an abomination in the Torah.
Anyone who has thought for a little bit about the relation Christians see between the Mosaic law and the New Testament should see through such an argument, because the New Testament explicitly affirms the judgment of male-male and female-female sexual relations as bad while explicitly rejecting the dietary laws that the ban on eating shellfish was a part of. So that objection is pretty naive. Any Christian interpretive grid that seeks to minimize the Torah prohibition on same-sex sex acts can’t do so merely because we nowadays think it’s all right to eat shellfish, because there’s explicit allowance of that in the New Testament and explicit continuance of the harsh language about same-sex sex acts.
What occurred to me today, when reading Christopher Wright‘s discussion of Deuteronomy 25, is that there’s a further problem with this objection. It’s not that the occurrence of eating shellfish lowers the negative judgment on homosexuality because an innocent enough act gets called an abomination. It’s the evil of eating shellfish and the other things that fall under this same term that go way up, and that includes the example Wright discusses from Deuteronomy 25 (cheating people in commercial ventures). Eating shellfish in the covenant context of God’s people called together to be separate from their neighbors is tantamount to deciding for yourself what you think God’s standards should have been when he instituted the dietary laws. We can’t read our acceptance of shellfish-eating into how serious eating shellfish would have been taken among those at the time.
The dietary laws were an important distinguishing feature of how Israel was to live in contrast to those around them. It reflected both abandonment of pagan worship practices and an affirmation of the things in nature that, in the Mosaic covenant, represented wholeness and unity among God’s people. It’s easy to lose sight of how serious it is to reject that when you think about how easily Christians eat shellfish today. It’s a complete misunderstanding of the cultural, indeed covenant, context of the Torah to think that the inclusion of shellfish as an abomination makes abominations not very serious.
Those who continue to hold to a high view of scripture, including the Torah, aren’t going to be able to dismiss the Torah pronouncements against abominations as easily as pointing out that we all eat shellfish now and don’t consider it an abomination. Any Christian does consider it an abomination to do something with the import of what eating shellfish would have been in that context. We just rightly don’t think eating shellfish in our context would have the same import. So any reconciliation of the prevailing secular view of homosexuality of our day with a high view of Christian scripture is going to have to look elsewhere. I don’t think it’s all that plausible that we should lessen how serious we take the Torah prohibitions on what it calls abominations to be just because it’s called an abomination to eat shellfish. We should instead increase our sense of the horror an ancient Hebrew would have had at the idea of eating shellfish.
September 22nd, 2010 | 11:12 am | #1
Jeremy,
For those who point out the shellfish prohibitions etc., I think their point is simply this: we cannot conclude that a given practice is abominable from the mere fact that the Torah declared that the practice was abominable.
This point is entirely consistent with the idea that commandments of the Torah were really serious. But just as the command to build a big boat was only very serious for a specific time and audience (Noah), the commands of the Torah (or even of the Decalogue) may only be very serious for other people in another time.
September 22nd, 2010 | 12:04 pm | #2
We dare not forget that the only reason that shellfish are no longer an abomination, is that God told Peter that on the rooftop in Joppa.
We may now look back and see the cultural issues, but it’s God’s command, not culture that dictates that.
It’s possible that we conclude that not all abominations in the Torah are still abominations, but we need to remember, as we read Scripture front to back, that an abomination in the Torah remains so unless the witness of Scripture says otherwise.
Scripture plainly says otherwise about shellfish, and plainly reaffirms the abomination that is homosexuality.
September 22nd, 2010 | 12:05 pm | #3
Ok, let’s grant that the shellfish comparison is pretty silly, but it works for those who use it so you’re stuck with it and all the theological argument in the world is not going work against it.
But let’s take something a little more serious. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
That is something reaffirmed in the New Testament as well but no one in their right mind is going to go out and kill witches.
September 22nd, 2010 | 12:37 pm | #4
Daryl: “Scripture plainly says otherwise about shellfish, and plainly reaffirms the abomination that is homosexuality.”
To emphasize your excellent point a little bit more: Holy and Divinely Inspired Scripture clearly teaches that same-sex behavior is an abominable sin, a teaching that transcends all times, all peoples, all places, and all cultures.
It is also a sin that our Holy, Merciful Father in Heaven will forgive IF the homosexual sinner is repentant and covered with the blood of Jesus Christ.
September 22nd, 2010 | 1:08 pm | #5
Chuck,
I would say that the NT doesn’t affirm the death penalty for witches, but it has upheld the impermissibility of witchcraft.
I think the shellfish question can be answered well, for someone truly wanting to know. But I don’t think most people asking that are doing anything other than trying to take a shot at believers.
September 22nd, 2010 | 1:23 pm | #6
One of the general questions raised here is how today’s reader is supposed to determine the intended scope of biblical commands and prohibitions.
Some seem to suggest that if something is called an “abomination,” this is supposed to indicate (unless the N.T. explicitly states otherwise) a wider scope of application, grounding the prohibition in something more universal or timeless. If, however, the concept of the abominable has anything to do with the idea of disgust (as the food restrictions might seem to indicate), the suggestion is dubious. On this topic, I’d recommend Martha Nussbaum’s From Disgust to Humanity (Oxford UP, 2010).
September 22nd, 2010 | 1:35 pm | #7
The Bible, though it includes statutory law, is not merely a book of statutes. Thus, the Deuteronomy prohibition of same-sex relations, unlike the dietary laws, involves the Hebrew-Christian belief in the complementarity of gender. We see this in the Fall (the relationship between Adam and Eve), the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic law through judges and kings and second temple Judaism. And then, the relationship between Christ and his Church is presented as that between a bride groom and his bride.
Disgust is a perfectly natural reaction to that which one viscerally realizes is unworthy of one’s humanity. So, ironically, contra Nussbaum, one who truly loves, truly cares for, truly wants to see made whole those who gravitate toward same-sex attraction is to elevate the humanity of the other. For to be truly human is to truly understand one’s intrinsic telos and to ask for the grace, patience, and discipline to adjust one’s desires to it. To not recognize this is to think of one’s self as less than human. Thus, Nussbaum, at the end of the day, just begs the question by assuming that our identity is located in our desires rather than in our nature, though flawed and misshapen as it often is.
September 22nd, 2010 | 2:36 pm | #8
Thanks Francis for your comment.
At the end of the day, I think I’ll pass on Nussbaum’s book.
September 22nd, 2010 | 3:04 pm | #9
CE,
Abomination or disgust, makes no difference.
if God is disgusted by something, it is sin.
Would God insist that I be disgusted by something that doesn’t disgust him?
I don’t see it.
September 22nd, 2010 | 4:27 pm | #10
C. Ehrlich said:
“One of the general questions raised here is how today’s reader is supposed to determine the intended scope of biblical commands and prohibitions.”
Steve Drake: Interesting question. Thought-inducing. Why would one take it any other way than was taken by the original reader trying to understand the author’s intent? Do the commands and didactic teaching of Scripture change over time and within a culture?
There’s a bit of a ‘Hmmm’ going in my head at the moment. Why would C. Ehrlich ask this question? What is the motivation behind this question? What are his views of Scripture? Lots of things to think about here, let me think on it.
September 22nd, 2010 | 4:39 pm | #11
Still thinkin’. Got more questions though. What is C.Ehrlich’s view on ‘morality’? Where, or in what, are these ‘morals’ epistemically grounded? Any others? Might be, still thinkin’.
September 22nd, 2010 | 9:03 pm | #12
When I’ve seen the shellfish point made against the prohibition of homosexuality, it’s usually taken as a knockdown argument against using scripture to justify such a prohibition. I’ve seen it used exactly that way over and over. Perhaps there are some making the more moderated point that it just shows that the Torah prohibition might not be grounded in nature simply because it uses that word, but then the argument becomes just a different bad argument, i.e. one that ignores that there are other prohibitions in scripture.
On Nussbaum, if anyone is interested in exploring any of her work, I suggest instead the much more valuable book The Fragility of Goodness, which doesn’t in every way line up with Christian thinking on the matters she discusses, but a good deal of what she says there is of a piece with the Christian doctrine of original sin (at least the Protestant doctrine in the way that Augustine originally used the term), the fallenness of the world in general, and total depravity in specific, both in its general effects on fallen humanity and in the specific ways that it still affects believers who are redeemed (which I think is in some ways similar to the common grace that still affects unbelievers despite their not being the immediate recipients of any salvific grace).
September 22nd, 2010 | 10:06 pm | #13
Francis Beckwith,
You offer a conveniently incomplete characterization of disgust:
I shouldn’t have to point out to you that the sorts of things towards which people react with disgust are highly contingent and culturally sensitive. The Egyptians of Joseph’s day were apparently disgusted by herdsmen–but herdsmen are hardly “unworthy of one’s humanity.” (Indeed, in Genesis we read that shepherds were an “abomination” to the Egyptians.)
I also shouldn’t have to point out to you that the visceral reaction of disgust is often a reaction we must resist–regardless of how “natural” it is. It may be perfectly natural to be disgusted by another person’s physical deformity or disease. Reacting with disgust towards the leper, however, is not exactly Christlike.
September 24th, 2010 | 12:11 pm | #14
I don’t see how that changes anything Frank said. He was commenting on the appropriateness of disgust when it’s against something unworthy of humanity. That’s compatible with disgust being inappropriate when it’s motived unhealthily against things that are perfectly fine. So the only two ways to use this as an objection to what he says is (a) to beg the question against him about whether the action in question is unnatural or (b) to argue against his reasoning for why we should think it to be unnatural, neither of which you did.
September 24th, 2010 | 3:11 pm | #15
Jeremy, you seem to be missing the larger point. If what prompted the use of “abomination” is simply the reaction of disgust, then it’s a dubious move to point to that word “abomination” as evidence that the prohibition in question is intended to be more universal and timeless. This is because of the particular psychological and normative features of the disgust reaction–features which Francis Beckwith conveniently failed to acknowledge.
September 24th, 2010 | 3:35 pm | #16
He wasn’t making that point, though. He was simply saying that, if you already have a reason to regard it as unhealthy, unnatural, and harmful, then disgust is appropriate. He was responding to Nussbaum’s criticisms, which include positive arguments for accepting homosexuality as perfectly natural on the ground that people who are gay do in fact desire same-sex relationships. His point was explicitly directed at such an argument, pointing out that it begs the question to assume desires alone determine the important questions of identity, rather than nature having the role that the Bible gives to it. So other cases of disgust that aren’t like this are irrelevant. He was talking about the cases where it is like this, in response to an entirely different argument than the one you’re taking him to have tried (and failed) to respond to.
September 24th, 2010 | 3:52 pm | #17
Obviously, Jeremy. This was my point, not Francis’. Nussbaum writes a lot of things, and obviously I am not trying to defend everything. If you read her work on disgust and homosexuality, you’ll see that many of her arguments and observations are quite independent of the issue which you (and Beckwith) are ascribing to her and complaining about.
September 29th, 2010 | 11:34 am | #18
It was his point. Read his comment again. You may have been saying the same thing while thinking you were disagreeing with him, but this was indeed what he was responding to in her work.
I’m well aware that she does other things, and I’m sure he is too. He’s simply responding to one aspect of her work as it bears on this issue.
September 29th, 2010 | 11:44 am | #19
First you’re saying that it wasn’t Francis’ point; now you’re saying it was.
Maybe it would help to clarify your pronoun.
October 1st, 2010 | 7:23 am | #20
Maybe it would help to clarify what “it” refers to. My original claim was that Francis said, “if you already have a reason to regard it as unhealthy, unnatural, and harmful, then disgust is appropriate” and that he wasn’t saying the additional thing you thought he was saying. You then said that the point I was attributing to him was your point and that he was denying it. I responded that it was indeed his point. I’m not sure where in any of that there is a contradiction.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact