Holiness Without Love

Is No Holiness at All

Disturbing the Theological Certainties

of Anti-LGBTQ Biblical Literalism

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT-5

© R.E. Slater

A Companion Essay to “Transgender Identity:

Toward Healthy and Holistic Relationship”

✍️ Preface: When Holiness Becomes a Wall

Across the contemporary landscape of the Christian church, a deep fracture has widened — one between those who believe Scripture must remain untouched by modern insight and those who believe love must remain the measure of truth. In this fracture, countless lives — especially those of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people — have been caught, bruised, and exiled.

This essay is written as an act of conscience and hope: not to destroy the Bible’s authority, but to reclaim its heart from those who have used the bible to wound and harm others.

In many churches today, holiness has been weaponized — it has been turned from a symbol of divine compassion into a border of purity and fear. The phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin” has become a moral shield for cruelty. Beneath its piety lies a refusal to see others as equals in divine dignity.

The first purpose of this essay, then, is humanistic: to defend the psychological, legal, and moral worth of LGBTQ+ people against doctrines that deny their humanity. It is written from the conviction that human dignity precedes theology, that love cannot be postponed until the church feels ready to extend it, and that holiness divorced from empathy is not holy at all.

But the second purpose is theological — to reveal that love is not the opposite of holiness, but its truest expression because it is it's truest foundation. From a process-theological view, the divine is not an unmoved judge but a living presence within all relational becoming, luring creation toward deeper compassion and harmony. Every act of love widens that divine movement; every act of rejection resists it.

> To affirm LGBTQ+ dignity is not to betray God, but to participate in God’s ongoing creation.

> To cling to exclusion in God’s name is not holiness — it is idolatry.

I. The False Binary of “Holiness vs. Love”

Evangelical theology often insists that love without moral purity is sentimentalism, while holiness without compromise is virtue. This logic divides God into parts — as though the divine could be loving or holy, but not both at once.

In the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, love is the essence of holiness. The prophets repeatedly define holiness not by separation from sinners but by justice, mercy, and care for the oppressed.

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free?” — Isaiah 58:6

Jesus, in turn, lived a holiness that touched what was forbidden — the bleeding woman, the Samaritan, the tax collector, the leper, and yes, the sexual and social outcast. He did not preserve purity; he embodied love.

To call queer and trans lives “unholy” is not to protect divine truth — it is to invert the gospel.

Love that heals and includes is the holiness of God.

II. Literalism as Idolatry

Biblical literalism is not ancient; it is modern and manufactured. It arose in the 19th century as a reaction to scientific discovery, biblical scholarship, and cultural change. It claims divine certainty while practicing human fear.

Literalists read the Bible not as a dynamic witness to evolving revelation, but as a static codebook. They cherry-pick verses that reinforce hierarchy while ignoring those that subvert it. Leviticus 18 becomes sacred law, but Leviticus 19’s call to economic justice and love of neighbor becomes “cultural.”

Literalism’s true danger is not ignorance — it is idolatry. It makes an idol of the text and calls it God.

“If your reading of Scripture cannot grow in love, it has ceased to be a living word and has become a graven image.”

Faith is not fidelity to words frozen in time; it is fidelity to the divine life still unfolding through them.

III. Recovering the Inclusive Scripture We Lost

The exclusion of LGBTQ+ people rests on selective blindness. The Bible, read through lenses of purity, looks narrow. Read through lenses of love, it is expansive and alive.

Consider the eunuchs — gender-diverse people of antiquity who appear repeatedly in Scripture:

In Isaiah 56, God promises that eunuchs who keep the covenant will receive “a name better than sons and daughters.”
Jesus acknowledges them in Matthew 19:12, implicitly honoring those whose bodies and lives defied social norms.
Philip baptizes an Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 — an outsider made the first non-Jewish Christian convert.

These stories were not accidents; they were early affirmations of gender variance as compatible with divine calling.

And Paul’s proclamation — “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28) — is a cosmic abolition of exclusion, a declaration that divine relationship transcends every human division.

The inclusive heart of the gospel is not an innovation of modern liberalism; it is its original pulse.

IV. When “Holiness” Masks Power

In every era, religion has sanctified control. Under “holiness,” churches have justified slavery, racial segregation, patriarchy, and colonialism. Today, anti-LGBTQ theologies are simply the latest form of that pattern — holiness used as an unholy fortress for power.

This dynamic is not new. Jesus confronted it in his own day:

“You tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others, but you yourselves are unwilling to lift a finger.” — Matthew 23:4

The holiness of the Pharisees was separation. The holiness of Jesus was solidarity.

The holiness of empire is dominance. The holiness of love is liberation.

The “holy” condemnation of queer and trans people is thus not holiness at all; it is empire theology dressed in sacred language.

V. The Living Law of Love

In Mark 2:27, Jesus reinterprets Torah itself:

“The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath.”

Law exists to serve life, not the other way around.

When a biblical teaching harms, silences, or drives people to despair, the problem is not the person — it is the interpretation. The Spirit that animated Scripture still speaks, and its voice sounds like love.

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, but it is they that testify on my behalf.” — John 5:39–40

Love is not optional or secondary. It is the hermeneutic key by which all Scripture must be read. Any doctrine that destroys the beloved is unfaithful to Christ.

VI. The Cost of Bad Theology

The damage of exclusionary theology is measurable and devastating:

LGBTQ+ youth who grow up in churches which reject them face exponentially higher suicide risk.
Families are torn apart by shame disguised as righteousness.
Communities become echo chambers of fear rather than compassion.
The moral credibility of Christianity collapses before a watching world.
Every sermon that condemns queer and trans lives wounds the body of Christ itself.

A faith that drives people to despair cannot be holy.
A church that exiles its children cannot be the family of God.

Bad theology kills. But good theology heals. And good theology always begins in love.

VII. The Idolatry of Certainty

Literalism masquerades as faith, but it is fear: the fear that if our interpretations change, God will change with them — and we will lose both God, self, and faith.

But the living God is change — not chaos, but creative transformation. Process theology reminds us that God is not an unmoved mover but a co-suffering companion, feeling with the world, evolving with its pain and joy.

To cling to certainty is to cling to control. But to let love lead is to trust the living God more than our frozen doctrines.

“When your faith can no longer grow, it is not faith but nostalgia.”

The church’s nostalgia for a perfect, unchanging moral order is a denial of the Spirit’s motion in time.

VIII. A Better Vision: Holiness as Relationship

What would it look like for holiness to be redefined not as moral separation but as relational integrity — the fullness of right relationship between God, self, and others?

In that vision:

Holiness is compassion lived courageously.
Love is justice embodied in relationship.
Faith is trust in divine becoming, not retreat into divine distance.

The holiness of Christ is not purity of separation but presence in love.

The holiness of the Spirit is not rigidity but renewal.

The holiness of the Creator is not judgment but the perpetual invitation to co-create a better world.

When churches learn this, they will finally become what they claim to be — communities of grace, not gatekeepers of fear.

IX. The Theological Core

God is not the guardian of our exclusions. God is the relentless presence within what we have excluded.

God’s holiness is not about keeping the unworthy out; it is about bringing the rejected home. Wherever human beings have drawn lines in the name of purity, God has crossed them in the name of love.

X. Conclusion: The Door in the Wall

When Jesus stood at the margins, it was not because he despised the center. It was because God dwells where love is most needed.

The church has chosen the center for too long.

Holiness has become a wall.

Love must make "holiness" a living, loving door.

May this essay disturb the certainties of those who mistake fear for faith and purity for holiness.

May it awaken in us the courage to read Scripture as a living word, to see love as the final law, and to welcome every human being as a bearer of divine image.

For holiness without love is no holiness at all —
it is merely pride in religious disguise.

Below are the drafts for Appendix A (Robert S. Smith) and Appendix B (Gospel Coalition & Similar Movements). Both are structured to parallel the tone of the main essay: thoughtful, firm, and theologically articulate — not reactive or shrill.

Appendix A: Engaging Robert S. Smith’s "The Body God Gives "(2024)

Amazon link

Robert S. Smith’s book The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory is one of the more systematic conservative attempts to ground Christian ethics regarding gender in the belief that biological sex determines gender identity. It seeks to provide a “biblical anthropology” to resist what the author perceives as cultural relativism in discussions of gender.

This appendix offers a constructive theological response to the major claims of Smith’s book, showing why such a framework is both biblically limited and theologically harmful, and how a more faithful reading of Scripture and tradition calls us toward love, dignity, and relational holiness.

1. On Biblical Literalism and Hermeneutical Control

Smith’s argument relies on the assumption that the plain reading of Scripture reflects God’s immutable will for gender and sexuality. This assumption:

Ignores the historical development of biblical interpretation and the cultural specificity of texts.
Fails to recognize that “plain reading” is always an interpreted reading, mediated through modern assumptions.
Positions Scripture as a static codebook rather than a living witness to divine revelation.

A process-relational hermeneutic insists that God’s Word must be read through the lens of love and evolving human understanding. Jesus himself reinterpreted Torah in the service of human flourishing (e.g., Mark 2:27), demonstrating that Scripture is meant to serve life, not entomb it.

2. On the “Sexed Body” as Determinative

Smith argues that God created the body as male or female and that this biological sex must ground gender identity. This view collapses:

biological sex (a spectrum in reality),
gender identity (a psychological and experiential dimension),
and gender expression (a cultural and social practice)
into a single, rigid binary.

This not only contradicts contemporary scientific and psychological understanding, but also flattens the diversity of embodiment reflected across cultures and history (refer to my first essay: Transgender Identity, by re slater)

Biblical narratives themselves include gender-variant figures (e.g., eunuchs), whose inclusion in God’s covenant disrupts simplistic binaries. Isaiah 56, Matthew 19:12, and Acts 8 reveal that God’s covenant expands beyond the body’s assigned social role.

3. On Creation Theology and “God’s Design”

Smith appeals to Genesis 1–2 as proof that male and female are fixed categories representing divine design. But:

These texts are mythopoetic, not anatomical manuals.
Genesis presents a theological vision of relationality and shared dignity, not a technical blueprint for immutable gender roles.
Throughout Scripture, God’s action is characterized by surprising expansions of covenant — Rahab, Ruth, eunuchs, Gentiles, women apostles — not by static enforcement of original categories.

Appeals to “God’s design” often confuse creation order with cultural order, sacralizing human norms rather than divine relational creativity.

4. On the Authority of Experience

Smith downplays transgender experiences as subjective feelings in tension with divine reality. But Christian theology has long recognized that human experience is one locus of revelation (Wesleyan quadrilateral; liberation theology; feminist and womanist theology).

Experience does not overrule Scripture — but neither may Scripture be interpreted against the lived dignity of human beings without betraying its own witness to love and justice.

“Where theology refuses to listen to human pain, it has ceased to speak for God.”

5. On Pastoral Harm and Responsibility

Smith frames his argument as “compassionate,” but the theological system it defends has historically led to:

rejection of trans people from churches,
spiritual trauma,
loss of family, housing, and safety,
elevated suicide and mental health crises.

Pastoral compassion without theological transformation is sentimentality. Real compassion demands a rethinking of exclusionary doctrines in light of love, justice, and the evolving understanding of creation.

6. On Love as the Hermeneutic Center

Smith’s framework subordinates love to holiness, treating holiness as doctrinal fidelity. A Christological hermeneutic does the opposite:

Love is the criterion by which holiness is recognized.
Any theology that harms must be re-examined in light of Jesus’ own practice of boundary-crossing love.
The gospel is measured not by how well it enforces purity, but by how fully it enacts grace.

“God is not the guardian of our exclusions. God is the relentless presence within what we have excluded.”

✅ Summary

Smith’s book represents a well-organized articulation of an old framework: fixed gender binaries, rigid biblical literalism, and holiness defined as exclusion. The present essay above challenges that entire framework at its theological roots. These six points can be used for teaching, debate preparation, or theological dialogue in church settings.

Appendix B: Responding to The Gospel Coalition and Related Networks

The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and affiliated organizations — including CBMW (Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood), various Reformed networks, and conservative evangelical seminaries — are among the most influential voices shaping anti-LGBTQ+ theology in North America and beyond.

Their influence lies less in scholarly originality and more in amplifying and normalizing exclusionary theology through media, conferences, and pastoral training.

This appendix outlines key patterns of argument used by these groups and how the main essay offers a theological counter-framework.

1. Biblical Inerrancy as Weaponized Certainty

TGC treats its interpretation of Scripture as objective truth, framing disagreement as rebellion against God rather than hermeneutical difference. This rhetorical move:

Delegitimizes other Christian traditions,
Shields itself from critique,
Creates a false binary between faithfulness and compromise.

Response: Theological authority does not arise from unchangeable interpretation but from fidelity to the living Word revealed in love. As Jesus reinterpreted Torah for the sake of mercy, so must the church today.

2. Purity Culture and Gender Essentialism

TGC builds much of its theology on creation-order complementarianism — asserting fixed male and female roles as divinely mandated. This framework:

Overlooks cultural contingency in biblical texts,
Ignores gender diversity in Scripture,
Tethers holiness to conformity, not relationship.

Response: This is a theology of boundary policing, not Christic love. The gospel narrative repeatedly collapses such boundaries — in Jesus’ ministry, in Paul’s radical equality statements, and in the Spirit’s unpredictable inclusion of outsiders.

3. Misuse of Pastoral Language

TGC often couches exclusion in terms of “love and truth” — claiming to love queer and trans people while denying their dignity. This is a theological sleight of hand: love without inclusion is not love, it is church-language for the tolerance of it's harm and suffering placed upon unloved congregants and outsiders to their church organization.

Response: Genuine pastoral care must center the actual flourishing of the person, not their compliance with ideology. Christ’s love meets people as they are, not as dogma demands they be.

4. Framing Affirmation as Rebellion

TGC portrays affirming theology as capitulation to secularism. This framing assumes:

God cannot speak through new knowledge or human experience,
Tradition (and divine Revelation) is a closed, fixed system,
The Spirit no longer moves beyond inherited boundaries.

Response: Affirming LGBTQ+ dignity is not rebellion; it is a continuation of the biblical pattern of radical inclusion — akin to the church’s expansion to Gentiles, its dismantling of slavery, and its ongoing work against patriarchy and racism.

5. The Narrative of Cultural Decline

Many TGC leaders frame LGBTQ+ inclusion as a sign of societal moral decay. But this narrative:

Reflects cultural anxiety, not biblical insight,
Confuses Western Christendom with the gospel itself,
Projects fear rather than faith.
Shows the moral decay rampant within the church itself

Response: Fearful theology always tries to preserve control. But the God of Scripture calls people out of fear into courageous love. The future of faith is not threatened by inclusion — it is strengthened and renewed through it.

6. Reclaiming Holiness as Love

TGC theology hinges on holiness as separation. The counter-witness of Jesus is holiness as radical proximity.

He touched the untouchable.
He welcomed those purity systems rejected.
He broke Sabbath rules to heal.

This is not the abandonment of holiness. It is its truest expression.

“The church has chosen the exclusionary center for too long. Holiness has become a wall. Love will make it a door.”