The New Worlds of Process Theology, Evolution, and Church Theology

Passing the World

The recent evolution of a possibly new species being names "Brolars" and "Pizzilies" never ceases to amaze me when describing a biological process always in motion. In this case, the possible evolution between the specialized polar bear species and several nearby species of Canadian Brown bears, North American Grizzlies, and Kodiak Brown bears (found on Kodiak Island, Alaska).

Whether the evolutionary change becomes permanent or not is left to be seen as evolution requires a lot of time to change over to a "semi-permanent" state. Here, amongst the North American bear population, evolution required about 500,000-600,000 years to occur.

Similarly, humanity is currently interbreeding amongst itself over the past 50,000 years. More so now, as the population grows in density and mobility (famine, droughts, war, etc). In fact, the modern human species has been changing over the past 150,000-250,000 years even though the species itself is 2,000,000 years old since diverging from the ape family. That is, it has taken that long for the paleo-human subspecies to find it's last iteration in the line of "homo sapiens." Before us where many different stages of human-like, bi-pedal, non-ape species. Homo Sapiens - or, modern man - is its most recent development.

Credit

 

JOHN BAVARO FINE ART / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY | 

Caption

 

Australopithecine species. Illustration of several species of Australopithecines, or Homininians, in the genera Ardipithecus, Paranthropus, Australopithecus and Homo. Australopithecines include modern humans (Homo sapiens) and their close relatives. For a version of this image without the labels see C049/0083.

The science of evolution is best understood as a science of processual evolution even as the universe itself processually proceeds within itself from event to event. A good Christian theology must include in its teachings these ideas even as they relate to a processual theological understanding of God and creation.

The classical, Greek/Plato/Hellenized teaching of God has delimited God for far too long in defunct philosophies of the world and cosmos. And during that time has infilled it's traditional non-processual teachings with un-God like qualities more oriented to our own sin and cruelty claiming these are God's characteristics - sic, essences - as well. But they are not.

God is love. God is neither cruel or evil. When ridding Platonism from Western Theology and subsequently adding a God of love to the equation - not as a peripheral descriptor but as an essential divine descriptor - we get a better, more translucent form of Christianity arising and being described as a Processual Christianity. Or, a Process Theology.

A Christianity which sees God as amipotent (v. omnipotent; ami=friend/lover; potent=power), a loving power who is generatively sovereign in cooperative partnership with creation (including man), without requiring definitive outcomes but all possible outcomes based upon God's valuative imputation of God's energies, thoughts, and actions into receptive creational elements yearning for a relationship between itself and the divine-creational/human cooperative.

"An amipotent God is active, but not a dictator. Amipotence is receptive but not overwhelmed. God engages without domineering; is generous but not pushy; and invites without monopolizing. Amipotence is divine strength working positively at all times and places. The power of an amipotent God is the power of love." - Thomas Jay Oord, Open and Relational Theology: An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas

Processual Christianity builds upon AN Whitehead's Process and Reality philosophy which spun off a subset process fields known as processual theology, science, technologies, societies (especially eco-societies), communities, literature, and socio-political interactions.

Process is everywhere around us as it is how the universe moves and has it's being. This is what Whitehead had observed along with many other philosophers and religionists before him back to antiquities. Whitehead's metaphysic of creational  cosmology is best described as highly open, experiential, panpsychic as well as physical, interactive, organic, and relational, among other adjectives.

Process philosophy and theology may be summed up as pancreational, panrelational, panexperiential, and panpsychic. Which means creation is highly interactive with itself in all its many natures, dimensions, and states of being. It further means that the future is always open and changing, always dynamic, and always evolving.

As its Creator, God is ever God in God's-Self. More concisely, God is a process God. How God moves and Is may aptly described a God of processual quality, essence, character, and Being. What does this mean?

That God is not impassable as traditional Christianity has taught (save in who God is as Loving Other et al) but highly passable in God's relationship with creation. That God is always highly experiencing a deep, relational communion, energy, and pan-essence throughout creation's energies and movements.

A qualitatively processual God is also NOT directing creation's future nor its immediate or long-term direction but is a God who is a deep, deep part of creation's future and direction. That is God doesn't need to direct creation's future as God is a PART of creation's being and subtending future to become it's truer self beyond the dichotomy of sin and evil inhabiting it's initial freewill beingness. But because God is also Other-than-creation, or Apart from creation as God, both the theistic and pantheistic pictures of relation fall apart. A process God must have a newer relation with creation, that of pan-en-theism, or pantheistic relation with creation as illustrated below.

It should be observed that those competing theologies which are non-processual will have many arguments which seem sound and wise. Having examined Whitehead through the writings of John Cobb and other process theologians, many, if not all, of those arguments fail when not perceiving the comprehensiveness of process theology. From the diagram three things stand out: 1) God is in a cooperating/partnering relationship with the cosmos; 2) panentheism is aptly described as process-RELATIONAL state of beingness; and, 3) like God, creation is always in a state of creativity which means that the idealized future of permanency is not true. Rather, the future is exactly like our processual present ever changing, morphing, adapting, renewing, reclaiming, etc. 

Continuing, the reason for God's panessence in creation is firstly because God birthed creation out of God's own DNA resulting in a generative, valuative, open creational teleology. And secondly because God's Otherness has been imputed INTO creation so that even the very "birthing" edges of evolutionary creation is filled with God's Self.

Process theology also emphases a processual-relational, nurturing-nourishing, and loving presence, or deep intrinsic immanence, of God with creation. The big story here then is of process theology's inherent DIFFERENCE to classical or traditional Christianity's Wholly-Other God who lives far, far away, and above us (like the Greek gods) always disapproving of our existence. It further teaches that God loves us when we receive God's love through Christ's atonement. Which is not denied but a process theology wishes to alter these past teachings of transcendency and disapproval by expanding away from it more broadly more deeply in this theology of Divine expiation beginning with who God is. Is God a God who loves or a God who loves and hates?

Traditional Christianity teaches of a God who loves and hates. However, this is NOT the God of Process Christianity. It is the idol of the traditional church which has been raised up like Aaron's rod to dis-spell the biting snakes of the wastelands present amongst Israel's 40 year wilderness journeys from Egypt as it moved in-and-about the lands of Palestine.

Processual Christianity says that though God is Other, is transcendent, is many things creation is not, that God in God's primary relationship to us, and creation, is  WITH us. That God is immanently near to us. That God is here and present with creation from moment-to-moment experiencing with us our griefs and anguish, harms and failings, joys, and hopes, and sufferings.

The story isn't in what God can do to prevent the sins and evils we bear in this world but to be there with us in its deepest agonies and greatest joys, helping where God can help as circumstances allow. The promises of God are built on God's presence with us; on God's ami-power to help us endure life's woes and evils; to "save" us both IN this present life as will as IN death unto Love's greater endurance beyond the realms of sin and death.

A process theology then is a theology of God who ABIDES with us always and not sometimes, or maybe, or when we're not doing evil, or even if we don't love God or believe in God. God is love and God is present.

Further, God's greatest joy is seeing creation displaying love in its many splendors against those days and times of unlove, hate, and passion darkly directed by willful creatures such as mankind.

Process bespeaks goodness and generative energy. Western theologies bespeak many things about God but many of which are not true. It uses the bible just as process theologians do but in ways different from process theology. The 2000 year hold of classical Greek-Hellenistic theology, or Platonic thought, the early Enlightenment science philosophies, or even modern day Catholic scholasticisms must be let go and be allowed to be infilled with processual life, vision, hope, and beingness. However, the better path of deconstruction is to depart these teachigs altogether and expand upwards, lifting your theology to a higher plane of insight and experience.

For further interaction with process philosophy and teaching locate appropriate articles in the topics and Index lists to the right.

Blessings, 

R.E. Slater

November 18, 2022

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Process Theology - God As a Verb:

An Introduction 08.01.2021

What if God is not a person or a personality at all? What if God is not all-powerful? What if God is not all good? What if all those ideas are the inventions from the Middle Ages, and nothing what Jesus or the writers of the Bible had in mind? What if God is a process - one that you and I participate in, one that seeks peace and liberation for all? During this Sunday service we explore Process Theology, a newer, more complex approach to religious belief that evolved in concert with quantum physics. Led by Worship Associate, Elizabeth Gemelli and guest sermon by Rev. Susanne Intriligator.

Introduction of Speaker - approx 9:30 min

Teaching - approx 11:00 min 

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Rare hybrid between a polar bear and brown bear.
(Philippe Clement/Getty Images)

Hybrid 'Brolar Bears' Could Spread

Through The Arctic as The Planet Warms

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by CARLY CASSELLA

in NATURE | November 7, 2022

Earth's largest land predators are increasingly crossing paths with brown bears at higher latitudes, bringing hybrid 'brolar bears' into the Arctic.

In 2006, a hunter in the Canadian Arctic shot a bear that didn't look like the others. DNA testing would later confirm the animal was actually part grizzly, part polar bear.

In the years since, 'pizzlies' or 'brolar bears' have popped up more and more in North America, and now researchers in Siberia are warning the same could happen elsewhere in the icy north.

"Brown bears are moving into the tundra. Brown bears have been seen in the lower reaches of the Kolyma River, where polar bears live," Innokentiy Okhlopkov, a researcher at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences told TASS, a Russian news agency.

"Brown bears have been seen, for example, in the Anabar District [of Yakutia, Russia]. It is likely that in the future there will be hybrids of polar and brown bears."

Polar bears and brown bears only diverged from one another around 500,000 years ago. Though uncommon, mating between the two can occasionally result in fertile offspring.

As climate change intensifies, revealing new lands and food sources, these rate events could become more common as brown bears move northwards and cross paths with polar bears more frequently. Similarly, melting sea ice forces polar bears inland, again making encounters between the two more likely.

Already, locals in some parts of Russia have noticed the two species frequenting the same places. In the Yakutia region of Siberia there are two polar bear populations that could possibly breed with brown bears.

Some studies estimate polar bears could be close to extinction by 2100, save for a few lonely subpopulations in the highest reaches of the Arctic. And if enough of them interbreed with brown bears, the pure species could disappear even sooner.

Polar bear numbers are already expected to plummet as sea ice melts, but experts are now worried that any remaining individuals will see their genetics diluted by hybridization.

In fact, that's already happening as you're reading this. In 2010, researchers in North America actually found a brolar bear whose mother was a hybrid and whose father was a brown bear.

Unlike polar bears, which mostly feed on blubber and meat, brown bears have a super varied diet. They will eat just about anything they can get their paws on, which means these are likely to better cope with any environmental changes that might come in the future.

Polar bears are not nearly so adaptable, but perhaps new genes from brown bears could help the species survive in the Arctic.

If that's the case, polar bears may still exist in the decades to come, but they'll never be quite the same as before.

One day, they could even represent an entirely new species.

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(Mint Images/Getty Images)

And now for the rest of the story...

"Cooked Fish Anyone?"

At an archaeological site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, the remains of ancient carp-like fish show signs of having been carefully heated 780,000 years ago. The discovery is not the oldest evidence of the controlled use of fire by early humans, but it is the oldest evidence in Eurasia. In Africa, Homo erectus sites dating back at least 1.5 million years contain charcoal and burnt bones. In fact, signs of cooking don't really show up in the archaeological record until long after the arrival of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Until recently, the oldest evidence of cooking was the heated remains of starchy plants found in an underground oven in Africa. And that site only dates back 170,000 years. That's 600,000 years after early humans in Israel were cooking fish in a valley near the Dead Sea!

The Oldest Evidence of Ancient Humans

Cooking With Fire Was Just Found

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by Carly Cassella

HUMANS, 15 November 2022

What sets humans apart from other animals? It's a burning question that some scientists say boils down to the fine control of one earthly force: fire.

The British primatologist Richard W. Wrangham is a big proponent of the so-called 'cooking hypothesis'. Today, there is no known human population that lives without cooking, which suggests it is a powerful and necessary skill.

Wrangham argues that the evolutionary shift from raw to cooked food was the "transformative moment" that fueled the bellies of early humans and allowed their brains to grow, giving rise to our genus and ultimately our species.

A new discovery in Israel makes that idea even more digestible.

An international team of scientists working in the northern sector of the Dead Sea claims to have found the earliest signs of cooking by prehistoric humans.

At an archaeological site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, the remains of ancient carp-like fish show signs of having been carefully heated 780,000 years ago.

The discovery is not the oldest evidence of the controlled use of fire by early humans, but it is the oldest evidence in Eurasia. In Africa, Homo erectus sites dating back at least 1.5 million years contain charcoal and burnt bones.

Yet these are only circumstantial signs of burning, not clear signs of cooking. Evidence of the latter is much harder to come by.

In fact, signs of cooking don't really show up in the archaeological record until long after the arrival of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Until recently, the oldest evidence of cooking was the heated remains of starchy plants found in an underground oven in Africa. And that site only dates back 170,000 years.

That's 600,000 years after early humans in Israel were cooking fish in a valley near the Dead Sea.

"We do not know exactly how the fish were cooked but given the lack of evidence of exposure to high temperatures, it is clear that they were not cooked directly in fire, and were not thrown into a fire as waste or as material for burning," says archaeologist Jens Najorka of the Natural History Museum in London.

The team's recent analysis suggests the teeth of ancient freshwater fish found at the site were caught at a nearby lake, no longer in existence, and exposed to suitable temperatures for cooking.

The findings push back our ancestors' control of fire to the mid-Pleistocene, a time when populations of Homo erectus were giving way to bigger-brained hominins, like Homo heidelbergensis.

"Gaining the skill required to cook food marks a significant evolutionary advance, as it provided an additional means for making optimal use of available food resources," explains archaeologist Naama Goren-Inbar from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

"It is even possible that cooking was not limited to fish, but also included various types of animals and plants."

Gesher Benot Ya'aqob is a site rich in the remains of ancient hominins. Archaeologists have found evidence of flint, basalt, and limestone tools here, as well as fruits, nuts, seeds, and many species of land mammals, both medium and large.

Whoever lived in this valley clearly knew the land well. But it was their understanding of freshwater habitats that researchers think allowed this population to really thrive.

It might have even helped humans leave the African continent and live elsewhere. By jumping from freshwater habitat to freshwater habitat, hominins could ensure they had a good supply of fresh water and nutrient-rich foods.

Scientists have argued for years now that eating fish rich in omega fatty acids, zinc, and other crucial nutrients is what allowed the human brain to evolve such great complexity.

Raw fish probably suited the earliest hominins just fine, but as cooked fish made its way into our ancestors' diet, it would have made digestion easier and saved people from consuming dangerous pathogens. It would have also given hominin brains a bigger boost of nutrients.

The fish fried in Israel may have just been the start of our humanity's culinary prowess.

"This study provides evidence of fish cooking by early hominid … emphasizing the role of wetland habitats in offering a stable, year-round source of food that played an important role in hominin subsistence and dispersal across the Old World," the authors conclude.

The study was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

God as "Amipotent" better Describes God than as "Omnipotent"

The Death of Omnipotence

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by Thomas Jay Oord

November 7, 2022

An amipotent God is active, but not a dictator. Amipotence is receptive but not overwhelmed. God engages without domineering; is generous but not pushy; and invites without monopolizing. Amipotence is divine strength working positively at all times and places. The power of an amipotent God is the power of love. - Oord, Thomas Jay. Open and Relational Theology: An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas

I’m writing a new book. My tentative title is “The Death of Omnipotence… and Birth of Amipotence.”

As the title suggests, I’ll argue that God is not omnipotent. But instead of simply saying, “God can’t do…,” I’m also proposing a view of divine power I think is more biblically supported, philosophically coherent, and experientially justified. I call it “amipotence.” (Here’s a 3-minute ORTShort describing the word.)

Here’s how I plan to start the book…

THERE’S NOTHING THAT GOD CANNOT DO?

“My God is so big, so strong, and so mighty there’s nothing that He cannot do.”[1] These lines from a children’s song give voice to what many people believe: God can do anything.

Other song lyrics proclaim the glory of an all-powerful God. In his Messiah concerto, George Frideric Handel’s oft-repeated lines ring out:

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth,

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah![2]

Contemporary worship choruses promote omnipotence, declaring a sovereign God cannot be thwarted nor the divine will be frustrated. It’s common for believers, enraptured in praise, to lift their voices to the One they call “almighty” and proclaim, “our God reigns!”

OMNIPOTENCE

“Omnipotence” expresses in formal language the “God can do anything” view. A God with all (omni) power (potent) apparently can do anything we imagine and more. Augustine made this connection, saying the omnipotent God is “He who can do all things.”[3]

In some theologies, God actually exerts all power and is the cause of everything; call this “theological determinism” or “monergism.” In others, God could do everything but chooses not to. God so conceived controls from time to time but generally opts to allow creatures to exert power; call this view “voluntary divine self-limitation.”[4]

Among the attributes theists ascribe to God, omnipotence is likely best known. For many, it’s a placeholder for God – “the Omnipotent.” Although distinctions can be made, the term is often thought synonymous with other words and phrases describing divine power: “sovereign,” “all-powerful,” and “almighty.”[5]

These describe what many think necessary of a being worthy of worship: unlimited power. Christian creeds refer to God’s almightiness. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…” begins the Apostle’s Creed. The Nicene Creed starts similarly: “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…” The Westminster Confession speaks of a God who, in “sovereign” or “almighty” activity, saw fit to “ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”

Answering Divine Omnipotence with Divine Amipotence resolves questions of theodicy

THREE MEANINGS

Theists espouse various meanings of omnipotent, almighty, or all-powerful. In this book, I address three common among scholars and laity. To say God is omnipotent typically means at least one of the following:

1. God exerts all power.

2. God can do absolutely anything.

3. God can control others or circumstances.[6]

Some theists affirm one or two meanings but not all. Some reject the idea God exerts all power, for instance, but believe God can control others. Others say God can do anything but also say God doesn’t always control creatures. Many claim God can singlehandedly determine outcomes but cannot do what is illogical or self-contradictory. And it’s common for believers to say God is omnipotent but appeal to mystery when vexing questions arise.

CONCLUSION

I’d love to hear your questions, suggestions, and thoughts. Now that you know the general aim of the book, what issues should I be sure to address?

(I explain amipotence a bit in my book, Pluriform Love. Also, see this essay from Jay McDaniel.)

[1] Ruth Harms Calkin, “My God is so Big” (Permission to quote granted from Nuggets of Truth Publishing).

[2] Handel seems to be drawing from Revelation 19:6, which in Latin and in the King James Version of scripture is translated “omnipotent” but in most contemporary biblical translations is rendered “almighty.”

[3] Augustine, De Trinitate, IV 20, 27 (CChr.SL), 50, 197: “Quis est autem omnipotens, nisi qui omnia potest.” Despite this claim, Augustine also notes a number of things God cannot do.

[4] Theologians have explored the distinction between God’s potential power and the actual expression of divine power. See, for instance, Ian Robert Richardson, “Meister Eckhart’s Parisian Question of ‘Whether the omnipotence of God should be considered as potentia ordinata or potentia absoluta?” Doctoral Dissertation (King’s College London, 2002), 17.

[5] In previous writings, I’ve said we could rightly call God almighty in the senses. God is 1) the mightiest, 2) exerts might upon all, and 3) the source of might for all. Gijsbert Van Den Brink argues for “almightiness” over omnipotence in Almighty God: A Study of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence (Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1993).

[6] By “control,” I mean acting as the sufficient cause of some creature, circumstance, or event. To describe such control, I use phrases like “singlehandedly decide outcomes,” “unilaterally determine,” or others that depict God as the sole cause. I will argue that God never has controlled and, in fact, cannot control others.

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What does Amipotence Look Like?

It looks like the human touch of a nurse.

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by Jay McDaniel

July 25, 2021

​

​God is neither impotent nor omnipotent but what I call “amipotent.” I coined this word by combining the Latin word for power — “potent” — with a Latin prefix for love — “ami.” From “potent” we get words like “potential” and “potency.” We find the “ami” prefix in love words like “amity,” “amigo,” and “amicable.” God’s power is the power of love: amipotence.

An amipotent God is active, but not a dictator. Amipotence is receptive but not overwhelmed. God engages without domineering; is generous but not pushy; and invites without monopolizing. Amipotence is divine strength working positively at all times and places. The power of an amipotent God is the power of love. - Oord, Thomas Jay. Open and Relational Theology: An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas

Thomas Oord has coined the term "amipotence" to name the infinite power of divine love The term combines the Latin word for power — “potent” — with a Latin prefix for love — “ami.”

Amipotence is a verb not a noun. It is an ongoing and endless activity, always different and yet always the same. This activity is not all-powerful in the sense of being able to prevent all tragedies, but it is all-faithful and, I believe, all-beautiful. The heart of amipotence is healing and life-giving, like love itself.

What does it look like? I think it looks like the healing power of a nurturant nurse. We do not expect nurses to make everything right, but in their human touch we find life's deepest meaning. That meaning is not that all pain can be relieved. It is that noone suffers alone and that always, even in suffering, there is a healing (a solace, a togetherness, a presence, a companionship, and a hope) that is more, much more, than whatever tears must be shed. For me, the God of whom Thomas Oord speaks is a deep Nurse in whose life the universe unfolds, moment by moment. She is - he is - it is - the Nurturing: an encircling spirit beneath, behind, beyond, and (sometimes) within the happening of all that happens

- Jay McDaniel, July 25, 2021

The Biblical Case for Gay Marriage v Tradition Teachings

19 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Bible Teachings

The bible's teachings were collected from a long time ago. Its words are even older within it's known stories and teachings. The views of societies have changed over the eons. Views before Christ. Views after Christ. Views of religion before Israel's covenant with God. And views of the church in a new covenant with God. Thus the question of gay marriage when several of the bible's teachings speak to one man and one woman heterosexual marriage and is mute on the question of gay marriage.

Traditional Christianity says the question of the bible's silence on gay marriage is because it is not "the ideal" of God's creation. The progressive church says its silence is there because of many other reasons and has nothing to do with God's "ideal".

As a Christian raised in traditional Christianity - as versus where I am today in my LGBTQ+ writings - my view will not come as a shock when proposing that the teachings of the bible on heterosexuality might be the "ideal" for many but it leaves plenty of room by even God's standards for allowing love to extend towards gay marriage as well. Especially so when we think of love in terms of "covenanted" (or, faithful) relationships with one's spouse, be they hetero- or homosexual.

Especially too when there are several examples in the bible of homosexual gay couples in the bible. The most prominent one which comes to mind is that of David and Jonathan (see here). Now I still think of their relationship as one between two very close friends... ut that is based on my orientation as a heterosexual... however, I must also allow as a Christian for the possibility of a close-and-healthy gay bond between David and Jonathon. In either case, the bible shares in its many stories that of a possible gay relationship between two "men of God".

And not being naive, there are as many toxic relationships between gay couples as there are between heterosexual couples; these should be abandoned unless they can be righted through love and repentance to one another.

Church Teachings and Judgments 

Traditional Christianity has also taken on a role of "sanctifying" human relationships and (mis)deeds. If reading Christian history is any kind of teacher, then one will find a wide deviation between "Christian" standards from faith-to-faith and from era-to-era - many of which are shown to be unloving, cruel, harming, and hypocritical. The church has no place in civil society in "sanctifying" anyone's relationship with anyone else. This is between the parties involved and God much like a doctor's relationship to their patients. Nor between institutions and their members. This is where the role of pastoring and counseling comes in to play. Relationships are personal and so must be the interaction of outsiders when asked in by that couple.

Which doesn't mean we might not exercise loving council to one another when situations arise; but always remember these are intensely personal matters and should be treated as such. And when offering pastoral, counseling, or friendship  advice always error on the side of wisdom and love. Exercising ethics and morality can be as beneficial as it can be harming and oppressive; making such interpersonal communications an exercise only few are qualified to enter into and make. And definitely not from the pulpit as I have observed too many times.

Further, the church itself, because of its own moving ethics and moralities, must always restrain itself from doing further damage as has been seen over the recent years in church organization's charters and policies imputed into people's lives. Not all have wisdom, and not all council is biblical, godly, or "God-ordained" as much as the church thinks it is and has instructed itself to think its own judgments into people's lives as the more righteous and holy while forgetting wisdom and love altogether.

Conclusion

Below are several articles which may help round out "biblical" approaches to human relationships. For myself, I question how-and-why people use the bible in other people's lives without looking to their own lives first. And even then, the most righteous life may be but the shallowest in comporting with those whom God dearly loves and does not judge to condemnation - as the church too many times thinks it has the right to do and preach. The God I know is a loving God and never a damning God. God is One thing and not Two things. God is love and not evil.

Blessings and Peace,

R.E. Slater

November 17, 2022

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References:

A Theology of Marriage including Same-Sex Couples:

A View from the Liberals

David and Jonathan: Same-sex love between men in the Bible

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The Bible and same sex relationships:

a review article

article link

Tim Keller,  2015

Vines, Matthew, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same Sex Relationships, Convergent Books, 2014

Wilson, Ken, A Letter to My Congregation, David Crum Media, 2014.

The relationship of homosexuality to Christianity is one of the main topics of discussion in our culture today. In the fall of last year I wrote a review of books by Wesley Hill and Sam Allberry that take the historic Christian view, in Hill’s words: “that homosexuality was not God’s original creative intention for humanity ... and therefore that homosexual practice goes against God’s express will for all human beings, especially those who trust in Christ.”

There are a number of other books that take the opposite view, namely that the Bible either allows for or supports same sex relationships. Over the last year or so I (and other pastors at Redeemer) have been regularly asked for responses to their arguments. The two most read volumes taking this position seem to be those by Matthew Vines and Ken Wilson. The review of these two books will be longer than usual because the topic is so contested today and, while I disagree with the authors’ theses, a too-brief review can’t avoid appearing cursory and dismissive. Hence the length.

I see six basic arguments that these books and others like them make.

Knowing gay people personally.

Vines and Wilson relate stories of people who were sure that the Bible condemned homosexuality. However, they were brought to a change of mind through getting to know gay people personally. It is certainly important for Christians who are not gay to hear the hearts and stories of people who are attracted to the same sex.

And when I see people discarding their older beliefs that homosexuality is sinful after engaging with loving, wise, gay people, I’m inclined to agree that those earlier views were likely defective. In fact, they must have been essentially a form of bigotry. They could not have been based on theological or ethical principles, or on an understanding of historical biblical teaching. They must have been grounded instead on a stereotype of gay people as worse sinners than others (which is itself a shallow theology of sin.) So I say good riddance to bigotry. However, the reality of bigotry cannot itself prove that the Bible never forbids homosexuality. We have to look to the text to determine that.

Consulting historical scholarship.

Vines and Wilson claim that scholarly research into the historical background show that biblical authors were not forbidding all same sex relationships, but only exploitative ones — pederasty, prostitution, and rape. Their argument is that Paul and other biblical writers had no concept of an innate homosexual orientation, that they only knew of exploitative homosexual practices, and therefore they had no concept of mutual, loving, same-sex relationships.

These arguments were first asserted in the 1980s by John Boswell and Robin Scroggs. Vines, Wilson and others are essentially repopularizing them. However, they do not seem to be aware that the great preponderance of the best historical scholarship since the 1980s — by the full spectrum of secular, liberal and conservative researchers — has rejected that assertion. Here are two examples.

Bernadette Brooten and William Loader have presented strong evidence that homosexual orientation was known in antiquity. Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, for example, tells a story about how Zeus split the original human beings in half, creating both heterosexual and homosexual humans, each of which were seeking to be reunited to their “lost halves” — heterosexuals seeking the opposite sex and homosexuals the same sex. Whether Aristophanes believed this myth literally is not the point. It was an explanation of a phenomenon the ancients could definitely see — that some people are inherently attracted to the same sex rather than the opposite sex.

Contra Vines, et al, the ancients also knew about mutual, non-exploitative same sex relationships. In Romans 1, Paul describes homosexuality as men burning with passion “for one another” (verse 27). That is mutuality. Such a term could not represent rape, nor prostitution, nor pederasty (man/boy relationships). Paul could have used terms in Romans 1 that specifically designated those practices, but he did not. He categorically condemns all sexual relations between people of the same sex, both men and women. Paul knew about mutual same-sex relationships, and the ancients knew of homosexual orientation. Nonetheless “Nothing indicates that Paul is exempting some same-sex intercourse as acceptable.” (Loader, Making Sense of Sex, p.137).

I urge readers to familiarize themselves with this research. A good place to start is the Kindle book by William Loader Sexuality in the New Testament (2010) or his much larger The New Testament on Sexuality (2012). Loader is the most prominent expert on ancient and biblical views of sexuality, having written five large and two small volumes in his lifetime. It is worth noting that Loader himself does not personally see anything wrong with homosexual relationships; he just — rightly and definitively — proves that you can’t get the Bible itself to give them any support.

Re-categorizing same sex relations.

A third line of reasoning in these volumes and others like them involves recategorization. In the past, homosexuality was categorized by all Christian churches and theology as sin. However, many argue that homosexuality should be put in the same category as slavery and segregation. Vines writes, for example, that the Bible supported slavery and that most Christians used to believe that some form of slavery was condoned by the Bible, but we have now come to see that all slavery is wrong. Therefore, just as Christians interpreted the Bible to support segregation and slavery until times changed, so Christians should change their interpretations about homosexuality as history moves forward.

But historians such as Mark Noll (America’s God, 2005 and The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, 2006) have shown the 19th century position some people took that the Bible condoned race-based chattel slavery was highly controversial and never a consensus. Most Protestants in Canada and Britain (and many in the northern U.S. states) condemned it as being wholly against the Scripture. Rodney Stark (For the Glory of God, 2003) points out that the Catholic church also came out early against the African slave trade. David L. Chappell in his history of the Civil Rights Movement (A Stone of Hope, 2003) went further. He proves that even before the Supreme Court decisions of the mid-50s, almost no one was promoting the slender and forced biblical justifications for racial superiority and segregation. Even otherwise racist theologians and ministers could not find a basis for white supremacy in the Bible.

So we see the analogy between the church’s view of slavery and its view of homosexuality breaks down. Up until very recently, all Christian churches and theologians unanimously read the Bible as condemning homosexuality. By contrast, there was never any consensus or even a majority of churches that thought slavery and segregation were supported by the Bible. David Chappell shows that even within the segregationist South, efforts to support racial separation from the Bible collapsed within a few years. Does anyone really think that within a few years from now there will be no one willing to defend the traditional view of sexuality from biblical texts? The answer is surely no. This negates the claim that the number, strength, and clarity of those biblical texts supposedly supporting slavery and those texts condemning homosexuality are equal, and equally open to changed interpretations.

Wilson puts forward a different form of the recategorization argument when he says the issue of same-sex relations in the church is like issues of divorce and remarriage, Christian participation in war, or the use of in vitro fertilization. We can extend that list to include matters such as women’s roles in ministry and society, as well as views of baptism, charismatic gifts, and so on. These are “issues where good Christians differ.” We may believe that another Christian with a different view of divorce is seriously wrong, but we don’t say this means his or her view undermines orthodox Christian faith. Wilson, Vines, and many others argue that same-sex relations must now be put into this category. Since we see that there are sincere Christians who disagree over this, it is said, we should “agree to disagree” on this.

However history shows that same-sex relations do not belong in this category, either. Around each of the other items on Wilson’s list there are long-standing and historical divisions within the church. There have always been substantial parts of the church that came to different positions on these issues. But until very, very recently, there had been complete unanimity about homosexuality in the church across all centuries, cultures, and even across major divisions of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions. So homosexuality is categorically different. One has to ask, then, why is it the case that literally no church, theologian, or Christian thinker or movement ever thought that any kind of same sex relationships was allowable until now?

One answer to the question is an ironic one. During the Civil War, British Presbyterian biblical scholars told their southern American colleagues who supported slavery that they were reading the Scriptural texts through cultural blinders. They wanted to find evidence for their views in the Bible and voila — they found it. If no Christian reading the Bible — across diverse cultures and times — ever previously discovered support for same-sex relationships in the Bible until today, it is hard not to wonder if many now have new cultural spectacles on, having a strong predisposition to find in these texts evidence for the views they already hold.

What are those cultural spectacles? The reason that homosexual relationships make so much more sense to people today than in previous times is because they have absorbed late modern western culture’s narratives about the human life. Our society presses its members to believe “you have to be yourself,” that sexual desires are crucial to personal identity, that any curbing of strong sexual desires leads to psychological damage, and that individuals should be free to live as they alone see fit.

These narratives have been well analyzed by scholars such as Robert Bellah and Charles Taylor. They are beliefs about the nature of reality that are not self-evident to most societies and they carry no more empirical proof than any other religious beliefs. They are also filled with inconsistencies and problems. Both Vines and Wilson largely assume these cultural narratives. It is these faith assumptions about identity and freedom that make the straightforward reading of the biblical texts seem so wrong to them. They are the underlying reason for their views, but they are never identified or discussed.

Revising biblical authority.

Vines and Wilson claim that they continue to hold to a high view of biblical authority, and that they believe the Bible is completely true, but that they don’t think it teaches all same-sex relations are wrong. Vines argues that while the Levitical code forbids homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22) it also forbids eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:9-12). Yet, he says, Christians no longer regard eating shellfish as wrong — so why can’t we change our minds on homosexuality? Here Vines is rejecting the New Testament understanding that the ceremonial laws of Moses around the sacrificial system and ritual purity were fulfilled in Christ and no longer binding, but that the moral law of the Old Testament is still in force. Hebrews 10:16, for example, tells us that the Holy Spirit writes “God’s laws” on Christians’ hearts (so they are obviously still in force), even though that same book of the Bible tells us that some of those Mosaic laws — the ceremonial — are no longer in binding on us. This view has been accepted by all branches of the church since New Testament times.

When Vines refuses to accept this ancient distinction between the ceremonial and moral law, he is doing much more than simply giving us an alternative interpretation of the Old Testament — he is radically revising what biblical authority means. When he says “Christians no longer regard eating shellfish as wrong,” and then applies this to homosexuality (though assuming that Leviticus 19:18 — the Golden Rule — is still in force), he is assuming that it is Christians themselves, not the Bible, who have the right to decide which parts of the Bible are essentially now out of date. That decisively shifts the ultimate authority to define right and wrong onto the individual Christian and away from the biblical text.

The traditional view is this: Yes, there are things in the Bible that Christians no longer have to follow but, if the Scripture is our final authority, it is only the Bible itself that can tell us what those things are. The prohibitions against homosexuality are re-stated in the New Testament (Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1) but Jesus himself (Mark 7), as well as the rest of the New Testament, tells us that the clean laws and ceremonial code is no longer in force.

Vines asserts that he maintains a belief in biblical authority, but with arguments like this one he is actually undermining it. This represents a massive shift in historic Christian theology and life.

Being on the wrong side of history.

More explicit in Wilson’s volume than Vines' is the common argument that history is moving toward greater freedom and equality for individuals, and so refusing to accept same-sex relationships is a futile attempt to stop inevitable historical development. Wilson says that the “complex forces” of history showed Christians that they were wrong about slavery and something like that is happening now with homosexuality.

Charles Taylor, however, explains how this idea of inevitable historical progress developed out of the Enlightenment optimism about human nature and reason. It is another place where these writers seem to uncritically adopt background understandings that are foreign to the Bible. If we believe in the Bible’s authority, then shifts in public opinion should not matter. The Christian faith will always be offensive to every culture at some points.

And besides, if you read Eric Kaufmann’s Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? (2010) and follow the latest demographic research, you will know that the world is not inevitably becoming more secular. The percentage of the world’s population that are non-religious, and that put emphasis on individuals determining their own moral values, is shrinking. The more conservative religious faiths are growing very fast. No one studying these trends believes that history is moving in the direction of more secular societies.

Missing the biblical vision.

The saddest thing for me as a reader was how, in books on the Bible and sex, Vines and Wilson concentrated almost wholly on the biblical negatives, the prohibitions against homosexual practice, instead of giving sustained attention to the high, (yes) glorious Scriptural vision of sexuality. Both authors rightly say that the Bible calls for mutual loving relationships in marriage, but it points to far more than that.

In Genesis 1 you see pairs of different but complementary things made to work together: heaven and earth, sea and land, even God and humanity. It is part of the brilliance of God’s creation that diverse, unlike things are made to unite and create dynamic wholes which generate more and more life and beauty through their relationships. As N.T. Wright points out, the creation and uniting of male and female at the end of Genesis 2 is the climax of all this.

That means that male and female have unique, non-interchangeable glories — they each see and do things that the other cannot. Sex was created by God to be a way to mingle these strengths and glories within a life-long covenant of marriage. Marriage is the most intense (though not the only) place where this reunion of male and female takes place in human life. Male and female reshape, learn from, and work together.

Therefore, in one of the great ironies of late modern times, when we celebrate diversity in so many other cultural sectors, we have truncated the ultimate unity-in-diversity: inter-gendered marriage.

Without understanding this vision, the sexual prohibitions in the Bible make no sense. Homosexuality does not honor the need for this rich diversity of perspective and gendered humanity in sexual relationships. Same-sex relationships not only cannot provide this for each spouse, they can’t provide children with a deep connection to each half of humanity through a parent of each gender.

This review has been too brief to give these authors the credit they are due for maintaining a respectful and gracious tone throughout. We live in a time in which civility and love in these discussions is fast going away, and I am thankful the authors are not part of the angry, caustic flow. In this regard they are being good examples, but because I think their main points are wrong, I have had to concentrate on them as I have in this review. I hope I have done so with equal civility.

* * * * * * *

How I Was Moved To Support Same-Sex

Marriage In The Church

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by Julie Rodgers | Feb 4, 2016

Your beliefs don’t shift in an instant. We research and agonize, bouncing between hope and despair, until one day we hear ourselves say something a former version of ourselves never would have said. That’s how I came to support same-sex marriage in the church. When I came out as a teenager in Baptist circles in the Bible Belt, I never would’ve imagined God would still like me if I married a woman one day. And I want to try to explain, in theological(ish) terms, how I ended up here.

It seemed reasonable to be taken to an ex-gay ministry within days of coming out to my family my junior year in high school. At that point, gay people were hardly mentioned in the church, and when we were, we were told God thought gay people were gross. The main message from conservative Christians was that the Gospel would transform sexual minorities who sought the face of God, washing us, sanctifying us, and eventually making us straight.

A little lesbian who wanted so badly to be good, I abandoned my skepticism and latched onto the hope for “freedom from homosexuality.” I stuck around for almost a decade, hopeful that God would show up and surprise me if I remained committed to the process. When Exodus International asked if I would join their speaking team, I jumped in with a message of hope in what God would likely do in the future.

Eventually, we learned that even the most dedicated wouldn’t be able to change their orientation. Evangelical Christians shifted their theology a little at that point. Pastors and leaders decided that perhaps God’s transforming work would not result in orientation change, but it would result in the grace to pursue lifelong celibacy. Initially, Christian leaders were troubled when those of us committed to lifelong celibacy referred to ourselves as gay. They insisted we refer to ourselves as “same-sex attracted,” which implied we were basically straight people whose attractions happened to misfire from time to time. Then they realized it’s a bit much to demand lifelong celibacy from this one group of people and to define the terms of how we were allowed to talk about it, so it became more acceptable for us to say we were gay.

Some of this made me uneasy but I tried to be a sport about it, assuming those in leadership were more theologically sound than me and that their intentions were likely holier than mine. When Evangelical leaders said their views were rooted in sincere theological beliefs rather than homophobia, I believed them. In their minds, that is true. In my mind, that was true.

Thoughtful Christians have taught that all of Scripture points to a theology of marriage that involves one man and one woman in a lifelong commitment with a green light for sex in that context alone. This is based on the idea that the Bible is our ultimate authority, but it’s complicated by the fact that we bring an interpretive lens to the Bible. When we support women’s equality in all areas of leadership in the church, we trust one interpretive lens over another. Both sides are sincere Christians and both view the Bible as authoritative––they just differ on how the Bible, which was written in a patriarchal context in the 1st century, should apply to empowered women in the 21st century.

Since we interpret in community, we ultimately choose to trust one group of leaders in their interpretive endeavor over another. There’s safety in numbers, right? So I stuck with the crowd and assumed conservative pastors and Christian leaders probably brought a trustworthy lens to Scripture. Throughout my twenties I was committed to lifelong celibacy.

As the debate raged, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the way the arguments shifted. Initially we were told we should become straight, so I tried to become straight. Then we were told a traditional theology meant lifelong celibacy, so I was on the celibate track. We were taught that a marriage between a man and a woman is primarily about sanctification: a place to learn how selfish we are in a sort of lifelong mini-monastery. We were taught that marriage is also about companionship because God said it’s not good for humans to be alone. We heard that the marital bond creates an energizing love that overflows into the kind of hospitality that helps us to welcome the hurting into our homes.

As more LGBT people came out and more theologians said a Christian marriage could actually extend to same-sex couples, traditionalists grew anxious. Pastors realized there is no reason two gay or lesbian Christians could not live into the kind of marriage they’ve taught all along: one that’s about sacrifice, sanctification, companionship, and reflecting God’s faithful commitment to the church. So they scrambled for some sort of explanation for why we should continue to apply the text in a way that excludes same-sex couples from marriage, and many now say it’s because the capacity for procreation is central to a traditional understanding of marriage.

The problem is that Protestants have never taught that procreation is central to marriage and we don’t actually believe that or we wouldn’t be cool with birth control. We suddenly adopted a quasi-Catholic view of sex and marriage but only when it comes to gay people––not when it might burden straight people.

For 13 years I was mostly on board with leaders who maintained that marriage was between a man and a woman, assuming they were onto something I was missing. I’ve been on board with this at a great cost––a cost that’s been worth it because I deeply love the community I’ve come from, the community that I still consider my family. But I watched many people use their power to protect themselves rather than using it to protect the most vulnerable. I saw them make decisions about LGBT people while excluding us from the community of interpretation. Over the course of hundreds of conversations, with tears and prayers and vulnerable pleas, my heart was broken. Many Christian leaders have scrutinized the people they could’ve learned from all along, anxiously creating new arguments that kept sexual minorities from pursuing calls to ministry, playing the piano in the church, or building a home with someone they loved.

When you put that example next to someone like Eugene Rogers, you start to feel like there’s something very life-giving and very Christian in the affirming view of marriage. He sees marriage as a school of virtue that nurtures generosity in gay and straight couples alike: “For marriage is an example of the concrete discipline that most of us (liberal and conservative) lack: in marriage we practice common discernment over self-interest. Marriage cultivates concern for one another: it offers lifelong hospitality; it enacts love; and it exposes our faults in order to heal them. It is the marital virtues that the church need, not only with respect to the Bridegroom, but with respect to one another.”

He goes on to say: “The married know that they have learned moral virtues––patience or temperance or courage, fidelity, hopefulness, and charity­––because of a vulnerability to their spouse that they could not learn from any other person. Eros makes a way to the heart; without the vulnerability it brings, charity grows cold. This is not a lesson of “sexual liberation,” if sexual liberation involves evading commitment and discipline. This is a lesson of the incarnation.”

He says marriage exposes our faults in order to heal them and the grace cultivated in a lifelong commitment nurtures moral growth. When I considered the fruit of that kind of teaching over and against the fruit of one that views LGBT people with suspicion, relegating us to lifelong singleness with very little tenderness, I came to believe that we should celebrate same-sex marriage. It became hard for me to understand what exactly was driving traditional teaching on marriage if it was not fear of change––a very particular kind of fear that’s often expressed through homophobia.

But we don’t have to live in fear any longer. Same-sex couples are getting married, and many of these couples are decisively Christian, and these Christian couples are a witness to a watching world that’s been disillusioned by the hypocrisy they’ve seen in the church. No amount of disagreement with these marriages will invalidate their Christ-like example of love and faithfulness. It will not diminish the power of their testimony when their love creates an energy that welcomes in the hurting, the lonely, and the forgotten. These couples exemplify a vibrant faith fueled by a man from Nazareth who embodied love and forgiveness in the way He lived and died. That is, after all, what a Christian marriage is all about.