Kimlyn Bender is Foy Valentine Professor of Theology and Ethics at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary. He is responding to The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story by Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays, published by Yale University Press.
Bender was asked to respond to Part II of the book, “The Widening of God’s Mercy in the New Testament.” The full text of his response follows, from which was excerpted passages for a summary review published in the Voices column of the Baptist Standard. A full text response of “Part I: The Widening of God’s Mercy in the Old Testament” is available here.
Part II: The Widening of God’s Mercy in the New Testament
Richard Hays is a towering international figure in New Testament studies. His work has played decisive roles in discussions of how Scripture is read and how biblical ethical reflection might be undertaken thoughtfully, a project most fully worked out in his famous study, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.[1]
The current book is stated explicitly to be a correction to the former book’s chapter and position on homosexual practices and the question of the full inclusion of sexual minorities within the church. All references to Hays below will refer to Richard Hays unless otherwise stated.
The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Description and appreciation
There is, first and foremost, much to appreciate and embrace in these chapters. The big picture of God’s expansive grace—grace greater than our sin—is displayed with broad and powerful brushstrokes. That there are no restrictions in the New Testament on those whom Jesus addressed and to whom he showed mercy, from the poor to the powerful, from Pharisees to peasants, from Sadducees to the Syrophoenician woman, is recounted by Hays with a sense of the grandeur of Christ’s compassion.
In this regard, the chapters on the New Testament display how God’s grace is evident in Jesus’ ministry and the later inclusion of Gentiles within the church. Hays highlights a number of these themes with a broad examination of a wide range of New Testament texts.
In the first chapter of the second section, he notes that many found Jesus’ mercy to those on the margins of society to be upsetting (Ch. 8), especially in view of his criticism of religious leaders. Hays posits Jesus’ mercy to the “poor, captive, blind, and oppressed” should cause us to ask “how our own lives, our own communities, reflect and embody the great reversal that Jesus proclaimed.” As Hays continues: “How do we become conduits for the unexpected mercy that we have received?” (120).
In the following chapters, Hays describes how in his ministry of healing and his generous reading of the law, Jesus placed the welfare of people over strict Sabbath and other legal observance (Ch. 9). He also discusses how Jesus’ calling and eating with persons who were looked down upon in society, such as “tax collectors and sinners” (see p. 132-133), and his openness to foreign persons also extended grace in surprising ways (Chs. 10 & 11).
In every case—and this is significant—Hays carefully shows that while Jesus’ ministry appears entirely novel to some, he was drawing upon earlier Old Testament precedents, such as the texts of God’s broad intentions for the nations to know and worship God. Jesus explicitly highlighted that God’s mercy never was reserved solely for Israel, but extended even to foreigners like the widow of Zarephath and the Syrian soldier Namaan (Luke 4:25-27; cf. 1 Kings 17:8-24; 2 Kings 5:1-19a [see Hays 114-115]). As Hays notes, in his teaching and work Jesus was not opposing the Old Testament or Judaism, but “was firmly rooted in the Jewish prophetic tradition” (p. 116). He was not rejecting but re-interpreting Scripture faithfully (pp. 150-151).
In the ensuing chapters, Hays examines how the early church faced challenges in debates over the full inclusion of Gentiles in God’s covenant and the church. Such debates most often centered around questions concerning whether such Gentiles were required to be circumcised and follow strict food laws and Sabbath observance (Chs. 12-15). These debates especially were intense because time had led some in Judaism to close themselves off from Gentiles entirely for fear of the contagion of their idolatry and contamination in sin (p. 154).
Here again, Hays argues that through an obedient response to Jesus’ commission to his followers that they be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth,” and through a careful “reading backwards” of the Old Testament, the church was able to discern in Scripture itself that the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s mercy was God’s intention from the very beginning (see p. 153). The church was helped in this regard by considering the miraculous conversion of Gentiles, such as the Roman soldier Cornelius (discussed in Ch. 14).
The story of Acts, as well as Paul’s letters and others in the New Testament, describes this expansion of Christian faith to the Gentiles. In time, the church in Jerusalem deemed that such converts were not required to keep strict Torah observance of food laws or to undergo circumcision, important identity markers for God’s covenant with the Jews, but were required only to refrain from idolatry, sexual immorality, and from meat strangled and containing blood (Acts 15:19-20; cf. 21:25; see pp. 182-183).
As seen earlier regarding Jesus’ expansive mercy, the movement of the church to include Gentile believers fully within its life without conversion first to Judaism and its strict Torah observance was based upon arguments drawing upon biblical precedent. The church discerned in Scripture God’s original and enduring intention to show mercy and bring salvation to the nations. The church was urged on by its experience of encountering Gentiles who had responded already to the gospel and gave evidence of marks of the Spirit’s work in their lives (see esp. pp. 183-187).
Moreover, such arguments of precedent drew upon analogical reasoning grounded in Scripture to forge a path forward for Gentile inclusion in the churches and to decide what was required of them in their new life. As Hays notes, the Jerusalem decision regarding Gentiles in Acts 15, with its letter of the apostles and elders, “posits practical requirements that guard against idolatry and sexual misconduct, while maintaining symbolic continuity with Jewish tradition” (p. 184). What might be added, however, is that while the “symbolic continuity” of food requirements here mentioned receives little emphasis in the rest of the New Testament, the prohibitions against idolatry and sexual immorality are well-attested throughout, and they often are related (such as 1 Corinthians 10).
Some initial observations
There is nothing in the broad strokes of the portraits painted in these chapters that will be controversial to all modern students of the New Testament. That God’s grace is extended by Jesus to those who were unexpected to receive it, and that this was a scandal to many of his contemporaries, is a foundation of New Testament scholarship and generally known to even infrequent readers of Scripture. For Hays, this picture of Jesus, and of the New Testament in general, in which the church came in time to appreciate God’s calling and inclusion of Gentiles in his covenant and salvation, undergirds the main thrust of his argument for contemporary church practice.
Underlying every question in every chapter of this section is the following one, from the first chapter of his section (Ch. 8): “How might the Gospel stories of Jesus’ convention-altering words and actions affect our thinking about norms for sexual relationships in our time?” (p. 121; cf. 126-127; 130; 151). Hays’ argument is that the first should lead to a revision of the church’s historic teaching of sexual norms, specifically regarding same-sex relationships.
The purpose of the chapters thereby serves the central argument of this section of the book, which may be summarized as follows: As Jesus broke with religious and other expectations in extending mercy, not only to the respected members of Jewish society, but also to “tax collectors and sinners,” and in his willingness to reject strict readings of Sabbath observance in favor of showing mercy to those in need and placing their well-being first, so the church today should see the full inclusion of sexual minorities as an extension of this ministry of mercy. Moreover, the full inclusion of Gentiles—which was a contested issue in the early church, but which the Holy Spirit led the church to embrace and accept—should also serve as a model and paradigm for how God’s widening mercy now may be leading the church to include persons fully who are same-sex attracted (or who identify as gay or lesbian or simply as LGBT+).
There is much rhetorical power to Hays’ chapters and its broad argument. The book is, as the authors indicate, written for a popular audience, and therefore it is not a scholarly treatise. Most importantly, it argues for love and understanding and compassion for those who identify as gay or lesbian or who, rejecting such terms of identity, simply describe themselves as having same-sex attraction. This argument for love and compassion, along with Hays’ grand portrayal of God’s mercy and grace, are the greatest strengths of the book. Nevertheless, there are significant questions that arise when the central argument is examined as a piece of exegetical, hermeneutical and moral reasoning. And it serves no one to ignore these.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
First, despite the attention its release has been given, it is possible this book will not satisfy anyone on any side of this debate regarding sexuality in the churches. For many who hold to a traditional view of human sexuality and marriage, Hays’ reversal from his earlier position will be a matter of disappointment. But some who hold a more progressive view on such matters also may be ill at ease with the specific argument made for inclusion.
The reality is there are no new exegetical findings in this book. Indeed, Hays states he has not changed his mind at all regarding what the biblical texts say regarding homosexual practice, which he takes to be a universal and sustained prohibition of it in any form in all the relevant passages in both the Old Testament and the New Testament (see p. 8; cf. 206; 245, note 2).
This admission implies the exegetical arguments about such passages appear to be over. For if there was a way to move exegetically from the texts to an affirmation of such practice—something previously overlooked or misunderstood in the past by the church and previous commentators—certainly such things would be highlighted in the book. But they are not. And when a New Testament scholar of Hays’ caliber is unable to provide an exegetical argument or foundation for a progressive reading of such texts, and when this is coupled with decades of other discredited attempts to do so, many of which have been undermined earlier by Hays himself (but, of course, not only by him), then it may be concluded reasonably that such an argument does not exist. In this sense, the book implicitly concedes that the attempt to find an exegetical alternative to traditional readings of the relevant texts prohibiting same-sex activity has come to an end. In short, the quiet concession of the book is that the texts opposing homosexual practice have been correctly understood by the church’s tradition of interpretation and do not allow for a revisionist reading.
Therefore, it is not surprising Hays’ argument is one based on analogy, not upon exegesis of biblical texts pertaining to sexual practice. In fact, while the book would seem to be a strong reversal of Hays’ former position, he in fact has not changed any of his exegetical conclusions regarding the texts in Scripture that address same-sex activity. Arguments for sexual revision therefore require another way forward. This other way is what this book seeks to provide. It provides not an exegetical argument (one based on an examination of specific texts in Scripture pertaining to sexual practice), but a hermeneutical one (one that attempts to explain how and why such texts might be properly and validly set aside by the church today in view of a larger narrative pattern within Scripture—namely, in view of the ever-widening circle of God’s mercy to more and more people found in the New Testament).
Finding the trees among the forest
This first observation leads to a second and related area of disquiet. There are many times when biblical scholars rightly emphasize there are dangers in attempting to build an entire theological or moral position or argument out of a few select texts, a kind of proof-texting in which elaborate positions are rendered from little textual evidence. For example, it would be questionable that one can build a theology of baptism out of Paul’s singular and unexplained reference to a “baptism of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:29). We might say that this is the mistake of confusing the forest for the trees, missing the large biblical trajectories in view of one or two texts meant to bear more weight than is possible or prudent.
This book, in fact, states that the debates on human sexuality are missing “the forest for the trees” (p. 2). It is difficult indeed to build a theological or moral forest from but a single textual tree or two. But what is not noted so often is that it is equally difficult to make a forest where there are no trees. And there are no trees for the sexual position for which Hays argues. In other words, there is not a single text in the Old Testament, in all intertestamental Judaism and rabbinic commentary, in the entire New Testament, nor in all the literature of the early church that argues or presents homosexual activity in a positive light or commends it for Christian adoption. Nor is there any that commends any sexual practice other than that expressed in a relation of marital union between a man and a woman.
In view of this, the fact that Hays sets aside any examination of the relevant biblical texts pertaining to homosexuality in the book can only weaken the overarching argument. The reason given by both authors for this categorical refusal to address these texts is that such examinations are “superficial and boring” (p. 2; cf. 206), but this casual dismissal of these texts will appear to many, again, as but an admission that indeed no argument can be made challenging traditional readings of them. This, in turn, only strengthens the case that Scripture is uniform in its rejection and condemnation of such behavior.
Overlooking the obvious
This admission then necessarily entails a third set of difficulties. The intent of the book is to provide not an examination of specific texts, but to argue from the larger narrative of Scripture and God’s mercy to a moral trajectory of ever-expanding inclusion that can enlighten how questions of human sexuality might be addressed today. Specifically, the book argues that a trajectory within Scripture for an ever-increasing widening of God’s mercy should serve in turn as the basis and rationale for the full inclusion of persons in same-sex relationships within the church in the present.
It is not unreasonable to expect that such an argument for trajectories beyond Scripture would begin by examining trajectories within Scripture on the same theme. So, arguments for a trajectory relating to sexual practices beyond Scripture, therefore, might begin reasonably with an examination of the trajectories, paradigms and patterns pertaining to sexual practice within it. As previously noted, this is not undertaken in the book. The not insignificant trajectories of prohibitions within Scripture regarding sexual practices simply are conceded and not examined but dismissed as having any ongoing relevance. Hays is forthright in this, and there is no examination and only passing reference to passages in either the Old Testament or the New Testament that speak to homosexual acts (such as Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; among others).
But what also is not examined is what such prohibitions serve. What they in fact serve is the affirmation of marriage as understood across the trajectory of Scripture. Indeed, if one were to speak of a large “forest” argument in Scripture that is directly relevant to the question of the divine intentions of sexuality, one that spans all its “trees” of texts, it is the picture of marriage and its correspondent marital imagery that spans from Genesis 1 and 2 (and specifically 1:26-27 and 2:23-24) through the spousal imagery of God’s relationship to Israel in the prophets (such as Isaiah 50:1; 54:5-10; Jeremiah 2:1-2). The imagery continues into the teaching of Jesus, in which his foundational texts of commentary on divorce and marriage are founded on a reiteration of the Genesis texts noted earlier, so that he opens his discussion by going behind arguments in the law to God’s original created intentions for humanity (see Mark 10:1-12 and Matthew 19:1-12).[2]
This trajectory continues from the Gospels into Paul’s Epistles, where in his discussions of marriage instructions (and sexual prohibitions, such as against illicit sex with a prostitute) he presupposes and cites the very same texts and positions of Genesis and of Jesus (such as 1 Corinthians 7:1-2; 6:16 [6:12-20]; see also Ephesians 5:22-33). This understanding is presupposed in the rest of the New Testament (for example, Hebrews 13:4) and in Revelation’s imagery of the bride and bridegroom, Christ and his church (Revelation 19:7; 21:1-3, 9). All the ethical reasoning pertaining to sexual ethics done by Jesus in the Gospels and Paul in his letters has this picture in the background.
What is surprising is that the present book, which speaks of “sexuality within the biblical story,” as its subtitle states, makes no reference to this larger trajectory and “forest” of the biblical material and says almost nothing of marriage at all (the only exception is the reference to “monogamous covenant fidelity” on p. 187). To write a book on sexuality within Scripture would seem to require attention to this larger narrative within Scripture. For while Scripture has little to say about modern notions of “sexuality” and sexual orientation, it has much to say regarding marriage (and marital imagery), in relation to which all passages of sexual practice in Scripture—both prohibitive and affirmative—either explicitly or implicitly refer. In brief, the trajectory of prohibitions of Scripture regarding sexuality serves the larger trajectory of affirmation. Put bluntly, the “Nos” serve the much larger “Yes.” Yet, Hays gives no attention to the prohibition passages (the minor trajectory, or smaller “forest” with its “trees”), and only passing attention to the larger affirmation of marriage across Scripture (the major trajectory, or larger “forest”). In this way, it is difficult to say that his examination ultimately is one of “biblical sexuality,” as chapters do not address these explicit issues of sexuality or marriage in the New Testament. It is difficult to make sense of this abandonment of both the forest and the trees.
One of these things is not like the other
Hays’ argument can be questioned on other fronts than those of omission. There also are related questions as to the strength of the type of argument he is making. The book’s argument is one based not on an exegetical or even a typological reading of Scripture (that is, where new problems or issues cause the church to wrestle with and extend, but not abandon, the meaning of former biblical texts), but rather an analogical one where specific instructions of not only the Old Testament but the New Testament simply are abandoned. The former exegetical and typological arguments of Scripture deal with precedent. The latter argument, made by Hays, deals with a more radical proposal, namely, how a firm trajectory of texts within Scripture regarding sexual practice might be set aside in view of a larger trajectory regarding God’s widening mercy that is argued to override, and indeed overturn, it.
It is striking, however, that most of Hays’ examples in support of the latter proposal, in fact, are arguments based upon the former kind of argument. In other words, for every discussion in which Hays examines Gentile inclusion and the expansion of grace to outsiders in the New Testament, he provides prior Old Testament precedent to contextualize and explain such developments. For instance, Jesus does not simply overturn Sabbath practice or abrogate Sabbath observance or its command. As Hays notes, Jesus does not simply annul Sabbath observance altogether but brings it into alignment with God’s original intentions for it and its service to human welfare and his own honor (see, for example, Hays’ discussion of Isaiah 58:6-9 on pp. 126-127). In short, for Jesus to broaden the law was not the same as abrogating the law (see, for example, Matthew 5:17-20).
Similarly, the extension of mercy to Gentiles, though apparently revolutionary and surprising in Jesus’ day and a highly contested notion in the New Testament, already is included in God’s promise to Abraham that he would be a blessing to the nations, “all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:1-3). Such mercy, moreover, is prefigured across the Old Testament, from the stories of Rahab the Canaanite to Ruth the Moabite, both of which are included in the history of redemption (and, we might note, Jesus’ ancestry—see Matthew 1:5). It is witnessed across the Old Testament, but perhaps quintessentially in the grand vision for the nations in the book of Isaiah. In sum, the inclusion of Gentiles in God’s salvation is rooted in Old Testament precedent and promises, and already in that given to Abraham.
Yet, when Hays turns from these stories of Jesus’ displays of mercy to those on the outside, as well as from discussions of the church’s inclusion of the Gentiles, to the actual subject of his book, namely human sexuality, what he presents is not an argument based upon precedent or even biblical typology, but rather an analogical argument, one that has power in its broad brushstrokes of God’s mercy and inclusion, but which does not have textual precedent in its actual details or exegetical force in its imperatives. In other words, while he provides numerous prior textual patterns for the thinking of the New Testament on questions of mercy to outsiders in Jesus’ ministry and the inclusion of Gentiles in the gospel in Acts and Paul’s letters, there is no textual precedent for a revision of the biblical norms of sexual practice. The book, then, seems mis-subtitled. It is not an examination of “Sexuality within the Biblical Story,” but “Sexuality without (or beyond) the Biblical Story.”
And this is what makes Hays’ argument so different from those pertaining to reorientations of Sabbath observance, food laws and circumcision, and thus to Gentile inclusion in God’s salvation. It is one thing to say that the Jewish identity-markers of circumcision and food requirements are not imposed upon the Gentiles in the New Testament. As Paul recognized, such things were signs of inclusion, but not the cause of inclusion, in God’s mercy, and whatever importance they may have had for Israelite faith and identity, the church could see its way forward for Gentiles to be included in the church without abrogating God’s larger purpose of the law. It could do this precisely because there was an appeal to the original promise of God to Abraham. If such an appeal could not be made, Paul would have had no leg to stand on in Galatians and could not appeal to the importance of Abraham and the divine promise that framed the later law (Galatians 3:17-18). But regardless of our estimation of this (and there are, of course, numerous contemporary debates regarding Paul and the law), one thing is certain in the New Testament on the topic at hand: Gentiles were not given a pass on the requirements pertaining to sexual morality in the New Testament.
There simply is nothing within the entire New Testament that would point to the abandonment Hays is arguing or that would warrant it based on the New Testament’s own practice and forms of moral argumentation. In truth, the argument Hays is making already was a live option in the New Testament as the church spread into Gentile territory, and the church rejected it.
Instead, the general prohibitions of the Old Testament maintained in the Judaism of Jesus and Paul’s day—those regarding idolatry, as well as those pertaining to sexual morality, including rejections of incest, extramarital sex, adultery and homosexual practice—were extended in the New Testament to the church and to Gentiles specifically.[3] The prohibitions of such things are all caught up under the general prohibition of “porneia”—and such came to ground a sexual ethic that would shape millennia of Christian sexual morality.[4] Moreover, if anything, the requirements of Jesus concerning sexual behavior—such as his words pertaining to lust (Matthew 5:28) and divorce (Matthew 5:31)—are more rigorous, rather than less, to prior understandings within Judaism.
In short, the trajectory of Scripture is not toward greater sexual permissiveness but greater restriction—and this included that required for Gentile converts and not only Jewish believers. Hays chooses to ignore this trajectory, but doing so, once again, attenuates the force of his argument.
Sleight of hand makes the argument work
This then leads directly to a fifth area of questions. If the thesis of the book were that God has no entry requirements for those who respond in faith to him, and all people, regardless of their backgrounds, ethnicities, race, gender, sexual proclivities or attractions, or any other identifying descriptions, are objects of God’s love and mercy, then it indeed is successful. That Christ has died for, and God has shown mercy toward, Jews and Gentiles, Romans and Greeks, men and women, young and old, Europeans and Africans, the rich and the poor, the oppressed and the oppressors, slaves and slave traders (like John Newton) and on and on—this indeed is the wideness of God’s mercy, and it extends to those who experience same-sex attraction or attraction to both sexes. There can be no real argument with this.
There really is a scandal to grace, and Hays is right to highlight it. Grace indeed is amazing, as John Newton could write, for it indeed does “save a wretch like me.” God’s mercy is beyond our expectations or description. And Hays is right to highlight that we might not like that it is so indiscriminate, but that is how grace works. Again, there is no real question here, and Hays’ descriptions of how radical Jesus’ call to repentance and discipleship was in view of this wideness of God’s mercy is indisputable. No doubt with an eye toward the doubters of his contemporary argument, Hays approvingly quotes Jesus’ warnings against any who would limit such grace: “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:33; see pp. 138-139).
There is, however, something that sits uneasily here in Hays’ use of such passages. That prostitutes enter the kingdom of God is unquestionable. There truly is no limit to whom Jesus calls, but calling prostitutes never was taken by the church in history to entail an affirmation of prostitution, any more than Jesus’ call and mercy to Zacchaeus was taken to be an affirmation of his exploitation of the poor, or, in Hays’ words, his “oppressive tax-farming operation” (see 136; 138-139).
But the book plays a subtle trick on the reader. It argues for the inclusion of all persons in God’s kingdom, but quietly slides into an implicit argument for an acceptance of their sexual practices. That God always and originally intended to include not only Abraham and his offspring but “the nations” and thus “Gentile sinners” (Galatians 2:15) in salvation is evident in his original promise and ensuing salvation in Christ. But this is very different than that every Gentile practice was divinely accepted or was to be approved and sanctioned by the church.
And this, of course, is where things again become difficult, not only exegetically, but also hermeneutically for Hays’ form of moral argumentation. That God has justified the ungodly, which includes those who have lived out every practice and held every attitude of Jesus and Paul’s vice lists, is again unquestionable. But this is a very different thing than an endorsement of the practices in those lists.
This distinction is puzzlingly never addressed in Hays’ chapters and appears to be intentionally eliminated, which of course leads to a form of category confusion. The constant confusion of these chapters is that of equating the fact the kingdom of God includes people of every background with the claim the kingdom of God affirms their prior (or current) practices. And these simply are not the same, nor were they ever thought to be so in the New Testament. Indeed, the gospel is for all—even for the greedy, the immoral, and those entrapped in the idolatries of this and every age.[5] But this is very different than affirming that the gospel embraces greed, immorality and idolatry.
That the church in Corinth, for instance, included persons with backgrounds in various sexual practices is unquestioned, but Paul sees such things, including homosexual activity, not as things to be embraced but to be left behind and abandoned to a former life in view of a coming one. As Paul related in his letter to Corinth: “But this is what you were …” (1 Corinthians 6:11 [9-11]). Moreover, Scripture simply is not interested in contemporary nuances regarding sexual identities but in behavior when it comes to sexual practice. There is no language of identities in the New Testament regarding sexuality or orientations. It is not that Paul, for instance, is unaware of such practices, nor even that some persons are identified with such practices in a primitive understanding of what we might term “orientation.”[6] But his injunctions, and those of the entire New Testament, focus on porneia—on areas of forbidden practice.
Once again, a crucial question of biblical sexuality simply is ignored in Hays’ argument. The crucial question for the actual topic at hand is not regarding a limitation of who might receive God’s mercy—that, indeed, is unquestioned. As previously noted, there is no reason to argue with Hays’ broad exposition of the biblical texts that demonstrate the expansiveness of grace. There are, furthermore, no criteria that limit inclusion in the kingdom of God, and this includes one’s sexual background or self-defined identity. Nor should there be any argument that all persons—of any designated sexual orientation or identity—should be treated with anything other than respect, dignity and compassion in the church and in society.
The actual pressing question, rather, as the New Testament scholar Joseph Fitzmyer incisively noted, is not about who is invited into the church but what is entailed after such entrance and what the church is to be and to teach.[7] The question, then, might be put this way: Are there forms of behavior excluded from the Christian life as required by the gospel? These exclusions often are found in the vice lists of the New Testament—greed, malice and others. Sexual immorality is included in these lists, and, as Hays knows and notes, such also included homosexual activity. Further, as he also recognizes, there are no exceptions to this view in the Old Testament or the New Testament. Hays’ proposal is simply that we no longer consider same-sex practices as porneia, but rather consider same-sex activity permissible if in relationships marked by “monogamous covenantal fidelity” (p. 187). Therefore, the pertinent question that remains is whether the biblical tradition of prohibition of all such activity is now to be set aside as outmoded, irrelevant and mistaken.
Yet, the ultimate question is not even whether these uniform biblical prohibitions and paradigms in the Old Testament and New Testament are to be set aside for the church today, and their guidance in the entire tradition of two millennia of Christian ethical reflection in the Eastern and Western churches conceded to be a mistaken understanding of God’s will for human life.[8] The ultimate question is whether the larger trajectory of marriage grounded in sexual distinction found within Scripture from Genesis through Jesus and on to the end of Revelation is declared to be of no ultimate consequence for sexual practice.
That really is the heart of the question. And this, of course, is not only a question of biblical interpretation but of contemporary moral and ethical application. For the exegetical debate, as noted, appears to be over regarding the prohibitions. To make the argument Hays is making requires setting aside both trajectories within Scripture, trajectories extending across two millennia of church tradition. But if so, the quiet question that may remain is why, if Jesus and Paul (along with the entirety of the New Testament) were so mistaken about the importance of sexual distinction as a foundation for sexual relationships and marriage, they might nevertheless be helpful for any guidance in sexual ethical reflection at all.
Abandoning a (formerly held) method for ethical reflection in Scripture
As already noted, what Hays provides is not an intertextual argument or a typological one, but an analogical one. Indeed, it is a kind of broad theological and moral impressionism that relativizes the importance of the exegetical findings of specific texts. When seen in this light, Hays’ current book is not simply the correction of his earlier view of homosexuality in a chapter of his earlier book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Rather, it is the rejection of the hermeneutical ethical method of that book.[9]
Perhaps the strangest thing about this book is that the argument Hays is making—that the inclusion and endorsement of same-sex relationships in the church is akin to the acceptance of Gentile Christians—was undermined earlier by Hays himself and has been discredited since.[10] Hays states, however, that his new argument is not predicated only on that one, but on the larger trajectory of the increasing and widening circle of God’s mercy and grace in Scripture (p. 223). That point must be noted.
Nevertheless, if one were to reverse a significant position from the past, it might be expected the second argument would equal the rigor of the first. But this new book does not match the prior one—or even the single pertinent chapter of the past one on homosexuality—in exegetical precision, theological depth, argumentative rigor, or moral and ethical nuance. In the book now under discussion, the problematic texts are dismissed summarily without discussion, the doctrines of creation and eschatology are lopped off entirely, the “symbolic world” of Paul earlier argued—one in which the tragedy of the world has affected even our sexuality—is now downplayed or maybe even rejected,[11] and the cautious earlier appeals to experience as a lens now give way to affirmations of experience’s full and unquestioned authority.
Astoundingly, Hays’ earlier discussions in The Moral Vision of the New Testament—of the doctrine of creation, of God’s intentions for human sexuality, of the fallen human condition, of our culture’s obsession with sex, of the reality our body is not our own but belongs to the Lord, of the self-renunciation of the cross and the struggle of the Christian life (including in sexual matters), of the eschatological vision and hope of redemption for our lives (including our embodied lives and desires)—all of these themes in his earlier discussion of sexuality in The Moral Vision of the New Testament simply have disappeared. We are left with the contemporary language of not doing harm and the cultural platitudes of affirmation and inclusion. In this way, the book, despite its impressive description of New Testament passages, in the end is a popular treatise quite light in its moral argumentation, a book swimming hard with the stream of contemporary culture.
Finally, that many Christians who identify as gay or as having same-sex attraction choose and strive to live lives of quiet obedience in celibacy in view of what they perceive to be the clear teaching of Scripture and the Christian tradition, as do many single Christians of any type—persons previously acknowledged in the earlier book—these persons now simply have disappeared from discussion. Their witness and experience simply are ignored.
Conclusion: Where does the argument go from here?
Despite its strengths, in the end this book is marred by serious shortcomings. The analogical comparisons it makes overlay an argument that, in the end, is primarily consequentialist and based on experience—namely, any moral reading of Scripture is valid in which persons in same-sex relationships can be fully affirmed and included within the church in view of our experience of their displays of faithfulness and fruit of the Spirit.
The dismissal of the texts prohibiting of same-sex activity, through a hermeneutics of suspicion, are rendered invalid for Christians today and considered intrinsically harmful (and not only for how the churches have used them to cudgel persons of same-sex attraction—wrongly, it should be argued strongly).[12] These texts are not even worth the time of examination, apparently. Here, the driving concern is particularly the affirmation of persons and the liberation from the burden of such texts.
The moral imperative for dismissing the biblical prohibitions and paradigms of same-sex activity is based on the unacknowledged but unquestioned contemporary cultural conviction adopted by the book that identity and behavior cannot be distinguished and that to reject a person’s chosen behavior is to reject the person himself or herself. The argument then becomes that as God has shown mercy to same-sex attracted persons, so God embraces same-sex sexual practices.
For many progressive readers who embrace this argument, it is the larger, rhetorical claims of similarity between the inclusion of Gentiles and others in God’s mercy that will be seen to serve as a proper analogy for how sexual minorities now are to be admitted to full church participation and membership without regard to sexual practice. For many traditionalists, such a comparison will seem illegitimate, not only because there is no textual precedent for such trajectory arguments within Scripture itself, but also because the analogy does not seem to be a valid one. This latter is because an argument for a trajectory beyond the canon for which there is no canonical precedent is not an extension of canonical authority but is its replacement by an external “canonical” authority—in this case, for the authority of contemporary experience. Yet, while such analogical arguments based on a trajectory beyond the text of Scripture may not be compelling to traditionalists, such argumentation once again may give pause even to some progressives on this issue as well, and for the following reasons.
The first is because any method of moral reasoning that argues by analogy from one thing to another needs to provide some type of criterion for why such a comparison and extension of principle is proper and valid in certain cases and not in others. But this is missing here. While the moral reasoning of this book works with an analogical extension of the inclusion of Gentiles into the church in the New Testament to a contemporary affirmation of same-sex relationships within the church of today, it does not provide a limit on how ethical judgments based on such arguments of trajectory might be made in other cases. This is a final test for any moral argument: Can it provide moral reasoning, not only for one specific issue (for example: for a revision of the church’s stance on homosexual activity), but also for other moral stances, in this case, sexual practices? A moral argument, and perhaps especially a moral trajectory argument, requires the ability to provide some explanation of how it will provide measures of discrimination and judgment and thus limitation. This is what I remain unclear about having read The Widening of God’s Mercy.
What I was left wondering is what a church might say when a polyamorous “three-some” of persons enters a church—as has occurred and will happen with increasing frequency—and wants to join its membership and its life? There is more biblical textual material that could be used to warrant polygamy than an approval of homosexual behavior in Scripture.What might the church say to these persons in view of Hays’ moral reasoning? And when some of them display a spiritual seriousness and vibrant faith, what could be said to them in view of Hays’ argument? If the criteria for acceptance and inclusion of practice is the sincere faith and spiritual earnestness of the person—an argument always under, and at times breaking, the surface of Hays’ book—on what grounds could such a practice be rejected by a church? And would not a rejection of a loving and long-standing relationship, and of the self-identity of such persons, intrinsically constitute “harm?”
To put this a different way: Why would a firm insistence on the question of number in marriage or sexual practice hold fast when sexual differentiation as required for sexual activity and marriage is set aside, even though it is the only picture or paradigm of sexuality given to us from Genesis to Revelation? Furthermore—and it is bewildering how often this basic fact simply is overlooked in all the progressive arguments for sexual revision—the only reason in Scripture for the “two-ness” of marriage is because God created “male and female,” and the union of these is an (exclusive) “one flesh” union that (exclusively) produces children. Had God created three sexes, with all three involved in a “one flesh” union and also in procreation, then marriage would be defined intrinsically as comprising three persons according to the logic of both Scripture and reason. But children, like marriage and singleness, are missing topics in the book. To write a book on “biblical sexuality” (again, subtitle) and leave out any, even cursory, examination of marriage and singleness and children simply is incredible.[13] For this reason alone, the book not only has serious limitations but in the end is an unserious book.
So, questions remain for me after reading this book. Will a challenge to number be the “new trajectory” argument in the future? Will God change his mind on number in sexual practice and marriage as he seemingly has on gender distinction, as the authors argue? If questions of biblical sexuality have been too preoccupied with questions of sexual difference, as Hays seems now to believe, have they been too preoccupied with questions of number? This is not a red herring. It is a live cultural discussion churches now must face. Some may dismiss this as conjecture or misdirection, but if so, they are behind the times and need to get out more.
Moreover, will there come a time in the face of sincere and spiritually serious polyamorous persons—the logic, of course, of bisexuality, for the “B” in “LGBT+” is intrinsically nonexclusionary—when Christian biblical scholars and theologians repent like Hays is repenting now of their past insistence on limiting the greatness of love (which always wins) to but one other person in a covenantal union of marriage when there today are numerous Christians who display marks of charity and sincerity in committed unmarried cohabitation and some in relationships with two or more partners? Will we reach a time in which the church repents of its intrinsic oppression of bisexual persons by making them live only one side of their identity and orientation? Will it have to reconsider its exclusive emphasis upon marriage as a requirement for sexual union (in truth, for many this ship long sailed)? Will the church have to ask forgiveness for its historic insistence upon only two partners within marriage in view of our new knowledge of “a range of nonheterosexual orientations and expressions” (p. 19)? I cannot imagine all this will happen, but I suppose for two millennia few Christians could have imagined how things have gone in the past two decades, either.
But there is a second, more serious reason not only traditionalists on marriage but also progressives may be uncomfortable with the book. As stated at the outset, once the biblical texts on sexuality themselves cannot be reread or reimagined, then more drastic measures must be found. If in the end the texts cannot be changed, then perhaps the only answer is to say God has changed, and the word of God attested in Scripture is not final.
The picture of God in the book (and especially Part I) is of a God who displays moral ambiguity and requires human nudges in the direction of continual progressive improvement.[14] But a God for whom such changes are common is a God who may narrow as well as widen God’s mercy. Once God is thought to be prone to frequent prevarications, there is no guarantee the arc of God’s history bends uniformly toward justice (and notice, now these histories no longer are the same, in that justice is not defined by God’s eternal character and what in turn God does, but God himself constantly must improve to meet justice’s demands). We may, in fact, have to wait for God to catch up to our contemporary moral insights. That, in fact, is the most disturbing thesis underlying this entire book.
Addendum: A few extra final thoughts
Reading this book, it struck me how very modern it is in its way of addressing human sexuality. It speaks of sexuality but not of marriage. It speaks of identities but not of activities, and in effect fuses them. It hardens desires and proclivities into essential categories, even though in the ancient world as today, homosexual activity often could be performed by persons who also regularly engaged in heterosexual practices (and vice versa). It often treats gay and straight as two fixed alternatives, though it does acknowledge the growing variety of “nonheterosexual orientations and expressions” and the growing literature around them (see p. 19). In truth, culture truly has progressed onward to much more multivalent categories.
Moreover, the topic of the book now seems a bit quaint. Arguments in Christian denominations over LGBT+ issues are coming to an end. The major Protestant denominations and churches are almost finished self-selecting their positions after decades of dissension and debate, with churches and whole denominations moving firmly into traditional or revisionist positions. This does not mean such debates will not continue for a long time, but today, no one who is looking for an affirming church need look far. There are churches that represent an entire spectrum of positions on matters of human sexuality and inclusion. The culture itself, in fact, largely has moved on. The pressing cultural conversations regarding human sexuality have progressed to questions of polyamory, gender nonconformity and transgenderism. That is really where the cultural energy is right now.
The book also is centered on a North American conversation. It is primarily a discussion among progressive (and traditional) American churches and communities. It is not a discussion embraced by the global church in the same way. There is little ecumenical consensus on the question of same-sex practice and marriage, and one might have expected a bit more humility in the book in the face of other non-Western voices and the global church that holds a much more traditional view of marriage and sexual practice. Hays argues the church must come to its decisions through communal consensus (p. 187), but it seems on this question the consensus is limited to that of the mainline Western church, with the hope that more traditional churches and denominations might follow their lead. To reach consensus on the question, however, the discussion would have to involve more than a few progressive denominations in the United States and must convince the churches elsewhere. Indeed, many often emphasize the Western church should listen to the global church, but on this question, it seems many want an exception.
Finally, and mentioned earlier, while Hays argues in the introduction, conclusion and within the New Testament chapters that we must pay attention to what God is doing in the present, what is missing from the book is any acknowledgement that there are an increasing number of persons today who are open about their same-sex attraction yet who, through conviction, believe the call to conversion and obedience to Christ requires them to live lives of celibacy and that same-sex activity is contrary to the way of Christ and God’s created intentions for humanity. It is striking that such persons have no real acknowledgement in the book, except in the “Epilogue” where Hays mentions Gary, a person from his former book.
Kimlyn J. Bender is Foy Valentine Professor of Theology and Ethics at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary. He is author of the volume on 1 Corinthians in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.
[1]. Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (New York: HarperCollins, 1996).
[2]. This imagery also stands behind Jesus’ parables of brides and bridegrooms: Matthew 9:15; 25:1-13; cf. Mark 2:18-20; Luke 5:33-35; cf. John 3:25-30.
[3]. Any examination of the vice lists of the New Testament shows this (such as Mark 7:21–22; Romans 1:29–31; 13:13; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 2 Corinthians 12:20–21; Galatians 5:19–21; Ephesians 4:31; 5:3–5; Colossians 3:5, 8; 1 Timothy 1:9–10; 6:4–5; 2 Timothy 3:2–5; Titus 1:7; 3:3; 1 Peter 4:15; Revelation 9:21.
[4]. For a biblical and historical discussion of porneia and its relevance to homosexual practice, see, Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013); also, Kyle Harper, “Porneia: The Making of a Christian Sexual Norm,” in Journal of Biblical Literature 131 no. 2 (2011): 363-383.
[5]. These three—idolatry, sexual immorality and greed—were, for Jews during Paul’s day, the three markers of pagan Gentile life.
[6]. Mark D. Smith, “Bisexuality and the Interpretation of Romans 1:26-27,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64 no. 2 (1996): 223-256.
[7]. Joseph Fitzmyer, First Corinthians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 244. As I have put this elsewhere: “Paul’s vice list does not serve the purpose of presenting the criteria that must be met for inclusion in the church or salvation; rather, it presents the implications of what such inclusion entails. It should not be set against Jesus’s inclusion of sinners and his sharing table fellowship with them (Mark 2:15–17). Jesus’s concern is to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance (Mark 2:17); Paul’s concern is to maintain the integrity and purity of the Christian community and the validity of its witness before the world. … To confuse these either shuts the church off from the world in a sanctified though sterile isolation that betrays the evangelical impulse of the gospel or eliminates all requirements for communal life such that church and world bleed together without distinction, with the result that there is no remaining witness of the church set over against the world. In the end, the results are ironically similar: the witness of the church before the world is lost.” Kimlyn J. Bender, 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2022), 107.
[8]. The authors’ comparisons to things like slavery simply do not work in this regard. Scripture never mandated slavery, had arguments at hand to overturn it (such as, Philemon), and this was noticed at least as early as Gregory of Nyssa, who strongly rejected the practice of slavery for Christians, arguing that owning other persons was contrary to God’s created intentions in Genesis. For a discussion of Nyssa and his arguments against slavery, see J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Further, Hays’ argument of comparing those who hold to traditional biblical norms on sexuality to the “weak” in Romans compared to a more progressive “strong” is a strange one in view of Paul’s own practice (pp. 196-202). While there indeed were matters of indifference to him regarding food regulations, he was much less lenient regarding sexual practices (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 5-7). In this regard, he simply followed the example of Jesus (see Mark 7:17-23).
[9]. In The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Hays outlined a list of “ten fundamental proposals” for setting forth normative Christian ethics. It is very difficult to see how the current book under review follows these proposals, and specifically: “2. We must seek to listen to the full range of canonical witnesses” (rather, the prohibition texts now are simply ignored). Moreover, there is little at all of the cross in this current book, or any discussion of how the Christian life might call for self-renunciation. All seems to be affirmation, so point 3 is also downplayed. Also difficult is 5b: “We should not override the witness of the New Testament in one mode by appealing to another mode.” This seems to be precisely the case of what is going on in the new book. The scope of God’s redemption in the New Testament is now an argument for overriding and replacing the New Testament instruction regarding human sexuality. See Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 310.
[10]. Hays, Moral Vision of the New Testament, 394-400. See also William J. Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2001).
[11]. Hays, Moral Vision of the New Testament, 396.
[12]. In this regard, it could be argued Hays’ argument in this book against what could be called a “beneficent heterosexism” in order to dismiss the ongoing normativity of biblical proscriptions of homosexual activity is akin to the argument used by Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to dismiss texts in Scripture she considers to be “benevolent patriarchalism,” such as Ephesians 5:21-6:9. In this, Hays seems to be shifting in his hermeneutical strategies from trust to suspicion (see Hays, Moral Vision of the New Testament, 276). One of the challenges of the current book, it seems to me, is to show the argument in the end is different from the “hermeneutic of liberation” (with its selective attention to texts, its dismissal of both the tradition and texts within Scripture as inherently harmful, and its hermeneutics of suspicion) Hays had examined earlier in Moral Vision of the New Testament (see pp. 266-282 there).
[13]. Paul, Augustine, Luther and Barth simply would make no sense of this, along with the entire Christian tradition of reflection upon marriage, singleness and sexual practice. How did we get here? It begins with the Protestant church almost entirely allowing culture rather than the church to catechize Christians on what marriage is, is for, and what it might mean to be a vocation and institution with theological (and social and political) significance rather than simply a private romantic partnership. The same, moreover, goes for what singleness is in the Christian life. Such a lack of instruction on marriage and singleness is evident in the fact that, in contrast to both biblical and traditional precedent, there is little discussion in many churches about marriage in relation to creation and eschatology. Regarding the former, if there is no structural design and intention to God’s world—that is, no divinely intended and foundational role for sexual distinction as “male and female” regarding sexual practice and marriage—then marriage becomes simply a private institution where sexual distinction plays no essential role, since marriage in the end comes down to individual and personal desire, inclination and consent. This, again, is in contrast to a view of marriage as a theological vocation and public institution defined by sexual distinction as “male and female” and intrinsically tied to procreation and the raising of children (as historically it always has been). Moreover, when eschatology is lost, all goods become immanent—and so it can only seem cruel and oppressive to deny sexual relationships in this life if this life defines our ultimate happiness. The loss of eschatology is also why marriage has been idolized by both traditionalists and progressives. But as Jesus and Paul teach, marriage is a created good, but not an eternal one (Matthew 22:30; 1 Corinthians 7:39). We find our identity in Christ, not in marriage. Nor is marriage necessary for a faithful life. In turn, both singleness and marriage are signs of the kingdom. Again, it is telling just how little the themes of creation, eschatology, marriage and singleness receive in this book.
[14]. In fairness, one strongly senses this is a position much more argued by the younger Hays than the elder one.