From: topcat!tom@tredysvr.tredydev.unisys.com (Tom Albrecht)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: "Mr. Gomes, I've Re-Read My Bible"
Date: 13 Oct 92 23:55:54 GMT
Organization: Applied Presuppositionalism, Ltd.


                    "Mr. Gomes, I've Re-Read My Bible."
                               by Gary DeMar

In the August 17, 1992 issue of the New York Times, Peter J. Gomes, an
American Baptist minister and professor of Christian morals at Harvard,
wrote "Homophobic? Re-Read Your Bible."  The following response was sent to
The Times to serve as a rebuttal to Mr. Gomes' poorly reasoned article. You
guessed it, The Times was not interested.  Their loss is your gain.

                              What's a Right?

Turning the case for homosexuality into a crusade for civil rights is a
brilliant tactic.  Anti-discrimination laws which protect racial
minorities, women, and the disabled are in a different category from laws
protecting homosexuality.  Homosexuality is an action, an admitted
lifestyle.  Anti-discrimination laws are not designed to protect
lifestyles.  They protect what a person is, not what a person does.  The
homosexual community is beginning to realize this, so they are
reformulating the debate to include biological reasons for their behavior.
Such a causal effect, however, is up for strong debate.

But Mr. Gomes goes further by claiming that "fundamentalists" who oppose
homosexuality on biblical grounds are misreading the Bible.  I would take
strong exception to the arguments set forth by Mr. Gomes.  Mr. Gomes, in
"Homophobic?  Re-Read Your Bible," does not make his case.

                            Hard to Understand?

The Bible tells us that there "are some things hard to understand, which
the untaught and unstable distort, as they do the rest of scriptures, to
their own destruction" (2 Peter 3:16).  Some things in the Bible are hard
to understand, but most things are not.  The issue of homosexuality is not
one of the hard things.  In fact, the prohibition against homosexuality is
so clear that one has to go far out of his way to distort the obvious.
Peter J. Gomes is "far out" in reading and interpreting the Bible when it
comes to the homosexual issue.  Let's look at the passages he cites to see
who is in exegetical left field, the fundamentalist Bible-believers or the
fundamentalist non-Bible-believers.

                                 The Method

Mr. Gomes attacks those who use the Bible as a moral standard in evaluating
whether homosexuality is both sinful and criminal.  His approach is to
explain away the obvious by misstating the facts, conveniently leaving out
important textual details, and making wild leaps in logic.  His first
tactic is to discount the biblical prohibitions against homosexuality by
turning them into ceremonial laws that supposedly found fulfillment in the
finished work of Christ.  He reasons this way: Since Leviticus 18:19-23 and
20:10-16 are part of the "Holiness Code" that "prohibits eating raw meat,
planting two different kinds of seed in the same field and wearing garments
with two different kinds of yarn" -- and these laws no longer apply because
they find fulfillment in the redemptive work of Christ -- then we can
conclude that the prohibitions regarding homosexuality no longer apply
since they are in the same code.

                             The Holiness Code

There are problems with this line of reasoning.  First, the same "Holiness
Code" that condemns homosexuality also prohibits adultery (Lev. 18:20),
child sacrifice (v. 21), and sex with animals (v. 23).  Is Mr. Gomes
telling us that these are now acceptable alternative lifestyle choices that
should be protected by law?  If his answer is yes, then let him say so.

Second, Leviticus 19 (still part of the "Holiness Code") prohibits stealing
and lying (v. 11), oppressing neighbors and robbing them (v. 13),
withholding wages from a laborer (v. 13). cursing the deaf and tripping the
blind (v. 14), showing partiality in judicial matters (v. 15), slandering
(v. 16), and taking vengeance (v. 18).  Leviticus 20 repeats the
prohibitions against child sacrifice (vv. 2-5), adultery (v.10),
homosexuality (v. 13), and bestiality (vv. 15-16).  Are we to conclude,
using Mr. Gomes logic, that these laws no longer apply today because they
are found in the "Holiness Code"?

Third, homosexuality is "an abomination" (Lev. 18:22) that deserves the
death penalty (20:13).  Certain ceremonial violations also were considered
"abominations," but not one is a capital crime.  the breach of the
ceremonial law resulted in separation from the religious activity of Israel
for a stated period, a form of temporal excommunication.  Thus there is a
qualitative difference between eating pork (Lev. 11:7), sexual abstinence
during a woman's menstrual period (18:19), ritual shaving (19:27), all
pointing to the redemptive work of Christ, and homosexual practice.

                             Sodom and Gomorrah

Mr. Gomes mentions Sodom and Gomorrah, stating "that the story is not about
sexual perversion and homosexual practice."  He must dispense with this
dramatic and self-evident story since it is found outside the "Holiness
Code."  If homosexuality is condemned outside the special-nation status of
Israel then his case is lost.  This would mean that the prohibitions
against homosexuality would automatically become universal and
non-ceremonial.

Let's rehearse the story.  Two male visitors "came to Sodom in the evening
as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom" (Gen. 19:1).  Lot invites the two
men "to spend the night" at his "house" (v. 2).  The men wanted to "spend
the night in the square" (v. 3).  Lot "urged them strongly" not to stay in
the square but to enter "his house" (v. 3).  Lot, "oppressed by the sensual
conduct of unprincipled men" and "tormented day after day by their lawless
deeds" (2 Pet. 2:7-8), knew the evil of the city first-hand.  The square
was obviously a pick-up point for homosexuals.  Lot wanted to spare the
male visitors the indignities that they would have been subjected to had
they stayed there.

Before they all went to sleep, "the men of the city, the men of Sodom,
surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every
quarter" (v. 5).  Notice the repetition of the word men in the text.
Without any desire to meet the strangers socially, the men of Sodom
demanded that Lot "bring them out to [them] that [they] might have
relations with them" (v. 5).  The word translated "relations" is the Hebrew
word yadha ("to know").  The word yadha appears nearly fifty times in the
book of Genesis and in at least seven instances it means sexual relations
(Gen. 4:1, 17, 25; 19:5, 8; 24:16; 38:26; cp. Num. 31:17, 18, 35; Judges
11:39; 19:22, 25; 1 Sam. 1:19).

Lot knew what the men wanted, and it wasn't a social call.  The men of
Sodom wanted the male visitors for sexual purposes.  They had been denied
their opportunity when Lot bypassed the open square.  Lot, already tainted
by the immorality of Sodom, offers his virgin daughters as a sexual
substitute: "Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations
with a man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever
you like; only do nothing to these men..." (Gen. 19:8).  When Lot offered
his daughters as sexual substitutes for the Sodomites' request, he used
yadha, the same word used by the men of Sodom that is translated as "had
relations with" (v. 8).  If the word yadha means "had sexual relations
with" in verse 8, then it means "had sexual relations with" in verse 5.
Contrary to Mr. Gomes' article, Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexual sex,
and it is he who is viewing the passage through the lens of his own
prejudices and personal values.

                               An Abomination

Mr. Gomes references Ezekiel 16:49-50 to lead unsuspecting readers into
believing that Sodom and Gomorrah's sin was not sexual perversion but
inhospitality.  He is correct in one sense.  Sodomizing strangers is the
height of inhospitality.  Mr. Gomes quotes Ezekiel 16:49 to support the
thesis that Sodom's sin was simply failure to care for the poor, but he
fails to quote verse 50 which states that "they were haughty and committed
abominations before Me."

The word "abominations" is the same word used in Leviticus 18:22 to
describe explicit homosexual behavior.  Notice too that "abominations" is
listed last in the Ezekiel litany of judgment.  With this in mind, and the
New Testament to back us up, it becomes clear that homosexuality is the
cultural culmination of rebellion against God.  It represents the "burning
out" of man and his culture.  In Romans 1:29-31 Paul describes accompanying
aspects of a culture that reaches this stage.  The vices enumerated by Paul
accompanying the open practice of homosexuality characterizes a society in
which homosexuality is practiced and tolerated.  Therefore, homosexuality
that is publicly accepted is symptomatic of a society under judgment,
inwardly corrupted to the point of impending collapse.  Paul the apostle
regarded it as the most overt evidence of that degeneracy to which God in
His wrath gives over a nation to judgment.

                               Strange Flesh

And what is the New Testament commentary on the goings on in Sodom and
Gomorrah?  Jude tells us that the men of Sodom and Gomorrah "indulged in
gross immorality-and went after strange flesh" (Jude 7).  What is the
definition of "strange flesh"?  Again the New Testament is clear: "For
their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and
in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman
and burned in their desire towards one another, men with men committing
indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their
error" (Rom. 1:26-27).  Mr. Gomes wants us to believe that Paul's
condemnation of homosexuality is only with those who did not perform their
homosexuality in term of "Jewish-Christian spiritual idealism."  Can the
same excuse be given for incest, bestiality, prostitution, and adultery as
long as the Christian performs these acts with "Jewish-Christian spiritual
idealism" in mind?  There is not a verse in the entire Bible that Mr. Gomes
can quote to justify his bizarre interpretations.

                                 Conclusion

It is through the lens of Mr. Gomes' own prejudices and personal values
that he "reads" Scripture and cloaks his own views in its authority.  He is
like the Pharisee who "nicely sets aside the commandments of God in order
to keep his traditions" (Mark 7:9).

[reprinted from _The Biblical Worldview_, by American Vision, PO Box 724088,
Atlanta, Ga 30339-1088]



--
Tom Albrecht