The Witness: Moving Beyond the Magic 8-Ball™ Approach to the Bible: <br> Reflections on the Statement <i>To Set Our Hope on Christ</i>

Anglican/Episcopal News | Human Sexuality

Moving Beyond the Magic 8-Ball™ Approach to the Bible:
Reflections on the Statement To Set Our Hope on Christ
By Neil Elliott
Saturday, July 16, 2005

I'm a P.K. (Preacher's Kid), so my memories of the black plastic Magic 8-Ball™ we consulted -- er, no, played with: it was just a game, after all! -- were in other children's houses, well away from the oversight of churchgoing adults. I remember feeling a little uneasy as we'd pose our questions, give the ball a good shake, and wait for the answer to float up into the window: "Signs Point to Yes." "Very doubtful." "Ask again later." Now a quick internet search confirms my childhood suspicions: the best Magic 8-Ball™ sites are listed under the keyword classification "Society / Religion and Spirituality / Divination / Online Oracles."

There are plenty of Christians around the world, even in churches of the Anglican Communion and, yes, the Episcopal Church, who turn to the Bible in pretty much the same way. Ask your question, open the Bible, and let the answers float to the top.

That's why I'm grateful for much of the language in the recent statement, To Set Our Hope on Christ: A Response to the Invitation of Windsor Report Par. 135 (available from the Episcopal Book Resource Center in print or via download in PDF format). Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold asked a group of preeminent Episcopal theologians to prepare a response to the Windsor Commission's challenge that the Episcopal Church explain the 2003 consecration of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, "a person living in a same gender union" (in the not-quite-felicitous phrase of the Response), as bishop of New Hampshire. The Response clearly states that the Episcopal Church's experience "was no easy or automatic process, as if one could just look up the answer in Scripture" (¶2.4) - as if it were a divine Magic 8-Ball™.

There is much to commend in the Response: the genuinely gracious tone of the document, first of all, which in a different world might have drawn out some of the venom of the good bishop's fiercest opponents. (The Rev. Susan Russell has described some of the ambient nastiness swirling around the American Anglican Council in a recent Witness column.)

Add to that some gentle, yet firm and consistent reminders: that we in the Episcopal Church have arrived, through our own attentiveness to the Spirit, at a deeper understanding of holiness in sexual relationships (¶2.1); that we recognize the Bible as the result of history, not divine stenography (¶2.3), and understand that since it bears witness to a history of disagreement and struggle to discern truth, it simply cannot function as an instrument of ready-to-hand divination (¶2.4); that the Bible itself shows that from the beginning Christian people have had to work hard, with tremendous patience, humility, and mutual respect, to live together in communities of faithful discernment (¶2.6).

There are plenty of Christians who turn to the Bible in pretty much the way we used to consult the Magic 8-Ball™: Ask your question, open the Bible, and let the answers float to the top.

Other results of contemporary biblical scholarship follow, stated in suitably unequivocal terms. "The Bible hardly ever discusses homosexual behavior," and the few references are clearly a minor concern compared to the great themes of justice (¶2.20). The biblical writers most likely did not address the phenomenon we deal with today, "Christians of the same gender living together in faithful and committed lifelong unions" (¶2.18). Of the handful of passages that are customarily read as condemning "same-sex relations" (an imprecise phrase that begs more questions than it answers), only the twin prohibitions in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, and Paul's broadside in Romans 1:26-27, are conceivably of material relevance (¶2.21). The first belong to a cultural universe that in other respects remains alien to most modern Christians; for his part, Paul seems inconsistent as he "crosses one boundary" (between Jew and Gentile) but not another.

Though elsewhere on The Witness online I've contested the received reading of Romans 1 on which the Response's authors rely, I'm nevertheless deeply grateful to see these insights of modern biblical scholarship articulated with such care and clarity, and wish they were as basic to the theological curricula of other Anglican provinces as they are in Episcopal seminaries in the U.S.

Second Thoughts

Having said that, I'll admit to being puzzled at how readily the authors of the Response could move from those critical insights to language that reminds me of the divination-by-Bible I first encountered in the revivalist churches of my childhood. Here's how they described their process:

"We asked God to show us whether we were to welcome Christians of same-sex affection into our midst and to invite them to share leadership of the Church with us or not. We asked God's help in discerning through the power of the Holy Spirit whether we ought to understand our situation in analogy with the experience of the early Church regarding the inclusion of the Gentiles. We began to study Acts 10-15 with great care" (¶2.9, emphasis added).

There is much to commend in the Response: the genuinely gracious tone of the document; some gentle, yet firm and consistent reminders: that we in the Episcopal Church have arrived at a deeper understanding of holiness in sexual relationships; that we recognize the Bible as the result of history, not divine stenography; that it simply cannot function as an instrument of ready-to-hand divination.

Nevermind -- for now -- the implication that "we" are somehow inside, and gays and lesbians are outside, waiting to be invited into the church's fellowship, just as soon as "we" get the word that it's okay. That would be a preposterous description of the Episcopal Church's experience, of course -- though perhaps one that sells better in parts of the world where some Anglicans still entertain such blinkered thoughts.

My more immediate concern is with how the Response represents the way we in the Episcopal Church use the Bible in our theological, moral, and ethical discernment. Did "we" really "ask God to show us" whether to let gays and lesbians in, and whether or not to ordain them, and then open the Bible to see what floated to the top?

I'm relieved to learn from the Response (and I don't think I'm giving anything away) that God's apparent answer to both the questions posed is "yes." I'm even tempted to imagine: surely that will settle the issue once for all, and we can all move on to the next agenda item -- say, the other burning issue at Lambeth 1998, something about cancelling world debt?

But what if those opposed to the Response's conclusions believe they've also been consulting their Bibles, and have come to different conclusions? I'm left wondering, whom is this part of the document designed to persuade?

Before taking up scripture, the Response discusses "Holiness, God's Blessing, and Same-Sex Affection" with the clear and forthright declaration that "for almost forty years, members of the Episcopal Church have discerned holiness in same-sex relationships and have come to support the blessing of such unions and the ordination or consecration of persons in those unions" (par. 2.0). That experience, which many of us immediately recognize as our own, is the fundamental premise that informs the Response. It's also a premise that opponents of the ordination of gays and lesbians would flatly deny. Between the two positions yawns a seemingly unbridgeable chasm.

I suspect the Response's authors have evoked the story in Acts 10-15, not because it has actually informed their moral reasoning regarding same-sex relationships, but because it provides a plausible biblical analogy that they hope will help move the "other side" to greater openness -- "biblical" openness, so to speak -- to possible reconciliation.

"The Bible hardly ever discusses homosexual behavior." The biblical writers likely did not address the phenomenon we deal with today, "Christians of the same gender living together in faithful and committed lifelong unions." Those insights should be as basic to the theological curricula of other Anglican provinces as they are in Episcopal seminaries in the U.S.

It's just here that I have misgivings.

Another Look at Acts 10-15

The authors of the Response offer an elaborate analogy: "the account of the inclusion of the Gentiles (Acts 10-15) has allowed us to interpret our experience in the light of the early Church's experience" (¶2.2). Just as Peter was, at first, "rightly reluctant to cross traditional clean/unclean boundaries" until a voice from heaven offers an "implied criticism of [his] certainty," so "we" in the Episcopal Church "find ourselves in the same position."

That is, if I understand the analogy being made, "we" have been "initially hesitant to welcome" our gay brothers and lesbian sisters into the church. Furthermore, just as "Peter . . . was, rightly, criticized for his actions" welcoming the righteous Gentile, so the Episcopal Church has appropriately been called to account by the Windsor Commission.

The payoff in the analogy is what (the authors evidently hope) comes next. Just as Peter eventually won over his critics by testifying that the Holy Spirit really, really had come upon Cornelius and his companions, so conservatives, wherever they are, should be won over by our testimony that the Holy Spirit really, really has come upon the gays and lesbians among us.

"For almost forty years, members of the Episcopal Church have discerned holiness in same-sex relationships and have come to support the blessing of such unions and the ordination or consecration of persons in those unions" (Response, ¶2.0).

For several reasons, I doubt this argument will carry the day with the people it's presumably aimed at.

First, if a "Peter-like" appeal to the evidence of holy lives and the gifts of the Spirit had ever held any weight with the anti-gay crowd, we wouldn't still be having these arguments. The people of the Diocese of New Hampshire satisfied the delegates to the 2003 General Convention that they'd found all the holiness of life they could have hoped for in the man they elected bishop. That didn't -- and presumably, that still can't -- satisfy adversaries who see only "a man living in a same-sex union" and recoil in moral horror.

Neither is the "Church's studied compromise" in Acts 15 likely to convince these adversaries. Yes, Peter convinced "the Jewish church" (the dubious phrase used in the Response, ¶2.10) that Gentiles didn't have to become Jews; but James insisted, and Peter evidently concurred, that even if circumcision is a matter of indifference, sexual immorality (porneia) is clearly prohibited (Acts 15:20). Those of us who (in the Response's phrase) "have come to recognize . . . holiness in the lives of Christians of same-sex affection, and in their covenanted unions" (¶2.1), may find this story evocatively appealing. For others, however, who see only rampant porneia at large in ECUSA, the attempt to cast gays and lesbians as the equivalent of the Gentiles of Acts may well appear a rhetorical shell-game.

The Response's reliance on Luke's account in Acts 10-15 is, in my view, a potential liability. As the authors read that story, Peter was led by the Holy Spirit to move beyond his narrow-minded prejudice regarding what is clean and unclean (¶2.10). But that's not the point of Luke's story. To be sure, there was a time when describing the observance of kosher laws as a matter of misguided prejudice was perfectly acceptable in the church; but in the last thirty years, scholars like David Tiede and Jacob Jervell have set Luke squarely in the context of diaspora Judaism. Their scholarship casts doubt on the notion that Luke's story was about Peter learning to "stop worrying and learn to love the unclean." (It's hardly an analogy complimentary to our gay brothers and lesbian sisters.)

To the contrary, it's precisely because Peter remains a devout and steadfastly observant Jew that he wouldn't think of eating non-kosher food, even if a voice from heaven commanded him (three times!) to do so. Of course he was "greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision" (10:17)! As my friend and New Testament scholar Mark Reasoner has pointed out, nothing in the story indicates that the heavenly voice was the voice of God: Jewish tradition poses the question whether such immediate "revelation" could cancel what the people already knew of God's will, and always answers, No. Luke's point is not that Peter gave up an irrational prejudice; it's that embracing righteous Gentiles like Cornelius was (so to speak) so thoroughly "kosher" that even a stalwartly observant Jew like Peter could see its merit. (The same goes for James, evidently.)

In that light, it would be more in keeping with the analogy of Peter's experience, as it functions within Luke's narrative, for the Response simply to affirm, as they do in ¶2.0-1, that we in the Episcopal Church are not about to relax our moral standards regarding holiness in sexual relationships. Nor will we countenance any suggestion that we do so -- even if some strange voice from heaven were to command it! We simply know better. Like the Lukan Peter, we know holiness when we see it -- not least when, as some of my college student friends might put it, God gets up in our face with it.

My concern is that in our efforts to appear to others as sufficiently "biblical," we in the Episcopal Church may begin to adopt an uncritical, two-dimensional approach to scripture that minimizes the actual complexity of our situation, and the genuine complexity of theological response to which we have been called.

Abandoning the Magic 8-Ball™ Approach to Scripture

Although I remain grateful to the authors of To Set Our Hope on Christ, I have grave misgivings about their attempt to structure our present conflict around a "biblical" paradigm. I'll leave it to the opponents of ordinations like Bishop Robinson's to protest being cast in the role of the grumbling "Jewish Church" in Acts 10-15. Suffice it to say that I wouldn't necessarily appreciate it -- and I expect the authors of the Response might not, either -- if such opponents were to tell us that they'd found our spiritual types in the Bible, in first-century characters who had to be brought around to see the light.

In carrying through their "biblical" analogy, the authors of the Response implicitly abandon the language of "rights" (¶2.10), which does not enjoy an obvious biblical pedigree. But in other contexts, our church has repeatedly recognized that respecting the dignity of human beings as created in the image of God is naturally expressed in recognizing their claims upon us, claims reasonably expressed in terms of rights. We have put that commitment at the heart of our Baptismal Covenant. Why would we shy away from that commitment just because it can't easily be documented from scripture?

We are on firmer ground when we simply and honestly give an account of the logic that actually informs our practice in recent decades. To the extent the Response does that, it provides an invaluable service to our church.

Neil Elliott is an Episcopal priest, New Testament scholar, and member of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. He currently serves as scholar-in-residence at St. Paul's Church on the Hill, St. Paul, Minn. He may be reached by email at NeilElliott@msn.com.