Reflections on Matthew 19

August 20, 2008

Recently, I have found myself pouring over Matthew 19:3-12 in reference to Jesus’ interesting discussion of the eunuchs which is often taken as a commentary on celibacy. I recently stumbled across a post that the evangelical NT scholar Ben Witherington wrote in reference to Rob Bell’s most recent cross-country book tour. Witherington criticizes(scroll down to 2/15/07 if you follow the link) Bell’s more supportive reflections on the status of gay relationships.

The relevant passage in Mt 19 is prompted by the Pharisees’ question to Jesus: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause” (Mt 19.3) Jesus responds that male and female were created such that each would leave their parents and become joined together as one flesh (Mt 19.5) In contrast to Deut. 24.1, Jesus states “what God has yoked together, let man not separate” (19.6) Consequently, Jesus apparently understands Moses’ deviation from this original ordination concerning marriage to reflect a concession to the fallen state of human beings. Christ then is attempting to re-establish the original ordination which leads him to answer the Pharisees’ question: “Whoever divorces his wife, except for fornication, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries her who has been divorced commits adultery” (Mt 19.9)

After this response, the Pharisees conclude that it “would not be profitable” for such a man to marry, if one were to follow Jesus’ teaching. However, I find Jesus’ answer in Mt.19.11 endlessly interesting: “Not all men can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given” (19.11) The implication here is that many human beings could not refrain from marriage and therefore would need God’s gift or blessing in order to withstand the temptations that would assuredly envelope the non-married person. In this sense, celibacy is not so much chosen as discerned. As a parallel, I would equate this process of discernment as paralleling that of ministerial vocational discernment. The individual is not merely enacting his/her own desires but rather coming to understand God’s will for their life. So this all raises a question: Are we to assume that any non-married person has received the gift of celibacy?

Even posing this question is somewhat odd within our culture. First, celibacy is not taken seriously as an ascetic discipline or task because it is generally assumed to conceal some deep psychological dis-ease. Second, we so idolize marriage-yes, it has literally become an “idol”—that many people find it difficult to indulge the possibility of a full, meaningful life that does not include marriage and the rearing of children. On the other end of the spectrum, marriage has become a marker of faithful Christian belief such that having a spouse and children and living in the suburbs is an accomplishment that imbues a person with some sort of moral authority. In our context, the man who “heads a household” enjoys more legitimacy as a church leader than assuredly a celibate person would. How many pastors of the fifty largest churches in America do you think are celibate? I think “possessing” a family–and it is often wielded like a possession–is foundational to the perception of pastoral authority in most evangelical Protestant contexts. For a man to be unmarried and childless would conflict with our idolization of marriage and severely undermine the capacity of such a person to be perceived as worthy of church leadership. Sad and un-biblical, but I think, quite true. Behind all of Willow Creek’s protestations to the contrary, I don’t think they–or 99% of churches with similar demographics–would for one second consider a celibate gay person as a teaching pastor.

Conservative evangelical NT scholar Ben Witherington III argues that Mt. 19 “makes very evident that for single persons, any single persons, celibacy in singleness is the standard Jesus holds up for the unmarried.” The problem is that Jesus presents celibacy as a rather marginal and more importantly, consciously-chosen lifestyle. He speaks of “only those” to whom the Word was given (Mt. 19.11) and then most interestingly remarks, “he who can accept it, let him accept it” (Mt.19.12). It is hard to imagine why individual acceptance would matter if celibacy is imposed as a solemn demand—for instance, via theological fiat upon a whole class of persons (like gays.) Jesus could have said, “Many will struggle to accept the call of celibacy but they will burn in the lake of fire if they are not obedient.” This sounds a lot like many of the pastorally incompetent evangelical voices in our time who espouse what I call the “Deal with it” attitude to gays and lesbians in which obedience is the privileged virtue. Yet, Jesus did not speak this way, which is instructive. Instead, in Jesus’ moral universe, celibate persons are not assigned celibacy in tandem with their sexual orientations (“Gay people line up in the celibate line on the right . . . “) but rather are persons who consciously choose celibacy out of devotion to “the Kingdom of the Heavens” (Mt. 19.12). Jesus shows great concern for the limitations of the human person–that is, what is each individual prepared and constituted to accept? He shows great pastoral sensitivity in admitting that this life is only for the very few. Jesus gently proclaims in reference to celibacy, “Let him who can accept it, accept it.” From this viewpoint, celibacy is an honorable yet chosen calling that points toward another world.

Many gay people—just like straight people—choose to live honorable, celibate lives. The question is why we would expect that all gays and lesbians would choose celibacy when Jesus acknowledges that many heterosexual people would not. If you believe Witherington, you have to argue that while many gays and lesbians seem to possess an immutable sexual preference/orientation that has the potential to be shared in a life-giving relationship, they must all abstain from such a relationship whether they seem able to accept celibacy or not. We see here why conservatives must argue against the createdness of homosexuality and instead ascribe it to psychopathology or human sin—to do otherwise, implicates God in the creation of a class of persons who are constituted with apparently live-giving desires but are forbade from pursuing them. The very same God that was so conscious of the temptations that would befall many non-married heterosexuals (Mt. 19.11) now becomes utterly indifferent to the same temptations for homosexuals. All of the sudden, Jesus doesn’t care to offer homosexuals another alternative and by consequence offer any choice at all. All homosexuals are presented with is an identity seemingly folded in on itself. If this was what Jesus intended, it seems he would have said, “Let him who cannot accept it, accept it anyways.” But, of course, this would be an entirely different Jesus.

It then is rather unsurprising that Witherington concludes that the Bible’s silence on the reality of sexual orientation is hermeneutically “irrelevant.” For Witherington, references to homosexual acts in Romans 1, 1 Cor 6, and Galatians 5 (to name a few) make clear his point that the Bible consistently seems to condemn such practices. Of course, I am not disputing that point. We could argue about how to translate ‘malakoi’ and ‘arsenokoites’ all we like but it really just begs the question: “Do ancient biblical condemnations of same-sex sexual activity apply to sexual activity that proceeds from a constitutive sexual orientation and were the biblical author’s views of such behavior precisely influenced by the belief that such actions betrayed a natural inclination that all humans possessed?” To say such questions are irrelevant to the hermeneutical practice is as lazy as it is irresponsible. Professor Witherington seems to operate out of the mistaken assumption that pro-gay Christians are disputing that the Bible in many places condemns homosexual sexual acts. I don’t see how anyone could deny that in many places the Bible clearly does condemn such acts. The problem is contemporarily many of us don’t understand “homosexual behavior” as betraying a natural order but in fact believe that persons have constitutive orientations that are experienced in much richer and nuanced ways. The question is whether the moral status of such acts changes in the context of our much more developed understanding of how wide-ranging and utterly natural homosexuality, in fact, is. This is the position that Marcus Borg takes in essentially arguing that Paul is no more an expert on homosexuality than on the internet. Borg wants to say that Paul’s reference point for Romans 1 (to use one example) might have been Greek pagan fertility practices in which people engaged in polyamorous orgies as a “religious practice.” Does the seeming incongruity of such acts to our contemporary understanding of gay identity seem hermeneutically irrelevant to you dear readers? I am curious to know.

We now understand that many people experience their homosexual orientations as unchosen, unchangeable, and morally benign and judging by the consistency of such experiences among hundreds of mammals, it appears that homosexuality is, above all else, quite natural. It then does seem worthwhile to clarify whether it makes sense to insist on the practical applicability of biblical condemnations of behavior when we understand such physical articulations as involving a much richer and deep sense of personal identity than was previously imagined. I would be curious to hear from our readers on these points. Blessings to you all and sorry for my long blogging absence!

Posted by MATT Posted in Posts by Matt, Queer / Theology, The Church