Ancient Words, Modern Questions
Some questions deserve more than a verse, a slogan, or a talking point.
What Scripture Actually Says About Homosexuality, Same-Sex Relationships, and the Church
Part One of The Church & LGBTQ Question
There are some subjects Christians seem to have a hard time talking about without immediately choosing a side.
Homosexuality is one of them.
Say the word in a church setting and you can almost feel the room change.
For some Christians, there isn't much to discuss. The Bible says homosexuality is sinful. Scripture is clear. The Church has believed it for centuries. Case closed.
Others will tell you we've misunderstood the passages altogether. They'll point to Greek words, ancient sexual practices, translation decisions, the year 1946, and cultural differences between Paul's world and ours.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that are actual people.
Gay people who love Jesus.
Gay people who want nothing to do with Christianity.
Christians who affirm same-sex marriage.
Christians who experience same-sex attraction but believe the historic Christian sexual ethic is true and have chosen celibacy.
Parents trying to understand what faithfulness looks like after a son or daughter comes out.
Pastors trying to figure out what conviction and compassion look like when they're sitting across the table from a person rather than preaching about an issue.
And churches that sometimes seem much better at making statements than having those conversations.
That's why I wanted to slow this down.
Before talking about politics, psychology, sexual orientation, conversion therapy, church culture, the Religious Right, or how LGBTQ people have experienced Christianity, I wanted to begin with the most basic question.
What does the Bible actually say?
Not what I was told it says.
Not what conservative Christianity needs it to say.
Not what progressive Christianity wants it to say.
What does the evidence actually support?
I've spent considerable time working through the major passages, looking at the Greek and Hebrew, reading traditional and affirming scholarship, comparing interpretations, and testing some of the assumptions Christians on both sides bring to these texts.
And I came away convinced of two things that we need to be able to hold together.
The historic Christian position on same-sex sexual behavior has a stronger biblical foundation than many of its critics acknowledge.
But also:
The Bible says considerably less about what we now call a gay or LGBTQ person than many traditional Christians sometimes claim.
Both matter.
And if we're going to have an honest conversation, we can't afford to ignore either one.
Before We Talk About Homosexuality, We Need to Define What We Mean
Part of our problem is that we use one word to describe several different things.
Someone experiencing same-sex attraction is not necessarily having sex.
Someone who identifies as gay may be celibate.
Someone can experience an attraction without choosing it.
Someone can experience temptation without acting on it.
Someone can intentionally cultivate sexual fantasy.
Someone can enter a sexual relationship.
Those aren't the same thing.
Yet church conversations frequently collapse all of them into one category called homosexuality.
The Bible doesn't really do that.
Scripture talks extensively about sexual behavior, desire, lust, temptation, marriage, adultery, sexual immorality, singleness and celibacy.
What it doesn't give us is a modern psychological discussion of sexual orientation.
That concept, as we understand it today, belongs to a much later way of thinking about human sexuality.
So when someone says:
“The Bible condemns homosexuality,”
we need to ask:
What exactly do you mean?
Same-sex attraction?
A gay identity?
Sexual orientation?
Sexual fantasy?
Same-sex intercourse?
Same-sex marriage?
Because those are different questions.
And the biblical evidence isn't equally clear about all of them.
We Probably Need to Stop Starting With Sodom
For generations, one of Christianity's favorite places to begin this discussion has been Sodom and Gomorrah.
I don't think that's where the strongest biblical case is.
Genesis 19 describes something horrific. A mob surrounds Lot's house and demands access to his visitors.
This isn't a picture of two adults entering a consensual same-sex relationship.
It's attempted gang rape.
It's violence.
It's domination.
It's humiliation.
It's a complete collapse of hospitality and justice.
And later Scripture makes the picture even broader.
Ezekiel describes Sodom as arrogant, prosperous, and unconcerned about the poor and needy. Jude includes sexual immorality in Sodom's wickedness, but its strange reference to pursuing “other flesh” appears connected at least in part to the angelic visitors in the story.
That doesn't mean sexuality has nothing to do with Sodom.
It clearly does.
But saying:
“God destroyed Sodom because people were gay”
is far too simplistic.
And frankly, we don't need to make Genesis 19 carry an argument it wasn't written to carry.
There are stronger texts.
The Biblical Pattern Really Begins in Genesis
To understand the Bible's sexual ethic, Genesis 1 and 2 matter most.
Genesis says humanity is created male and female in God's image.
Before we make that about sexuality, we should notice what an extraordinary statement that is.
Both bear God's image.
Neither sex possesses more human dignity or spiritual value than the other.
Then Genesis 2 gives us the familiar story of Adam and Eve.
The man is alone. God says that isn't good. The woman is created as a corresponding partner, someone sharing his humanity while being distinct from him.
And then comes the statement that echoes throughout the rest of Scripture:
a man leaves his father and mother, is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh.
Now, Genesis doesn't stop and say:
“This passage is intended to answer every future question about sexual orientation and marriage.”
We shouldn't make it say more than it says.
But we shouldn't make it say less either.
The Bible's foundational picture of sexual union is male and female becoming one flesh.
And that pattern matters because Jesus later goes directly back to it.
Jesus and the Question He Didn't Answer
You've probably heard someone say:
“Jesus never said anything about homosexuality.”
Technically, that's true.
There is no recorded saying of Jesus where he explicitly says:
“Same-sex intercourse is sinful.”
We should be honest about that.
But sometimes that statement is used to suggest Jesus had nothing relevant to say about the issue.
That's harder to maintain.
When Jesus is asked about divorce in Matthew 19, he goes back to Genesis.
He brings together the creation of humanity as male and female and the statement about a man being joined to his wife and becoming one flesh.
His immediate subject is divorce.
So we shouldn't pretend Jesus was secretly answering a question about homosexuality.
But Jesus clearly believed Genesis mattered when defining marriage.
That leaves us with an important question:
Is male-female sexual difference essential to the biblical definition of marriage, or is it simply the form marriage happened to take in the biblical world?
Traditional and affirming Christians answer that question differently.
And much of the debate eventually comes down to that.
Leviticus Is Difficult, but Not for the Reason We Sometimes Hear
Then we get to Leviticus.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 prohibit a man from having sexual intercourse with another male.
There are important questions here.
Why does Leviticus prohibit it?
How do Israel's holiness laws apply to Christians?
Why do Christians follow some Old Testament sexual laws while not following Israel's dietary regulations or civil penalties?
Those are legitimate questions.
What is harder to establish is the popular claim that Leviticus was actually talking only about rape, temple prostitution, or sex with children.
The text itself doesn't say that.
It prohibits male-male intercourse.
That doesn't mean Christians should carry ancient Israel's civil punishments into modern society. The Church has never simply treated Israel's civil legal code as America's criminal code.
But the sexual prohibition itself becomes more important because something that looks remarkably similar appears later in the New Testament.
About That Greek Word, and 1946
This is where the conversation gets especially interesting.
In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, we encounter the unusual Greek word arsenokoitai.
And this is where you've probably encountered the claim that the word homosexual didn't appear in the Bible until 1946.
There's truth there.
The English word homosexual is modern.
And using it to translate an ancient Greek word can create a real problem.
Today, “homosexual” can describe a person based upon orientation regardless of whether that person has ever had sex.
But arsenokoitai appears to concern sexual conduct.
That distinction matters enormously.
A celibate gay Christian could be called “homosexual” according to modern English usage.
If a Bible translation then says “homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God,” a reader could easily conclude that simply experiencing a homosexual orientation separates someone from Christ.
That's much more than the Greek text establishes.
But here's where another argument goes too far.
The fact that the English word homosexual wasn't used until modern translations does not mean nobody understood the Bible as prohibiting male-male sexual activity before 1946.
They did.
They simply used different words.
There's also not strong evidence that arsenokoitai simply means pedophile, despite how often that claim appears online.
The word appears to draw upon the Greek words for male and bed or sexual intercourse, and there is a strong scholarly argument that Paul is echoing the Greek wording of Leviticus.
There is still debate about the exact scope of the word.
But saying:
“Nobody really knows what it means”
doesn't represent the evidence very well.
The better conclusion is that it refers to male-male sexual activity, while modern translations should be careful not to turn a word describing conduct into a label for a person's entire identity.
That's an important distinction.
Then We Come to Romans 1
If there is one passage that the affirming interpretation has to deal with seriously, it's Romans 1:26–27.
Paul describes women exchanging what he considers natural sexual relations and men abandoning sexual relations with women and becoming consumed with desire for one another.
Some scholars have argued that Paul is really talking about prostitution, pederasty, exploitation, excessive lust, or pagan sexual practices.
Those things certainly existed in Paul's world.
But limiting Romans 1 to those situations is difficult.
Paul describes men desiring one another.
That sounds reciprocal.
He also appears to describe female same-sex relations, which makes an explanation based entirely on pederasty even more difficult.
And the entire passage is surrounded by creation language.
Creator.
Creation.
Exchange.
Male.
Female.
Nature.
Paul appears to be reasoning from what he believes God's created sexual order to be.
That's why, after looking at the competing arguments, I don't think the strongest affirming position is:
“Paul wasn't talking about same-sex sex.”
The evidence for that is relatively weak.
The stronger affirming argument is much more challenging.
It says:
Paul probably did reject same-sex sexual relationships. The question is whether his ancient understanding should determine the Church's ethical conclusion today.
And once we get there, we're no longer arguing mainly about Greek words.
We're talking about how Christians interpret Scripture.
That's Where This Became More Complicated for Me
If we're going to say that Paul's ethical judgment remains binding because it is grounded in Scripture and creation, we need to ask whether Christians apply that principle consistently.
So I started testing it.
And this is where things became interesting.
Take women in ministry.
Paul appeals to Adam and Eve while discussing restrictions involving women in 1 Timothy.
Yet many Christians who hold a very high view of Scripture—including the Assemblies of God—believe women can preach, teach, pastor and exercise spiritual leadership.
They don't believe they're rejecting Paul.
They believe they're interpreting his instructions within their historical context and alongside everything else Scripture says about women in ministry.
That means:
“Paul mentioned creation, therefore the application must be universal”
isn't enough by itself.
Context still matters.
Then there's slavery.
The Bible regulates slavery and never gives Christians a simple command saying:
“End the institution everywhere.”
Yet Christians eventually came to recognize slavery as incompatible with the deeper biblical vision of human dignity, neighbor-love, and equality in Christ.
Again, broader biblical principles mattered.
Then there's divorce.
Jesus explicitly goes back to creation and says what God has joined together, humans shouldn't separate.
Yet many evangelical churches recognize circumstances involving adultery, abandonment, and abuse in which divorce, and sometimes remarriage, can be permitted.
Churches are already doing contextual biblical reasoning around marriage.
None of those examples automatically proves that same-sex marriage is biblically permissible.
There are important differences.
But they do prove something:
Interpreting Scripture faithfully requires more than finding a verse and declaring the conversation over.
And Yet the Traditional Case Still Holds Up
After working through those comparisons, I kept coming back to the same problem for the affirming position.
With slavery, Scripture itself contains moral pressure moving toward freedom.
With women, Scripture contains positive examples of women praying, prophesying, instructing and serving alongside apostolic leaders.
With divorce, Scripture itself contains exceptions and pastoral responses to broken marriages.
But when it comes to same-sex sexual relationships, we don't find an equivalent positive biblical example.
Instead, the pattern remains remarkably consistent.
Genesis gives us male and female.
Genesis 2 gives us male-female one-flesh union.
Leviticus prohibits male-male intercourse.
Jesus returns marriage to Genesis.
Romans negatively evaluates male-male and apparently female-female sexual relations.
First Corinthians and First Timothy appear to carry that sexual ethic into the early Church.
Taken together, that is a much stronger case than simply saying:
“Leviticus says it's wrong.”
It's a whole-Bible argument.
And at this stage of the investigation, I think intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that.
The historic Christian sexual ethic has substantial biblical support.
But that sentence cannot be where the Church stops thinking.
Because Sexual Behavior and Being Gay Are Not the Same Question
This may be one of the biggest things I've taken away from this research.
Even if we conclude that Scripture prohibits same-sex sexual behavior, we have not automatically answered what Scripture says about:
a homosexual orientation,
an involuntary attraction,
identifying oneself as gay,
experiencing temptation,
or what faithful Christian life looks like for someone who experiences those things.
The Bible doesn't use all of our modern categories.
And this matters pastorally.
Take attraction.
A married heterosexual man notices another woman is attractive.
Has he committed adultery?
Most Christians would say no.
If he intentionally begins fantasizing about her and cultivating sexual desire, that's different.
Jesus takes lust seriously.
But attraction and intentionally cultivated lust aren't necessarily the same thing.
The same moral distinction should apply to someone experiencing same-sex attraction.
Otherwise we're creating one sexual ethic for straight people and another for gay people.
Likewise, temptation itself cannot automatically be sin.
Christianity teaches that Jesus experienced temptation and yet remained without sin.
So whatever we eventually conclude about sexual orientation, we should be very careful before telling someone that the mere experience of an unwanted attraction makes that person morally guilty before God.
Scripture doesn't give us enough evidence to say that casually.
And Then There's Celibacy
This is where traditional Christianity has to ask some difficult questions of itself.
If marriage is biblically defined as a covenant between a man and a woman, then an exclusively gay Christian who accepts that theology may be facing something much bigger than:
“Wait until marriage.”
They may be facing:
“Remain celibate for life.”
Christianity absolutely has room for that.
Jesus was unmarried.
Paul speaks positively about singleness.
The New Testament never teaches that romantic or sexual fulfillment is required for a meaningful human life.
But if the Church asks someone to embrace lifelong celibacy, then the Church has a responsibility to become the kind of community where lifelong celibacy is actually livable.
That means more than Sunday morning.
It means friendship.
Meals.
Family.
Belonging.
People who know when you're struggling.
People who show up at the hospital.
People who celebrate holidays with you.
People who are still there when you're sixty-five.
People who become family when biological family is gone.
The Church can't organize virtually everything around married couples and children and then tell a gay Christian:
“Your calling is lifelong singleness. Good luck.”
If we're going to preach celibacy, we need to recover the kind of Christian community that makes celibacy possible.
Otherwise, we've proposed a rule without referencing the family Scripture that defines the Church's intended role.
There's One Question I Still Can't Shake
Imagine two couples walk into the same church.
The first is heterosexual.
Both people were previously married. Their earlier marriages ended for reasons the church wouldn't consider biblically justified.
Eventually they marry each other.
Years later, they genuinely come to faith.
Most evangelical churches would not tell them:
“You need to repent by divorcing each other.”
They would likely be encouraged to honor the marriage they're in now.
Now imagine another couple.
They're gay.
They've been together for fifteen years.
They're legally married.
They genuinely come to faith.
Traditional Christian theology gives them a very different answer.
Their sexual relationship must end because the Church doesn't recognize their union as marriage in the biblical sense.
There is a coherent theological argument for that distinction.
The first relationship is understood as a real male-female marriage, even if it arose through sinful circumstances. The second isn't considered marriage according to the traditional biblical definition.
But saying there's a theological distinction doesn't make the human reality disappear.
If repentance means preserving one relationship while fundamentally changing the other, Christians need to be able to explain why with more care than:
“The Bible says so.”
We're talking about actual human beings.
Actual relationships.
Actual histories.
Actual families.
Actual costs.
Conviction doesn't require us to pretend those costs aren't real.
So Where Did I Land?
I didn't begin this research wanting to prove a traditional position.
I didn't begin wanting to dismantle one either.
I wanted to know what the evidence could actually support.
At the end of this first part of the investigation, here's where I land:
The biblical case that same-sex sexual intercourse falls outside the historic Christian sexual ethic is strong.
It doesn't depend on Sodom.
It doesn't depend on one disputed Greek word.
It wasn't invented when the word homosexual appeared in an English Bible.
The argument emerges from the larger biblical story of creation, marriage, sexual ethics, Jesus and Paul.
But I also came away convinced of something else:
The Bible's teaching about same-sex sexual behavior does not permit Christians to make assumptions about everything else concerning LGBTQ people.
It doesn't automatically tell us why someone experiences same-sex attraction.
It doesn't tell us that every gay person chose that attraction.
It doesn't establish that orientation and sexual behavior are morally identical.
It doesn't tell Christians to fear gay people.
It doesn't tell parents to reject their children.
It doesn't tell churches to treat homosexuality as though it were somehow beyond the reach of grace.
And it certainly doesn't permit Christians to humiliate people in the name of defending truth.
Those questions require more investigation.
And that's exactly where this series is headed.
Because there is still another possibility we need to be willing to consider:
The Church could be right about part of its theology and still be wrong about some of the ways it has applied it.
Likewise, the Church could have treated LGBTQ people badly without that automatically proving the historic sexual ethic itself is wrong.
Both things can be true.
If we really want truth, we have to be willing to investigate both.
But Now the Question Has Changed
I started this first part by asking:
What does the Bible actually say about homosexuality?
I ended up asking another question:
If the Bible primarily speaks about sexual behavior, when did Christianity begin speaking about a type of person?
Because somewhere along the way, something changed.
Paul didn't write about an “LGBTQ community.”
The early Church wasn't debating “sexual orientation” using modern psychological categories.
For much of Christian history, same-sex sexual activity was discussed primarily as an act.
Eventually it became something else.
A behavior became associated with a category of person.
The language changed from sodomy to homosexuality.
Then homosexuality moved into medicine and psychology.
Eventually it became an identity.
Then a community.
Then a civil-rights movement.
Then one of the defining political and religious conflicts in modern America.
And the Church's language changed along the way too.
That leaves me with questions I don't think we can answer by simply opening Romans 1 again.
When was the idea of a “homosexual person” actually developed?
What did Christians in the first centuries of the Church really believe about same-sex relationships?
How did medieval Christianity understand them?
When did governments begin criminalizing them?
What role did the Church play?
When did homosexuality become a psychiatric diagnosis?
Why was it later removed?
What really happened with the 1946 Bible translation controversy?
What happened between Christianity and the gay community during the AIDS crisis?
How much did the rise of the Moral Majority and the Religious Right change the way evangelical Christians talked about homosexuality?
What happened inside the ex-gay movement?
And how did same-sex marriage transform the conversation from one primarily about sexual behavior into one about identity, equality, religious freedom, and civil rights?
But there's one question underneath all of them that I want to follow wherever the evidence leads:
Which parts of what the American Church now calls “the biblical position on homosexuality” actually come from Scripture, and which parts came from history, culture, psychology, politics, and the Church itself?
That's where we're going next.
Because if Christians are serious when we say Scripture, not culture, is supposed to shape our convictions, then we should be willing to investigate our own history with the same intensity that we investigate everyone else's.
And I have a feeling that history is going to make this conversation even more complicated.
Coming Next
When a Behavior Became an Identity
How 2,000 Years of Church History Shaped the LGBTQ Question
Part Two of The Church & LGBTQ Question
The Bible gave us a starting point.
Now we need to find out what happened between Paul and us.
