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Second Thoughts (Clements) |
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Roy Clements first pastored the Nairobi Baptist Church in Kenya and was later the Senior Pastor at Eden Baptist, a busy church in the university town of Cambridge, England. During that time, besides being a popular conference speaker, he also wrote numerous books. With over 20 years of international preaching and teaching experience, he became an internationally respected conservative Christian leader. In 1999, he first publicly acknowledged his homosexual orientation. As a result, some publishers and bookshops have withdrawn and/or refused to carry his books any longer and according his website, "most pulpits and conference platforms have been denied to him." The following article is posted, with the author's kind permission, as an example of some of the more thoughtful evangelical writing advocating a "non-traditionalist" approach to sexual ethics. Why Evangelicals Must Think Again About Homosexuality, by Roy Clements I believe there are at least three reasons: 1. Because Christian hostility towards homophile relationships rests on an interpretation of the Bible which is in many respects open to question. 2. Because there is a diversity of opinion among Christians about the issue which will cause division within the churches unless an attitude of greater tolerance and mutual respect prevails. 3. Because current pastoral practice is damaging homosexual Christians and so alienating the gay community generally that evangelism is impossible. All these three arguments will undoubtedly be challenged by evangelicals wishing to maintain the traditional position. Against (1), they will insist that the Bible unambiguously declares that all homosexual genital acts are sinful; any contrary reading involves distorting the plain sense of the text. Against (2), they will observe that Christian tradition on this matter is unanimous and schism may be necessary to preserve the moral purity of the church. Against (3), they will protest that, since homosexual acts are sinful, responsible pastoral practice and evangelism must call upon gay men and women to renounce such immorality as an inescapable part of the cost of Christian discipleship. It would require a book to fully respond to these objections; this essay sets itself the more modest task of highlighting a couple of key issues in the debate. The account of human sexuality provided by the book of Genesis displays many facets. At the simplest level it is clearly related to the mandate to "multiply". Sexual reproduction is one of the many features which the human race has in common with the animal world. But the linkage of the phrase "male and female" to "the image of God", together perhaps with the unexpected first-person plural verb "let us make", suggests that there is something distinctive about human sexuality too ( see Genesis 1:26-27). Looking back at this ancient text from a Christian perspective, it is tempting to speculate that a single human individual cannot fully reflect the complexity of God's likeness. Augustine long ago made this suggestion in his discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity. If love is an essential part of the divine being, he reasoned, then there must of necessity be Another who is the eternal object of that love. And if humankind is to "image" such a God, then inter-personal relationship must be intrinsic to our existence too. This insight seems to be confirmed by the complementary account of creation provided in Genesis 2. God, we are told, was strangely sympathetic to the loneliness of Adam, observing that within the universe he had so conspicuously pronounced "good" there was, nevertheless, a significant exception. "It was not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18). In the following verses we are given another account of the purpose of sexuality: not procreation this time but companionship. A companionship, indeed, that goes much deeper than any that could be provided by the animal world because it has a profoundly organic, "one flesh" dimension to it. Paul, once again reflecting on this text with the benefit of Christian hindsight, comments that there is a "mystery" involved here. Sexual union, he claims, foreshadows the intimate relationship Christ desires to have with his Church (Ephesians 5:31-32; note also I Corinthians 6:15-17). So it may not be too much to say, as in fact the Catholic tradition always has, that human sexuality possesses a sacramental significance. It communicates spiritual realities in a physical and symbolic way, and in so doing it provides us with the verbal and emotional vocabulary to understand something of the heart of God. It comes as no surprise, then, that there is a "mystic" dimension to sex that often links it to religious experience in some way. To identify this connection, the Greeks employed the word "eros". Plato in his "Symposium" uses this term for the compelling desire for divine things, and in the later mystery religions it describes a state of ecstatic union with divinity. Catholic mystics in the mediaeval period often described their spiritual experiences in unmistakably erotic language. And Puritan commentaries on the Song of Solomon spiritualised that poetic celebration of "eros" so that it became a vehicle for expressing devotion to Christ. Evangelical hymnbooks still display the influence of this tradition. Take the following lines, for instance. I lift my heart to thee, Saviour Divine; for thou art all to me, and I am thine. Is there on earth a close bond than this: that my Beloved's mine and I am his? To summarise then, human sexuality was not exclusively designed by our Creator to foster procreative male-female bonds. Rather, as creatures made in the image of an inter-personally related God, our animal sex-drive was spiritually elevated into "eros", an innate desire for an intimate bonding relationship with another person, which finds its ultimate fulfilment in union with Christ. Second Thoughts - pg. 2 | ||||||||
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