Peter Gomes was a very eloquent preacher, and a good writer as well. His best-selling book from the 1990s is entitled The Good Book, and there is a good deal to commend about it. He sanctions careful detailed contextual study of the Bible. For instance, he says….p.12—-”
“Bible studies tend to follow this route. The Bible is simply the entry into a discussion about more interesting things , usually about oneself. The text is a mere pretext to other matters and usually the routine works like this: A verse or passage is given out, and the group or class is asked ‘What does it mean to you?’ The answers come thick and fast, and we are off into the life stories or personal situations of the group and the session very quickly takes the form of Alcoholics Anonymous, Twelve Step meetings or other exercises in healing and therapy. I do not wish to disparage the very good and necessary work these groups perform…I simply wish to say that this is not Bible study, and to call it such is to perpetuate a fiction.
“Bible study actually involves the study of the Bible. That involves a certain amount of work, a certain exchange of informed intelligence, a certain amount of discipline. Bible study is certainly not just the response of the uninformed reader to the uninterpreted text, but Bible study in most of the churches has become just that— the blind leading the blind, or as some caustic critics of liberal Protestantism would put it, the bland leading the bland. The notion that texts have meaning and integrity, intention, contexts, and subtexts, and that they are part of an enormous history of interpretation that has long involved some of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world, is a notion often lost on those for whom the text is just one more of the many means the church provides to massage the egos of its members.”
This is exactly right. To the claim that one only needs a brain and the Holy Spirit to understand the Bible the proper response is ‘It’s a shame you are not giving the Holy Spirit more to work with’. Detailed contextual study of the Bible is necessary, especially for understanding its more difficult portions and genres.
More problematic is the way Gomes deals with the way the Bible has been abused. It has indeed been used for various unrighteous causes and to justify unChristian behavior. Gomes is right that the Bible does not teach abstinence from alcohol but rather temperance and moderation. It was our Wesleyan holiness movement that taught abstinence, and went beyond even John Wesley on that front. As for slavery, he gets a good deal wrong. Paul is indeed, in the context of the house church, working hard to make clear that slaves are persons with consciences and are to be treated with respect and love. He even says in Colossians they are to be treated as equals, and indeed masters are urged in Ephesians to serve ones slaves as well as vice versa. This was radical and provides a trajectory for change within the Christian household. And Philemon is revolutionary— ‘no longer as a slave but rather as a brother’ (also implied in Gal. 3.28).
As for what he says about anti-semitism, he seems to confuse anti-semitism with opposition to some forms of Judaism by Paul and others, which is another matter entirely. Rightly interpreted Paul is not anti-semitic in any sense, he is engaging in a fraternal debate with other Jewish followers of Jesus. Nor is Gommes right that Paul endorsed a two track model of salvation, one for Jews through keeping the Mosaic covenant and one for Gentiles through Jesus. Wrong— God’s people are Jew and gentile united in Christ (again Gal. 3.38).
In regard to women, he is right to highlight various positive roles women played from the outset of Jesus’ ministry and in the early church, and he is right that passages like 1 Cor. 14.33b-36 and 1 Tim. 2.8-15 are correcting specific problems that in this case are caused by women, but such corrections do not rule out women doing ministry. The abuse of a privilege doesn’t rule out its proper use. Gomes is right to distinguish principles from practices in the NT, and as Gordon Fee used to say we look for equivalent practices today to implement Biblical principles, we don’t have to have the same practices (e.g. women should not wear jewelry— 1 Tim. 2).
Most problematic is Gomes’ longer chapter on homosexuality. Here he follows Boswell and Furnish’s arguments, arguments that Richard Hays in his Moral Vision of the NT, and in a previous article critiquing Boswell’s case, not to mention Rob Gagnon’s The NT and Homosexual Practice have made abundantly clear are fundamentally flawed. It is frankly irrelevant that the term homosexuality is a modern (19th century) one. So is the phrase gender orientation as distinguished from the biology of gender determination. The Bible does indeed say that same sex sexual activity is sin. The claim that the Bible is only critiquing male prostitution or pederasty and that the ancients knew nothing about consensus long term adult relationships between homosexuals is simply false.
Equally false is Gomes’ attempt to distinguish the creation story from the notion of marriage, something Jesus himself quite clearly links together in Matt. 19. And while we are on that text Jesus offers only two options for his disciples— heterosexual monogamy or celibacy in singleness. End of story. This is not because of Jesus’ ignorance of other kinds of adult relationships. It is because God set up the human race as male and female, and both the unitive and procreative aspects of sexual expression were supposed to create a bond between a man and woman called a one flesh union of male and female, which no other sort of relationship could produce. Only such a relationship can turn men into husbands, women into wives, with the potential to become fathers and mothers. The notion that Jesus has nothing relevant to say about the modern issue of gay marriage is completely false.
It is strange as well that in so detailed a chapter as Gomes’ on the subject of homosexuality that he nowhere even discusses the term arsenokoitas. Not once. If male on male sexual expression is banned in Christian ethics, which it is, then obviously gay marriage is a non-starter if one is referring to Christian marriage. Civil unions are another matter, and are not based on Christian views of marriage. What the secular state deems legal should not be the basis for Christian considerations about whether such a marriage meets Christian ethical standards. Throughout his discussion Gomes’ assumes a kind of flawed logic as follows—- gays are born this way, so therefore God made me this way, so it must be good. Nowhere does human fallenness or the obvious fact that human beings in various ways are born with flaws or deficiencies of various sorts enter into his reflections. He even suggests that homosexuals have to express themselves in the ways they do, as if they have no choice in the matter. This likewise is false. Francis Collins in the appendix to his The Language of God not only stresses that there is no evidence, at least not yet of a gay gene (though some may be born with tendencies in that direction) but even more importantly as he says— ‘no one is hard-wired to behave in those ways’. It is a matter of choosing to follow certain inclinations, feelings, passions. This is exactly right.
I agree with those who say that the debate about same sex issues is not merely a debate about the interpretation of key Biblical passage. It is also a debate about whether the Bible is authoritative and teaches certain views of these ethical issues. In some cases, some are prepared to say things like ‘the Bible got slavery wrong and also homosexuality’. I disagree. Nothing the Bible actually teaches is wrong, and it doesn’t endorse patriarchy or slavery etc . So the analogy with slavery or patriarchy doesn’t work. It is clear that what is at issue here is not merely a minor ethical matter. What is at issue is the authority of the Bible when it comes to Christian ethics.
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