How the mighty have fallen

Nicholas Wolterstorff has been a noble warrior in the field of philosophy of religion.  He has worked with Alvin Plantinga to lead the Society of Christian Philosophers, arguing philosophically that one can be an orthodox believer and do rigorous philosophy at the same time.

Alas, we can no longer say that.  On October 13 he spoke publicly for the first time on homosexuality, advancing embarrassingly-weak arguments for the politically-correct position on marriage and sexuality.

For example, he dismissed Genesis 19 as being simply about gang rape, and the prohibitions in Leviticus 18 and 20 as merely some among many other sins that ought not be “cherry-picked.”

But ancient Jews saw Genesis 19 as a description of homosexuality and condemned it.  Jubilees 16.5-6 and the 12 Patriarchs, both written in the 2^nd century before Christ, when Jews were alarmed by Hellenistic acceptance of homoeroticism, denounced same-sex activity and this passage as an instance of it.  The New Testament author Jude’s clear reference (7) to the same suggests that New Testament authors understood Sodom’s sin in this way.

Wolterstorff also dismissed the prohibitions of same-sex activity in Leviticus 18.22 and 20.13 because they are found alongside other prohibitions of other sins and so should not be “cherry-picked.”  It would be “unfair to universalize that condemnation while ignoring everything else that’s forbidden.”

What else is forbidden in these two chapters of Leviticus?  Child sacrifice, bestiality, adultery, incest, idolatry, theft, deceit, slander, revenge, sorcery, cursing parents, and dishonest business practices.  Do we really ignore these others?  Does the New Testament?  The answer is no.

Besides, in the long list of prohibited practices in these chapters, only one is singled out as tô`ēbâ or “abominable”: same-sex intercourse.  The ritually “impure” practices in Leviticus (childbirth, seminal emissions, heterosexual intercourse, and menstruation)–which Wolterstorff suggests we ignore–are not punished but purified by bathing and sacrifice.

Wolterstorff makes similarly weak arguments for a liberal reading of Romans 1.  He claims its clear prohibition of “men consumed with passion for one another” and committing “shameless acts with men” could not possibly describe the “loving covenantal relationships” he has seen among gay couples.

But Paul in Romans 1 is concerned not with the conditions of those men and their relationships but with the acts themselves. He uses a phrase familiar in Hellenistic Judaism to denounce homosexual acts, saying they are para phusin  [against nature]–a disruption of the created order.  There is no hint of what else might be going on in their lives, such as the quality of their relationships with one another.  Paul focuses instead on the acts and declares them to be unnatural in themselves.

It is disappointing to see the otherwise-rigorous Wolterstorff use such sloppy reasoning in support of what is now de rigeur in the academy.  But it is not shocking.  Intellectuals have proven time and again to be more susceptible than the hoi polloi to the fear that one is out of step.