Part One - Manfred Brauch
The Prohibitions of Leviticus 18:22; 20:13

A. Basic Assumptions and Principles in Biblical Interpretation

My guiding challenge, as an interpreter of scripture are these words from the Apostle Paul:

We are servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. (I Cor: 4:1-2)

We have been given the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in our earthen vessels. (II Cor. 4:6-7)

The first text calls me to accountability to responsibility as a student of scripture, to determine in honesty and integrity what the text really says and really means, not what I would like it to say and mean. The second text calls me to humility, to recognize that I bring my limited, weak, stumbling, broken humanity to this task of faithful interpretation. To the extent to which I live out these challenges, in my teaching and writing and in this forum this morning, I gladly leave that to the judgment of God and my brothers and sister in Christ.

For me the key to a proper understanding of the nature and authority of the Bible as word of God is the incarnation.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us, (John I:14)

assuming our human limitation and brokenness. Consequently, the word and witness about God, about God's coming and redemptive presence, contained in scripture, participates in that same incarnational reality, assuming the cultural and historical limitations of those who bore witness to God's redemptive action.

Because of that incarnational reality of God's word, one of the most critical tasks in Biblical interpretation is this: How does one discern what in scripture is culturally or historically conditioned and thus belongs only to the time of the writer, from what is transcultural and transhistorical and thus is authoritative for Christian faith and life at all times and all places?

Among numerous criteria for this process of discernment, which all of us in one way or another engage in, are the following important guidelines:

First, Is the matter with which we're dealing, like the present one, inherently moral or nonmoral. Is it theological or nontheological? That is, does it really have to do with our relationship to God and with our relationship with one another?

Secondly, The contrast between the ideal call of the gospel and the actual implementation of that gospel as we find it in the New Testament documents must be taken seriously. That is, the contrast between the vision of the gospel and its actual first century implementation and practice. Galatians 3:28 is one of those vision texts for me. There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, the power categories of up and down, over and under are eliminated in the community in Christ. That is a vision which was not totally implemented in the first century, nor in the 20th century.

Thirdly, how does the particular issue correspond to or fit into the central thrust of a particular Biblical book? The central concern of the New Testament or of scripture as a whole, the total teaching of Jesus - I call this the forest versus the trees principle. And finally, especially in the relationship of the Old Testament with the New: The latter must be criterion for that which is authoritative, that is, is the understanding of God's nature, God's way of acting, God's call of obedience, in the Old Testament, consistent with the teaching of Jesus and the Apostle Paul and the rest of the New Testament witness? These, then are some of the basic assumptions and convictions that guide me in seeking to discern what the Biblical text says and means regarding homosexuality.

B. The Holiness Code and Homosexuality

In our first text group, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, with which you are all familiar, these verses which clearly forbid homosexual relations between men are part of the holiness code of Leviticus 17 through 26. Calling upon Israel to separate itself from the practices of the surrounding nation, Leviticus 18:3. Can these rules and regulations be normative for us? And if so, which ones?

It has been argued that the concern in these and other prohibitions in the Holiness Code is which ritual purity rather than with the morality of particular acts and, since the gospel releases Christians from the laws of purity, Mark 7, Acts 10, Romans 14. These injunctions are not relevant in a discussion of Christian sexual morality.

Others connect these passages with text that condemn prostitution in Israel, like Deuteronomy 23:17. And in the ancient world that practice took on both homosexual and heterosexual forms.

But there are no references in the Holiness Code to sexual abuse in contexts of worship. It is simply the act. You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. Which is rejected. What is in view is the form of the sexual activity, not it's motivation and context. This sense is further confirmed by the juxtaposition with beastiality in both chapters 18 and chapter 20.

But more importantly, the Holiness Code is concerned much more with issues of morality and justice than with issues of ritual cleanliness and purity.

Besides rules about eating blood (17:10f, 19:26) , menstrual uncleanness (18:19), proper sacrifices (17:2-8, 19:5-8), mixed seeds or cattle (19:19) , unclean animals (20:25), Sabbath keeping (19:3,30), there are prohibitions against incest (18:6-18, 20:17f), adultery, (18:20; 20:10), homosexuality (18:22; 20:13), beastiality, tribe sacrifice, idolatry and all kinds of rules and codes and regulations about honoring of parents, care for the poor, stealing and bearing false witness, oppressing the neighbor, committing injustice, slandering others, hating the brother or taking vengeance, unfair trading, rape of a betrothed woman, harming handicapped persons, acts of violence, defrauding with false weights and measures, unequal rulings in court, pushing one's daughter into the practice of prostitution.

Thus, the distinction between purity and morality is not one which can be easily imposed on the thought world of either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Would first century Christians have isolated the Levitical prohibition of same sex acts or incest or the rape of a servant girl as part of a newly obsolete standard of holiness?

There is no reason to suppose that Paul or the first generation of Christians would have connected the prohibition of same sex activity with, for example, the prohibition of sex during menstruation, rather than with the prohibition of adultery. Indeed, much of the material in Leviticus 18 through 20, particularly in the chapter verse - chapter 19, between these two verses, 18:22 and 20:13, is concerned with behaviors which Paul rejects in Romans 1:29 through 32 as well as other catalog devices which are in - incompatible with participation in the Kingdom of God.

The crucial hermeneutical question is this: On what basis and by what criteria -- given commitment to the authority of scripture, do we decide which parts of the Levitical holiness code are obsolete and which continue to be normative, ethical moral standards for Christian life and relationships?

For me, the answer to that question is Jesus life and teaching and the Apostolic witness. There is no question about it. Jesus radically and unceremoniously rejected the holiness codes, categories of ritual purity and cleanliness, uncleanness as well as in the oral law of the pharisees and the Torah. The blind and lame, the handicapped and lepers were for him, not outside the sphere of God's reign and God's love.

Further, he drew into his fellowship the sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, prodigal sons. But, he did not affirm their living and behaving because he knew it to be destructive. He came, so says the gospel to "seek and save the lost." And lostness is the result of all those practices and behaviors in the Holiness Code, which are clearly distortive and destructive of life as intended by God.

Precisely the same, it seems to me can be said of Paul. There can be no question that, following Jesus Christ, he repudiated the requirements of the holiness code regarding purity, ritual practice, clean, unclean categories. For Paul the law, and particularly the ritual law, was no longer the vehicle or means to salvation and belonging to God's Kingdom. But Paul most certainly did not reject the normative force of its moral, ethical requirements as its numerous injunctions to holy and righteous living buttressed with lists of the specific practices clearly demonstrates.

Since Paul clearly includes same sex relations in categories of living which for him are contrary to God's kingdom, the holiness code injunctions in this and other moral matters remain normative for anyone, it seems to me, who does not go beyond the confines of the Biblical cannon for discerning the mind of Christ in ethical and moral decision making.

[next]