Lot's wife and homosexuality
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| English: Abraham Sees Sodom in Flames, circa 1896–1902, by James Jacques Joseph Tissot (French, 1836-1902) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Reumah’s thoughts raced over the events of the last twenty-some years. She remembered the first day when she had seen Lot, the day he first entered Sodom. She picked him out immediately as a special person—young, wealthy, handsome, and an “outsider.” He believed in a different God than did the rest of her society, and this made him decent and honest. Lot often shared with her his faith in his God Yahweh and told her amazing stories of how Yahweh had done wonderful signs and miracles for him and his uncle Abraham. Lot clearly adored Abraham and his wife Sarah. They had brought Lot with them from their birthplace and helped to make him independently wealthy. Then, when Lot had become so powerful and rich that the land could not sustain both his and Abraham’s flocks and herds, Abraham selflessly gave Lot the first choice of other lands. Lot chose the fertile plain of the Jordan River near Sodom.
Lot immediately became the focus of the affections of eligible women and seducing men. Many men propositioned Lot, but he was content to be courted by the women of Sodom. His wealth protected him from overly aggressive men. To have sex with men was against his religion, Lot had often confessed. Reumah’s father, King Bera, took a liking to Lot. His position of leadership among the elders of the community gave her an advantage over the other women of Sodom. She quickly won Lot’s heart and became his wife. Her husband seemed to enjoy his inherited power and prestige. Reumah and her two daughters in time came to believe in Yahweh, but she also was determined not to offend her ancestors’ gods.
Still, she owed much to the courage and devotion of Abraham, her uncle by marriage. When he and his servants rescued Lot and the King of Sodom from the tyranny of King Kedarlaomer and his league, Abraham refused all spoil and reward. He didn’t want anyone to get the idea that he owed his success and wealth to anyone, including the king. “Yahweh alone is my reward,” he often said.
Reumah was shaken out of her thoughts by Lot’s bold proclamation: “I’m going to try to pacify the men by offering our daughters to them.” Reumah could hardly believe her ears. Would she now lose her daughters? They were already engaged to other men! She screamed her opposition. The men screamed back, “Forget Lot’s wife.” The messengers at that moment struck all the men with blindness. Yet they continued groping for the door.
The tumult of the crowd was now accompanied by the shaking of her house. “Earthquake! Earthquake! This is horrible!” she exclaimed. What did it all mean? Lot explained that the messengers were actually emissaries from his God, who was about to destroy Sodom because of its wickedness. The messengers were there to deliver the righteous because God loved them and would not allow them to be overtaken by the destruction.
“So this is what it is all about.” Reumah was really not surprised. Sodom’s reputation as “sin city” was widespread. The sexual abuse of men with men, bestiality, seduction, sexual exploitation, and rape were all part of everyday life in Sodom, and the king encouraged it as part of royal policy. Even more rampant were the greed, arrogance, and economic exploitation. The poor, the powerless, and the slaves were especially vulnerable. Reumah was grateful that her family had been spared all of this. After all, by the king’s authority, Lot held a seat of judgment at the gate. Still, Reumah wondered how Lot would fare if he was seduced during one of his wine binges. She was grateful that she had two daughters but wondered about the character of her future sons-in-law.
By dawn their situation was desperate. The earthquakes were increasing and the violence more threatening. The messengers announced that Yahweh was determined to rescue Lot and his family, but they had to flee at once. They must leave everything behind. Deliverance had finally come. They all breathed a sigh of relief.
But not everyone believed the warning of the messengers. The future sons-in-law refused to be persuaded. They would not leave their families.
Suddenly, almost miraculously, Reumah found herself standing with her family and the messengers outside the gate. Reumah felt as though she were in the presence of God. But the messengers compelled them to hasten to nearby Zoar lest the falling rocks and the hot, fiery ash devour them along the way. They began to run. Yet Reumah’s thoughts now turned to the future. How would they survive in a new city? With no possessions and no power and no friends in high places, how could they adjust to starting at the bottom? Was the price of giving up everything in Sodom worth this? Perhaps Sodom was not so bad after all. At least she could be a better witness for Yahweh now.
Her doubts became unbearable, and she fell behind. Fleeing was a big mistake. She had to stop. She let the others go on. She longingly looked back toward Sodom. Family, friends, and neighbors were there, as well as wealth and prestige. Perhaps many would survive. They would need her. She could go back. She could and she would return. She would wait here and then return to start all over.…
“Where is Reumah?” Lot asked. There was no answer. There were no living beings left. There were only life forms frozen in their tracks by the poisonous, deadly gasses and ash that had overcome Sodom. Clearly Reumah was among them.
THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY felt an explosion quite unlike that which shook Sodom, an eruption of reinterpretation of Scripture regarding gay and lesbian sexuality. To varying degrees, these studies have found the traditional view of key texts wrongheaded and in error. The old interpretations were replaced by three approaches:
1. References to homosexuality do not occur in passages where they traditionally have been seen (Gen. 19:1–8; Judg. 19:16–30; Ezek. 16:44–50; 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 Tim. 1:8–10; 2 Peter 2:6–8; and Jude 6–8). Identification of homosexuality in these passages is improper interpretation of Scripture.
2. Homosexuality is in the context of certain passages, but these texts concern Israel’s special ritual or sacred relationship to God (e.g., Levit. 18:22; 20:13). They are irrelevant to the Christian.
3. Whatever references to homosexuality are in Scripture may be deemed outdated and irrelevant. They concern a form of homosexuality unlike the modern practice and have nothing to contribute to contemporary discussion (e.g., Rom. 1:26–27).
There are variants to the third approach. One disassociates moral norms from theological revelation and asserts that the total modern community must decide what is moral and immoral, what God’s will is for us. Another variation that appeals to liberation theologians makes freedom in love the chief criterion for deciding the morality of homosexuality. Such reasoning reads the Bible through modern philosophies. Of course, many studies adopt two or all three approaches to the biblical texts.
A study of the biblical witness about homosexuality is timely and holds acute ramifications for people in the Judeo-Christian tradition that reach into all aspects of modern living. The homosexual lifestyle has penetrated virtually every facet of contemporary society. Organizations exist for the expressed purpose of affirming homosexuality as a legitimate Christian lifestyle, including an entire church denomination, the Metropolitan Community Church. The “gay rights” movement demands that society remove all civil restrictions on homosexual activity so that homosexuals have access to all jobs, housing, and public service in government.
Their “sexual orientation” should not be a barrier to any opportunity. The gay community designs federal and state legislation and promotes judicial decisions as avenues for advancing its goal to include homosexual activity under civil rights protection. Churches wrestle with such matters as the acceptance of homosexuals into the church and even the ordination of gays and lesbians. The gay community has gone so far as to confront society with a redefinition of marriage that would recognize two homosexuals living together as man and wife, with rights to adopt children.
The book that led the way for this new interpretation of the Scriptures was D. Sherwin Bailey’s Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition. More recently, John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality won a 1981 American Book Award for History. Boswell’s treatment of Scripture and history to the fourteenth century was hailed as “a groundbreaking work,” a “revolutionary study,” “one of the most extensive treatments” of homosexuality, “an astonishing work of scholarship.” It was said to open “a new area of historical inquiry.” Indeed, he succeeded “in making one think the unthinkable.”1 Robin Scroggs, L. William Countryman, George Edwards, John McNeill, Pim Pronk, Martti Nissinen, and other reinterpreters have followed Bailey and Boswell.
Boswell’s work continues to have a significant impact among homosexuals and others, within and without Christendom. The gay movement champions his work because it believes that it will change the attitudes of heterosexuals and persuade them to accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. It does this by removing the biblical sanctions against homosexuality. Boswell and others are, I believe, so far-reaching and assertive in their revised interpretations of the biblical passages that they have crossed the line from objectivity to activism and are not only revisionist but also prohomosexual.
The approach of liberation theology is distinctive. George Edwards adds this dimension to the interpretation of Scripture. Where Paul and other writers of Scripture might condemn homosexuality, the theology of gay/lesbian liberation must “correct” them. There can be no such condemnation because soteriology is liberation. Liberation is based on love, whether gay and lesbian or heterosexual. So Edwards finds Scripture irrelevant and uses liberation theology to “correct” it.
Still more recently, another approach espouses a distinction between purity and morality. Countryman believes that homosexuality violates only the Old Testament “purity rule”; it does not violate any moral principle. Since Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament abrogated all purity rules, homosexuality is acceptable.3 Whether this approach can sustain a distinction between rules and principles, it challenges the traditional understanding of homosexuality.
Following Countryman, it is important, then, to discover what moral principle, if any, affects our understanding of homosexuality as acceptable or unacceptable behavior. I will argue that the nature of God as both loving and holy provides the anchor for just such a moral principle that excludes homosexual behavior.
Pim Pronk defends homosexuality from the perspective of moral argumentation. It is within the “whole human community,” not the narrow confines of revelation or theology, that a moral determination about sexual morality must be made. Theology and revelation cannot limit God’s will for another day and time. Exegesis of the Bible can affirm that its writers regarded homosexuality as sin, but does this judgment remain normative? A new context must determine how much weight to give to the Bible’s statements. Theology is not the epistemological source of the knowledge of good and evil but exists only to affirm that morality is the will of God. The what of morality is supplied by moral education, critical thinking, and rational argumentation. The whole human community in deliberation decides what constitutes good and evil. Moral positions are part of general revelation and are antecedent to the appeal to special revelation.
Pronk’s method broadly covers all moral argumentation and has far-reaching consequences—nowhere greater than in the matter of homosexual ethics. Other approaches involve a discussion of the exegesis of texts on homosexuality and their interpretation and application. This approach asserts that “there is every reason to remove the homosexuality issue permanently from the church’s agendas as a moral and religious, i.e., as a scientific, problem.” If this view is correct, then the Bible’s statements on homosexuality are truly irrelevant. Is this a valid approach?
Finally, Martti Nissinen revises Scripture’s view of homosexuality from the standpoint of worldview. He combines features of the thinking of Boswell, Countryman, Edwards, Pronk, and others. In effect, his view subjects the biblical worldview to that of modern times. If the contemporary worldview regards homosexuality differently than does the Bible, then the modern attitudes deserve to prevail.
For example, Nissinen asserts that biblical writers were people of their times, with limited knowledge. Modern “changes in worldview” force us “to diverge from the clear word of the Bible.” The “specific moral commands are norms born from the needs of the time and place.” For Nissinen, love is “the central hermeneutical principle when applying biblical commands”; such an approach means “careful examination of both the Bible and the prevailing reality in which we live with neighbors of flesh and blood.”
Clearly, Nissinen regards contemporary culture, not the Bible, to be determinative in ethics. His approach, based as it is in worldview, is potentially the most far-reaching of the revisionist interpretations of the Bible’s statements on homosexuality.
Although each of these approaches has certain distinctives, there are common principles of interpretation and theological presuppositions. All of the various approaches incorporate one or more of the three views or approaches to Scripture discussed above. These approaches to Scripture’s teaching regarding homosexuality have confused and distressed both Christians and non-Christians. It is possible to find our way to the truth if we follow a careful, deliberate, and respectful process of interpretation. We can and must interpret Scripture correctly if we are to apply it rightly within and without the church.
If religion has a direct effect on morality, and morality, in turn, has a direct effect on law or legislation, then the new interpretations of Scripture have serious consequences for society, and we must answer them. Religious grounds derived from Scripture have influenced sexual behavior in the West more fully than has any other influence. Christians cannot abandon the implications that their theology has for public morality and legislation. They must speak to the legitimacy of homosexuality and its effects on morality and law within and without the church.
De Young, J. B. (2000). Homosexuality: Contemporary Claims Examined in Light of the Bible and Other Ancient Literature and Law (pp. 23–29). Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
The book that led the way for this new interpretation of the Scriptures was D. Sherwin Bailey’s Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition. More recently, John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality won a 1981 American Book Award for History. Boswell’s treatment of Scripture and history to the fourteenth century was hailed as “a groundbreaking work,” a “revolutionary study,” “one of the most extensive treatments” of homosexuality, “an astonishing work of scholarship.” It was said to open “a new area of historical inquiry.” Indeed, he succeeded “in making one think the unthinkable.”1 Robin Scroggs, L. William Countryman, George Edwards, John McNeill, Pim Pronk, Martti Nissinen, and other reinterpreters have followed Bailey and Boswell.
Boswell’s work continues to have a significant impact among homosexuals and others, within and without Christendom. The gay movement champions his work because it believes that it will change the attitudes of heterosexuals and persuade them to accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. It does this by removing the biblical sanctions against homosexuality. Boswell and others are, I believe, so far-reaching and assertive in their revised interpretations of the biblical passages that they have crossed the line from objectivity to activism and are not only revisionist but also prohomosexual.
The approach of liberation theology is distinctive. George Edwards adds this dimension to the interpretation of Scripture. Where Paul and other writers of Scripture might condemn homosexuality, the theology of gay/lesbian liberation must “correct” them. There can be no such condemnation because soteriology is liberation. Liberation is based on love, whether gay and lesbian or heterosexual. So Edwards finds Scripture irrelevant and uses liberation theology to “correct” it.
Still more recently, another approach espouses a distinction between purity and morality. Countryman believes that homosexuality violates only the Old Testament “purity rule”; it does not violate any moral principle. Since Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament abrogated all purity rules, homosexuality is acceptable.3 Whether this approach can sustain a distinction between rules and principles, it challenges the traditional understanding of homosexuality.
Following Countryman, it is important, then, to discover what moral principle, if any, affects our understanding of homosexuality as acceptable or unacceptable behavior. I will argue that the nature of God as both loving and holy provides the anchor for just such a moral principle that excludes homosexual behavior.
Pim Pronk defends homosexuality from the perspective of moral argumentation. It is within the “whole human community,” not the narrow confines of revelation or theology, that a moral determination about sexual morality must be made. Theology and revelation cannot limit God’s will for another day and time. Exegesis of the Bible can affirm that its writers regarded homosexuality as sin, but does this judgment remain normative? A new context must determine how much weight to give to the Bible’s statements. Theology is not the epistemological source of the knowledge of good and evil but exists only to affirm that morality is the will of God. The what of morality is supplied by moral education, critical thinking, and rational argumentation. The whole human community in deliberation decides what constitutes good and evil. Moral positions are part of general revelation and are antecedent to the appeal to special revelation.
Pronk’s method broadly covers all moral argumentation and has far-reaching consequences—nowhere greater than in the matter of homosexual ethics. Other approaches involve a discussion of the exegesis of texts on homosexuality and their interpretation and application. This approach asserts that “there is every reason to remove the homosexuality issue permanently from the church’s agendas as a moral and religious, i.e., as a scientific, problem.” If this view is correct, then the Bible’s statements on homosexuality are truly irrelevant. Is this a valid approach?
Finally, Martti Nissinen revises Scripture’s view of homosexuality from the standpoint of worldview. He combines features of the thinking of Boswell, Countryman, Edwards, Pronk, and others. In effect, his view subjects the biblical worldview to that of modern times. If the contemporary worldview regards homosexuality differently than does the Bible, then the modern attitudes deserve to prevail.
For example, Nissinen asserts that biblical writers were people of their times, with limited knowledge. Modern “changes in worldview” force us “to diverge from the clear word of the Bible.” The “specific moral commands are norms born from the needs of the time and place.” For Nissinen, love is “the central hermeneutical principle when applying biblical commands”; such an approach means “careful examination of both the Bible and the prevailing reality in which we live with neighbors of flesh and blood.”
Clearly, Nissinen regards contemporary culture, not the Bible, to be determinative in ethics. His approach, based as it is in worldview, is potentially the most far-reaching of the revisionist interpretations of the Bible’s statements on homosexuality.
Although each of these approaches has certain distinctives, there are common principles of interpretation and theological presuppositions. All of the various approaches incorporate one or more of the three views or approaches to Scripture discussed above. These approaches to Scripture’s teaching regarding homosexuality have confused and distressed both Christians and non-Christians. It is possible to find our way to the truth if we follow a careful, deliberate, and respectful process of interpretation. We can and must interpret Scripture correctly if we are to apply it rightly within and without the church.
If religion has a direct effect on morality, and morality, in turn, has a direct effect on law or legislation, then the new interpretations of Scripture have serious consequences for society, and we must answer them. Religious grounds derived from Scripture have influenced sexual behavior in the West more fully than has any other influence. Christians cannot abandon the implications that their theology has for public morality and legislation. They must speak to the legitimacy of homosexuality and its effects on morality and law within and without the church.
De Young, J. B. (2000). Homosexuality: Contemporary Claims Examined in Light of the Bible and Other Ancient Literature and Law (pp. 23–29). Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
