HOMOSEXUAL HERMENEUTICS AND ITS DEADLY IMPLICATIONS: A PASTORAL REFLECTION

Mainline denominations and many biblical scholars and theologians have tumbled down the slippery slope of biblical errancy faster than anyone could have predicted. Since Scripture is no longer the basis of any moral judgment whatsoever, acceptance of homosexuality is no longer a question of sinfulness, but a question of "social justice." And this justice is not founded on God's absolute moral justice, but a justice dependent on the capricious mores of this current world.

Ironically, in spite of their sentiments towards the inspiration of Scripture, these theologians continue to use Scripture to debate evangelical theologians. But the upshot of this debate is the gross misinterpretation of the several passages that condemn homosexuality.

By rejecting the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, these theologians lack the ultimate power and authority that Scripture can bring. Carl Henry says it best when he writes:

Yet it is clear from the history of theology and philosophy that efforts to preserve the reality of the living Creator-Redeemer God apart from the authority of the scriptural word always falter. Even the neo-orthodox theology of "divine encounter," emphasizing as it did the distinctive impersonal self-revelation of God, soon emptied into existentialist alternatives and finally into death-of-God speculation. The triune God is indeed the "ontological premise" on which the historic Christian faith is founded, but the case for biblical theism seems to require his definitive revelation in the inspired Word of Scripture.63

Scripture is the ultimate standard of reference because God has made it his inspired and inerrant revelation to humanity, as he writes in 2 Tim 3:16-17: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" [NIV]

V. THE MORAL-SOCIAL CONTROVERSIES

Other arguments for gay acceptance came from the Kinsey Study in 1948. Kinsey concluded that at least ten percent of the American population (or approximately twenty-five million people) is gay. If this were true, most homosexuals would argue that something regularly practiced by so many people could not be morally wrong. But the Kinsey report was anything but objective and scientific. Joseph Gudel designates four reasons for the skewed conclusions of the Kinsey report. First, twenty-five percent or fifty-three hundred of his interviewees were prison inmates. Incarcerated individuals would obviously have no access to having heterosexual relationships even if it was that person's desire to do so. Forty-four percent of these inmates admitted to a homosexual relationship in prison. Second, he used several hundred male prostitutes as part of his sample. Third, his methodology for choosing many of the other interviewees was on a "volunteer basis." That is to say, most of his volunteers were already practicing homosexuals. Finally, Kinsey did not say that ten percent of the entire U.S. population was homosexual. Rather, he affirmed that ten percent of white American males were "more or less" exclusively homosexual for at least three years of their lives between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five.64