by Wolfhart Pannenberg
from Good News Magazine
Can love ever be sinful? The entire tradition of Christian
doctrine teaches that there is such a thing as inverted, perverted
love. Human beings are created for love, as creatures of the God who
is Love. And yet that divine appointment is corrupted whenever people
turn away from God or love other things more than God.
Jesus said, ?Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me?? (Matt. 10:37, NRSV). Love for God must take precedence
over love for our parents, even though love for parents is commanded
by the fourth commandment.
The will of God be the guiding star of our identity and self-
determination. What this means for sexual behavior can be seen in
Jesus? teaching about divorce. In order to answer the Pharisees?
question about the admissibility of divorce, Jesus refers to the
creation of human beings. Here he sees God expressing his purpose for
his creatures: Creation confirms that God has created human beings as
male and female. Thus, a man leaves his father and mother to be united
with his wife, and the two become one flesh.
Jesus concludes from this that the unbreakable permanence of
fellowship between husband and wife is the Creator?s will for human
beings. The indissoluble fellowship of marriage, therefore, is the
goal of our creation as sexual beings (Mark 10:2-9). Since on this
principle the Bible is not time bound, Jesus? word is the foundation
and criterion for all Christian pronouncement on sexuality, not just
marriage in particular, but our entire creaturely identities as sexual
beings. According to Jesus? teaching, human sexuality as male and as
female
is intended for the indissoluble fellowship of marriage. This standard
informs Christian teaching about the entire domain of sexual behavior.
Jesus? perspective, by and large, corresponds to Jewish tradition,
even though his stress on the indissolubility of marriage goes beyond
the provision for divorce within Jewish law (Deut. 24:1). It was a
shared Jewish conviction that men and women in their sexual identity
are intended for the community of marriage. This also accounts for the
Old Testament assessment of sexual behaviors that depart from this
norm, including fornication, adultery, and homosexual relations.
The biblical assessments of homosexual practice are unambiguous in
their rejection, and all its statements on this subject agree without
exception. The Holiness Code of Leviticus incontrovertibly affirms,
?You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an
abomination? (Lev. 18:22 NRSV). Leviticus 20 includes homosexual
behavior among the crimes meriting capital punishment (Lev. 20:13; it
is significant that the same applies to adultery in verse 10). On
these matters, Judaism always knew itself to be distinct from other
nations.
This same distinctiveness continued to determine the New Testament
statement about homosexuality, in contrast to the Hellenistic culture
that took no offense at homosexual relations. In Romans, Paul includes
homosexual behavior among the consequences of turning away from God
(1:27). In 1 Corinthians, homosexual practice belongs with
fornication, adultery, idolatry, greed, drunkenness, theft, and
robbery as behaviors that preclude participation in the kingdom of God
(6:9 10); Paul affirms that through baptism Christians have become
free from their entanglement in all these practices (6:11).
The New Testament contains not a single passage that might
indicate a more positive assessment of homosexual activity to
counterbalance these Pauline statements. Thus, the entire biblical
witness includes practicing homosexuality, without exception among the
kinds of behavior that give particularly striking expression to
humanity?s turning away from God. This exegetical result places very
narrow boundaries around the view of homosexuality in any church that
is under the authority of Scripture. What is more, the biblical
statements on this subject merely represent the negative corollary to
the Bible?s positive views on the creational purpose of men and women
in their sexuality.
These texts that are negative toward homosexual behavior are not
merely dealing with marginal opinions that could be neglected without
detriment to the Christian message as a whole. Moreover, the biblical
statements about homosexuality cannot be relativized as the
expressions of a cultural situation that today is simply outdated. The
biblical witness from the outset deliberately opposed the assumptions
of their cultural environment in the name of faith in the God of
Israel, who in Creation appointed men and women for a particular
identity.
Contemporary advocates for a change in the church?s view of
homosexuality commonly point out that the biblical statements were
unaware of important modern anthropological evidence. This new
evidence, it is said, suggests that homosexuality must be regarded as
a given constituent of the psychosomatic identity of homosexual
persons, entirely prior to any corresponding sexual expression. (For
the sake of clarity it is better to speak here of a homophile
inclination as distant from homosexual practice.) Such phenomena occur
not only in people who are homosexually active. But inclination need
not dictate practice. It is characteristic of human beings that our
sexual impulses are not confined to a separate realm of behavior; they
permeate our behavior in every area of life. This, of course, includes
relationships with persons of the same sex. However, precisely because
erotic motives are involved in all aspects of human behavior, we are
faced with the task of integrating them into the whole of our life and
conduct.
The mere existence of homophile inclinations does not
automatically lead to homosexual practice. Rather, these inclinations
can be integrated into a life in which they are subordinated to the
relationship with the opposite sex where, in fact, the subject of
sexual activity should not be the all-determining center of human life
and vocation. As the sociologist Helmut Schelsky has rightly pointed
out, one of the primary achievements of marriage as an institution is
its enrollment of human sexuality in the service of ulterior tasks and
goals.
The reality of homophile inclinations, therefore, need not be
denied and must not be condemned. The question, however, is how to
handle such inclinations within the human task of responsibly
directing our behavior. This is the real problem; and it is here that
we must deal with the conclusion that homosexual activity is a
departure from the norm for sexual behavior that has been given to men
and women as creatures of God. For the church this is the case not
only for homosexual, but for any sexual activity that does not intend
the goal of marriage between man and wife particular, adultery.
The church has to live with the fact that, in this area of life as
in
others, departures from the norm are not exceptional but rather common
and widespread. The church must encounter all those concerned with
tolerance and understanding but also call them to repentance. It
cannot surrender the distinction between the norm and behavior that
departs from that norm.
Here lies the boundary of a Christian church that knows itself to
be bound by the authority of Scripture. Those who urge the church to
change the norm of its teaching on this matter must know that they are
promoting schism. If a church were to let itself be pushed to the
point where it ceased to treat homosexual activity as a departure from
the biblical norm, and recognized homosexual unions as a personal
partnership of love equivalent to marriage, such a church would stand
no longer on biblical ground but against the unequivocal witness of
Scripture. A church that took this step would cease to be the one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, arguably the preeminent contemporary
theologian, recently retired after 27 years as professor of systematic
theology at the University of Munich, Germany, and director of the
Institute of Ecumenical Theology. Translated by Markus Bockmuehl for
publication in the Church Times; copyright Wolfhart Pannenberg.
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