• Hurrah for the Kingdom.
• Does the Bible Condemn Homosexual Behaviour?

      At the banquet of the realised Kingdom of God, "people will come from east and west, from north and south" forecasts the Jesus of Luke (13:29). When the Holy City comes to be, "people will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations" prophesies the seer in Revelation (21:26).

      The 8th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, held in Harare, Zimbabwe,, 3-14 December 1998, could be interpreted as a foretaste of this Christian anticipation. There were some 4,500 of us: delegates (numbering nearly one thousand), media folk, accredited visitors, and others. They represented 339 member churches: Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal, and at some levels, Roman Catholic.

      The 'glory' of the church catholic was best experienced in the 30-40 minute periods of worship that began each weekday. The Assembly theme, "Turn to God--Rejoice in Hope", gave shape to worship: the God to whom we turn, turning to God, and rejoicing in hope. Many languages were spoken, hymns and prayers came from many traditions (and more than fifty countries) and were sung to a variety of instruments; worship leaders were priests and laity, women and men, younger and older, abled and differently abled.

      Symbolism enriched worship, for instance, when 4,000 edible leaves were prepared for the service on "healing the nations", which marked the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. We met in sight of a carved wooden cross, 4.5 metres tall, with the continent of Africa incorporated into it, the work of a Zimbabwean artist, David Guy Mutasa.

      The Assembly met on the campus of the University of Zimbabwe. In the Great Hall, the delegates wrestled with a number of tantalising issues. For example:

      (1) Threatened withdrawal by the Orthodox who contended that they were inadequately represented in key decision-making and who protested the WCC's alleged stance on homosexuality, the ordination of women to the priesthood, and the use of inclusive language. The outcome? Dialogue will continue, in spite of withdrawal by the Orthodox Churches of Bulgaria and Georgia.

      (2) Making room for Evangelicals. Many evangelicals are members of member churches, but a host are not. In general, Evangelicals charge the WCC with not being Christ-centred; not evangelistic; having departed from its reason for existence, namely, fostering the visible unity of the church; and being unscriptural with regard to homosexual behaviour. Some Evangelicals adopt a hermeneutic of suspicion toward the

      (3) Creating a "Forum of Christian Churches and Ecumenical Organisations" which would give space, for the Roman Catholic Church and major Pentecostal and Evangelical Churches. This was agreed to after consider able debate.

      (4) How to respond to grassroots demands for Third World debt reduction, elimination of child labour, and greater participation by youth in the church's life today.

      In their tent adjacent to the Great Hall, Accredited Visitors were able to see and hear videoed segments of the debates on these issues. In addition, they had a half hour Bible study of the Scripture read in worship given by a Sri Lankan which was followed by small 'Home Groups' that considered additional Scripture suggested in the Worship Book.

      A feature of this Assembly were the over 500 scheduled Padares. The dominant language in Zimbabwe is Shona and padare is a Shona word, for "a place of meeting for discussion". Among those that we participated in were: Roman Catholicism and the Ecumenical Movement; Debt Cancellation--What Then?; The Environment and Ethics; Spirituality and the Iona Unity; and From Bondage to Freedom (a recently begun program by the Mar Thoma Syrian Church for some of the children of the 100,000 prostitutes 'employed' by the 'mafia' in Bombay, India.)

      On this occasion, it was not possible to hold an Assembly Eucharist but there were scheduled Eucharistic opportunities: at the Greek Holy Trinity Cathedral, the Methodist Church, St Michael's Roman Catholic Cathedral and St Mary and All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral. At the latter the Archbishop of Canterbury preached. (As we left it, we were addressed by a woman with a baby on her back, a refugee from Rwanda. My wife sought out a Cathedral 'helper' [dressed in white, with blue cape] to offer her assistance.)

      For me, one of the best features of the Assembly was the presence of Christians (and at least one Muslim), from so many African countries, among whom were greatly gifted women.

      Probably for most, the highlight of the Assembly was the visit by President Nelson Mandela on the second Sunday afternoon. He was the guest of honour at a ceremony that marked the 50th anniversary of the WCC's formation. He testified that he would not be what he is if he had not been educated by Christian missionaries. Additionally he praised the WCC for "activating the conscience of the world for peace, on behalf of the poor, the disadvantaged and the dispossessed."

      Ronald GRAHAM has been an appreciative subscriber to National Outlook for a number of years. A former Australian who graduated from the University of Melbourne, he has lived in the United States for many years. He is Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky. This is a seminary of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a church related most closely to the Churches of Christ in Australia.

      The day before I began to write this, a woman wrote in a letter published in our daily paper: "Homosexual acts are sinful because again and again in the Bible God condemns and forbids them." In response to that confident statement, I want to take thoughtful account of each possibly relevant Scripture.

      A homosexual is a person who is sexually attracted (often exclusively) to others of his or her own sex. The word homosexual did not come into use in the English language until the late nineteenth century.

      In English translations of the Scriptures it is found only in the New Jerusalem Bible (JB), 1985 in 1 Timothy 1:10 and in the following modern versions of 1 Corinthians 6:9: the first edition of the Revised Standard Version (RSV), 1946; the first and second editions of the New English Bible (NEB), 1961/1970, the New International Version (NIV), 1973; and the various editions of Today's English Version (TEV) (= the Good News Bible), 1966/1971/1976.

      I will deal only with homosexual behaviour, not homosexual feelings. What do the Scriptures have to say about it? Very little. A great deal more is devoted to such issues as the perils of wealth, the pitfalls of pride, and the wrongness of exploiting the helpless.

      The Scriptures always need to be interpreted and the interpreter must wrestle with at least these three questions: What did the author say? What did he mean by what he said? How might that apply to us today?

      There are four or six passages that deal with homosexual behaviour: (1) two having to do with rape; (2) two with relationships between two people of the same sex which some interpret as homosexual; and (3) two legal texts. In addition, (4) there are five passages that have to do with cultic homosexual acts and (5) the Creation story.

      In Genesis 18, God sends three representatives to earth to see whether Sodom and Gomorrah are as wicked as the Lord has been told. They first come to Abraham and Sarah.

      In chapter 19, two of them push on to Sodom. They are prepared to make their beds in the street, but Lot persuades them to accept his hospitality.

      Before they go to bed, a mob of men surround the house and demand that Lot send out his visitors so that they may 'know' them. Lot urges the rabble not to do wrong and to save them from that offers them his two virgin daughters. He gives the men permission to gratify their desires but begs them not to touch his guests. Enraged by Lot's judgemental attitude, the predators threaten to deal with him more violently than they had purposed with his visitors. But the latter pull Lot inside, close the door, and strike the Sodomites blind.

• When the mob says it wants to 'know' Lot's guests they mean to have sex with them.
• It was not made up of homosexuals or Lot would not have offered them his two virgin daughters.
• In Lot's value system, the protection of his two male guests ranks higher than the protection of his two daughters.
• The Sodomites were struck blind not just because they proposed to rape guests in their own home town but because they purposely violated the culture's ethic of hospitality.

      In view of the modern understanding of this incident as homosexual rape, it is instructive that other writers of Scripture seldom, if ever, regard Sodom's sin as homosexual behaviour (cf. Isaiah 1:10, 16b-17; Jeremiah 23:14; Ezekiel 16:49; Amos 4:11, 4-5,1; Romans 9:29; 2 Peter 2:6-8; Jude 7).

      The same is true of Jesus (Matthew 10:15, Luke 17:28-29).

      A Levite from Ephraim took a concubine (a secondary wife who had inferior status). She was from Bethlehem. They had a falling out and she returned to her father's house. The Levite and a servant follow and are persuaded by her father to accept hospitality for five nights, after which the Levite left with her. By nightfall the three had arrived at Gibeah, where they were offered hospitality by an old man.

      While they were making merry, some ruffians of the tribe of Benjamin surrounded the house, demanding that the old man send the Levite out to them so that they might 'know' him. But the old man told them it would be a vile thing for them to violate his guests, so he offered them instead his virgin daughter and the concubine. But the thugs will not accept this.

      Finally the Levite forces his concubine to go out to them. All night they abuse her, abandoning her at dawn. When the Levite comes out in the morning, he finds her lying dead in the doorway. He puts her on his donkey and takes her home where he cuts her into twelve pieces and sends her "throughout all the territory of Israel".

• What began as intended homosexual rape ended up being violent heterosexual rape.
• The atrocity violated the ethic of hospitality, although only the Levite and his servant, not the concubine, are protected as guests.

• In that culture, the rape of guests was the issue. Rape is reprehensible enough whether the victim be male or female, but it is all the more heinous when committed against guests.

Neither of these two stories is relevant to the issue of homosexual relationships between two consenting adults.

      Naomi is a Hebrew woman who settled in Moab, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. Her two sons married Moabites, Ruth and Orpah. When her husband and sons died, she decided to return to Bethlehem. Ruth insisted on going with her, making three choices: about where she will live, what people she will identify with, and which God she will serve (Ruth 1:16-17).

      When Ruth marries Boaz and bears him a son, the women of Bethlehem speak of her in these terms to Naomi: "Your daughter-in-law, who loves you"; but what is mean by 'love' is not the feeling that the two women have for each other, but the fact that the birth of Ruth's son, Obed, provides Naomi with male next-of-kin who will nourish her in old age (4:14-15).

      In 1 Samuel 18:1, it is said that "the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul".

      This language is found elsewhere only in Genesis 44:30 where Judah pleads for the Egyptians to release his young brother, Benjamin, because Jacob's life is "bound up in the boy's life". It is an indication of the father's love for his son.

      In 2 Samuel 1:26, lamenting the death of Jonathan, David says: "Greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women."

• This passage is a lament marked by hyperbole.
• David was a busy heterosexual: married to seven wives whose names we know and by whom he had ten children; married to other women whose names we do not know and by whom he had ten children; and living with a number of concubines, by whom he had still more children.

      There was a powerful bond between David and Jonathan, formed (as between mates in World War II) by their comradeship in battle, but the account does not demand that their relationship was homosexual.

      Neither of these stories has any bearing on what the Scriptures have to say about homosexual acts between consenting adults.

      Verse 22 of Leviticus 18 refers to a homosexual act. It occurs in a chapter in which the Israelites are commanded by God not to live like the Egyptians, from whom they had been liberated, or like the Canaanites, into whose land they were entering. With one exception, the commands are directed at men. They include having sex with or marrying kinsfolk spanning a number of generations, having intercourse with a woman during her menstrual period, committing adultery, and sacrificing children to the god Molech. The exception is a prohibition against both men and women having intercourse with an animal.

      What the Israelites are commanded not to do are described as "abhorrent" to the Lord.

• Why they are reprehensible is not stated, except that they were all practised by the Egyptians and/or Canaanites. Rejecting these practices is a criterion for distinguishing and defining the in-group, Israel.
• What in the Old Testament God finds 'abhorrent' raises a question about the deity's value system (See Deut 7:25 and 27:15; 12:31 and 18:10-12; 13:12-16; 17:2-5; and 20:17-18; 18:10-12; 22:5; 23:17-18; 24:1-4; 25:13-16.)

      Leviticus 20:13 forbids homosexual acts. It is in a chapter that repeats some of the prohibitions in chapter 18. These chapters agree that the purpose of what is forbidden is to keep Israel different from its neighbours in its religious practices, theology, and morals.

      Chapter 20 is different in that certain acts, including homosexual ones, are to be punished by death, in all cases but one meted out by the community.

      These passages call for some comments.

• All the behaviours are equally condemned as 'abhorrent' to God. Homosexual acts are no more offensive than adultery or intercourse during menstruation.
• The males to whom these holiness laws are directed are not designated as homosexuals.
• Leviticus 20:13 not only forbids homosexual acts but also decrees that those who perform them shall be put to death.
• Nothing is said about lesbians.
• These commands are designed to define the people of God, Israel, in contrast especially to the Egyptians and the Canaanites; do they thereby define the people of God, the Church?

      There are five passages that have to do not with homosexuals but with "shrine and temple prostitutes": 1 Kings 14:22-24; 15:12; 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7; and Deuteronomy 23:17.

      Male and female were differentiated in creation so that children could be born of their union. Homosexual acts are not procreative.

      Here companionship is given as the reason for or the purpose of sexual differentiation. The issue is whether a person's need for fulfilment can be met in a faithful and personal relationship with a significant other of the same gender.

      There are three New Testament texts that are cited in support of the belief that Scripture prohibits homosexual acts.

      In this letter, Paul is dealing with what it means to be Christian in a Greco-Roman city, the differing answers to which are causing divisions within the church. What should determine the boundary between the church and the world?

      He gives five answers:

• The model of Ancient Israel (5:13, 9-12: cf. Deut. 17:7) although this is not good enough in every situation (compare vv. 11-12 in chapter 11 with vv. 8-9).
• Certain practices are simply forbidden (6:9-10); perhaps because he believes he has "the mind of Christ" (2:16).
• Irrational emotion should be restrained (14:1-33a).
• There should be a willingness to forfeit rights and freedoms for one another (6:1-8,12).
• Most positive of all is the exercise of love (13:1-13; 16:14).

      Paul's list of 'wrongdoers' (6:9-10) who "will not inherit the kingdom of God" includes the malakoi and the arsenokoitai. But what are they?

      In the New Testament, malakos appears only here and in the Gospels (Matt 11:8=Luke 7:25). There it means "soft to the touch" and refers to people who wear luxurious clothes. The King James Version (KJV) has "effeminate" whereas modern translators have given it a sexual orientation, e. g., "male prostitutes" (NRSV, NIV).

      In non-biblical literature, the word has these meanings among others: the softness of expensive clothes, laziness, boys or women who sought to make themselves more attractive, a man who allowed himself to be penetrated (when what was in view was the effeminacy of which penetration was a sign, not the sexual act itself). Basically, the word referred to a complex of femininity. 'Sissy' would often be a good English translation of the word.

      If Paul were condemning effeminacy, what did he have in mind? Modern translators have been readier to have him condemn gay and lesbian people than effeminacy. The latter may be an embarrassment, but not a sin.

      In the New Testament, arsenokoites is found only here and in 1 Timothy 1:10.

      In Paul's vice list in 1 Corinthians 6:9, it may be linked with "fornicators and adulterers" or with "thieves, the greedy, and robbers" (NRSV).

      In non-biblical vice lists, it appears with vices related to economic injustice or exploitation; perhaps rape or sex by economic coercion, but not necessarily homosexual sex.

      Modern translations of the word vary considerably but most translators seem to have assumed that it refers to "men who have sex with other men", e. g., "sodomites" (NRSV, 1993) and "sexual perverts" (RSV, 1946; REB, 1992). (Is it only homosexual perverts who are excluded from the kingdom of God and

not also heterosexual perverts, or homosexuals only when their behaviour is a perversion?)

      The NRSV mg. states that malakoi may refer either to "adolescent boys who sold sexual favours to older males" or to "the more passive male in a homosexual act" and arsenokoites to "the more active male" in such an act.

      Non-biblical usage of the words gives little support to this interpretation.

      On the one hand, when what is at stake is exclusion from the kingdom of God, greater certainty of meaning is needed than appears to be the case. On the other hand, what is described as undesirable behaviour is somehow associated by Paul with idolatry.

      To begin with in Romans, Paul is concerned to establish that without exception men and women are sinners, that sin inevitably comes under judgement, that the root cause of sin is idolatry, and that all stand in need of the redemptive grace of God made manifest in Jesus Christ.

      The manifestations of sin include: greed, jealousy, murder, fighting, deceit, gossip, scandal-mongering, pride, a spirit of boastfulness, incredible ingenuity in devising ways to do evil, disloyalty to parents, lack of conscience, lack of fidelity to one's plighted word, absence of natural affections, lack of pity, and 'homosexual' behaviour.

      The manifestations of sin are both sensual and anti-social. They are attitudes that have been adopted, a disposition that has been shaped, and deeds that have been done. They constitute an extensive sampling, so that a homosexual act is no more and no less a manifestation of sin than being unreliable, spreading gossip, or lacking compassion.

• Interpreters generally agree that it is same-sex acts that are condemned in vv. 26-27. (This is the only reference in Scripture to those we call lesbians.)
• Paul's use of the terms "natural" and "unnatural" in vv. 26-27 probably derives from his reading of Genesis 1:27-28, which states that one of God's purposes in creating "male and female" was procreation of the species.
• The men and women Paul denounces have become homosexuals after "giving up natural relations" with the other sex; in other words, they may be perverts rather than homosexuals by nature.
• Are gays and lesbians that because they are idolatrous? Is their lifestyle the consequence of their trying to live independently of God, that is, the God of the Jewish/Christian Scriptures?

      Verses 8-10 appear in a passage in which the author takes to task some Christian teachers who do not have a correct understanding of the purpose of the Jewish law. The truth is that in spite of being recipients of the grace of God, the people were sinful and therefore institutional and legal boundaries were set by God to keep the forces of evil in check and thus allow space in the community for the holiness of God to dwell and work.

      The forces of evil are let loose in a variety of persons, among whom are the arsenokoitai. As to what is meant by that term there is considerable doubt. The KJV translates it imprecisely as "they that defile themselves with mankind". These are among the modern attempts to find the most accurate English equivalent: "sodomite" (NRSV; RSV both editions); "sexual perverts" (TEV); and "those who are immoral with women or boys or with men" (JB).

The author's strictures are against those whose way of life is vain towards God and violent towards people (1:13; 4:2; 6:4, 9, 10).
• What he contrasts is rational thinking and irrational passions.
• Joined with the arsenokoita as "godless and sinful" are "those who kill their father or mother, murderers, fornicators, liars, perjurers, and slave traders." (The last mentioned were often associated with violence and male slave prostitution.)

• Two Adams and two Eves cannot respectively produce children.
• Presumably two same sex people, if they are loving and faithful to each other, can meet the human need for companionship.

• "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death" (Lev 20:13). How do we justify accepting such an act as sinful whilst ignoring the command to impose the death sentence?
• The commands in these two chapters are designed to define the people of God, Israel. What defines the people of God, the Church? According to Paul, who wrestled long and deeply with this issue, the identity marks of the Church are not observance of the Jewish law but these: being in Christ; being possessed of the Spirit of God (or of Christ); and the Christian's faith working through love.
• Since Christians cannot opt out of the world but must live in it (1 Cor 5:10), what does the world do that the Church should not do, what should the Church do that the world does not do, and what does the world do that the Church may affirm?

• Did the writer(s) of these Letters mean by homosexual what we mean by that term?
• Whether orientation (sexuality that is fixed by one's genes and/or upbringing) and preference (in which the person has a measure of choice) in same-sex relations are defensible categories is debated. In any case, such a differentiation was foreign to New Testament times.
• No New Testament writer would find God approving a promiscuous and abusive relationship between two people, whether that relationship were heterosexual or homosexual.
• Whether consideration was given to the possibility that two persons of the same sex can give themselves to each other in love and with fidelity we do not know.

      Ronald GRAHAM, originally an Australian, is a member of the Disciples of Christ (= Churches of Christ) and is Professor Emeritus of New Testament, Lexington Theological Seminary, in Kentucky, USA.