Discussion on Homosexual Marriage and the Issue of Inclusion

Areas of Investigation
(1) Marriage
(2) The place of science in the discussion
(3) Inclusion

Definition of Marriage

Can a same sex relationship qualify as marriage? It appears that a gigantic paradigm shift has taken place in terms of how westerners think about marriage. While there appears to have been homosexual people in homosexual relationships in all places at all times of recorded history, no one ever suggested until the end of the 20th Century the idea of calling a homosexual relationship marriage.

I hope to investigate the cultural factors that influence why this proposal is now on the table, and how these cultural factors influence the way scripture, or particular scriptures are interpreted and applied. Does this proposal line up with the trajectory of history revealed in the progressive revelation of scripture? Might we be seeing a new manifestation  of gospel yeast at work in the world, or does this proposal line up with the trajectory of history that aligns with Satan’s rebellion against God’s good plan for humanity.

Science
Science has no notion of grace. While the effects of Divine grace can be observed and described by science, the mystery of grace remains a mystery. Science describes the natural order, and Charles Darwin’s description of life as natural selection, competition, and survival of the fittest is something I can accept as being a correct observation of nature apart from grace. When science is brought into the discussion, natural selection, competition, and survival of the fittest must be foundational to the discussion. Based upon Darwin’s theory, those who are attracted to the same gender sexually are non-viable, and therefore the condition must be seen at minimum to be a disability, and possibly a disorder. Perhaps the scientific designation should be to call it sexual disorientation.

Inclusion: Scripture and Divine Grace

Those who argue for full inclusion of committed, practicing homosexuals into Christian fellowship do so on the basis of God’s unlimited grace while assuming a definition of marriage that affirms homosexual relationships. It argues from the fact of limited scriptural reference to homosexuality, and a reinterpretation of those limited references that claims a better hermeneutics and a more informed cultural understanding of the context in which those texts were written.

I intend to look at the scriptures involved from a specifically Anabaptist perspective on hermeneutics which sees scripture as progressive –as culminating in the life of Christ and the teaching of his apostles. I also take Jesus appeal to the pre-fall passages of Genesis in Matthew eighteen as a signpost indicating how Genesis should be read and the priority that we should give it. I assume that as culture changes over time in the Biblical record, the Biblical record also changes in its response, and that each of those prophetic responses reveal an ideal or vision towards which God is leading us, but that ideal is already identifiable in Genesis, like the DNA of a fertilized egg.

I find William Webb’s “redemptive-movement hermeneutic,” approach in Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals, to represent the kind of hermeneutic that I use to trace the trajectory of revelation. (Webb’s book is reviewed by Tom Schreiner at sbts.edu/documents/tschreiner/6.1_article.pdf.)

My conclusions about inclusion will take into account the way the Mennonite Church particularly has handled inclusion in the past with regard to military service and divorce. I will also consider the ways in which churches have handled the issue of more than one wife in cultures where polygamy is at issue.