Does a change to welcome the Gentiles indicate a change to welcome same-sex attracted people? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
How did Richard Hays fall so far?
He used to be seen as a stalwart in many issues and a great mind in ethics. If you look at this work, you wonder where that has gone. There is no interaction with the scholarship. There is no interaction with the critics. There are just pronouncements. It is as if he is trying to sneak in his conclusion in whichever way he can so it won’t be looked at.
So this chapter is about the Jerusalem Council. This is something that took place in Acts 15. As the church welcomed Gentiles in, the relationship between the law and Christianity needed to be clarified. How much of the law were Gentiles supposed to follow? Could they do whatever they wanted?
In this chapter, some Pharisees show up saying that Gentiles must be circumcised and taught to follow the Law of Moses. The church met, with the apostles, to debate the issue. Notice that. They debated it. They did not just make a pronouncement.
To the thankfulness of all Gentile men, it was decided that we did not need to be circumcised. (You think evangelism could be hard today? Imagine telling a guy who is interested in convert what he has to undergo and see how willing he is then.) However, that did not mean anything goes. There were four things Gentiles were taught to avoid. Three could be included under trying to not offend Jewish sensibilities and that is eating blood of animals, strangled animals, and food offered to idols.
Yet one more item was sexual immorality. There is never any hint in the Pauline epistles that there is any wavering on this issue. Sex is for a husband and a wife. End of story.
But what does Richard Hays say?
Does Luke’s account of the Jerusalem Council offer a model for how the church today might address controversial issues concerning inclusion of sexual minorities? Indeed, it is a promising model, fully consistent with the flow of the Bible’s ongoing story of God’s expansive grace. The model suggests that just as the early Christians deliberated together and decided to remove barriers to gentile participation in the community of Jesus-followers, so also the church today should open its doors fully to those of differing sexual orientations.
Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 189). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.
No. It doesn’t. The council met together to deal with an issue that was not addressed in the Jesus tradition and they did so based on Scripture. If the same model is followed today and it is based on Scripture, the case is clear. Scripture does not approve of these relationships. The Gentiles were not sinners because they were Gentiles, as if all Jews were pure and innocent. They were sinners because of the things that they did and because they were fallen human beings.
There is no parallel. The standard of no sexual immorality still applies today. It would be interesting to see how the council would have responded had Richard Hays been there.
What should be of most concern is how God responds.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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