IN A GLASS, DARKLY

Now that we’ve got the facts out of the way, let me add my opinion here.

I feel that the assembly made the correct decision on all three recommendations. #1 was a “kiss your sister” non-aggression pact, while #2 had the full, continued support of our Conference of Bishops, who felt that it was not in the best interest of church unity to take an aggressive tack when sailing into these waters.

The third recommendation could’ve been seen coming from miles off. We ELCA Lutherans have recently been through an absolute catfight regarding our church’s relationship with the Episcopal Church of the USA. Many ELCA Lutherans (including this one) had big trouble with the terms of our clergy-sharing agreement with ECUSA, which required that future ELCA pastors would be ordained only by bishops (former practice allowed for any pastor to ordain upon approval of the appropriate authorities), and more specifically, required that all future ELCA pastors be absorbed into the ECUSA’s historic episcopate. Those in opposition to this practice won a major concession, by getting rules which permitted for “conscientious objectors” to be ordained outside that episcopate.

This was a more radical move than many people realized. Though these “irregular” ordinations are somewhat rare, the possibility of them represents a major shift away from centralized denominational authority and towards a more congregational polity. While the bishops of our synods still decide how ordinands get ordained, the mere fact that an individual can attempt to move outside the church’s standards is a shift of power, and probably made recommendation #3 inevitable. (In my most cynical moments, I think of it as an attempted quid pro quo, since many–but not all–of those who opposed the historic episcopate also opposed changing ordination standards with regards to sexuality. “If you get your exceptions, we get ours,” in other words. But that would require me to think that the task force was stacked, and I don’t think it was. We’ve been down a similar road once before, and all it got us was a bunch of bad publicity.)

But there is a difference of kind involved in the two decisions, just as there is a difference in kind between the question of whether to ordain women (which we and our predecessor churches have done since 1970) and whether to ordain non-celibate homosexuals. And yet, in the good Lutheran tradition of paradox, there also isn’t a difference.

There is a difference in that there is no place in the Bible where it can be claimed that it is a sin to be a practicing woman. (Many of the early church fathers probably wished there was, but there isn’t. The Gospel of Thomas doesn’t count.) Likewise, there’s nothing which conclusively states that being ordained outside the historic episcopate is or ever has been regarded as sin. But there are Biblical texts which deal with homosexuality. (Well, it seems there’s only one which deals with female homosexuality, but we’ll get to that later.)

I must note that there are passages which state that women are to keep silent in church and are not to be permitted to have authority over men. The ELCA has opted to hear these passages as being Paul’s instructions for churches in a different time and culture. This leaves us open to the charge that we do not consider all Scripture to be inerrant and infallible; it is well to note that the ELCA makes no such claim.

The claim that same-sex unions can be blessed and persons involved in those unions ought to be eligible for ordination depends heavily upon finding a way around those troublesome passages. Two passages in the Levitical Holiness Code (Lev. 18:22 and 20:13) can be dealt with (theoretically) by noting that Christians, for the most part, do not observe this code. We eat shellfish, we wear poly/cotton shirts, and we are allowed to use flush toilets during time of war, for instance. The dietary restrictions are dealt with somewhat in Acts 4:11-18, in which God appears to Peter in a dream and tells him that these restrictions have been lifted. Many Christians have interpreted this to mean that the entire Holiness Code has been lifted, a claim which is not made by the text. So, in theory, a Christian can eat pork and still be regarded as a Biblical literalist, at least as long as he or she is not wearing a polyester/cotton shirt (viz. Lev. 19:19).

Paul’s letters, however, contain more passages which seem to suggest that homosexual activity disqualifies a person from being part of the Christian community, let alone being ordained. Romans 1:26-27, in the midst of a list of strange doings among Rome’s gentile community, discusses the issue by casting homosexual activity in a negative light, strongly implying that both male and female homosexuality is antithetical to the very concept of Christian sexual ethics.

Two words create considerable difficulty with regards to male homosexuality. They are the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai. The former is most literally rendered “the soft ones” and the latter “those who go to bed with men.” The problem is that malakoi doesn’t occur anywhere in the New Testament outside of Romans, while arsenokoitai occurs again in 1 Timothy (another discussion about sexual practices and church bondaries) but nowhere else in the New Testament–or, apparently, anywhere else in antiquity. This makes pinning down the precise meanings of these two terms, with any and all possible nuances, exceedingly difficult. (Aristotle used malakoi in reference to those who were morally weak, which doesn’t seem to help us much here. Romans 1:27 would be a strange place for Paul to add an aside about general moral weakness, however.) It would have been better for our purposes here for Paul to avoid using what seem to be euphemistic terms, but we have what we have.

The picture is somewhat less clear regarding female homosexuality, if you can believe that. Paul merely talks about women who have exchanged what is natural for what is against nature (para physein), and it is only by context that you can guess that he is discussing sexual behavior. Moreover, this is the only passage in all of Scripture which directly addresses the question of female homosexuality.

The seeming ambiguity of these terms has opened the door to a variety of interpretations. Many have come to the conclusion that Paul was condemning male prostitution; others have said that the real problem was pederasty. (The preceding link goes to a Wikipedia article which contains some graphic text and images. Consider yourself warned.) No scholars seem to state definitively if Paul’s comments on female homosexuality refer to prostitution, or some little-known analogue to pederasty, or something else.

The problem here, as I see it, is the desire to substitute a highly nuanced interpretation for the plain, facial meaning of these terms. Paul was not really one to mince words, as anybody who’s read Galatians in the original Greek can tell you. To claim that words and phrases like para physein, malakoi, and arsenokoitai mean something other than what they appear to mean on first glance is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and I do not think such proof has been shown by those advancing the cause of ordaining homosexuals. Nor do I think it ever can be, unless some antiquarian finds a manuscript which shows that all these terms had specific non-facial meanings which were well-known in Paul’s times and places. In the absence of compelling proof that Paul meant something other than what it appears he said, the only wise interpretation is the most conservative one.

And this is why I feel there isn’t a difference between the question of ordaining non-celibate gays and ordaining women, nor between permitting conscientious objection to the historic episcopate and and permitting such objection to standards of sexual behavior. In the former case, we have Biblical women who were in leadership positions, who were actively involved in the act of proclamation. In the latter, you have the priesthood of Melchizedek, a priesthood which existed outside the Levitical framework. There is no evidence suggesting that the standards of sexual behavior are similarly porous. To misappropriate some Catholic language, even if we can craft an exegetical nihil obstat, we’re still a long way from getting an imprimatur. Thus, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly made the right choice on Recommendation #3.