(Argument from Design/Nature):
One argument against homosexuality is the "teleological argument" or the argument from nature. It is alleged that since God initially made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, that God's only intent for human marriage relationships/sexuality was heterosexual. However, this is an assumption based on silence, since the language used to describe marriage/sex as male and female can be archetypal in nature, and is not necessarily a precise definition. For example, Scripture clearly mentions breaking of bread and wine for the communion ritual. However, modern churches take this as an archetype and represent this symbol in different ways (wafers, grape juice, etc). Similarly, there is no reason to think that the singular representation of male-female unions is similarly not archetypal, as will be expounded more below.
One of the key issues in the discussion of sex and marriage is the question of what are the primary components of the marriage relationship. Traditionally, procreation has been one of the most important aspects of marriage/sex. It is my contention that procreation is only a minor component of the marriage relationship, and that much more important are the components of intimacy, security, exclusivity, fidelity, mutual commitment and faithfulness. Moreover, even if procreation is at some level in integral component of the intention for the marriage relationship, that metaphor for that function can be satisfied by other ways other than just biological reproduction, i.e., community service, foster parenting/adoption, etc.
There are several ways that appropriate sexual behavior is expressed in Scripture, other than mere procreation. Take Song of Solomon, for example. The whole book is (from a literalist perspective), a celebration of the love between a man and a woman, with a strong emphasis on sexuality. This emphasis on sexuality is not depicted as a means to produce offspring, but as a means to solidify the couple's love for each other. The sexuality described in this book is a very sensuous type of behavior, filled with passion and desire for the other person, not as a means for having children. Even in the first few verses of the book we see a celebration of sex as an apparent end to itself, or as a means to deepened intimacy :
Song of Solomon 1:2-4 (NIV)
2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth-- for your love is more delightful than wine. 3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the maidens love you! 4 Take me away with you--let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers. We rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine. How right they are to adore you!
In the Prophets we see an aspect of marriage in the metaphors that God uses to express anger at God's people. In the book of Hosea, Hosea is commanded to marry a prostitute to symbolize through his marriage the adulterous relationship Israel has shown to God. Similarly, many times in Jeremiah we see God calling Israel an adulterer for forsaking God for idols.
Hosea 3:1 (NIV)
The LORD said to me, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes."
Jeremiah 3:8 (NIV)
I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery.
And again, we see in Jeremiah the significance of devotion in the marriage relationship:
Jeremiah 2:2 (NIV)
"Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem: "`I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown.
Creation, Procreation and Marriage
We primarily see the procreative emphasis for marriage/sex in Genesis 1-3, on which we see Paul basing his "natural theology" in Romans 1 and elsewhere (1 Tim 2:11-15, where we see Paul commanding women to be silent and not teach men, because Adam was created first, and Eve was deceived first; 1 Cor 11:4-16; etc.). However, while it is indisputable that God commanded Adam and Eve in Gen 1:28 to "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it," that does by no means imply that the sole, primary, or even permanent component of marriage/sex is child-bearing. On the contrary, there is nothing in the nature of this command that implies that it even has to do with a marriage relationship, other than eisegesis from other texts that sexuality (thus "increasing in number") is to be done only within marriage relationships. For example, just several verses prior, in Gen 1:22, God similarly commanded the birds and the fish to "Be fruitful and increase in number."
This aspect of human nature, to "Be fruitful and increase in number," is related to humanity as creatures, not humanity as image of God. There are two crucial points to understand in this regards. First, the contention that God's primary intention for marriage was procreation is not supportable from Scripture. Second, while a case can be made from the Old Testament that marriage and procreation was an assumed part of adult relationships, that assumption is overturned in the New Testament. Regarding the first allegation, that God's intention for human marriage relationships was primarily procreation, the only passages that are capable of sustaining such a belief is the Gen 1:28 verse, be fruitful and multiply. However, given that this command is also spoken to the animals, it does little to support the relationship of humans to God. This description of sexuality colors it with a very primal feel, one that is instinctual in all animals and humans, and is one thing that strongly relates humans to the rest of creation: our procreative capacities, and our gender separation. However, it is by no means a reflection of our relationship to God. God is not gender separated. God is neither male nor female. While we have many texts in which God is described as He, Father, and masculine, one can also not deny the aspect of the divine feminine, such as in Proverbs 8, where Wisdom is personified as a woman, and in texts where God is nurturer and pro-creator (as in Genesis 1-2). Human male and femaleness does not personify Imago Dei, but rather our likeness to creation. Rather, what personifies Imago Dei is, our capacity to relate to one another, and to God, just as God, in the Divine Trinity, is self-relational and desires relationship with us. Just as God is faithful and loving to us, human Imago Dei is characterized by our capacity to be faithful and loving back to God, as well as faithful and loving to other people. There is never a time when God calls Israel an adulterer for not producing offspring. Rather, Israel is called an adulterer for breaking relationship with God, and joining with other gods/nations. Neither is there a time when God condones or encourages a man to divorce his wife for not producing offspring--only for adultery. What we see of the marriage/sex relationship when God first created it in Genesis 2:23-24(NIV) is the statement that "this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh . . . a man will leave his mother and father and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh." What we see as the definition of the relationship is one of joining two people together, with no rationale for procreation. Again, in Gen 2:18 (NIV) we read about God's intention for creating Eve for Adam: "The LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.' " God doesn't say, "I will make the man a person with whom to make children." One cannot deny the reproductive capacities that God did inherently make in the female, and my intent is not to dismiss the reproductive aspect of human nature. However, God's verbal description of the relationship God initially conctructed between Adam and Eve is of someone to alleviate Adam's alone-ness, not as somebody with whom to make babies. The primacy of the initial act of creating a partner for Adam was to produce relationship.
One cannot deny that procreation is inherent in the nature of the male-female sexual relationship. However, the very nature of the marriage relationship seems to allow for an alternative for procreation, while the primary characteristics of marriage have no counterparts. For example, a couple that cannot produce children is capable of multiple ways of pro-creating. By engaging in community service, parenting neighborhood children when the needs arise, even adopting children, the couple can produce life from their marriage that becomes the metaphor for the life produced by biological reproduction. While they may have no children of their own, their capacity to mother/father can be expressed in many other ways than giving birth and raising their own biological offspring as they relate to, and nurture other people in their community. On the other hand, the characteristics of marriage that we actually see as foundational have no similar parallels. For example fidelity. If one fails to be capable of fidelity within the marriage, one has no "alternatives." One is either faithful or one isn't. The characteristic of love, while it can be expressed in many ways, cannot be substituted. There is no "proximate expression" (Matzko) of the primary characteristics of marriage as there is the secondary characteristic of procreation.
One might venture to ask why God created procreation at all if it such an insignificant part of God's intention for the marriage relationship. The answer, as we all know, is to propagate the species. For the solution to the practical problem of where to get more people (just as God did for the animals), God created the capacity for the species to self-propagate. However, the question of whether or not the initial creation of male-female was for the purpose of demonstrating the only normative unions between humans, or whether it was simply a utilitarian act to have a method of producing the human race seems somewhat self-evident. On one hand, the latter proposal is clearly true: God did create them male and female to fill the earth. If God had made "Adam and Steve" rather than Adam and Eve, then there would be no human race, because biological reproduction would have been impossible. However, the first proposal may or may not be true--whether the male-female sexual union is the only sexual union intended by God is a question that we cannot answer definitively, however both biological and theological evidence indicates that it is not. One clue is that while we have been given the capacity for self-propagation, this by no means obligates every creature to self-propagate. If it did, then Paul would be sinning in 1 Cor 7:1 when he encourages us not to marry (therefore denying us the capacity to propagate the species). Somewhere between Genesis 1-2, when God commands Adam and Eve to be fruitful and fill the earth, and 1 Corinthians 7:1 where Paul discourages marriage, either God changed God's mind about wanting more humans wandering around on the earth, or the Genesis 1-2 passage has been mis-applied when it is used to support the idea that humans "should" have children, and that God's intention for marriage is for producing children.
From a biological perspective, the idea that God clearly created male and female genitalia to be complementary is based on pseudoscience and not on an understanding of human anatomy and sexual physiology. The common argument from traditionalists is twofold: 1) God had one purpose in mind for sex--procreation; and 2) the male-female genital anatomy attests to the complementarity of God's intent for sex as solely for male-female/penile-vaginal sex (see Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 2001).
The most obvious argument opposed to the proposition of singular usage is that the penis was clearly designed to serve several purposes: procreation (depositing sperm), pleasure (has nerves associated with pleasure, the pudendal nerve) and for excrement of waste. One of Gagnon's primary claims to the "obviousness" of the misuse of the rectum for sex is that the rectum is a transport for excrement, however he fails to explain the distinction for the penis which clearly has both sex and exremental functions.
Further, the ano-rectal area also appear to be created for uses other than singularly for waste excretement
It may or may not be merely coincidence that this area is the appropriate size and expandibility to accomodate a penis (similar to the vagina). Despite Gagnon's claims, the medical evidence shows that ano-rectal sex does not produce muscule or pathological tissue damage to the area.
Just inside the male rectal canal is the prostate gland, stimulation of which heightens the sexual experience due to innervation with the pudendal nerve, the same nerve that innervates the penis. Stimulation of the ano-rectal area and the prostate gland can alone produce orgasm in the male.
The vagina is obviously designed for multiple purposes--procreation and pleasure (innervation by the pudendal nerve). Contrary to traditionalist theologies and patriarchal cultures (including many cultures that practice female circumcision) that have ignored the sexuality of women as irrelevant, non-existent or evil, the biological fact that the vaginal area is innervated with nerves associated with pleasure, it would seem clear that God intended the vagina to be used not just for men, but primarily for women.
While vaginal penetration is important to many women for sex, current research on the female orgasm is turning away from penetration as the primary stimulant for sexual arousal and satisfaction, to the clitoris, laying on the surface of the vagina, therefore not requiring penetration, indicating that God may have created women (by design) to be able to experience sexual satisfaction outside of penetrative sex.
Most of the authors who oppose the various forms of gay sex based on biological issues fail to address similar types of sexuality between heterosexuals, including married couples. Many actively support oral sex between heterosexuals, quite common among both heterosexuals and homosexuals. Gagnon, for instance, quotes a Rabbinical text allowing for oral sex between heterosexuals (p. 299). Further, many of these authors fail to condemn heterosexual anal sex, which many studies have shown is not an uncommon form of sexual intimacy between heterosexuals. The question then becomes why issues of "nature" and biology can be used to condemn homosexuality based on anatomical issues while not subsequently limiting heterosexual sex to penile-vaginal sex.
A second point is that while traditional theology has assumed that marrying and having children is the obvious order of nature, this theology is mistaken. While in the Old Testament, we see little discussion of singleness (other than the mention of eunuchs, like Daniel and his cohorts), we have singleness mentioned and encouraged several times in the New Testament. So while in the Old Testament marriage and procreation may or may not be normative and encouraged, they are certainly neither normative, nor encouraged in the New Testament.
Matthew 19:10-12 (NIV)
10 The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry." 11 Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."
1 Corinthians 7:1-9 (NIV)
1 Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. 2 But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. 8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Here we see both Jesus and Paul discouraging marriage. Paul goes on to express his acceptance of marriage, but not joyfully--he merely tolerates it, as Moses merely tolerated divorce in the Old Testament. Moreover, in Paul's acceptance of marriage, we see absolutely no mention of the procreative aspect of marriage. We see clearly that Paul views marriage as a means for sexual release. As the chapter progresses, as well as in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5 we see other aspects of Paul's view of marriage (concern, respect, love, etc), but in these immediate verses we see primarily Paul's acceptance that marriage is a means to an end: "it is better to marry than to burn with passion." All of Paul's language in this passage points to a very physical, sexual nature of the marriage relationship: the reciprocal fulfilling of "marital duties" by each spouse (v. 3), which is clarified in the following verses, discussing that a wife's body is her husband's, and vice-versa, and that they should not deprive each other other than briefly for prayer. There is no hint that Paul's view of marriage is one of producing children. One certainly cannot presume that Paul condemned procreation, but he apparently didn't believe that humans still retain the duty to "be fruitful and fill the earth," otherwise he could not have discouraged marriage. What Paul does command within the marriage relationship is love (Eph 5:28 and Col 3:19), and similarly Peter commands love and respect within the marriage (1 Peter 3:7).
Summary of the Teleological Argument
So far I have discussed the faulty ideas that God's primary intention for marriage/sex was procreation, and that procreation as a goal is propagated in the New Testament, neither of which is true. Rather, the primary characteristics of marriage/sex seem to be a deepening and solidifying of relationship, intimacy, security, faithfulness, fidelity and mutual commitment/consent. All of these things are behaviors which strengthen humans as Imago Dei, and which separate us from most of the rest of creation. Similarly, these are all things which can be expressed in homosexual marriages, while still reflecting the Imago Dei. There is little support for the contention that God created humans primarily to propagate ourselves. Rather, it is clear from Scripture that God created humans to glorify and worship Him, and to engage Him in relationship. Nor is there support for the contention that God created marriage and sexuality for the primary purpose of bearing children. Rather, both Paul and Song of Solomon indicate that sex was created for human pleasure, and as a method of strengthening the marriage relationship, and that marriage as an institution is still allowed so that we may not "burn with passion" if we are not gifted to celibacy. One of the farces of the anti-gay position, is that while they may not condemn homosexual "feelings" (since just as unmarried and celibate gays have sexual desires for same-gender persons, so do unmarried and celibate heterosexuals continue to have sexual feelings for opposite-gender persons), they still insist on gays living a life of celibacy, when they have provided no justification that having gay attractions are necessarily linked to the gift of celibacy (1 Cor 7:7). Contrary to heterosexuals who are unmarried and not gifted with low sexual desire who have the hope that they will one day marry a woman, those holding the anti-gay position deny that hope to homosexuals, whom God may not have gifted with celibacy. Similarly, those people who hold to the anti-gay position often hold to traditions about sexuality and marriage that they have been taught, yet haven't dug into Scripture to see what the Bible itself has to say about homosexuality, sexuality, and marriage, other than a cursory reading of the English translations. It is this lack of effort which propagates the errant belief that Scripture contains unambiguous, unilateral condemnations of homosexuality, which thereby causes the church to ostracize the very gays that they are intending to "save" thus becoming Sodomites to those gays: Ezekiel 16:49 (NIV) Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
Is Gender Separation Part of the Image of God?
(argument from Barth's Church Dogmatics 3.1.41.2)
Genesis 1:26-27 (NIV)
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Some groups argue, along the lines of Karl Barth, that the theology of imago dei, or "image of God," includes gender. The argument is that in the complementarity of "gender characteristics" inherent in the nature of God (masculine authority, feminine nurturing, etc), humans were similarly built into the likeness of God, and those characteristics were separated into the human genders of male and female. The argument is that it it only in the joining of male and female in marriage and sexuality are men and women completed in this image of God as was created in us. The intimate relationality involved in marriage is analogous to the relationality inherent in the Trinity of God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). However, there are several assumptions inherent within this theology that are contrary to orthodox beliefs of the church, and border on ancient pagan religious beliefs. I therefore believe that not only is this argument not helpful in the homosexuality discussion, but is actually harmful for the church as a whole.
First, I'm not confident that complementarity is a good foundation for an imago dei or gender theology, since it hasn't been well received in church tradition. For example, in a recent book by John Piper and Wayne Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, while they are anti-gay, they specifically reject Barth's assertion of imago dei theology as sexual complementarity (in the chapter by Frame). A similar conclusion is affirmed by the Southern Baptist Conference's Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. In Piper and Grudem's book, John Frame lays several good critiques of Barth's position, including a reference to Meredith Kline's grammatical analysis of Gen 1 (from Images of the Spirit), which excludes Barth's interpretation, affirming the historical position on imago dei theology.
Historically, the church has affirmed the imago dei theology as that of having dominion/stewardship over the earth, as described in Von Rad's classic Old Testament Theology. Part of the problem with making sexual differentiation part of imago dei is that it sacralizes gender and consequently sacralizes sex itself. If God "created" them male and female, the grammar seems to evidence that gender was a new category, therefore not inherent in the nature of God. To impute gender onto God seems to take us back to a type of theology that Moses was trying to get the Israelites away from in having them abhor foreign religions, which had a clear delineation of gender in their Gods (Ishtar, Baal, etc). The distinctive feature of Yahweh isn't that God is "both" genders, but that God transcends gender. Not even that, because the category of gender is irrelevant to the inherent nature of God. To say that God transcends gender is to imply that gender was first a category, then Yahweh rose above it, which is clearly not the case. In humans, God "created" the construct of gender as a means to subdue the earth, in species propagation, which again, is what the grammar of Gen 1 seems to clearly say, and is what the church has historically supported.
Barth talks about dominion and stewardship in the context of imago dei, but then adds gender also as a factor of imago dei. He makes the following untenable remark, the aftermath of which is the primary source of rejection by the above authors: "What is it that distinguishes him [the male] from the beasts? According to Gen 1 it is the fact that in the case of man the differentiation of sex is the only differentiation." I find it hard to believe that a man like Barth could make such a statement, and harder still that it would be proposed today as as model for imago dei (see the next paragraph below for the ramifications of this doctrine). Barth admits that traditionally the early and later church theology of imago dei involves factors such as ensoulment, rationality, community, etc. Issues such as having life breathed into the nepesh (ensoulment), having the capacity to think, and the need for companionship (which mirrors the internal relationality of the Trinity) all seem like solid models on which to build a theology of imago dei. Barth gives little reason why we should abandon these, and little reasonable arguments for including gender into this theology. His statement itself seems scientifically contradictory since God clearly created animals male and female as well as humans, even though the text doesn't clearly state "and He created the animals male and female." But beyond that, from a broader theological perspective, it simply seems irrational for Barth to claim that the only thing that makes humans imago dei, and animals not imago dei, is the social factors inherent in the male-female marriage/genital relationship. That seems to deny the historical factors such as rationality, ensoulment and community.
Regarding the sacralization of gender and sexuality in Barth's position, it seems to return us to a pagan position where sexuality brings us closer to God, as was the belief of the followers of Ishtar and her temple prostitutes. Similarly, in the Graeco-Roman tradition, many of Paul's references to pornei in relation to temple worship are most likely to the temples of Cybele and Attis, where they used sexuality as a means of becoming one with their God. As with Ishtar, the idea was that in engaging in sexual worship of thier gods (Cybele and Attis for the Graeco-Romans, and Ba'al and Ashteroth for the Caananites), they are becoming more like their gods by joining the two genders into one, sharing in the gender nature of the other. In the Cybelean cult, gender was transcended by having the male temple prostitutes emasculate themselves and dress/act as women, and act "as women" in the sacred sexual act. Thus, it seems that the Spirit of Moses' invectives to abhor Canaanite practices would include the sacralization of gender and sex, since Yahweh is neither gendered nor sexual (genital), as the pagan gods clearly were (according to ancient mythology, the pagan gods would commonly have sex with humans, and with other gods).
From a contemporary social perspective, Barth's position seems to deny our wholeness as individuals before God. Certainly there is an aspect of incompleteness, both spiritually and socially, inherent in humans. But Barth's position seems to lead to the conclusion that one cannot be truly whole unless one is married. This seems to contradict what Paul and Jesus teach us in the NT (see Appendix 5 above), that God prefers us to be celibate rather than married. They certainly don't prohibit marriage, but Paul clearly discourages it (unless one can't keep from burning with passion), and Jesus clearly states that celibacy for God is preferable to marriage. For Barth to claim (this argument is found in 3.4.54) that God intended humans to only reach wholeness in marriage seems to be very much against the clear teachings of Paul and Jesus, and very insulting to those Christians who are single, whether by choice, by providence, or any other reasons why Christians are relationally alone.
