Robert Gagnon to Stacy Johnson: Two Positions on Homosexual Practice, Not Six
Commentary by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Originally posted on, August 6, 2004
Since this was originally posted Robert A. J. Gagnon has made minor changes in his assessment of William Stacy Johnson’s presentation to the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity. The following is the revised text.
John Adams of The Layman Online (Aug. 4), Leslie Scanlon of The Presbyterian Outlook (Aug. 5), and Jerry L. Van Marter of the Presbyterian News Service (Aug. 5) have all written long accounts of Prof. Stacy Johnson’s presentation of six views on homosexuality to the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity (Aug. 4). Johnson, professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, posits six basic positions in the PCUSA on homosexuality: (1) the “prohibitionist” or “categorical prohibition” position; (2) the “Definitive Guidance” or “welcoming but not affirming” position; (3) the “justice issue” position; (4) the “pastoral issue” position; (5) the “celebrationist” or “welcome, affirm, and celebrate” position; and (6) the “consecrationalist” or “welcome, affirm, and consecrate” position.
All three write-ups are in basic agreement of the substance of Johnson’s remarks. Assuming, then, the basic accuracy of the combined reports, Johnson’s presentation cannot be judged a fair representation of the issue. Both the categories and the descriptions, certainly of the first two categories, are skewed. Moreover, though Johnson was allegedly engaged in a purely descriptive task, his biases and personal assessments come through clearly at a number of points.
The scriptural position as middle ground
The first and most problematic dimension of Johnson’s analysis is to delineate six distinct point of views, in which only two, operating on a far end of the Johnson’s spectrum, represent anything resembling the scriptural position.
The impression left by such an analysis is that the scriptural position is an extreme view, corresponding to the “celebrationist” view on the other end. Another false impression is that four positions favoring ordination of “self-affirming, practicing homosexual persons” – the language of the 1978 Definitive Guidance – constitute some sort of numerical superiority within the PCUSA. Indeed, Johnson tells us that the so-called “prohibitionists,” whose relationship to the “Definitive Guidance” view Johnson confuses, encompasses only 5 (or 5-10) percent of the church. How Johnson knows this is a mystery. In reality, survey after survey of the Presbyterian Panel, and vote after vote of the presbyteries, has repeatedly shown that two-thirds of the PCUSA membership supports the chastity amendment against homosexual practice.
The truth is that there are only two positions of any consequence on the issue of homosexual practice: (1) the scriptural position and (2) anti-scriptural positions that deviate from Scripture in varying degrees of severity by favoring the ordination of self-affirming, practicing homosexual persons. Everything else is sociological muddle.
Johnson claims that the biblical passages that speak to homosexual practice “by themselves are inconclusive.” He might as well argue that the biblical passages that speak to promiscuity, infidelity, incest, adultery, and bestiality “by themselves are inconclusive.” The biblical witness against homosexual practice is as conclusive as conclusive can be. Of course, one must still evaluate counterarguments that attempt to discount the overwhelming witness of Scripture, as I have done at length in my own work. But to pretend that the witness of Scripture on homosexual practice is something other than overwhelming, or even limited to a few isolated texts, is ridiculous.
Since people tend to gravitate toward what is presented as a “middle” position, Johnson’s sixfold division implicitly invites hearers to locate themselves in one of two “middle” (read: moderate) positions: Johnson’s so-called “justice issue” or “pastoral-care issue” positions (or, possibly, his “consecrationist” position, which alone of the six positions was presented outside of a sequence from greatest opposition to greatest approval). From what I know of Johnson’s own position, Johnson conveniently locates himself in one of these “moderate” positions.
In delineating six different groups Johnson has to consider as unique to one group characteristics that actually straddle two or more groups. There is not a dime’s worth of difference between his “celebrationists” and “consecrationalists,” since few “celebrationists” in the PCUSA argue for the “anything goes” philosophy that Johnson attributes to them. Nor is there any material difference in the pragmatic response to homosexual practice by Johnson’s “justice issue” and “pastoral issue” positions. Indeed, all four of these positions arrive at the same basic view that the church should bless committed homosexual unions and be willing to ordain persons in committed homosexual unions.
“Categorical prohibition” is “welcoming but not affirming”
Moreover, two of the key features that Johnson claims to be dividing elements between the “categorical-prohibition” position and the “welcoming-but-not-affirming” position actually straddle both positions: the complementarity argument and a recognition of “sexual orientation.”
The complementarity argument. Johnson states that a complementarity argument defines the former but not the latter, which he identifies with the 1978 Definitive Guidance on Homosexuality (more precisely, as Jim Berkley notes in his Aug. 6 blog, the Authoritative Interpretation). But the 1978 Definitive Guidance, while not using the explicit language of complementarity, clearly embraces the concept, stating: “God created us male and female to display in clear diversity and balance the range of qualities in God’s own nature. . . . Nature confirms revelation in the functional compatibility of male and female genitalia and the natural process of procreation and family continuity.”
It is fairly obvious that the creation stories in Gen 1:26-27 and 2:21-24 illustrate the point that men and women are complementary halves of a single sexual whole. Only a determined effort to reject the biblical witness can ignore this. That is why the intertextual echoes and citations in Paul’s critiques of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 point to the creation texts. Jesus, too, clearly embraced the biblical witness that only a sexual union of a man and woman, male and female, could reestablish in this life the integrated, “one-flesh” sexual whole that existed prior to the splitting.
There is also on Johnson’s part a distortion of the so-called “body parts” argument. Johnson argues confusedly that a “focus on body parts for the sake of body parts” would not rule out rape, incest, or promiscuity. But who is focusing only on body parts? I have stated over and over again, in numerous writings, that the obvious compatibility of male and female genitals is both part of and emblematic of the broad complementarity of essential maleness and essential femaleness that is so well illustrated by both the copulative act and the story of the splitting off of woman from a sexually binary, primal human in Gen 2:21-24. And who is arguing that sexual complementarity is the only prerequisite for acceptable sexual behavior? Obviously Scripture views other-sex sexuality as a necessary but insufficient condition for an acceptable sexual union. But “insufficient” does not make the “necessary” any less necessary.
Another criticism that Johnson levels against the complementarity position is that the purposes of marriage as outlined in the Bible, in Johnson’s view, are limited to procreation, the prevention of promiscuity, and mutual companionship. And procreation doesn’t count for Johnson because we do not condemn childless unions. The problem with Johnson’s view of the biblical purposes of marriage is that it leaves out the most important purpose of all: to reunite the complementary halves or sexual “counterparts,” male and female, into an integrated sexual whole.
I treat at the end of this article Johnson’s contention that the Bible does not define the image of God in terms of sexual complementarity.
Sexual orientation. Johnson also states that the Definitive Guidance, in “embracing the category of sexual orientation,” has in effect “made a decision to exit the worldview of the biblical writers who focused on sex acts.” This is false.
The Definitive Guidance subordinates “sexual orientation” to the biblical prohibition of homosexual acts. It expresses full agreement with the New Testament witness that “all homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian faith and life.” It calls every act of homosexual intercourse “sin” and a “failing to be obedient,” irrespective of a person’s claim to homosexual orientation. So when Johnson claims that the Definitive Guidance condemns homosexual acts as a “tragedy” rather than a “perversion,” he puts forward a false dichotomy. The Definitive Guidance characterizes homosexual acts as both a tragedy and a perversion, or deviation, from the biblical norm.
When Johnson talks about “exiting the worldview of the biblical writers,” Johnson also shows no awareness of Greco-Roman theories that both posited something akin to sexual orientation behind at least some forms of homosexual practice and still classified such practice as “against nature.” Paul’s reference to the “soft men” in 1 Corinthians 6:9 indicates his knowledge of men with a lifelong attraction toward other males. Johnson also ignores, or does not understand, the implications of Paul’s view of sin, which assumes innate and congenital dimensions.
“Orientation” to a certain form of sinful behavior does not validate the behavior in question. If it did, multiple-partner sexuality would have to be validated, to say nothing of some forms of pedophilia. Not a single biblical moral imperative is predicated on the assumption that believers first lose all innate desires to violate the imperative in question before they are required to adhere to the imperative. The Holy Spirit empowers obedience even when sinful impulses of the flesh urge contrary behavior.
Johnson’s comments on “sexual orientation” exhibit the same love affair with the term that proponents of homosexual practice generally exhibit. A sexual “orientation” is simply the directedness of sexual desire at any extended period of an individual’s life. Some orientations are negative, some positive, and some neutral. The identity of the object of desire, not the orientation itself, plays a pivotal role in determining the morality of that orientation.
Johnson claims that, in contrast to the “prohibitionist” position that allegedly requires homosexual persons to repent “both of the deed and of the homosexual desire,” the Definitive Guidance tells homosexual persons “not to be ashamed of their desires, but not to act on them,” “welcoming homosexual identity, but non-affirming of what that identity really means.” This is inaccurate. The Definitive Guidance states: “Even where the homosexual orientation has not been consciously sought or chosen, it is neither a gift from God nor a state nor a condition like race; it is a result of our living in a fallen world.” The desire to have sex with a person of the same sex is sinful desire, just as desire to have sex with one’s immediate blood relations or with multiple persons or with another person’s spouse or with children is sinful. But obviously a person is not held culpable for, and does not have to repent of, merely the experience of sinful desire. Culpability occurs when one actively entertains and nurtures sinful desires, not only in deed but also in thought. To restrict culpable sin only to an actual act, excluding completely the domain of one’s thought life, is to engage in the kind of legalism that Jesus expressly rejected in his adultery-of-the-heart saying (Matthew 5:27-28).
According to the articles by Van Marter (see chart at the end), Scanlon, and now Adams’s Aug. 6 posting (“Task force members comment on views about homosexuality“), Johnson summarized “reconciliation” for the “prohibitionist” position as “Repent of being gay” and “reconciliation” for the “Definitive Guidance” position as “Repent of gay behavior.” If this accurately represents Johnson’s views, it is an absurd characterization of the so-called “prohibitionist” view. Nobody in the PCUSA is advocating that persons repent merely for experiencing unwanted sexual desires.
A number of Task Force members have shown themselves in the past to be tone deaf to nuanced arguments about sexual orientation. When reviewing the position that I put forth in an article for Theology Matters (available also at my website), Prof. Mark Achtemeier of Dubuque Seminary claimed that I made “homosexual orientation … essentially a voluntary sort of condition.” He said this in spite of the fact that I was quite clear in my article that “I do not contend that self-identified homosexuals can be easily rid of homoerotic desires” but that change can at least include “a reduction or elimination of homosexual behavior” and usually “a reduction in the intensity and frequency of homosexual impulses” even when it does not include development of heterosexual functioning or eradication of all homoerotic impulses. Moreover, societal sanctions and family and peer influences can affect the rate of incidence for homosexuality in a population. Nowhere do I state that in all or even most circumstances one can simply “choose” to eradicate every vestige of homosexual desire, with or without the Spirit’s help. But neither is homosexuality genetic and immutable in the way that one would define race or sex as genetic and immutable. Obviously it is closer to alcoholism and pedophilia in terms of its origination and malleability than it is to race and sex. But this nuanced view translates for some members of the Task Force as: “Gagnon thinks homosexuality is a voluntary condition.”
In short, both the “categorical-prohibition” position and “welcoming-but-not-affirming” position prohibit homosexual conduct categorically and elevate the act over the orientation.
Peripheral concerns about the 1978 Definitive Guidance
The 1978 Definitive Guidance is not perfect but it is a lot closer to the truth of Scripture than the “four” positions