Some apologists
for homosexuality argue that as Jesus never explicitly condemned homosexuality
in the Gospels, ipso facto, Jesus had
no issues with it. This line of reasoning is, frankly, stupid. The Babylon Bee
has an excellent satirical article that argues in a similar manner in favour of
home invasion(!):
Tremper
Longman III did a good job answering this fallacious claim:
“Jesus Said Nothing about Homosexuality”
If same-sex acts were sinful, wouldn’t Jesus
have made a point of it? Jesus truly is the apex of divine revelation, and he
doesn’t seem bothered by the issue, so why should we?
Such questions make a faulty assumption and
also forget something important about Jesus as he is presented in the Gospels
(the only place where we today learn about him and his teachings during his
earthly ministry). In the first place, these questions assume that Jesus
addresses or needs to address every issue, and these questions forget that
Jesus fully affirms the Old Testament as the Word of God . . . Unless the New
Testament gives us indication that Jesus’s coming somehow fulfils an Old
Testament law so that we no longer observe it or that the sociological
situation has changed in a way that the law no longer has relevance, we should
assume that the principle is still valid (particularly when there are New Testament
passages that explicitly reaffirm it).
To put it another way, Paul’s words are as
authoritative as those of Jesus, since they are the divinely inspired
interpretation of the redemptive acts and teachings of Jesus. That Jesus said
nothing about homosexuality tells us nothing about his attitudes towards
homosexuality except that it implies his agreement with the Old Testament, but
Paul’s teaching based on the Old Testament law does inform us of the attitudes
of this divinely commissioned apostle. And, actually, Jesus is not really
silent about this matter. When Jesus tells the disciples that “what comes out
of a person is what defiles them,” he lists, among other things, “sexual
immorality,” as well as “adultery” (Mark 7:20-23), which we have every reason
to think would include homosexual acts for this first-century
Scripture-affirming Jewish man. (Tremper Longman III, Confronting Old Testament Controversies: Pressing Questions about
Evolution, Sexuality, History, and Violence [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Books, 2019], 244-45)
For a thorough analysis of homosexuality in the Bible, see:
Robert A.J.
Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice:
Texts and Hermeneutics (Abingdon, 2001)
