Wednesday, May 15, 2019

“Jesus Said Nothing about Homosexuality” answered by Tremper Longman III


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)