I’m watching primary results tonight with a sanguine air; I still remain conflicted about who it is I want to win the Democratic nomination, and if I had to pick tonight, I’d still pick the junior senator from New York. As I type, I’m watching one of my heroes, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (who is — and this is not well-known — one of the best friends to the animal rights movement in the House) speak in Ohio at the Clinton victory party. But I have much affection for the dynamic Illinois senator as well.
In any event, that senator, Barack Obama is taking some heat from the religious right for his interpretation of Scripture. In Ohio, last week, according to the Baptist News, he spoke about same-sex unions.
“I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other,” he said, referring to unions that grant all the legal benefits of marriage, minus the name. “I don’t think it should be called marriage but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial, then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. That’s my view. But we can have a respectful disagreement on that.”
The Baptist News notes that the Sermon on the Mount is Matthew 5; the Romans passage is from the first chapter, verses 26-32. The Baptists complain that Obama is cherry-picking Scripture. Conservative talk-show host (and Mitt Romney biographer) Hugh Hewitt writes:
…even liberal evangelicals are going to be scratching their heads of Obama’s approach to Scripture…
“Godwin’s Law” warns against the use of Hitler or Nazi analogies in arguments. A second useful law: A candidate should never cite Scripture except with great specificity and unless he or she expects and desires to return to the subject and have every reference they used parsed over by millions of Bible readers.
Well, I’m pretty confident I meet the definition of a “liberal evangelical”, and I know my Scripture reasonably well. And Obama nailed it perfectly when he described Romans 1 as “obscure“. Obscure is often misunderstood to mean “unimportant”. But it doesn’t mean that; Webster says it means “not readily understood or clearly expressed.” Ask nine out of ten New Testament theologians about what Paul’s point is in the first chapter of this, his greatest letter, and most will say “yeah, it’s obscure.” While the Sermon on the Mount was just that — a sermon to a large crowd in which Jesus makes bold, prophetic statements about how we are to live, Romans is a densely argued, tremendously complex letter that touches on issues such as grace, the necessity of the cross, and the church-state relationship.
In Romans 1, Paul is — in the minds of most scholars — writing about idol worship; one consequence of this sort of idol worship (and he’s talkin’ about literal idols, not metaphorical idolatry) is that some folks “went against nature” (para physin) and had same-sex sexual activity. This para physin phrase is about as obscure as you can get, a topic of considerable debate among scholars of Greek. Its most common use is to condemn pedarasty (exploitative sex between much older men and boys). Para Physin is never once used to condemn a consensual relationship between peers. There isn’t a lot on the phrase available online, but a nice summary is here.
A “liberal evangelical” who takes Scripture seriously believes that all of Scripture is divinely inspired. But a liberal evangelical also knows that we cannot always trust the “plain meaning” of any text. While the Sermon on the Mount, with its plea to all of us to love our enemies, is blunt and unmistakably clear, many other parts of the New Testament (think of the opening of the Gospel of John, or the whole book of Revelation, or even just the mysterious phrase “Son of Man”) are, by definition “obscure”. Something that is “obscure” requires careful study and interpretation. To call a passage obscure, as Obama did, doesn’t mean it’s any less important. It just means it requires solid scholarship to grasp the author’s real intent.
Barack Obama is not running for theologian-in-chief. But based on his off-the-cuff comments last week, I’d say his exegetical skills are as formidable as his rhetoric. And if Hugh Hewitt wants to play the proof-text game with the Christian left, some of us are rarin’ and ready to go.
typical
Not totally on point, but in browsing through your blog fairly regularly over the last few years, I have been puzzled somewhat by your self-definition as an evangelical. My understanding is that an evangelical is a christian who believes in “sola scriptura” (i.e., that the bible contains everything we need for salvation) and that the bible is literally true. I would counterpose to this the catholic theology of the Roman and Anglican churches, which would suggest that we can gain further knowledge that will assist us in our quest for salvation from the continued work of the Holy Spirit in the church and from a rigorous understanding of natural law. In addition, this theolological tradition would provide, where appropriate, for the interpretation of biblical texts as symbolic rather than factual in nature. While evangelicals would reject these positions, it seems to me that it is possible to be a fully orthodox christian, subscribing unreservedly to the creeds, while holding a catholic theological position. I suspect that when you say that you are a “liberal evangelical” you are really saying that you are a credally-orthodox catholic. Do I have that right?
Not quite, John. There is no set definition of what it means to be an “evangelical”, though the Chicago Call and the Lausanne Covenant are often thought of as two possibilities for definition. I can sign on to the former with enthusiasm, to the latter with reservations.
To be evangelical implies two things that “credally orthodox” does not: an experience of being born again, and a commitment to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with others.
I’m so glad you wrote this. Citing the bible is such an accepted reason for being against homosexual relationships that you rarely hear real debates on the subject. As someone who is very much not religious this still confuses me because while I think the Bible clearly supports any number of positions that I don’t agree with, homosexuality isn’t one of those positions. The Bible isn’t clear on it at all and it’s incredibly frustrating that right wing evangelicals have won the public perception on this issue.
This is off topic but since this is your latest reference to ‘the junior senator from New York’ I’ll pose this question here.
As usual, I’ll boil things down to their most basic.
Barring whatever else you like about her, does it ever bother you that she often comes across as cranky and mean, assuming that she has ever struck you that way as she does me.
No, she doesn’t. She strikes me sometimes as exhausted and sharp, two qualities that, given the hellacious personal attacks against her (unprecedented in modern politics) make perfect sense to me. What is contentiousness in a man is crankiness in a woman; what is laudable ambition in a man is perceived as power-hunger in a woman. Sexism works that way, alas.
I’m well aware of the last platform you said and I don’t even patently disagree with it. But, to me, she DOES come across the way I described. I’m not even saying she is that way off the podium(how would I know?) but on it I find her off putting. Sorry. It’s easy to say that there’s a double standard but sometimes a person (man or woman), however worthy in other respects, might just come across as cranky.
And why would attacks against her be an excuse for her demeanor in return. Jesus was attacked.
The last line was said with a wink for those who don’t know me as well as he does.
Bill, “cranky” is always a matter of perception; gender invariably colors perception.
But do let’s get back on the thread. Search for my Hillary thread and comment there… this is for Barack and the bible…
Side point: I would distinguish between an ‘evangelical’, which describes all Christians who spread the ‘Good News’, and an ‘Evangelical’, which describes a particular subset. To extend the analogy, I consider myself to be catholic, evangelical, and orthodox without being Catholic, Evangelical, and Orthodox.
While the ‘para physin’ phrase is certainly ‘obscure’, I do not find the Chapter itself to pose significant problems of interpretation. Paul’s thought here really begins at verse 18. To break it down:
18-21 God’s wrath’s has descended upon those who suppress the truth, in particular those who have knowledge of God but fail to honor God.
22-23 These ‘wise fools’ turned to idolatry.
Consequently, God imposed the following punishments upon them:
24 Lust and the degradation of their bodies
26-27 Degrading passions and ‘unnatural intercourse’
28 debased minds
29 ‘evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness’
30 [they are] ‘gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents’ . . .
31 ‘foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless’
But the real enter-point of Paul’s argument here does not occur until the first verse of chapter 2 (which he then elaborates on in the rest of the chapter):
“Therefore you have not excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.”
‘Para physin’ in this passage is but the first sin (or more precisely, consequence of sin) in a long laundry list. It disturbs me that many Evangelicals denigrate this sin, whatever it means, above others, especially their own. One of my personal struggles is not judging them as a result!
Thanks, Profane, for an excellent and expanded exegesis.
And yes, I’m a small “e” evangelical like I’m a small “c” catholic.
I could be wrong, of course, but I’m guessing the author (or preacher) of the “nice summary” you link can’t actually read Greek. Someone who can is New Testament scholar Richard Hays of Duke Divinity School (not exactly a bastion of fundamentalism), who argues that so far from being obscure, _para physin_ was “commonplace,” “abundantly used” by both Romans and Hellenistic Jews to refer to homosexuality, as opposed to _kata physin_ (in accordance with nature) for the sexual relation of men and women in marriage. _The Moral Vision_ p. 87 (it’s available on google books)
Sorry for the typo - the page # is 387, not 87.