Theologians argue that arc of Biblical message points to full LGBTQ inclusion

Book review: ‘The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story’ by Richard B. Hays and Christopher B. Hays, ★★★★★

Adapted from image by Rod Long; licensed by Unsplash.

Richard B. Hays may not have written the book about the New Testament's perspective on homosexuality, but he did write the chapter.

The highly acclaimed theologian, former dean of the Duke Divinity School and a theologically conservative ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, wrote in his 1996 book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, an influential and theologically conservative chapter outlining the mainstream evangelical interpretation: Homosexual behavior is a tragic distortion of the created order, and while gay and lesbian persons are invited into the church, they are also called to a life of abstinence from same-sex sexual behavior.

And now Hays is apologizing, calling his earlier views “the presumptuous judgment of an eager young scholar” who was more concerned about his “intellectual project” than he was about “the pain of gay and lesbian people inside and outside of the church.”

One result of what he calls his repentance is a book he has co-written with his son, Christopher B. Hays, a professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, which has aligned itself with the traditional theological view on homosexuality.

The father-and-son duo argue in The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, published last month by Yale University Press, that the arc of the Biblical narrative calls for the full inclusion of LGTBQ persons, including those not sexually abstinent, in the Christian community.

Their approach isn’t one that is commonly used in liberal Christianity, where the anti-homosexuality prooftexts in the Bible are either ignored or dissected in a way that narrows their scope to a specific culture or otherwise prioritizes social justice over specific Biblical texts. Their argument at its heart a Biblical one in the sense that it recognizes the Bible as a divine work, one that sets the standard for faith and practice.

From the beginning of the book, however, they do challenge one bedrock assumption of most of today’s Protestantism: that the adoption of the New Testament as canon marked the final word on divine revelation to the full body of Christ:

Contrary to the common idea that the New Testament brings complete and final closure to God’s revelation, the New Testament itself promises that the Holy Spirit will continue to lead the community of Jesus’s followers into new and surprising truths.

If they veer into areas that traditionalists might see as heresy rather than mere disagreement, this is where.

Their argument is simple: Throughout the Bible, God has shown a propensity to change his mind — and in a way that, as the book title says, expands his mercy.

Referring to passages such as ones about God being the same yesterday, today and forever¹ and about the word of God standing forever², the Hayses write:

We suggest that for those who would like to make sense of the Bible, these statements about God’s unchanging word must somehow be held together with a long tradition of examples where God does in fact change his mind — and so do faithful people. In particular, God repeatedly changes his mind in ways that expand the sphere of his love, preserve his relationship with humankind, and protect and show mercy for them. [Emphasis in original.]

As a result, the Hayses expend essentially no time dealing with passages such as Romans 1:26-27, which are typically used to condemn homosexual behavior. The implication is that Paul’s words, at least if given the traditional interpretation, represent one area where God has changed his mind.

The bulk of the book is written in two sections: As the Old Testament expert, the younger Hays wrote the first half of the book to demonstrate a widening of God’s mercy that expanded from a select group as God’s chosen people to the messages of Jonah, Isaiah and others that all people are in some sense chosen. Then the elder Hays does the same with the New Testament. showing that Jesus himself upended the religion of his day with a ministry to people who included even the enemies of the faith, while the big theological debate after the Resurrection resulted in the recognition that even Gentiles were included among those who could receive the blessings of God’s chosen people.

While the Hayses acknowledge that learning of the experiences of gays and lesbian Christians was a factor in causing them to change their views, they claim that their perspective remains rooted in the Bible. Christopher Hays writes:

I remain committed to the unparalleled centrality of the Bible for Christian ethical discernment. The conclusions I have come to are not the result of new revelation or some sudden, blinding vision along the road to Damascus, but rather the slow and logical outworking of years of reading the Bible. ... Some people assume that “faithfulness to the Bible” inevitably leads to a traditionalist view of human sexuality. This book upends those expectations and offers a positive way forward.

The book’s earliest example of God’s will being softened by mercy can be found in the story of the Fall, where God warns Adam and Eve that they will die “in the day” that they eat the forbidden fruit. But that doesn’t happen. While scholars have offered numerous explanations for the textual discrepancy, the younger Hays offers one possibility: “Perhaps God has simply changed his mind and shown mercy to Adam and Eve.”

Perhaps the best-known Old Testament example of God changing his mind is in the story of the Flood, where God regrets creating humankind and decides to start over again. Christopher Hays offers dozens more.

Beyond the New Testament examples of a reflective God, Richard Hays sees the Jerusalem Council³ as an example of how the church could deal with LGTBQ issues today. He notes that that the feeling among many Jews in the early days of Christianity that it was morally abhorrent for new believers to eat forbidden foods such as pork was just as strong as the feelings many of today’s Christians have over sexual morality. The Council offers hope that God’s mercy can be recognized, he writes:

Indeed, it is a promising model, fully consistent with the flow of the Bible’s ongoing story of God’s expansive grace. The model suggests that just as the early Christians deliberated together and decided to remove barriers to gentile participation in the community of Jesus-followers, so also the church today should open its doors fully to those of differing sexual orientations.

Certainly, conservative critics of the book will argue (and, indeed, already have argued) that sexual morality and the dispute two millennia ago over dietary laws aren’t the same thing. And they will argue (and have) that viewing LGTBQ persons as a group rather than focusing on individual behavior is missing the point of how God shows mercy. Certainly, the Hayses don’t answer all the objections that could be raised to their argument.

But they make the best argument possible that faithfulness to the Bible as a source of inspiration and divine wisdom doesn’t preclude giving traditional ideas about sexual morality a new look. The book poses a challenge to the thinking of traditional Christianity that can and should not be ignored.

1. Hebrews 13:8.

2. Isaiah 40:8.

3. A gathering of apostles and other church leaders around 48 or 50 BCE in which they debated how to include Gentiles into the fledgling Christ-following movement. The result was a decision that Gentile followers of Christ would not be obligated to become circumcised (if male) nor to follow most Jewish dietary restrictions.