The Biggest Lie Told During Pride Month

Generally speaking, Mike Winger is a pretty good Christian apologist, but like many theologically Evangelical (& Non-Evangelical) Christians these days, his heart & mind are still in the thrall of Liturgical Philosophy & Ecclesiastical Tradition. 

According to him, the other side of the ecclesiastical ideological aisle is guilty of lying this time of year.  

He could not be more wrong. 

 In truth, the biggest Pride month lie is the tradition bound view on homosexuality. 

The reader is invited to refute this by way of using the Bible only & commiting no exegetical, epistemic, & logical fallacies. 

First, let’s outline the texts of Leviticus 18 & Romans 1:18 - 32 together in tandem.   

Why? 

Because Leviticus 18 is inerrant & infallible case law, & Romans 1:18 - 32 is verbal, plenary inerrant & infallible didactic material that follows the same outline & serves as an inerrant, infallible commentary on Lev. 18 as to its content.   Romans interprets Lev. 18 & vice versa.

Leviticus 18

Shema/Prologue (Lev. 18:1 - 5)

General & Specific Prohibitions (Lev.18: 6 -23) 

Document Clause, Witnesses, & Victory (Lev. 18: 24 - 30), which refers to statutes & rules & charges the people as witnesses & proclaims victory over the nations (& Israel should they behave like the nations).

Romans 1:18 - 32

Paul is following the outline of Leviticus 18, following the form of a Hebraic lawsuit/Suzerain Covenant.  

Shema and Decalogue (1:18 - 21) God’s Image testifies to His attributes & authority. 

God created people. His temple bears His Image & runs according to His Law & Gospel.

Historical Prologue (1:22 - 23)

They suppressed God’s image & authority substituting their own, & made idols that looked & behaved like themselves.

Stipulations/Prohibitions (1:24 - 28)  In Canaan & Rome, people did heterosexual & homosexual sex for their gods.  At times they deployed animals too.  (Lev. 18: 6 - 23).  

Document Clause, Covenant Sanctions/Renewal & Witnesses, Victory (1: 29 - 32)

Kitchen sink immorality will lead to Rome’s burning, just as it did to Sodom, Egypt, Israel, Babylon, &tc.

The text is about how we are supposed to think/reason.  

God’s created order testifies to His image & authority.   God indicts us for suppressing His image & authority & supplanting it with our own & other created images & reasoning accordingly.  

Thus, when someone teaches that human anatomy, physiology, &/or psychology is a proper warrant for sexual ethics, they are teaching the opposite of what the Bible teaches.  

Let’s interrogate the text as if doing elementary catechesis: 

What is the purpose of the created order according to Romans 1:20?   

• To testify to the existence, INVISIBLE attributes of God, & to God’s authority. 

Why is God’s wrath revealed from heaven?  

• Because people have (since the Fall) been deliberately suppressing the truth about God’s existence, INVISIBLE attributes, & authority by way of substituting the VISIBLE attributes of the created order, especially those of people & animals. 

How did people in the ancient world wind up with idols that looked like people & animals?   

• They looked to the created order & used its VISIBLE attributes as the basis of their theology, philosophy, & ethics.  

What sort of theology, philosophy, & ethics?  

• According to the text of Romans 1, worship & worship ethics, sexual ethics, & justice in general. 

How so?  

• Rather than look to God (who has no sex, no gender, & no sexuality) they deliberately & willfully looked to the created order — of which the prelapsarian state of Adam & Eve are a part & of which human anatomy, physiology, & psychology are a part — & reasoned accordingly.  

How then can it be that “natural” means “heterosexual/heteronormative” & “unnatural” means “homosexual,” in Romans 1:26 - 27.

• According to the grammar & syntax of Romans 1:18 - 32, it can’t.   

How so? 

• The only way to do that is to suppress the truth about God’s INVISIBLE attributes (which do not include sex, gender, & sexuality) & substitute the VISIBLE attributes of the created order in order to do ethical reasoning in general & sexual ethics in particular. 

If Romans 1:18 - 32 doesn’t describe & condemn homosexual behavior in general, what does it describe?  

• The text describes sexual activity done in the service of one or more pagan pseudodeities & any sort of theology, philosophy, &/or ethics that suppress(es) about the INVISIBLE attributes of God & instead substitutes the VISIBLE attributes of the created order —like the prelapsarian state of Adam & Eve, &tc — as its basis.

How so? 

• The text teaches that God’s INVISIBLE attributes alone constitute a non-arbitrary epistemic warrant for theology, philosophy , & ethics.  

• In addition, the text binds worship/worship ethics & sex/sexual ethics — & justice related ethics in general — together, whereas, in order to avoid concluding God is finite, ephemeral, & mutable, the tradition bound view separates them. 

How, then, does the tradition bound view err? 

• The traditional view looks to the state of the created order as a sufficient epistemic warrant for sexual ethics.   In so doing, it argues for basing human sexual ethics on the allegedly heteronormative state of the created order in general &/or the prelapsarian state of Adam & Eve in particular — a thought process which involves reverse engineering our sexual ethics from the created order. 

• Thus, if we can reverse engineer our sexual ethics from the human image, then it stands to reason we can do worship ethics from the human image — which, taken to its logical conclusion, would mean God is finite, ephemeral, & mutable too, a proposition that the Bible vehemently denies. 

• The argument against homosexuality by way of the VISIBLE attributes of any image drawn from the created order severs worship ethics from sexual ethics, whereas the Bible binds them together.  

What else does Romans 1:18 - 32 teach us? 

• The text is telling us something about how prejudice & bigotry operate.  

How so? 

• When you use the visible attributes of the created order to do ethical reasoning, justice itself is deeply affected.  

• This has multiple applications. 

• Natural = Male Dominance/Hegemony 

• Unnatural = Egalitarianism 

= Misogyny 

• Natural = White/Caucasian

Unnatural = Anything else 

= Racism

• Natural = Heteronormative

Unnatural = Homosexual 

= Homophobia 

• Natural = Conservative 

Unnatural = Liberal 

= Political Idolatry 

• Natural = Liberal

Unnatural = Conservative 

= Political Idolatry 

• Natural = Non-Jewish

Unnatural = Jewish 

= Anti-Semitism

As you can see —  by looking to the created order’s attributes instead of God Himself & His attributes, the end result is a perversion of justice in relation to both God & everyone & everything else.   

That’s what the tail end of Romans 1 addresses — unless God intervenes, history teaches us civilization will inevitably collapse repeatedly.  

In addition, since 1 Cor. 6 is related to Lev. 18 & Rom. 1 is an inerrant & infallible commentary on Lev. 18, it too, as well as I Tim. 1:10 - refers to *cultic* homosexuality not *all* homosexuality insofar the words for homosexuality in them are rooted in Leviticus 18.  Thus by understanding Romans 1:18 - 32 correctly, we can understand the other “clobber passages” correctly.   

In other words, any interpretation of “natural” & “unnatural” Romans 1:18 - 32 as a functional callback to any image drawn from the created order, the human image, included is forbidden by the text.   

The Bible is right about homosexuality. Ecclesiastical Tradition & Liturgical Philosophy that underwrites the traditional view are wrong.   

Using the rules for epistemic & biblical heremenutics does the tradition bound view pass muster?   

• No!

How so? 

• 1- Is - Ought Fallacy - Human anatomy is said to provide  a blueprint for sexual ethics.  We examined this in my previous article.  A moral “ought” is derived from a physical “is.” The disputant makes an illicit leap from what is to what ought to be. A classic example is the way some homosexuals defend their sexual ethics by appealing to their biology/genetics. 
• 2 - Vicious Circularity  - Human anatomy & physiology are raised to the status due a non-arbitrary epistemic warrant.  A non-arbitrary epistemic warrant must be necessary, reasoned, & principled. 

In truth, the body is unnecessary to deduce sexual ethics. By way of contrast, God’s nature is definitionally necessary, insofar as God is a necessary being, &, since God is infinite, eternal, & unchangeable in being, wisdom, authority & power, goodness, justice, holiness,& truth, sexual ethics inhere in the mind of God.   There are no other necessary minds in which ethical principles inhere. 

• 3 - Overspecification - Contextually, the range of meaning for “natural” is abstract & moral not physical & ontological. It cannot bear the meaning the tradition-bound view employs.

• 4 - Special Pleading - If a gay man appeals to his biology then Greg Koukl says (correctly), “Is-Ought fallacy!” When Greg Koukl does the same thing in the same article, it’s baptized.

• 5 - Category Mistake/Error - A category mistake involves the conflation of the properties of two separate domains.  When defenders of the tradition-bound view depart from Romans 1:18 - 32 in order to import Genesis into the text, they inevitably conflate God’s decretal will (a descriptive domain) & God’s moral will (a prescriptive domain).

In addition to the poor exegesis & exposition of the relevant texts, the tradition bound view runs through too many epistemic, logical, & exegetical fallacies to be true.

O LORD, HEAR OUR PRAYERS!