Gerald Sheppard on Same-Sex Partnerships

A book that I read recently, The Bible As a Witness to Divine Revelation, was composed in honor of the late Gerald Sheppard, a renowned biblical scholar and a Pentecostal. A colleague of mine recommended an article that Dr. Sheppard wrote on homosexuality. I read that article just now. It's entitled "The Use of Scripture within the Christian Ethical Debate Concerning Same-Sex Oriented Persons," and it appeared in the January 1, 1985 Union Seminary Quarterly Review.

My impression is that Sheppard is arguing that morality within the Bible was in a state of flux. First, Sheppard acknowledges that Paul considers same-sex activity to be unnatural in Romans 1:26-27. But Sheppard contends that Paul based his view on what was natural on biblical revelation, along with his "pre-modern, quasi-scientific observations." We see Paul's methodology in I Corinthians 11:1-16, where Paul appeals to the biblical story of creation to argue that the husband should be the head of the wife, and to nature to affirm that a man should have short hair. Paul is drawing from the Bible, but also from what he and his audience consider to be "natural" within their own historical context. Sheppard states that "A major question for us is: how to seek in our own time a similar wisdom about what is 'natural' from the standpoint of our spiritual discernment in the light of God's revelation in history, illuminated by our own unique empirical knowledge of the world" (27).

How Sheppard applies this insight becomes evident in the course of his article. He refers to social scientific agreement that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice, the lack of success some Christians have had in changing the sexual orientations of homosexuals, and the struggles of gay Christians with their orientation. He observes love in committed same-sex partnerships, which he believes is consistent with biblical principles regarding sexuality. In the same way that Paul was illuminated by Scripture and his own observations in determining what was natural and unnatural, Sheppard holds that we, too, should draw on our observations and the principles of Scripture as we wrestle with the issue of homosexuality. For Sheppard, a committed same-sex partnership is natural for those who have a homosexual orientation.

Second, there is also a changing outlook within the Bible, according to Sheppard. In I Corinthians 7:1-16, Paul presents marriage as if it's second-class to singleness; in I Timothy 4:1-5, however, deutero-Paul criticizes false teachers who "forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe." Sheppard concludes the following from this:

"Paul's earlier suggestion that believers should remain celibate now seems contradicted by a new appeal to 'nature.' In other words, even within the canonical presentation of Paul, conflicting perceptions of what is natural according to creation are caught in the flux of history of discerning the full implications of that revelation of the world given to us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The canonical context of the Pauline Epistles supports the possibility of a change in Christian ethical views about human conduct and what is 'natural' based on a similar theological dissideratum at a different time in history" (27).

Sheppard observes other examples of development within the Bible. He states:

"I read the psalms aware that Sheol is not my final resting place; I read Qoheleth aware that the resurrection has called the bluff of death upon all human hope; I read about the laws regarding slavery and assess the alleged 'humanism' in Deuteronomy compared with the laws of Exodus as only a step toward a much more profound view of 'humanity' in the love of God; I acknowledge the presence of homophobic statements in scripture which elsewhere bears attestation to a revealed reality of life in which all such phobias should be nailed to the cross" (31).

Sheppard notes that there are even times when fundamentalists are compelled to "go beyond the mere prooftexting of a 'biblical' theology or morality," for C.I. Scofield states that Ecclesiastes 9:10 is not authoritative divine revelation about the state of the dead. Even Scofield determines what is divine revelation on the basis of the larger testimony of the biblical canon.

Third, Sheppard discusses biblical interpreters in the past who had a problem with the immorality of biblical heroes, and he states that, similarly, many today have a problem with the morality that's in the Bible---which includes "capital punishment for children who curse their parents," slavery, etc. I thought that, here, Sheppard was making a point that even the sexual ethics of Leviticus 18 (which includes the ban on male homosexuality) are not absolute within Scripture. Abraham marries his half-sister, and Jacob marries two women who are daughters of the same man, both of which are prohibited in Leviticus 18. But Sheppard doesn't appear to make this point.

Liberal Christian arguments on homosexuality usually have not made much sense to me, but Sheppard's case sheds light on what many liberal Christians are getting at. I don't really buy into Sheppard's claim that the view of what is "natural" changes within the New Testament, for Paul in I Corinthians 7 did not say that marriage was unnatural, but that singleness was preferable. But Sheppard makes a good point when he notes that Paul's observations were shaped in part by his culture, and that there is flux and diversity within Scripture. That's why it's not always easy to assert dogmatically, "the Bible says": the Bible says diverse things, and even fundamentalists don't accept all of the Bible as authoritative in their own lives. They chalk some things up to "culture." But are there trends within Scripture that affirm human dignity? Yes.