Traditional Scriptural exegesis on homosexuality

From Al Mohler again - excellent stuff - the rest of this post is him at

http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-10-05

First, as Romans 1 makes absolutely clear, homosexuality is an act of unbelief. As Paul writes, the wrath of God is revealed against all those "who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." God has implanted all humanity with the knowledge of the Creator, and all are without excuse. As Paul continued: "For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions; for the women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error." [Romans 1:22-27]

The broader context of Paul's rejection of homosexuality is clear: Homosexuality is a rebellion against God's sovereign intention in creation, a gross perversion of God's good and perfect plan for His created order. What Paul makes clear is that homosexuality is a dramatic sign of rebellion against God and His intention. Those about whom Paul writes have worshipped the creature rather than the Creator. Thus, men and women have forfeited the natural complementarity of God's intention for heterosexual marriage and have turned to members of their own sex, burning with a desire which in itself is degrading and dishonorable.

The logical progression in Romans 1 is undeniable. Paul shifts immediately from his description of rebellion against God as Creator to an identification of homosexuality--among both men and women--as the first and most evident sign of a society upon which God has turned His judgment.

Essential to understanding this reality in theological perspective is a recognition of homosexuality as an assault upon the integrity of creation and God's intention in creating human beings in two distinct and complementary genders.

Here the confessing Church runs counter to the spirits of the age. Even to raise the issue of gender is to offend those who wish to eradicate any gender distinctions, arguing that these are merely "socially constructed realities," vestiges of patriarchal past.

Scripture will not allow this attempt to deny the structures of creation. Romans 1 must be read in light of Genesis 1 and 2. As Genesis 1:27 makes apparent, God intended from the beginning to create human beings in two genders--"male and female He created them." Both man and woman were created in the image of God. They were distinct, and yet inseparably linked by God's design. The genders were different, and the distinction transcended mere physical differences, but the man recognized in the woman "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" [Genesis 2:23].

The bond between man and woman was marriage. Immediately following the creation of man and woman come the instructive words: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed" [Genesis 2:24-25].

The text does not stop with the mere creation of woman. Rather, God's creative intention is further revealed in the cleaving of man to the woman ("his wife") and their new identity as "one flesh." This biblical assertion, which no revisionist exegesis can deconstruct, clearly places marriage and sexual relations within God's creative act and design.

Few theologians have given this critical issue its due attention. Indeed, throughout the history of the church, this pattern was seen as axiomatic and unquestioned. Only in the modern period, when social experimentation and radical protest movements have sought to push a wide-scale rejection of this pattern, has the issue come to light.

Significantly, it is Karl Barth who has most seriously addressed this biblical pattern of gender complementarity. Writing in 1928, Barth asserted: "What do we really know about the male and female except that the male could not be a man without the female nor the female without the male, that the male cannot belong to himself without also belonging to the female and vice-versa?"

The male and female only have meaning in relation to the other. Barth refers to Genesis 2:25, and suggests that the man and the woman saw each other naked and were not ashamed, "Because the maleness of the male and the femaleness of the female rightly become an object of shame….only when the male and female in their maleness and femaleness seek to belong to themselves and not to each other."

Horribly confused, Barth asserted, the sexes turn inward to an "ideal of a masculinity free from woman and a femininity free from man." This false ideal, which is a rejection of the Creator and His command, culminates in "the corrupt emotional and finally physical desire in which--in a sexual union which is not and cannot be genuine--man thinks that he must seek and can find in man, and woman in woman, a substitute for the despised partner."