The Jesus Card

HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE BIBLE?
Part 5

As is the case with most theological debates among Christians, it isn't long before people start quoting Jesus to back up their views. I call this tactic "playing the Jesus card," and it is certainly not an invalid method of arguing. For Christians, Jesus is seen as the top authoritative figure on Christian teaching, and so if you can show that Jesus agreed with you, your views earn stock in Christian communities.

It's not shocking, then, that Christians on both sides of the homosexuality debate try to play the Jesus card when arguing their position. However, this can be awkward since the gospels never mention Jesus saying anything about gay marriage or homosexuality.

Often times Christians who don't think homosexuality is a sin use Jesus' silence on the matter to their advantage. Many have argued that because Jesus didn't say anything on homosexuality in the gospels, he must not have considered it a sin. However, this argument of silence doesn't go very far by itself. After all, the gospels don't record Jesus teaching on many modern issues, such as alcoholism or pollution, but that doesn't mean he would approve of them if he was walking around with us today.

Other Christians who think homosexuality is a sin claim that while Jesus was silent on the matter, he wasn't silent about God's definition of marriage, which contradicts homosexuality. For evidence, these Christians quote Jesus' teachings on marriage found in Mark 10 and Matthew 19.

For this article, we will look at Jesus' teachings found in Mark and Matthew to see if they really define marriage in a way that excludes homosexuality, and determine if the Jesus card can be legitimately played in the debate over gay marriage. We will start by looking at what Jesus is saying in Mark 10 and Matthew 19, and then discuss what Jesus is not saying in those passages.

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What Jesus Is Saying

The passages containing Jesus' teachings on marriage can be found in Mark 10.1-12 and Matthew 19.1-12. Having read that, some are probably thinking that it is a funny coincidence that both Mark and Matthew contain Jesus' teachings on marriage in exactly 12 verses each, but it's not a coincidence. In fact, of Mark's 661 verses, about 90% of them have a parallel in Matthew. Due to the fact that Matthew's corresponding verses seem to correct those in Mark both in details and stylistically, many scholars view Matthew as a highly-embellished edition of Mark. In other words, the author of Matthew copied Mark to make his gospel.^[1]

This of course leads to many interesting and controversial questions, such as "why would Matthew (an eyewitness to Jesus' teachings), need to copy Mark (a secondhand source)?" The answer many scholars give is that neither Mark nor Matthew were written by Mark or Matthew. While these are fascinating questions to explore, this isn't really relevant for our discussion. The fact remains that Christians consider both Mark and Matthew as part of their canon, and therefore Jesus' teachings in them are considered authoritative, even if we don't know who really wrote them, or if they accurately record what Jesus really said.

What is relevant for us is that both Mark 10.1-12 and Matthew 19.1-12 have remarkably similar content, and therefore do not need to be quoted twice. I have chosen to quote Mark's version because it is written more simply, but will refer to the Matthew text as well. I will quote Mark 10.1-12 in four parts, followed by a brief analysis of each passage. Let's begin with Mark 10.1:

[Jesus] left that place [in Galilee] and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them. 

(10.1)

Jesus has left the northern region of Galilee and headed south to Judea. This verse is setting the scene, but is not very relevant for our purposes, so let's move on:

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 

(10.2-4)

We see the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus with a trick question. Presumably knowing Jesus' stance against divorce, the Pharisees ask him if it is lawful by the Torah for a man to divorce his wife. Jesus is in a tight spot. If he answers "yes," the Pharisees have caught Jesus contradicting himself. If he answers "no," the Pharisees can accuse Jesus of being ignorant about the laws found in the Torah, which, as we saw in Part 4 (and the Pharisees well knew), clearly allowed for divorce. Now let's look at Jesus' response:

But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 

(10.2-9, emphasis is my own)^[2]

Jesus answers that those laws allowing for divorce were only included because the Israelites were stubborn and resistant to God's will. This is a significant claim: Jesus is saying that at least some of the laws in the Torah don't ward off sin, but rather allow for sin.

To justify his claim, Jesus uses the first book in the Torah: Genesis. He specifically quotes Genesis 2.24, which is italicized in the passage above. As we discussed in Part 2, Genesis 2.24 is a symbolic explanation for why a man leaves his family to form a new family unit with his wife (as well as for sexual intercourse). Just as Eve was originally created from the same flesh as Adam in the second creation story, so too does a man and woman become "one flesh" when they become married and create their new family unit.

So Jesus is saying that divorce violates God's original intention for marriage since it is separating the symbolic bond between a husband and wife that God established in the beginning of creation. Finally, let's finish off the passage with Jesus' explanation of this rule to his disciples:

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” 

(10.10-12)

Here we see Jesus explaining that marrying anyone after a divorce is adultery (and therefore sinful). To many people (including the disciples), this seems like a harsh rule if taken as an absolute. After all, what if your spouse cheats on you? Shouldn't you be allowed to remarry? The author of Matthew seems to have felt this way too, and added an exception for such sexual offenses in his version.

It makes sense that Jesus would teach on divorce. It was a big issue in Jesus' day, and would leave a woman in a very vulnerable position since most women relied on men for their livelihood. Divorce also seems to have been relatively common and acceptable. Indeed, according to Matthew's version of the story, the disciples agree that it is better for men not to marry at all if they cannot divorce their wives at a later time.

To sum up, we have seen Jesus say that the laws in the Torah are not perfect for defining righteousness, that divorce was wrong because it broke the symbolic bond between man and wife that God established in Genesis 2.24, and that anyone who marries another person after they divorce commits adultery (unless the divorce was the result of sexual immorality).

What Jesus Is NOT Saying

So we've seen that Jesus' "teaching on marriage" in the gospels was really about divorce, not marriage in general. Now let's highlight what we did NOT see Jesus say. There are two things we should take note of:

First, Jesus didn't say that he was defining marriage in all respects. We've seen that Jesus justified his claim that divorce was sinful by quoting Genesis as evidence. But Jesus is saying that the symbolic bond between a man and a woman in marriage must not be broken; he is NOT saying that marriage must be between a man and a woman. Jesus is addressing marriage practices of his day, which did not include gay marriage. But just because he is addressing those practices does NOT mean he is insisting upon them. Describing heterosexual marriage is not the same thing as prescribing it.

Second, Jesus didn't say that all aspects of creation should be imitated. While Jesus is saying that the bond of marriage established in the second creation story ought to be imitated, he does not say that every aspect of creation must also be so. After all, according to Genesis 2 both man and woman were originally created "naked and unashamed," and God only gave them permission to eat from fruit trees, not meat. Yet according to the gospels Jesus was neither a nudist nor a vegetarian. Jesus uses Genesis to argue that divorce between a husband and wife is wrong, NOT to limit marriage to a husband and a wife, NOR to set every aspect of creation (such as the biological sex of those being married) as a standard.

[[Okay, so technically Jesus isn't giving us a proper definition of marriage, nor is he saying the creation of man and woman must be imitated in all respects. But homosexuality was seen as sinful by people in Jesus' culture. So can't we interpret Jesus' silence on the issue as evidence that he thought homosexuality was sinful as well?]]

Perhaps, but this is another argument of silence, and should be approached with caution. It's more than likely true that if we were to ask a stereotypical 1st-century Palestinian Jew about his position on homosexuality, he would tell us it was sinful. After all, as we saw in Part 4, the Torah calls homosexual intercourse an abomination. However, Christians generally believe that Jesus was NOT the stereotypical 1st-century Palestinian Jew, and we have also seen him challenge the laws in the Torah, such as those pertaining to divorce. This makes interpreting Jesus' silences with any degree of certainty incredibly problematic.

[[Okay, so we can't assume that Jesus' silence on the matter meant he must have agreed with the common perception of homosexuality in his day. But wasn't Jesus all-knowing? If he was, then why would he have kept silent on homosexuality, since he would have known this would be an issue later?]]

Despite what many Christians believe, according to the gospels Jesus was NOT all-knowing. While Jesus frequently asks rhetorical questions, we also see Jesus asking questions that he doesn't seem to have an answer to. We see him ask a blind man if he believes Jesus has the power to heal before he restores his sight, we see him ask the disciples how many loaves of bread they had with them, we see him ask the mother of James and John what she wants from Jesus, we see him ask a crowd which person had touched him while he was walking among them, and we see him ask God if he would intervene to prevent Jesus from having to suffer on the cross, so long it was God's will (and as we know, it turns out it wasn't).^[3] It wouldn't make much sense for an omniscient being to ask such questions.

While one could argue that these were all asked by Jesus for others' sake, not his own, Jesus is quite clear that he does not know everything, including at least some parts the future. Indeed, Jesus is said to have taught that NONE but the Father knows when the end times will be, himself included. It's unclear how much Jesus knew of the future (if he did at all), but it's not a stretch of the imagination to think that he was unaware of gay marriage as a concept or our modern debate 2,000 years later, and therefore would have felt no need to speak for or against it.

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While Jesus does use the story of man and woman's creation as evidence for why divorce is wrong, we do not see him teach that marriage ought to be between one man and one woman, nor do we see him claim or imply that all aspects of their creation ought to be imitated in marriage. While Jesus may very well have thought that homosexuality was sinful, it's simply impossible for us to know what he thought on the matter.

The fact is that Jesus never really offered a definition of marriage in the gospels, nor taught that homosexuality was a sin. The Jesus card may be the most powerful one in our hand, but that doesn't mean we can play it in every debate because we want him to agree with us.

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Notes

[1] This is part of an idea known as Synoptic Theory. According to this theory, Matthew and Luke both used Mark and a now-lost source containing the sayings of Jesus as sources. Matthew, however, relies on Mark more heavily than Luke. This theory is called "synoptic," which means something like "look alike," because Matthew, Mark, and Luke all are structured very similarly and contain similar content. As such they are called "Synoptic Gospels." John, on the other hand, is quite different than the Synoptic Gospels. Indeed, John is the only biblical gospel to identify Jesus as God incarnate, and contains no parables, which are a significant portion of the Synoptics.

[2] It may be worth pointing out that in Matthew's account, Jesus' response is reversed. Jesus answers: "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate" (Mat. 19.4-6). He is then asked why Moses allowed for it in the Torah, and Jesus attributes it to the hard-heartedness of the Israelites. It was pointed out to me in my comments section that in Matthew's version Jesus quotes Gen. 2.24 as the words of the creator himself. The Genesis text, however, never indicates that this is a quote from God. It's unclear if these were really Jesus' words. As we have already seen, the author of Matthew takes some liberties with his sources containing Jesus teachings. For another example of Matthean editing, see note 3 in Part 7.

[3] What is equally confusing with Jesus asking if God would spare him from his fate on the cross is how the author of Luke knew about that prayer. Jesus withdrew from his disciples "about a stone's throw" to pray by himself, and came back to find his disciples sleeping.