For all four of these posts on biblical texts, which are attempts at exegetical dialogue, I will be pairing Peter Gomes and Richard Hays as conversation partners. Gomes, now deceased, was an American preacher and theologian, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School as well as the University’s chaplain. Richard Hays was the Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolino. I will be drawing from Hays’s book The Moral Vision of the New Testament and Gomes’s book The Good Book. *When I initially crafted these documents nearly a decade ago Hays formally had a non-affirming position. As recently as of the September of 2024, Richard Hays ostensibly amended his position in the book The Widening of God’s Mercy, which he coauthored with his son Christopher. I have only heard about Hays’s amended position and have not read the book.
Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.
Hays begins by making a clear and conclusive statement about this text. “The holiness code in Leviticus explicitly prohibits male homosexual intercourse (Hays 381). What’s more Hays argues that “the act of ‘lying with a male as with a woman’ is categorically proscribed: motives for the act are not treated as a morally significant factor. This unambiguous legal prohibition stands as the foundation for the subsequent universal rejection of male same-sex intercourse within Judaism (Hays 381).” Hays acknowledges the most obvious objection, the Old Testament contains many prohibitions and commandments that have, ever since the first century, generally been disregarded or deemed obsolete by the church—most notably, rules concerning circumcision and dietary practices.
The question then becomes, is homosexuality similarly superseded and consequently rendered part of Israel’s dated ethical system? And if so, how does one make this seemingly idiosyncratic decision and is there a hermeneutical method that helps one make that choice?
This Gomes sets out to do. There are several pieces of data one needs to supply in order to understand Gomes’s argument. As is often the case, context breathes understanding. Narrativally, the Holiness Code is written for Israel as they are about to enter the promise land. The rules then, Gomes argues, have the purpose of forming a “frontier community,” and “are designed for a very particular purpose and in a very particular setting. Their purpose is nation building; their setting is the entry into a promised but very foreign land (Gomes 153).”
It’s worth looking at some of the other “rules” of the frontier community:
- Honoring parents
- Keeping the Sabbath
- Showing appropriate hospitality
- Abstaining from Idol worship
- Prohibit cattle inbreeding
- Prohibit Sowing fields with two kinds of seeds
- Prohibit wearing garments made of two different kinds of material
- Prematurely harvesting fruit from a tree
- Prohibition of round haircuts
- Prohibition of tattoos
- Prohibition of consulting mediums and wizards
- Abstaining from sexual relationship with your wife during menstruation
Failure to follow any of these is punishable by death. This stringent commitment to the rules is aimed at maintaining purity and strengthening the cultural identification of the newly forming Israel. Gomes points out that if the point of the frontier community is to form cultural identity, maintain protection, and procreation and that homosexuality threatens all of these. But Gomes argues that “we have, however, long since ceased to live as God’s frontier folk in the promise land. Not only is the cultural context markedly different, but so for Christians is the theological context (Gomes 154).” Here Gomes points to Paul’s theological suggestion the Gentiles have the Holy Spirit without the necessity of the Law of Israel.
One additional exegetical point that Gomes makes has strength and is worth mentioning here. The word abomination does not usually describe something intrinsically evil, such as rape or theft, but something that is ritually impure, like eating pork or engaging in intercourse during menstruation. An abomination is by definition what the Gentiles do, but that in and of itself is not necessarily evil or a violation of the Commandments (Gomes 154). I liken this to the fact that when I was a little boy my mother would sometimes prohibit a behavior such as singing annoying songs in the car where escape from the deafening tune was not possible. Though my singing was not wrong in of itself, to then proceed to keep singing would be disobedience given the context.
Here I will give Hays the last word and leave hermeneutical judgments to readers. In anticipation of this line of argument Hays points out that the Old Testament makes no systematic distinction between ritual law and moral law. So for example, the Holiness code also prohibits incest. Hays asks, is that a purity law or a moral law (Hays 382)? To be fair Hays does not answer that question per se, but rather recognizes the church’s task of “discerning whether Israel’s traditional norms remain in force for the new community of Jesus’ followers (Hays 382).” In order to see the decision the early church made about this particular matter we must turn to the New Testament. And so we shall.
A final word for readers who have been following all of these posts and intend to keep doing so. Readers will note for the sake of Hays’s proposal in my forthcoming post on Romans 1 that neither author contests that what being described in the Holiness Code is homosexual intercourse nor that in this particular instance it is condemned.