Rosaria Butterfield After Wheaton: Three Unbiblical Positions on Christianity and Homosexuality

Rosaria Butterfield—a lesbian English professor who hated Christianity and later became a Reformed pastor’s wife and told of the story in her book, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith—is fresh off of her return from Wheaton College, where 100 students protested her invitation to speak as implying that her testimony should be seen as normative. (You can read President Phil Ryken’s response here. You can also read an interview with Dr. Butterfield about her interactions with the students.)

As I write and speak today, 14 years have elapsed since my queer activist days. I’m a new creature in Christ, and my testimony is still like iodine on starch. I’m sensitive to three unbiblical points of view Christian communities harbor when they address the issue of Christianity and homosexuality. Everywhere I go, I confront all three.

1. The Freudian position. This position states same-sex attraction is a morally neutral and fixed part of the personal makeup and identity of some, that some are “gay Christians” and others are not. It’s true that temptation isn’t sin (though what you do with it may be); but that doesn’t give us biblical license to create an identity out of a temptation pattern. To do so is a recipe for disaster. This position comes directly from Sigmund Freud, who effectually replaced the soul with sexual identity as the singular defining characteristic of humanity. God wants our whole identities, not partitioned ones.

2. The revisionist heresy. This position declares that the Bible’s witness against homosexuality, replete throughout the Old and New Testaments, results from misreadings, mistranslations, and misapplications, and that Scripture doesn’t prohibit monogamous homosexual sexual relations, thereby embracing antinomianism and affirming gay marriage.

3. The reparative therapy heresy. This position contends a primary goal of Christianity is to resolve homosexuality through heterosexuality, thus failing to see that repentance and victory over sin are God’s gifts and failing to remember that sons and daughters of the King can be full members of Christ’s body and still struggle with sexual temptation. This heresy is a modern version of the prosperity gospel. Name it. Claim it. Pray the gay away.

Indeed, if you only read modern (post 19th-century) texts, it would rightly seem these are three viable options, not heresies. But I beg to differ.

Worldview matters. And if we don’t reach back before the 19th century, back to the Bible itself, the Westminster divines, and the Puritans, we will limp along, defeated. Yes, the Holy Spirit gives you a heart of flesh and the mind to understand and love the Lord and his Word. But without good reading practices even this redeemed heart grows flabby, weak, shaky, and ill. You cannot lose your salvation, but you can lose everything else.

Enter John Owen. Thomas Watson. Richard Baxter. Thomas Brooks. Jeremiah Burroughs. William Gurnall. The Puritans. They didn’t live in a world more pure than ours, but they helped create one that valued biblical literacy. Owen’s work on indwelling sin is the most liberating balm to someone who feels owned by sexual sin. You are what (and how) you read. J. C. Ryle said it takes the whole Bible to make a whole Christian. Why does sin lurk in the minds of believers as a law, demanding to be obeyed? How do we have victory if sin’s tentacles go so deep, if Satan knows our names and addresses? We stand on the ordinary means of grace: Scripture reading, prayer, worship, and the sacraments. We embrace the covenant of church membership for real accountability and community, knowing that left to our own devices we’ll either be led astray or become a danger to those we love most. We read our Bibles daily and in great chunks. We surround ourselves with a great cloud of witnesses who don’t fall prey to the same worldview snares we and our post-19th century cohorts do.

“There Is No Demilitarized Zone in the Issue of Homosexuality”

All the participants of the panel on homosexuality at The Gospel Coalition Council meetings agreed that we have entered one of the most difficult challenges to a gospel-centered approach to evangelism. The reason is not that the center of the Christian gospel has changed, but the center of the cultural gospel has changed. That center for many is the freedom to be GLBT and to be approved.

Which means that whether we want to make this a frontline issue or not, increasingly it is. As one of the panelists said, “There is no demilitarized zone in the homosexual debate.” Pastors must address it. In fact, virtually everyone who communicates with mainstream cultural folk must address it.

The argument against Christianity today is not epistemological but moral. Christianity is rejected not because it is badly argued, or untrue, but because it is evil. And it is evil because it opposes homosexual practice. The panelists agreed that, at least in major metropolitan areas, the issue of homosexuality ranks near the top of the reasons people reject Christianity, along with the problem of suffering and the exclusive claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation.

It is almost impossible to express a compassionate disapproval of homosexual practice without being demonized. But this is not an entirely new situation for the church. On the one hand the state of our culture seems to have changed with lightening speed. On the other hand it may not be as new as it seems.

Consider what it must have been like for Christianity to take root in a totally pagan and debauched culture in the first century. Sometimes we are presented with an overly positive picture of the progress of the faith. We read of how the church was courageous and loving, and how the empire was won over. But here is what it looked like along the way. This is from the mid-first century in pagan Asian Minor (1 Peter 4:3–5):

The time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

This is not pretty. The gospel is landing with power in some lives. So much power that they not only believe in Christ for justification, but their life styles are radically changed. They stop doing certain things. “Sensuality, passion, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties . . . a flood of debauchery.” Believing in Jesus means they don’t do that any more.

The result? Not respect and tolerance, but slander: “they malign you.” That is where we are today in regard to homosexuality. And Peter’s counsel to the maligned Christians who do not approve of the “flood of debauchery” around them is:

Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings.” (1 Peter 4:12–13).

Peter also held out hope that if we do not grow weary in doing good we would see saving effects in the lives of people around us:

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:12)

The panelists were sober-minded about the future. One of them suggested that if the cultural battle is lost on the nature and meaning of marriage then there will never be a complete cave-in in this country. Twenty percent of the people will always oppose same sex marriage, and many will go to prison.

Churches will be faced with new and unheard of cases of discipline. Suppose two so-called “married” men hear the gospel and one of them believes and comes to your church. Will you council “divorce” and moving out?

One final observation was made from the TGC panel: One of the most powerful things we can do is fold into our churches men and women who have same-sex attraction and surround them with a bigger vision of life and love and relationships that make it possible for them to flourish in families and friendships. These stories may be one of the most authenticating messages for the Christian gospel.

When Homosexuality Became a Man

“Man, that guy’s got a voice!” That was my first impression of Joe Hallett.

In the fall of 1990, my wife and I joined Bethlehem Baptist’s young adult Sunday School class. And during the worship times Joe’s voice would soar above everybody’s. He wasn’t a big guy — about 5-foot-7, maybe 130 pounds. But when he sang he was a man among men.

Joe wasn’t shy either. In our first conversation he just laid it out there. A decade earlier he had left college to dive into the gay community — the bars, the trysts, the flamboyant clothes, everything. And it had been exciting and liberating at first, after the misery of his sexually abused childhood and depressed teens. But the “gay lifestyle” turned out to be an empty bag. Like all distortions of human sexuality, “queerness” never delivered the fulfillment it promised.

Then in 1985, through the patient, persistent, pursuing love of a Christian friend, Joe heard the voice of Jesus and left “the lifestyle” to follow him.  

But nine months later the doctor spoke the nightmare words: “your blood test was positive.” Joe had full-blown AIDS. In 1986, the prognosis was two years, maybe. Joe believed life was over.

But Jesus didn’t. In fact, what Joe saw as a scorched place God intended to turn into a watered garden (Isaiah 58:11).

God gave him a church family at Bethlehem Baptist and a supportive family in Outpost Ministries' men’s group. Rather than shriveling, Joe flourished, growing in grace and truth and leadership. Soon he was asked to be Outpost’s Ministry Director. An excellent writer and compelling speaker, Joe increasingly found himself publicly preaching the gospel, championing God’s good design in human sexuality, equipping the church to serve the homosexually broken, and comforting the suffering.

Year after year this went on. Joe stopped expecting to die. There was too much kingdom work to do. So much that he recruited me to help him. One night in 1991, he called me. “I need some help at Outpost. The guys I work with need to be around spiritually mature men who don’t struggle with homosexuality. They have to stop seeing themselves as freaks, but as men. Would you help me?” I said yes.

For two years we worked together with real men with real lives. Men I grew to love. Men who grew stronger and sometimes stumbled. Men who had to fight to believe in God’s promises more than the deceitful sin in their broken bodies. Men like me. Homosexuality ceased being a label and became men I cared for.

In 1994, Joe gave me the honor of being his best man when God gave him the honor of marrying his long-time friend, Nancy, with whom he got to experience God’s good design for 3.5 years.

Finally, in the summer of 1997, Joe’s health began to fail. He had been very sick before and recovered. But this was different. As weeks passed many of us could tell that he knew the end was coming. But still his joy was infectious.

Once, when pondering death, Joe had written,

I think people are like trees. Some of us will flame brilliantly like sugar maples as we approach death. We will look forward to the promises of God and surrender our lives into his care. But others will wither and cling to the dying ashes of this life. Their self-centered lifestyles will deform them, making them like a twisted oak clutching its dead leaves. I wonder what your autumn will hold?

Joe died September 20, 1997, just when the sugar maples were in flame. He had not clung to dead leaves. He died reaching for the Lord of the Tree of Life in whose leaves is everlasting healing (Revelation 22:2). So the Lord appointed the maples as an honor guard ushering Joe to the land of strong singing and no more sin.

Fifteen years later I miss you, Joe. I miss your soaring songs, your Monte Python quotes, your honest friendship, and your godly example. You were faithful to Jesus unto death (Revelation 2:10), you believed his promises more than you believed your body, you didn’t waste your life, and you didn’t waste your AIDS. The Truth (John 14:6) has now set you completely free (John 8:32). You now have what you longed for most. I wish I could hear you sing.

And since you always liked to have the last word, I’ll let you ask us one more time:

“I wonder what your autumn will hold?”

Homosexuality and the Church’s Holy Tension

The core proclamation of the gospel declares that God made amends for human sin while humans were still ungodly and hostile sinners, that God experienced the pain and agony of offering Christ up to death in order to rescue the maximum number of people from sin and transform them into Christ's image. To denounce same-sex intercourse and then stop short of actively and sacrificially reaching out in love and concern to homosexuals is to have as truncated a gospel as those who mistake God's love for "accepting people as they are" and who avoid talk of the gospels transformative power. It is to forget the costly and self-sacrificial work of God in our own lives, past and ongoing. . . .

This book has been aimed at showing that affirming same-sex intercourse is not an act of love, however well meaning the intent. That road leads to death: physically, morally, and spiritually. Promoting the homosexual "rights" agenda is an awful and harmful waste of the church's energies and resources.

What does constitute an act of love is befriending the homosexual while withholding approval of homosexual behavior, working in the true interests of the homosexual despite one's personal repugnance for same-sex intercourse, pursuing in love the homosexual while bearing the abuse that will inevitably come with opposing homosexual practice. It is the harder road to travel. It is too hard for many people to live within that holy tension. Yet it is the road that leads to life and true reconciliation; it is the calling of the church in the world.

The real difficulty for the church lies not in assessing whether the Bible's stance toward same-sex intercourse is unremittingly negative, nor even (as is increasingly being suggested) in assessing whether the hermeneutical appropriation of the Bible's stance for our contemporary context sustains that witness. No, the real difficulty for the church lies in the pastoral dimension: the "nuts-and-bolts," day-to-day compassionate response to people whose sexual actions are recognized to be sinful and harmful to themselves, to the church, and to society at large. (492–493)

What’s At Stake in the Homosexuality Debate

The stakes could not be higher in the homosexuality debate, because — to put it rather bluntly — homosexual activity is a sin that parallels idolatry. The Apostle Paul seems to draw this connection in Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5, and he certainly does in Romans 1:18–27.

Robert Gagnon, a leading scholar on sexuality in Scripture, says these themes are closely related for Paul because both idolatry and same-sex intercourse equally oppose the designs of the Creator. He sees several strong connections that link Romans 1 to the creation account in Genesis 1–2. In his acclaimed book The Bible and Homosexual Practice, Gagnon writes, "Idolatry and homosexual behavior are in some measure parallel (not just successive) phenomena since both are presented as willful suppression of the obvious truth about God and God's design in the natural world."1

Pagan idolatry is twisted because it is the act of rejecting the Creator and replacing worship of him with the worship of what he has made. Similarly, homosexual acts are twisted because they reject God's natural design for human sexuality.2 Thus, homosexuality and idolatry are related. Both are evidence of a twisted distortion of God's design for men and women, both dehumanize men and women, both are rooted in a rejection of the Creator. That is to say, the distortions of idolatry and same-sex intercourse are foremost rooted in a worship disorder (Romans 1:21, 24–25).

And there isn't a disorder more serious than a worship disorder. The stakes could not be higher for sinners who refuse to honor and thank God for his created design. And when worship disorders spread, and souls hang in the balance, loving Christians speak up, not with voices of spite or hatred but with voices of love and compassion.

This is a point Gagnon makes:

Without taking into account God's will for holy living, love turns into affirmation of self-degrading and other-degrading conduct. This means that true love of one's neighbor does not embrace every form of consensual behavior. What constitutes an expression of love to one's neighbor depends significantly on how one assesses the benefit or harm of the neighbor's behavior. If indeed homosexual behavior is sin and an obstacle to the fullness of life available in Christ, then the church has an obligation both to protect the church from the debilitating effect of sanctioned immorality and to protect the homosexual for whom more is at stake than the satisfaction of sensual impulses.[3]

Yes. That last sentence is critical.

Homosexual intercourse is an obstacle to fullness in Christ, in fact it is an empty faux-replacement for the good design of the Creator. To seek happiness in homosexual activity is a replacement god, it kicks against the Creator, it is a rejection of the Creator just like idolatry.

John Piper is right when he says, "God's judgment on homosexual and lesbian relationships is not because he is a killjoy, but because he is opposed to what kills joy."4 Fullness of joy in Christ is at stake. And fullness of joy will never be found in crossing the wires of God's created intentions.

Heterosexual sin and homosexual sin alike are ultimately rooted in a worship disorder, a worship disorder that robs the soul of joy now and robs the soul of joy eternally. The fullness of joy we all long for is reserved for those sinners who, by God's grace alone, have been healed from this worship disorder, who are rightly oriented with the Creator, and who turn away from selfishness that kicks against the created order.

The gospel of Jesus Christ offers us victory in our worship disorders. By Christ's death and resurrection and through our union with him, we turn away from the wisdom of our own eyes, we turn from idols, and we turn from what contradicts God's beautiful design. We continue to battle sinful sexual impulses and all sin, and we fight sin together as brothers and sisters in Christ who look forward to a day when all temptations will be gone and we will enjoy eternal pleasures forever in the presence of our Creator (Psalm 16:11). That is why this topic matters, because eternal happiness is ultimately what's at stake in the homosexuality debate.

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2"In effect, Paul is saying: Start with the obvious fittedness of human anatomy; when done with that, consider procreative design as a clue; then move to a broad range of interpersonal differences that define maleness and femaleness. These are much better clues to God's will for human sexuality than preexisting, controlling passions — which can be warped by the fall and shaped by socialization factors." [Robert A. J. Gagnon, "Sexuality," in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Baker Academic, 2005), 745–746.]