Sex, Gender, and Identity in Pastoral Counseling

Why do we not put adulterers to death anymore as prescribed in, for example, Leviticus 20:10–16? And since we do not, why insist, then, on the enduring importance of the prohibitions on adultery, incest, homosexual practice, cross-dressing, bestiality, and other forms of promiscuity in Old Testament law? And has it any bearing on our pastoral guidance on sexual ethics, that ancient Israel’s land became unclean and caused the Lord to bring punishment for its iniquity upon it, so that the land vomited out its inhabitants (Lev 18:24–30)?

The short answer for Christians with a high view on the Bible is that these prohibitions are repeated in the New Testament (Rom 1:26–27; 1 Cor 6:9; 1 Tim 1:10), and that the land of ancient Israel prefigures the world in which a New Testament Christian lives.

At the same time, we know all too well that such a view on gender and sexuality is like a red flag to a bull in the face of the cancel culture that pervades Western societies. For social constructivism in general and queer ideology in particular, it is common to consider what the Bible says about gender identity and sexual orientation as irrelevant, or, if given attention, as norms that should be canceled. And since many Christians, including Christian churches and entire denominations, give in to the pressure, pastors with a calling to preach, teach, and counsel on sexual ethics based on Scripture find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

Christians who cancel the binding application of passages on binary gender and sexual ethics for Christians generally follow one of two hermeneutical strategies. The first attempts to demonstrate that the biblical texts do not exclude multiple genders and do not address modern consensual same-sex relationships, but instead cultic prostitution, homosexual practice with one’s social inferior, and pederasty. The second strategy involves acknowledging a binary, heterosexual perspective in certain biblical texts, but then setting them aside or subordinating them to other texts deemed more significant. In this latter view, it is not the rejection of non-binary gender identity and same-sex relationships in the biblical texts that are denied, but rather their authority. It is typically argued that, since Christ nailed all of these laws and ordinances to the cross, canceling their debt, they are not binding for Christians (Col 2:14–16); and that, since Christians are no longer under the law, there is “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female — for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

The purpose of this paper is not to go through the biblical arguments against these hermeneutical strategies, but to demonstrate that, though there are relatively few passages that address gender identity and sexual ethics, they are foundationally embedded in creation theology, and that the force of these admittedly few passages comes not from Moses’ and Paul’s time-bound prohibitions against Canaanite and Greek practices, but from the created order itself. The ethical principles behind the Mosaic laws are embedded in the same creation theology on which the New Testament’s sexual ethics is based, thus demonstrating that there is an organic connection between Old Testament creation theology, the ethical guidance of Mosaic law, and the New Testament’s approach to gender and sexual ethics.

The Created Order

Before we delve into the embeddedness of these passages in creation theology, an outline of the creation theology in which they are embedded is in order. Much more could be said about this, of course, but since the primary purpose is to focus on the embeddedness, a brief sketch must suffice.

Genesis 1 and 2 teach us that humanity must be appreciated and received as a relational, embodied, and binary gift. This formulation is deliberate. The adjectives “relational,” “embodied,” and “binary” qualify the most important term, “gift,” emphasizing that life is a gift or, put slightly differently, a given. This description underscores both the fundamental value of human beings as positively willed by God and the necessity for humans to understand themselves as a given, specifically given to reflect the relationship within God, i.e., the image of God, through their embodied binarity. “God is Spirit” (John 4:24), as John reminds us, and Paul, in a similar manner, describes him as “invisible” (Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17). Nevertheless, God decided to create man as his physical representation in creation.

Man as a physical representation of God

When in Genesis 1:26 it says, “Let us make man in our image (צלם), after our likeness (דמות),” both “visibility” and “corporeality” are part of the semantic fields of צלם, “image,” and דמות, “likeness.” The former denotes a physical, carved, or sculpted statue or copy of something metaphysical and is used in biblical Hebrew to describe various idols (e.g., 2 Kgs 11:18). When applied to God and humanity in Genesis 1:26–27, it should be understood, as Marc Cortez formulates it, as “a declaration that God intended to create human persons to be the physical means through which he would manifest his own divine presence in the world.”^[1] Our bodies are, in other words, tangible symbols or indicators of a divine mystery: As John Paul II phrases it: “The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it.”^[2] The body simply testifies to who I am, and without my body, Carl Trueman argues, it would be impossible to demonstrate that I am me:

 [My body] is perhaps the foundational piece of evidence that, were I to claim that I am, for example, Attila the Hun or Nancy Pelosi, I would be talking nonsense, with my body as Exhibit A in the case for the prosecution. It is not simply instrumental to my identity; my identity is inseparable from it. To downgrade it to a mere incidental, or to set the real me in opposition to it, is a recipe for chaos.^[3]

Man and woman as a physical representation of the Godhead

Another principle behind the biblical understanding of the relationship between gender, body, and sexuality is related to the boundary-drawing or limits in creation. The creation account in Genesis 1 describes the first act of creation as well-organized, well-structured, and well-ordered. This is achieved through the quantitative use of the number seven to separate the six days of creation from the seventh day of rest and the qualitative use of the same number to symbolize the perfect result. Furthermore, the narrative repeatedly describes creation in binary terms, where an original whole is separated and given names, and both separation and naming serve to delineate and identify the new, independent parts. This applies to light and darkness (vv. 3–4), heaven and sea (vv. 6–7), sea and dry land (vv. 9–10), the creation of animals in different “kinds” (v. 21), the distinction between humans and animals, and thus also the binary creation of humans as male and female (vv. 26–27).

Masculinity and femininity are, as it were, two different “incarnations,” that is, two ways in which the same human being, created “in the image of God” (Gen 1:27), is a body. And this combined body of masculinity and femininity is designed by God to participate in and reflect the divine plan for human love and communion, particularly within the context of marriage. It underscores the idea that the body is meant for self-giving love and free mutual fulfillment in interpersonal relationships, echoing the biblical imagery of marriage as a union of one flesh. As John Paul II puts it,

The human body, with its sex – its masculinity and femininity – seen in the very mystery of creation, is not only a source of fruitfulness and of procreation, as in the whole natural order, but contains ‘from the beginning’ the ‘spousal’ attribute, that is, the power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and – through this gift – fulfills the very meaning of his being.^[4]

Seen as a mutual gift, the union of sexually differentiated human bodies in marriage is a profound expression of the image of God as the perfect giver and life as the ultimate gift. For the same reason, marriage is teleological in the sense that it refers back to the original telos of God’s gift of life in original creation but also, due to the fall, forward to the gift of new and everlasting life through incarnation and consummation. Christopher West, in a most helpful presentation of John Paul II’s theology of the body, writes that the “giving” is both eternally internal to God and revelationally external in creation: “Within the Trinity, the Father eternally ‘begets’ the Son by giving himself to and for the Son. In turn, the Son (the ‘beloved of the Father’) eternally receives the love of the Father and eternally gives himself back to the Father. The love they share is the Holy Spirit, who ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son’ (Nicene Creed).”^[5]

Creation of man in this image means, specifically, that man in marriage is called to reflect God’s internal “giving” and “creating.” By complementing each other, “in the normal course of events, their reciprocal ‘giving’ enables sperm and ovum to meet, and a ‘third’ comes into existence.”^[6]

Old Testament Law as a Normative Universe

To illustrate the significance of creation theology for a biblical sexual ethic, we will briefly examine a paradigm shift that occurred a few decades ago within legal theory.^[7] In his influential essay “Nomos and Narrative” from 1983, the late legal scholar Robert Cover of Yale University contended that, instead of regarding law solely as a system of rules imposed by a sovereign, it is more apt to conceptualize law as a normative universe, a “nomos,” wherein “we constantly create and maintain a world of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful, of valid and void”^[8] This understanding of law represents a significant departure from traditional perspectives on law — not as a collection of institutional rules and principles, not as a series of policies and mechanisms for social control, but rather as a narrative prism through which we perceive and filter the realms of right and wrong, valid and void, good and bad. From this standpoint, law is most accurately characterized not as a rigid system but rather as an exceptionally rich and adaptable set of resources for all aspects of the normative life of individuals and communities. It contends that neither law nor legal institutions can be comprehended in isolation from the narrative in which they are immersed:

For every constitution there is an epic, for each decalogue a scripture. Once understood in the context of the narratives that give it meaning, law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which we live. In this normative world, law and narrative are inseparably related. Every prescription is insistent in its demand to be located in discourse — to be supplied with history and destiny, beginning and end, explanation and purpose. And every narrative is insistent in its demand for its prescriptive point, its moral. History and literature cannot escape their location in a normative universe, nor can prescription, even when embodied in a legal text, escape its origin and its end in experience, in the narratives that are the trajectories plotted upon material reality by our imaginations.^[9]

Cover’s essay was of landmark importance as it pioneered a new field of research, offering a fresh perspective on the interplay between law and narrative. In Old Testament research it is represented by Richard Averbeck, who has demonstrated that the law given at Sinai begins and ends with the native Hebrew indentured servant and the release law in light of the Lord’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. The liberation from slavery in Egypt is mentioned as the entire premise for the Law in the first of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod 20:2). And the non-cultic regulations in the Book of the Covenant commence with provisions on debt slavery and release: “Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing” (Exod 21:2–11). Similarly, the Law given at Sinai concludes with the same subject (Lev 25:39–43,47–55), again emphasizing the liberation from slavery in Egypt as the entire premise for the Law (Lev 25:38, 42–43, 55):

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers. For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God (Lev 25:38–44).

For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God (Lev 25:55).

This is the fundamental historical fact and theological rationale underlying the entire covenant and the law embedded therein. God had set his people free, so he is their God, and they are his people (Lev 25:55–26:1).^[10]

God’s free and unforced creation of Israel through liberation from slavery is itself embedded, however, in the larger narrative of God’s universal creation and recreation.

In Deuteronomy 4, God’s leading Israel “out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt” (4:20) is described as God’s greatest act “since the day God created (ברא) man on the earth” (4:32), and there are several reasons also to view the Holiness Code in Leviticus in light of the creation in Genesis 1 and 2.

The prohibitions in Leviticus 18 and 20 appear as a specific elaboration of the prohibition of adultery in the Decalogue in Exodus 20, and references to the creation account in the introduction to the covenant-making narrative in Exodus 19–24 abound. The fruitfulness (פרה) and multiplication (רבה) of the Israelites in Exodus 1:7 clearly echoes the functional explanation of the image of God in Genesis 1:28, the plagues narrative is full of polemics against Egyptian belief in creation, and there are several echoes of creation in the account of the parting of the waters of the Reed Sea in Exodus 14. Also, the reason for observing the Sabbath in Exodus 20:8–11 is provided with a reference to God’s rest on the seventh day in the creation account (Gen 2:1–3), and the parallel between the rest after the creation of heaven and earth and the creation of Israel is evident from the rationale for observing the Sabbath day in Deuteronomy 5:15, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore [italics added] the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” And though different words — פסל (“idol, image”) and תמונה (“likeness, form”) — are used in Exodus 20:4 and Deuteronomy 5:8 to ban the production (לא תעשה) of carved images, the reason behind the prohibitions must be seen in the light of God’s creation of man in God’s צלם (“image”) and דמות (“likeness”). What God had already created should not, in other words, be re-created by those who were the created images themselves.

Furthermore, there are several more subtle links between the creation account in Genesis 1 and the creation of Israel in Exodus 19–24. In rabbinic tradition, it is noted in Pirqe Avot that the world was created with ten words (5:1), that Israel’s ancestor Abraham was the tenth generation after Noah (5:2), and that God performed ten wonders in connection with the Exodus from Egypt (5:4). Likewise, both Jewish and Christian interpreters have observed a parallel between God’s Ten Words in creation and God’s Ten Words at Sinai. Martin Buber, for example, states that “Israel’s appropriation of the land is the encounter and association of Creation and Revelation.”^[11] Or in the words of Joseph Ratzinger: “[t]he creation narrative anticipates the Ten Commandments. This makes us realize that these Ten Commandments are, as it were, an echo of the creation; for they are not arbitrary inventions for the purpose of erecting barriers to human freedom but signs pointing to the spirit, the language, and the meaning of creation; they are a translation of the language of the universe, a translation of God’s logic, which constructed the universe.”^[12]

As an interpretation and elaboration of the commandment on adultery, the prohibitions in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are thus anchored in the created order.

This understanding also explains why Leviticus 18:22 is grouped with child sacrifice (v. 21) and bestiality (v. 23). Milgrom, in his commentary on Leviticus, argues that the common denominator for all prohibitions is procreation. They all involve the emission of semen for the purpose of copulation resulting either in incest or illicit progeny (vv. 6–20), the destruction of progeny (v. 21), or no progeny (vv. 22–23). The result of child sacrifice, homosexual intercourse, and bestiality respectively, is profanation of God’s name (תחלל את־שׁם אלהיך), abomination (תועבה), and perversion (תבל). They are singled out from the other offenses as transgressions directly against God because these acts are contrary to creation order. They involve copulating with someone who could not procreate or copulating in order to destroy the procreated result. Such an understanding only adds to the conclusion above, namely that the rationale is not only cultic prostitution, a distinction between penetrator and penetrated, or pederasty, but a total ban against homosexuality.

This is especially true in relation to Genesis 1 but also in relation to the subsequent description in Genesis 2 of the relationship between man and woman as “one flesh.”

Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary Jay Sklar argues that the parallels between Genesis 1–2 and Leviticus show that “the Israelites are not only to be a signpost back to Eden, they are to become a manifestation of it and a people who extend Eden’s borders to every corner of the earth.” Two conclusions, he writes, can be drawn from this idea:

First, because these chapters are a backdrop to Leviticus, it is natural to understand that the moral logic behind the Levitical prohibitions against homosexual sex is rooted in the fact that there is a pattern laid down in creation that helps us to understand what sex and marriage are to look like … Second, because the pattern is creational, it has ongoing relevance for today. Such an understanding is rooted in Jesus’s own approach to these chapters.^[13]

It is also worth mentioning G. Geoffrey Harper’s study on The Rhetorical Function of Allusion to Genesis 1–3 in the Book of Leviticus, in which he demonstrates that Leviticus displays a deliberate use and recontextualization of Genesis 1–3. The presence of key lexical terms and central concepts such as זרע (“seed”), ארץ (“earth, land”), and מות (“to die”) in both Genesis 1–3 and Leviticus 18 and 20 demonstrates Harper’s argument about the connection between these texts as part of a wider strategy. This suggests that the statements regarding homosexual practices in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 should be understood within the framework of the creation theology presented in Genesis 1–2.

The shared vocabulary and concepts between these passages indicate a deliberate intertextual connection that reinforces the idea that these prohibitions are rooted in the theological and narrative context of creation. This connection implies that the prohibitions are not arbitrary but meant to be understood within the broader theological framework of the created order as described in Genesis.

It is in the same creation-theological context that we should understand a group of texts that address cross-dressing (Deut 22:5; 2 Kgs 23:7; 1 Cor 11:4–5:14). When it says in Deuteronomy 22:5, “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak,” it must be understood as a prohibition against obscuring the created binary between man and woman. The prohibition appears in the immediate context with other prohibitions that mark boundaries between seemingly arbitrary categories: “You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together” (Deut 22:10–11). However, the seemingly arbitrariness in these distinctions dissolve when viewed as symbolic acts meant to mark respect for boundaries between the created “kinds,” which, according to Genesis 1–2, are fundamental to God’s intentions in creation. This includes the created and thus given “boundary” between male and female. The same underlying concept can be found in Paul’s words to the Corinthian church, where he discusses head coverings and long hair in 1 Corinthians 11:4–5 and 14.

The New Testament’s Normative Universe

Turning to the New Testament, Paul clearly bases his argumentation in Romans 1 on Genesis 1–2:

• The “creation of the world” is explicitly mentioned in verse 20.
• The replacement of “the immortal God’s glory . . . with images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” in verse 23 clearly refers to an overthrow of the divine image in Genesis 1:26–
• Worship of “the creature rather than the Creator” in verse 25 expresses the raison d’être of Genesis 1, namely, that God is the Creator and humanity is his creation.
• The wisdom and folly mentioned resemble man’s foolish grasp for wisdom in eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2, and there is an unmistakable allusion to Genesis 2:17 in verse 32 when it says about the “men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (verse 18) that “[t]hey know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die.”
• Paul’s use of the relatively unusual Greek words θῆλυς for female and ἄρσεν for males suggests that he draws on the Septuagint version of Genesis and Leviticus 18, where the same two words are used.
• In other words, the same-sex sexual acts forbidden in Leviticus 18:22 are, therefore, not just תועבה (“an abomination”) because the Canaanites practiced them (18:3) or because they caused ritual impurity (18:24–27), but because they conflict with the created order, namely, what the “seed” was created to accomplish. By describing these acts as “contrary to nature,” Paul clearly means “contrary to the intention of the Creator.”

The same is true for 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, where Paul also uses a form of the same unusual word for practicing homosexuals, namely ἀρσενοκοίτης.

As for the catalog of vices in 1 Timothy 1:8, Paul most likely groups them by reference to the Mosaic law. The list begins with “patricide” and “matricide” referring to extreme violations against the fifth commandment to honor one’s parents. The next vice, “murder,” applies to the sixth commandment, whereas the third, “fornicators” and “sodomites,” refers to the seventh commandment concerning adultery; “kidnappers” refers to the eighth commandment concerning stealing, and “liars” and “perjurers” refers to the ninth commandment concerning bearing false witness. Therefore, instead of interpreting the terms as referring to prostitution or pederasty, it is better to understand πόρνοις in its general and comprehensive meaning of “sexual immorality” and as referring to a violation of the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” (Exod 20:14).

The relatively few texts about sex and gender identity cannot be isolated from their biblical context. Both their meaning and force must be defined against the backdrop of the redemptive-historical and creation-theological context in which they are embedded. This implies that although both Moses and Paul address time-specific challenges regarding sex and gender, namely Canaanite and Greek practices respectively, they apply an underlying principle that is not limited to random, time-specific, or isolated violations of this principle. Instead, it reflects the fundamental intention in God’s binary creation of humanity as male and female with the purpose of becoming one flesh.

Pastoral Teaching and Counseling on Sexual Ethics

Genesis 1 and 2 teaches us, as already mentioned, that humanity must be appreciated and received as a relational, embodied, and binary gift. And the embeddedness of later biblical guidance on sex and gender shows us that the same deliberation in choosing “gift” as the key term and “relational,” “embodied,” and “binary” as given modifiers apply in the post-fall reality of the world in which we, as pastors and teachers, are called to teach, preach, guide, and counsel on sexual ethics.

The model for our ministry should be to follow the same hermeneutical strategy as laid out in the Bible itself. In other words, to work our way backwards from the particular biblical guidance in, e.g., the Mosaic laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, Jesus’ words in Matthew 19, and Paul’s admonitions in Corinthians and Timothy to redemption and creation.

If we do no more than repeat the prohibitions of Moses, Jesus, and Paul verbatim, we end up with a legalistic preaching, guidance, and counseling that does not set people free to choose the blessed life but binds them to a life of which they do not understand the blessing. And the strongest argument for not doing this is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus Christ is the expressed image of God, the one who, more clearly than anything or anyone else, shows us that human life is a relational, embodied, and binary gift. He does this by showing us how the body is meant for self-giving love and free mutual fulfillment in interpersonal relationships, by giving the ultimate gift, namely his own body, to and for humanity. He does this primarily as Redeemer, demonstrating that the way back to the order of creation is through redemption. It is the redeemed human who also receives his perfect righteousness and experiences that it is through faith we, as Paul has it, have “been clothed with the new man that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it” (Col 3:10). And since Christ is the expressed image of God, being “clothed with the new man” clearly means being restored to the created order.

The fact that there is no “Leviticus” in the New Testament is both obvious and challenging! It is obvious because ethical guidance and legislation in the church and society exists in their respective domains, but it is also challenging — or perhaps even frustrating — because there is no direct reuse of the guidance given to ancient Israel.

Post-fall texts in the Old and New Testaments should be appreciated — not as an answer key or check-list — but as examples on how the given created order should or could be fleshed out in various cultural and temporal settings. And the wording “should or could” is deliberate, since we need to distinguish between applications that are uniform and timeless on the one hand, and advice that is varied and timebound on the other. Homosexual practice will always, regardless of the circumstances, be a violation of the intended creation of binary humanity for one-flesh union between man and wife. Both Jesus and Paul repeat the prohibitions of Leviticus with reference to the created order. Dresses and long hair, on the other hand, are culturally and temporally conditioned signifiers of masculinity and femininity.

As for the domains of church and society, we need to distinguish between violation and transgression on the one hand and sentencing and punishment on the other in applying the texts from Leviticus.

Suffice it to say, I believe pastoral counseling is on firm exegetical and biblical-theological ground in insisting that, while the transgression should still be seen as a violation of God’s law, the New Testament maintains a division between church and state, leaving it to the state to “wield the sword.” Sentencing and punishment in the maintenance of order and justice coram hominibus, i.e., in human society, is a matter for the state. The church, on the other hand, is entrusted with God’s Word as the only means of defining right and wrong and declaring a person guilty coram Deo, i.e., in the presence of God, leaving the ultimate and eternal judgment of the unrepentant to God, but with a clear mandate to proclaim forgiveness in Christ to the penitent.

One challenge remains, however, in transposing the Mosaic laws to life under the New Covenant. What about the casuistic guidance that confronts reality with the aim of directing toward the ideal but where the guidance reflects the ideal to a lesser or weakened extent? This applies, for example, to texts that either narratively or legally address polygamy without idealizing it (e.g., narrative texts about Abraham’s, Jacob’s, David’s, and Solomon’s polygamy, or the levirate law in Deut 25:5–6). Or when there are New Testament texts that regulate slavery without idealizing it, such as 1 Corinthians 7:20–24; Colossians 3:22–25; 4:1; Ephesians 6:5–9; and Titus 2:9–10. In these texts, there is no outright rejection of polygamy or slavery. However, when the guidance is understood in light of the foundational narrative of creation, it becomes clear that it is intended to move the culture toward the ideal, especially within a context where polygamy and slavery were common. Man was not created to be a slave, and a man was not created to have multiple wives. But do such casuistic considerations also apply to sex and gender? Should we allow, not only in society, but also in the church, for homosexual practice, gender transitioning, and gender fluidity? The case of slavery is a tricky one, since Paul obviously allows for some degree of slavery in his advice to the church in Ephesus.

A key passage for settling the question, however, is Jesus’ comment in Matthew 19, where he acknowledges that, in ancient Israel, divorce was permitted “because of your hard hearts,” but adds, that ^“from the beginning it was not this way,” and “now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another commits adultery” (19:8–9). Since Jesus is addressing his disciples, not the “authorities,” I take it as a sign that, while in society, where regulation in the New Testament is left to “the authorities,” it should be accepted that legislation does not necessarily reflect the ideal but points toward the ideal. It is nevertheless the church’s responsibility to always base its teaching, preaching, counseling, guidance, and church discipline on the ideal. Jesus insists, through his words about marriage, that polygamy is not compatible with the Christian life, and a Christian cannot be married to multiple wives or husbands, even if it is permitted in society. Paul’s reference to creation in his discussion of homosexual practice similarly means that, even if it is permitted in society, practicing homosexuality is incompatible with the Christian life. Paul’s application of the distinction between man and woman in the passage about long hair also shows that, even if it is permitted in society, it is incompatible with the Christian life within the congregation to dress in a way that blurs the boundaries between the genders.

Since Christ shows us the way back to the beginning and forward toward the new creation, let us be “buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life” (Rom 6:4). And let us teach, preach, guide, and counsel people entrusted us to do the same!

[1] Marc Cortez, ReSourcing Theological Anthropology: A Constructive Account of Humanity in the Light of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2018), 109.

[2] John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), 19:4.

[3] Trueman, ‘The Triumph of the Social Scientific Method,’ First Things 6.15.20. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/06/the-triumph-of-the-social-scientific-method

[4] John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), 15:1.

[5] Christopher West and Eric Metaxas, Our Bodies Tell God’s Story: Discovering the Divine Plan for Love, Sex, and Gender (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2020), 34–35.

[6] West and Metaxas, 39.

[7] The following is to a large extent a paraphrase of different sections from the essay “Encoding and Decoding Culture”, in Daniel I. Block, David C. Deuel, John Collins, and Paul J. N. Lawrence (eds.), Write That They May Read: Studies in Literacy and Textualization in the Ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Scriptures:Essays in Honour of Professor Alan R. Millard (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020), 243–44).

[8] Robert Cover, ‘The Supreme Court, 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative’, Harvard Law Review 97:4 (1983), 4.

[9] Robert Cover, ‘The Supreme Court, 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative’, Harvard Law Review 97:4 (1983), 4-5.

[10] Richard E. Averbeck, ‘The Egyptian Sojourn and Deliverance from Slavery in the Framing and Shaping of Mosaic Law’, in Richard E. Averbeck, James K. Hoffmeier, Alan R. Millard, and Gary A. Rendsburg (eds.), “Did I not Bring Israel Out of Egypt?” Biblical, Archaeological, and Egyptological Perspectives on the Exodus Narratives (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 169-170).

[11] Martin Buber, On Zion: The History of an Idea (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 102.

[12] Joseph Ratzinger, “In the Beginning . . .” A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 26.

[13] Jay Sklar, ‘The Prohibitions against Homosexual Sex in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: Are They Relevant Today?’, Bulletin for Biblical Research 28:2 (2018): 189–90.