Homosexuality in the Early Christian Church

[tinpra]

I started to write this ridiculously long comment to my del.icio.us tag for this article when I realized I might as well just put it all in a posting, b/c that's exactly where I was headed, I was just too tired to realize it.

Assuming you have not read the article it is, in short, about two male saints (in the Catholic sense) who are thought to have been an openly gay couple in the early church. (It can't be too early, however, b/c there is a picture of them which also contains a miniature of Christ but Christ was not portrayed in the earliest Christian art.) Not only were they openly gay, but their marriage, and others, were accepted and normal for that early church.

Let's say all of this is true and historians haven't misread or misunderstood either the text about these two fellows (and it looks like the haven't) or misinterpreted the iconography of the art representing them. The point of the article is that the early church was tolerant and that today's church should do likewise, that sexuality and marriage were fluid in early Christendom and it is only in these modern times that we have become so rigid. Personally I think a review of the last 50 years would prove that last statement untrue, but to deal with the issue at hand...

So assuming all of this is true--early Christians knew, accepted and welcomed homosexuals, homosexuality and homosexual lifestyle--how does any of that change what's found in the Word of God, the Bible? The Bible is, for lack of a better term in my sleep-addled mind, the Christian Rulebook. All games have rules. If there are no rules, there is chaos. That is the nature of things. Just try playing Uno with someone you've never played with before without agreeing on rules-of-play and see the madness that ensues the first time someone has to pick up cards let alone any other kind of organized game. Now most games have official rules (Uno being one of them) as well as agreed-upon rules. Now while you and I, in this fictional game of Uno, may agree that each game is unique unto itself so that there is only one winner per game and as many winners as there are games, the official rules state that you have to play until someone makes 500 points. In "our" version of Uno, points don't necessarily matter. In our version of Uno, there are no penalties but in the official version there are.

You could argue that we don't care about the official rules--we made our own rules. But if you ever wanted to play tournament level Uno (there has to be such a thing somewhere) I'd bet you have to use the official Uno rules. And just because you and I decide to use our own rules does not invalidate the official rules. Actually the official rules trump our rules every time. Such is the nature of rules or laws.

So back to the two gay male saints of the early church. Still assuming that everything in the article is true: Just because those two men were gay, just because the early church accepted that and their marriage, just because such things were widely accepted and had their own ceremonies, etc., does not make them right. If God's Word is the Christian Rulebook then the agreed upon rules between you and I, or between ministers or priests or congregations, etc., for how to play this Christian "game" are overridden by what's in the Bible. Every time. Every. Time. If it were not so then the American Abolitionists, many of whom were Christians from various walks of life, would not have had a leg to stand on because the agreed upon rules said that Africans (and seemingly anyone who is dark-skinned) were less than human. Likewise with the rights of women. And I know I'm opening a can of worms by using those two particular examples, but I'm too tired to go into skewed ideas of what the Bible says about slavery and women, versus what is or was taught on it and what the Bible honestly portrays of practices of the people it talks about. But if you bring it up I will, of course, talk about it.

(article courtesy of this post by jinxed_wood)

Comments

[jinxed-wood.livejournal.com]

The Bible is, for lack of a better term in my sleep-addled mind, the Christian Rulebook.

Interesting take on it. The thing is, this argument presupposes the concept that the 'rule book' (i.e. the Christian Bible) has been immutable and unchanged for the last two thousand years, instead of the fluid and changing text it actually was. The modern day Bible (and the various versions thereof) bears little resemblance to the version touted in the early Christian church.

[tinpra.livejournal.com]

Actually the modern Bible is one of the best documented texts from antiquity. By "best documented" I mean that the source documents we have for it are extremely old, i.e. they were written relatively shortly after the events (in the New Testament for clarification) actually happened, and the translations are absolutely excellent. There is continuous work being done to translate ancient Biblical writings that are have been highly damaged by age so that they are physically hard to read. When those writings, however, are made clear by the preservationists, etc., who are working on them, the writings regularly match what has been translated today.

The King James Version of the Bible is a really, really good translation. One might have personal issues translating King James/Elizabethan English into modern English, but that's an entirely different issue. Likewise, versions like the Amplified Bible not only give you the usual usage of words, but also the extended or synonymous uses.

[jinxed-wood.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think I'd be more inclined to think that Bible is one of the more selective documents going around, and just as defined by the New Testament documents it leaves out, as the ones it leaves in. But I'm afraid we have very differing views on such matters and leave it at that.

[tinpra.livejournal.com]

;) You're right, I do have a very differing view on that one.