Issues Concerning the Heidelberg Catechism and Behlar Confession

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General Assembly Class: 5/4/2014

Issues Concerning the Heidelberg Catechism and Behlar Confession

1. Unity and Diversity

Tensions concerning unity and diversity (and, relatedly authority and autonomy) are a central part of the human experience. The history, theology, and structure of Reformed Protestantism can only be understood if one sees how basic facets our faith and practice are ever reforming attempts to reconcile these differences. The structure of church governance balances the autonomy and diversity of laypeople and individual churches (stressed in the Baptist tradition) with the unity and authority of the denomination (stressed in the Roman Catholic and Episcopal traditions). The guidelines for reading scripture[1] adopted by the 123d and 194th General Assembly quite brilliantly combine our individual authority to interpret scripture with the authority of historical scholarship, witness to Jesus, and the rule of love to constrain acceptable interpretations.

The philosopher Tristan Garcia notes that humans typically unify themselves into three kinds of classes in terms of their origin (species, nations, races, families), beliefs (sects), and activities (occupations, hobbies).[2] There is nothing a priori wrong with this kind of sorting, but it leads to characteristic dangers.

For Garcia, a class becomes “compact” when people in them are no longer seen as individuals belonging to several distinct classes, but are rather seen entirely in terms of the now compact class. This can be from an external perspective, as with the classical racist who does not see people of a given ethnicity as anything other than as examples of that ethnicity. Or the class itself can become more and more compact, forcing its own members to shed identification with other classes that might compete for attention. Religious cults and companies that engage in pyramid schemes often do this, monopolizing members’ activities and beliefs and distancing members from family members who are hostile to the cult or scheme. The result is an empirical realization of Garcia’s compactness, with the members actually becoming less and less distinguishable from one another.

If Garcian compactness is one of the main dangers of unity, the danger of diversity is that too much of it hinders our ability to acknowledge of our real commonalities. Moreover, this kind of acknowledgement seems to be a psychological prerequisite for empathy in human beings. If something could be wholly other, completely diverted from others, it would be terrifying. H.P. Lovecraft has several stories that paradoxically describe indescribable creatures to achieve this kind of horror. Stephen King’s late period masterpiece From a Buick Eight is an extended meditation on this aspect of the genre.[3]

Often the two dangers go hand in hand. Racists who view people of African descent entirely in terms of that descent (Garcian compactness) often justify their views in terms of defending ethnic diversity! In fact, for decades the Dutch Reformed Church provided theological justification for Apartheid in exactly these terms.[4] Likewise, academics who attempt to deconstruct all classifications in the name of difference end up not having the resources to differentiate anything from anything. So difference either becomes a universal monotony (a night in which all cows are black, as Hegel wrote), or the critique is wielded in bad faith to bully people into joining the critics’ class. Garcia argues that critics of the notion of “gender” often in fact want everyone to adopt their preferred gender roles!

The dialectical tensions surrounding unity and diversity are at the core of the confessional issues facing the 2014 General Assembly. The 1562 Heidelberg Catechism was intended to be interdenominational, showing that Lutherans and Reformed believed the same essential tenants at a time when Lutherans in the Palatinate viewed Reformed pastors to be desecrating the Lord’s Supper. The peaceful tone is connected to the desire for interdenominational peace, which at that time in history was a prerequisite for actual peace. The Belhar Confession of 1986 affirms that the one church mentioned in the Nicene Creed is normative for the visible church, and that failure to worship or share in sacraments due to race is in fact heretical. Belhar moreover argues that achieving this unity cannot be divorced from achieving reconciliation and justice.

As we will see, the particular issue with the Heidelberg Catechism paradoxically concerns one of the major sources of division in the PCUSA. Somewhat less paradoxically, some defenders of the revised translation take the revisions to be in the service of not having the text serve to undermine Christian unity. For some of us, the unequal treatment of GLTB people in the Reformed tradition is analogous to the heresy concerning race to which the rejections of the Behlar Confession respond. Not for all though, which is one of the reasons that the revisions to Heidelberg Catechism will almost certainly be officially adopted this year, while the Belhar Confession could go either way.

II. The Heidelberg Catechism

In 2012 the General Assembly approved by voice vote[5] a new translation of the Heidelberg Catechism in The Book of Confessions. The new translators studied the early German and Latin versions of the Heidelberg Catechism and produced a new translation, that: (1) following the original German text, includes scriptural references added to every one of the 129 questions, (2) presents each answer not as block paragraphs but broken into stanzas, and (3) corrects numerous translation problems.[6]

Of these problems, the one that was most controversial concerned Question 87, which in the current Book of Confessions reads:

Q. 87. Can those who do not turn to God from their ungrateful, impenitent life be saved?

A. Certainly not! Scripture says, “Surely you know that the unjust will never come into possession of the kingdom of God. Make no mistake: no fornicator or idolater, none who are guilty either of adultery or of homosexual perversion, no thieves or grabbers or drunkards or slanderers or swindlers, will possess the kingdom of God.”

The newer version reads:

87 Q. Can those be saved who do not turn to God from their ungrateful and unrepentant ways?

A. By no means.

Scripture tells us that

no unchaste person,

no idolater, adulterer, thief,

no covetous person,

no drunkard, slanderer, robber,

or the like

will inherit the kingdom of God.1

1 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:1-20; 1 John 3:14

The following criticism is typical:

Q. 87. The propposed new translation removes the direct 1 Corinthians quote and instead paraphrases it as: “By no means. Scripture tells us that no unchaste person, no idolater, adulterer, thief, no covetous person, no drunkard, slanderer, robber, or the like will inherit the kingdom of God.” The citation of 1 Cor 6:9 - 10 appears only in a footnote. Is this change an improvement, or is it a dilution of the Scripture on which the catechism is supposed to be based? While the current BOC makes clear the meaning of the original Greek scriptural text, the translation, by paraphrasing Scripture and omitting same - sex behavior, obscures the meaning and implies falsely that Scripture did not include same - Sex relations among the sins condemned.[7]

This kind of response did not win out, as over two thirds of 173 presbyteries passed item 18-03 in 2013. The revised translation has already been adopted by the Christian Reformed Church in North America and the Reformed Church in America (the former’s doctrinal statement echoing Roman Catholic dogma on homosexuality itself being at variance with God, and the latter’s 2012 General Synod declaring “homosexual acts” to be sins, though this was controversial), and the decision of the presbyteries will almost certainly be ratified at the forthcoming General Assembly.

The question of how to interpret the Bible on homosexuality is still very much with us, and the PC(USA)’s own theologian Jack Rogers has actually penned one of the decisive theological works on this issue.[8] Many, many scholars argue that none the famous seven passages (Genesis 19:1-11, Judges 19:16-30, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:9-11) should be taken to be normative with respect to issues pertaining to GLBT people.

The problem is that it is extraordinarily difficult to argue that all of these passages: (1) are taken to be normative for all people at all times and places (nobody takes all of the Levitical prohibitions in the same sections in this way; everyone in this room is wearing more than one kind of cloth and has touched pig skin at some point in their lives), (2) are actually talking about the sexuality of “homosexuals,” as we understand the term today, (3) are not dependent upon false empirical beliefs attendant to the cultures of the writers of the time, and (4) can be read according to the conservative’s interpretation while still reading the Bible as a witness to Jesus (who either says nothing about the issue or (on some historian’s understanding) by the act of healing the Centurions’ beloved outraging the very people who cite these very passages) and according to the rule of love.

Let us briefly focus on 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and issue (2). The NSRV version of the passage is

9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers--none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Paul’s Greek word that is rendered “male prostitute” is “malakoi/malakos,” and “sodomite” is “arsenokoitai.” Many widely used translations use “homosexual” for one or the other of terms (no translation uses it for both).

There is scholarly dispute about what exactly the words might have meant in Paul’s cultural context, and what they might say about people in our context. “Malakoi/malakos” is often taken to refer to people who surround themselves with luxury and moral passivity in general. Jesus uses the term in Matthew 11:8 and Luke 7:25 to contrast John the Baptist’s clothing with that of rich people who live in palaces, not in the wilderness like prophets. No serious scholar thinks he’s talking about homosexuality here. The word does have a connotation of effeminacy, but this is because classical Greek culture overwhelmingly associated strength and activity with masculinity and passivity and weakness with feminity. Aristotle, for example, believed that women were reincarnated men who had not been brave enough in the previous life. Female animals and humans were viewed as metaphysically just like males, but somehow metaphysically less. These kinds of views were so widespread that they infected the very language.

Accusations of effeminacy in ancient Greek had nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality. Note that the Spartan mocking of Athenians as being effeminate in the movie 300 was historically ridiculous because effeminacy was one of the main putdowns Athenians applied to Spartans because Spartan women had political power. This had nothing whatsoever to do with sex.

“Arsenokoitai” seems to be a word made up by Paul, including “man” and a verbal form of “bed” in it. Could this possibly mean “homosexual” (as it is given in the NASB and ESV) as we mean the term today? To answer this one would need to study sexual behavior in the Greco-Roman world to try to understand what Paul might have taken “manbedders” to be, and ask if this refers to gay people.

To do this, one must first note that any complex enough human trait can only be characterized from below in terms of relevant biological factors and from above in terms of socio-cultural factors.

In this case note that being gay involves both biological and genetic factors as well as the social normative space that people in a given culture create for people with those factors.

When we attend to these social normative spaces,[9] it is just very, very hard to see Paul as talking about homosexuals or about sexual acts of loving adults in consensual relationships.

First, there does not seem to be any significant genetic or biological difference between modern humans and humans of the classical world. From this and how widespread were same sex sexual relations in the ancient world, we can gather that most of the people having same sex relations in the ancient world were not “gay” as we use the term.

Second, sexual relations in the classical era were in reality absolutely horrifying, involving a system of non-consensual domination that expressed a key part of the brutality of a slave owning society that enjoyed gladiatorial games. Recent scholarship[10] shows that early Christian attitudes about sex and Paul’s writings in particular were a key part of liberating children, the slaves, and the poor from systematic abuse. To misread Paul’s comments as not being against this system of domination (that ruled almost the entire known world) is to radically underestimate the revolutionary transformative power of Jesus’ love.

Third, it is unclear that Paul would have even understood what we mean when we talk about genetic factors playing a role in one’s gender and sexual identities. To the extent that he could have, he probably would have had false beliefs. That is, Paul might have been mistaken. Let us go further, and suppose he actually did mean to be conjuring up Leviticus and (if we could put him in a time machine) would side with contemporary cultural conservatives about same sex issues. As with the Levitical condemnation of wearing more than one kind of cloth, why isn’t this aspect of Paul read as we also read his criticism of vegetarians? (Romans 14:1-2) Since Jesus never said anything about vegetarians, neither in the three synoptic Gospels nor in John,[11] we don’t take Paul on vegetarians seriously. Likewise, given his historical placement, we don’t expect Paul to be an expert on diet.