• If you are by nature a trusting person, you’ll have to get used to this and guard your heart and mind. The New York Times recently ran an op-ed piece by a rabbi who claims that the ancient God of Israel is “dual-gendered.” The rabbi takes his readers through a tortured derivation of the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew consonants that comprise the sacred name of God (which our Bibles, in translation, render “LORD” in small-caps), in an attempt to make his point.
• As scholarship, the op-ed piece is groundless, as Robert Gagnon makes clear in a blog for the journal First Things [it’s short; you can read it here]. But the New York Times has apparently no interest in being accountable to thousands of years of scholarship. This is how people and institutions (Christians and churches included) behave when they imagine themselves morally superior to their cultural opponents. Instead of respect, they hold those who disagree with them in contempt and dismiss their arguments as mere bias. You and I are as susceptible to this as anyone else, which is why we should be careful to proclaim Christ alone as righteous, not ourselves — but in this case it’s the NYT embodying the hubris.
• So, here’s a thought. Robert Gagnon is a professor of NT at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and happens to be the author of the definitive work on biblical texts relating to homosexuality. He’s an egghead. Some of you were taught by former pastors to have a mild contempt for Christian scholarship and intellectuals in general. Usually the idea is that intellectuals are all about pride and superiority — they just want to show you they’re smarter than you are — and with time they’ll all become academic liberals and abandon Jesus, while you remain a faithful soldier in the trenches.
• I encourage you to humbly reconsider and pray over your view of Christian intellectualism. The fact is, Gagnon’s work on homosexuality is so thorough, so solid and well-argued, that any writer teaching an opposite view will be forced to reckon with Gagnon, point by point. In effect, Gagnon’s work becomes a huge obstacle standing in the way of anyone who wants to say publicly that Scripture supports active homosexual practice. Where there may have been a floodgate, there is now a dam, thanks to Gagnon. You may not be able to understand all that he writes, but it doesn’t matter. He has done the Church a great kindness. In coming years, we will continue to need men and women like him — hard-working scholars with the courage to graciously disagree with their fellow academics.
– Pastor Eric