Same-sex Marriage And The ELCA

What follows is a brief review of an article approving same-sex marriage by Dr. Stephen Paul Bouman who currently serves as the Executive Director of the Congregational and Synodical Mission unit of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America: The Child in Our Midst: Reflections on Richard Norris's "Notes".  In the article he begs for compassion and understanding for Christians who have a homosexual orientation. His understanding is that some are born as homosexuals. They have no choice. This is who they are, either gay or lesbian.

"To require celibacy (of them) contradicts Augsburg Confession Article XXIII (requiring monastic vows). To enter into a committed union that is intended to be lifelong may be the best or certainly the least bad alternative for gay and lesbian Christians. And I can find no passage in the Bible that forbids such a committed union" (p.622). 

But what is the Bible to Bouman and others in the ELCA—and denominations with whom that church is in full fellowship (i.e. United Church of Christ, United Methodist, Presbyterian Church—USA, Reformed Church of America and the Episcopal Church)? It is an historical book with a long history, not God's inspired Word. The human authors made many mistakes about historical events, places and people.

Within the essay Dr. Bouman openly rejects the Bible as God's inerrant and inspired Word. The idea of divine inspiration as the basis for the authority of the Bible, he writes, can be traced back to North African Bishop Augustine of Hippo. This is a very strange conclusion, one that we are called to accept simply because Bouman says it is so. It is not based upon what the Biblical authors themselves said about their writings, nor is it based upon what other church fathers believed. Bouman writes,

"Augustine introduced the pagan Greek notion of inspiration: a divine being speaking through a human oracle. It is this view of Scripture that makes appeal to Scripture so problematic for Norris, and which undergirded much of what Augustine and others thought concerning moral issues and national law." (italics added)

To view the Bible as inspired, says Bouman, brings up two problems:

1. A doctrine of inspiration removes the Bible from its place in history and its actual historical development. 
2. When the Bible is located outside of history its authority is no longer the authority of the gospel, the good news of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. . . Only the gospel gives the Bible its proper authority. The gospel of Christ is the Word of God. Everything else, even the "law" as the "word of God," is subordinate to the gospel, having its own subordinate and adaptable authority for Christians. 

Conclusion: the Holy Spirit did not inspire the writers of the Bible. Instead we have documents written by men in which the gospel was somehow preserved. It is strange enough to say that, but the confusion continues as he turns to the writings of the New Testament to discover what the gospel is. Of course, since these writings are not the inspired Word of God, we have no way of knowing whether they are trustworthy. How, for instance, do we even know that Christ rose from the dead? But Bouman does not address that issue. Instead he writes,

"John 1 states that Jesus is the Word of God who became flesh and lived among us, a claim grounded solely in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The writings of the New Testament give us access to this historical event and the resurrection appearances and serve as the standard or norm for their interpretation. The Christian gospel is that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel and the world, that Jesus is the crucified and risen Savior (Rom. 4:25), that in Jesus' cross and resurrection the reign of God has come. There is no other absolute Word of God, not even the law of God."

But, but, but . . . Was Jesus' birth the creative working of the Holy Spirit? Did the Holy Spirit guide the Apostles to write about Jesus' life, death and resurrection? Is it true that no one can call Jesus LORD without the work of the Spirit? What is the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the gospel? After rejecting the Bible as the work of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), he still turns to the Bible to find the gospel. This time he quotes from Walter Bouman's unpublished monograph on human sexuality.

"The Lutheran approach to the authority of the Bible is thus characterized by two axioms: 

(1) only the gospel gives the Bible its true authority;  

(2) only the Bible gives the gospel its normative content." 

We have the gospel because of the Bible, and we pay attention to the Bible because of the gospel. 

Frankly, I'm confused. Bouman operates with a completely different understanding of inspiration ("a divine being speaking through a human oracle") than most other Christians. No one ever said that the inspired authors were mere amanuenses (secretaries taking notes and then transcribing). The Greek oracles were indeed supposed to be taken over by spirits and used. But Christians have always maintained that “the Bible was both the exclusive work of the Holy Spirit alone and at the same time the work of the biblical writers.”

I could go on and on about this article to talk about how he destroys the Law as the means of revealing sin, even though he likes to use the law/gospel language familiar to Lutherans. Despite what the Formula of Concord may have said, Bouman insists that the Torah, including the Decalogue, according to some unnamed Biblical scholars, did not have this usage in Israel. Instead its singular purpose was to serve as the means by which the Jews gained their identity, an identity that came from obeying the 613 commandments that the scribes found in the Torah. In this view, Israel's keeping of the hundreds of commandments marked them as God's chosen people, adopted by God's act of grace. Consequently, "the keeping of the law is no grudging gesture of submission, but an act of gratitude and loyalty . . . God's love for Israel deserves an answering love." (p. 620)

By thus turning the law into Israel's gospel, he completely and totally ignores the Apostle Paul's statement about Israel's inability to keep the law because of sin (Rom. 3:1-20). He claims that the purpose of the law was not to reveal their failure to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and our neighbor as ourselves, but rather to give the Jews a way to express their gratitude for God's gracious choosing of them as His people. The assumption is that they could and did keep the law.

So what happened to sin? And judgment? And of what value is the gospel if we are not all dead in trespasses and sins?

With that upside down statement about the commandments and the law as the groundwork, he goes on to say that the gospel serves the same purpose for Christians. The gospel is the New Testament Torah, the way by which Christians mark themselves a followers of Christ. I don't know what happened to the three solas Lutherans love to talk about: grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone. I think they've gone away along with the teaching about inspiration.

Anyway, according to Bouman, guided by the gospel in a complex world Christians adapt the teachings of Jesus and the apostles to this new context—the rise of the gay movement. Given the alternatives they do the best they can. And for gays or lesbians the best they can do is to marry and commit themselves to a lifelong union.

I conclude by telling you that I am quite exasperated—I can hardly breathe. No more Holy Spirit. No more rebirth by the Spirit. No more sin. Vast confusion about what the gospel is. And from that flows an approval of same-sex marriage, regardless of what the so-called uninspired Scriptures have to say about marriage and about the mystery of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31-33).

Go figure!