The aim of David Runcorn’s contribution
to the Pilling Report is to provide an alternative to the reading of the
Biblical evidence concerning same sex partnerships adopted by “conserving
evangelicals” and many others, including many who do not disapprove of same sex
sexual acts.
David Runcorn’s minority report assumes
that “faithful, committed same sex relationships” are a “contemporary
phenomenon” with no parallels in the world of the Bible and that for this
reason Biblical prohibitions on same sex sexual activity do not apply to these
relationships.
This post examines whether David Runcorn’s
readings (DR) are sufficiently plausible to justify the claim made in the
Pilling Report that Biblical teaching concerning sexually active same sex
partnerships is uncertain to a significant degree. (In some sense, our
interpretation must always be provisional but there is a difference between a
stance of humility and one which expresses a lack of confidence in being able
to understand what Scripture says on a given issue. The latter is also an
appropriate stance in some cases but not in other cases and may in fact express
a proud refusal to accept what Scripture says.)
Genesis 2
DR acknowledges that the first two human
beings were “made for each other” in a sense which required that they were of a
different sex from each other. He could have used David Clines’ famous question
“What Does Eve Do to Help?” (chapter one in What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990])
to highlight that the woman was created to help the man to procreate.
DR then points out that this does not
require us to believe “that the whole created order has a bi-focused structure”
as is apparently argued by some. (DR provides no references here.) I’m glad to
agree with DR that Genesis 2 does not “actually exclude any other kind of human
relationships” but surprised to discover that he thinks anyone holds a view
which, if pursued with rigour, would entail a denial of “friendship, community
or society” other than marriage.
Marriage, as introduced in Genesis 2, is far more than the union of two individuals. In ancient Hebrew culture it expresses a vocation to community. This is often missed. But can the language of bifocus express this truth at all? Or is society itself bifocused – and if so how?
It is true that marriage “is far more
than the union of two individuals” although the focus in Genesis 2 is on procreation
more than relationships with the wider community and it is not clear what the
basis is for the claim in the second sentence. (The footnote refers to pp 32-34
in Brueggemann’s Genesis commentary which do not obviously support the claim
and are in any case not about Genesis 2.)
DR then goes on to argue that in the New
Testament bifocus “is more often presumed to be part of the old order
overturned by the gospel (male/female, Jew/Gentile, etc.)” with reference to
Galatians 3:28.
Given that Paul writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and
female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (emphases added), it could be explored whether the first two binary oppositions are declared irrelevant within the church, while the
male/female one is transcended without being altogether irrelevant. In any case, it seems a bold move to conclude from the absence of slavery and marriage in the perfected new creation to the absence of sexual distinctions.
Is DR fighting a straw argument of his
own making? This impression is confirmed in the following which conflates “image
of God” language (Genesis 1) with marriage (Genesis 2):
Is the claim being made that man and woman in married union somehow ‘complete’ the expression of what it means to be made in God’s image? It needs to be shown that God’s image in humanity is understood as expressed through marriage and sexual differentiation in Hebrew or Christian theology. And can this be so without implying sexual differentiation within God – something utterly foreign to the biblical tradition?
Maybe DR should have tried to differentiate his
reading more explicitly from real, existing readings of Genesis 1 and 2 rather than setting
it in opposition to a hypothetical construct of his own making.
The final two paragraphs in this section claim
that Genesis 2 is awash with cultural assumptions which result in it being “a
very long way from a Christian understanding of marriage.”
His ‘including’ reading highlights that a
“hunger and longing for relationship lies at the good heart of being human.”
From the fact that God waits with the creation of woman until Adam has recognised
the need himself, he concludes that “only Adam, it seems, can recognize” who is a
suitable helper for him. This is of course unwarranted, as any parent or teacher
should know. In many areas it is important that learners get to develop an understanding
of the needs and answers themselves; whether others do or do not already know the answer is neither here
nor there.
(It is interesting to note that DR now
claims that Adam’s reaction to the creation of woman recognizes and celebrate
companionship when two paragraphs before they were considered a naming ceremony
which expresses dominion over the woman. The male-centeredness is said to
be subverted by the reference to “side” and the use of “helper”. I am confident that this revised reading can be shown to fit the details of the text better.)
“Marriage now appears almost as an aside,”
argues DR by glossing “for this reason” as “while we are on this subject”
(without justification or hint of any awareness of how such phrasing works in
the book of Genesis). He wants to persuade us that what Genesis 2 is about is
not so much the appropriateness of a woman to help the man to procreate but the
need for everyone to find their life partner without having a companion forced
on them.
In sum, DR claims that the choice here is between
allowing for the possibility of same sex partnerships in analogy to marriage or
to exclude “any relationships outside of heterosexual marriage.”
