What's New in the Revised Edition of God and the Gay Christian (Part One)

An overview of the (many) updates

In my first post, I gave a brief summary of the updates in the revised and expanded edition of God and the Gay Christian. Here, I’ll offer a more detailed overview of what’s new in the book, going chapter by chapter through the first half of the book. (Most of the updates are in the second half of the book, which I will cover in my next post.)

Introduction

There are a few paragraphs that I’ve retained from the original introduction, but overall, the introduction is new. You can download and read all of it (and all of the updated chapter one as well) on the home page of www.reformationproject.org.

One data point I found particularly striking: “In a 2024 survey, nearly half of those leaving the church cited negative teachings about gay and lesbian people as a key factor in their decision. Among former churchgoers under thirty, the number was a staggering 60 percent.”

Chapter One: A Tree and Its Fruit

The main addition to chapter one is on page 13 (and corresponding endnotes), where I respond to a critique from non-affirming authors Denny Burk and Christopher Yuan about my application of Jesus’s teaching about trees and their fruit in Matthew 7:15-20.

In short, Burk and Yuan have argued that it is invalid to point to negative consequences in people’s lives as an example of “bad fruit” because bad fruit in this text refers only to disobeying God. Consequently, Yuan wrote in his 2018 book Holy Sexuality and the Gospel that even “depression or suicide” would not qualify as bad fruit.

This is an interesting, somewhat technical argument that has been amplified by non-affirming apologists Sean McDowell and Alisa Childers. It was the argument McDowell spent the most time on in a 2018 dialogue/debate I had with him. Admittedly, we went around in circles somewhat on this point because I hadn’t yet read Yuan’s book in which he elaborates this critique, so I didn’t quite understand where McDowell was coming from. All that to say, this is one more reason I’m glad I was able to update God and the Gay Christian: I’ve since been able to give serious consideration to this critique and I’ve addressed it in the new edition of the book.

Chapter Two: Telescopes, Tradition, and Sexual Orientation

I slightly expanded my discussion of same-sex practices in ancient Greece and Rome on pages 34-37. I also engage briefly with the work of non-affirming author Nancy Pearcey, whose 2018 book Love Thy Body has gained a meaningful audience since its publication. Despite some major disagreements, I appreciated Pearcey’s book and thought her argument was worth including as an example of a certain school of thought among non-affirming Christians.

(And this is a minor point, but as I quote biblical scholar Richard Hays in this chapter, I was glad to be able to include the update from 2024 that he changed his mind and became affirming of same-sex relationships before he sadly passed away earlier this year.)

Chapter Three: The Gift of Celibacy

I added a two-page section (pages 49-51) addressing why Jesus quotes “male and female” from Genesis 1:27 in his response to the Pharisees’ question about divorce and remarriage in Matthew 19:4-6. I may write a longer post about this at some point, but in short, I thought biblical scholar Karen Keen made a persuasive argument in her 2018 book Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships. I cite her in this section and also cite 18th-century theologians John Gill and John Wesley, both of whose commentaries on this text align with Keen’s analysis.

Additionally, I added some fascinating material on pages 47-48 (and corresponding endnotes) about the Hebrew phrase ezer kenegdo (“suitable helper”) in Genesis 2:18. I’ll dedicate an entire post to this material sometime soon, but non-affirming author Preston Sprinkle has placed a heavy emphasis on the word kenegdo as supporting a non-affirming reading of Scripture. He has been widely quoted by other non-affirming Christians on this point, but as I explain in the book, I think his analysis is wrong. Katherine Johnson, a biblical scholar with a deep understanding of biblical Hebrew (and the programming manager for The Reformation Project!), first pointed this out to me about two years ago. It’s an important (albeit technical) point that I look forward to discussing more soon.

Chapter Four: The Real Sin of Sodom

This chapter is the least changed from the original edition, although I did expand the endnotes somewhat. As you may be able to tell, I enjoy engaging with critiques, but my argument about Sodom and Gomorrah has occasioned the fewest. That said, I did some digging and found an interesting rebuttal from popular YouTuber Mike Winger to my argument that Jude 7 refers to the attempted rape of angels rather than same-sex relations as such.

To be clear, my argument is by no means original to me—biblical scholars have been making the same point since before I was born, and even a number of non-affirming scholars agree with it. But Winger challenged it on the basis that Jude 7 refers to Sodom, Gomorrah, and “the cities around them,” which he said precludes the possibility that the pursuit of “strange flesh” (sarkos heteras) described in that verse could be the Sodom-specific assault on the angels narrated in Genesis 19. As I explain in a new endnote (on page 256), however, I think Winger misses how the phrase “Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them” functions as a collective unit and thus, how Jude views the men of Sodom’s actions as a stand-in for the entire plain of the Jordan.

Chapter Five: The Abominations of Leviticus

The main change I made to chapter five was to expand my discussion of the hermeneutics of patriarchy: specifically, whether patriarchy should be understood as universally normative for the people of God or whether it should be seen instead as a consequence of the fall that Christians are ultimately called to move beyond (as with slavery and polygamy).

I also added some fascinating material in the endnotes about rabbinic attitudes toward female same-sex activity in the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud.

Chapter Six: Excess Passion and Unnatural Acts in Romans 1

I restructured the second half of this chapter (“The Question of Nature”) and fleshed out my argument about the Greek word for “nature” (physis) in greater detail. While I continue to place a primary emphasis on patriarchal gender roles as shaping ancient views of “natural” and “unnatural” sex, I wanted to give greater attention to how attitudes about procreation and excess passion informed those labels as well.

On that note, I expanded my treatment of Romans 1:26, especially in the endnotes. This is one of three issues that I have changed my mind about since the original edition of the book. There have been disagreements among biblical scholars for several decades now about whether Romans 1:26 (“Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones”) describes female same-sex relations or heterosexual behavior that was considered unnatural (either because it was non-procreative or because the women were seen as taking an inappropriately dominant/masculine role).

You may recall that, in the original edition of the book, I said that although it wasn’t definitive, I was “inclined to agree” with scholars like Bernadette Brooten who made the case for a female same-sex reading of the verse. I have also said on various occasions over the years that verse 26 “likely” refers to female same-sex activity. I am no longer as persuaded of that, in significant part due to an influential 2019 article in the Journal of Biblical Literature by classics scholar David Murphy. (The article is called “More Evidence Pertaining to ‘Their Females’ in Romans 1:26.”) I am not fully convinced of Murphy’s position that Romans 1:26 refers to heterosexual behavior, but it now seems equally plausible to me as the same-sex reading. I plan on writing a longer post this summer explaining my shift in thinking on this question.

As a caveat, I don’t think this debate has tremendous practical relevance, as even if Romans 1:26 doesn’t refer to female same-sex relations, we still have sufficient evidence to know that early Christians opposed same-sex activity among both men and women. (Given that early Christians opposed all sex outside of marriage and that same-sex marriage didn’t exist in the biblical world, that’s really the only plausible view they could’ve taken.) But as I write in the book, the debate does underscore “the differences between ancient understandings of nature and the expectations many contemporary readers bring to the text.”

Additionally, I added a section about the remarkable parallels between Romans 1:18-32 and chapters 13 and 14 in the Wisdom of Solomon, a first-century BC text widely read by Jews in Paul’s day. Anyone who reads Wisdom 13-14 will recognize how heavily Paul borrows from this text in Romans 1, and as biblical scholar Dale Martin has observed, in both Wisdom and Romans, the focus is on the origin of idolatry. Significantly, this is distinct from the sin and fall of Adam and Eve (contrary to what interpreters like Hays once argued). That isn’t to deny that Romans 1 also contains echoes of Genesis 1-3 (as non-affirming biblical scholar Robert Gagnon has highlighted), but those references are secondary to Paul’s much more extensive allusions to Wisdom.

Speaking of Gagnon, in 2023, he published a response to both New Testament scholar Jim Brownson (author of Bible, Gender, Sexuality) and me in an essay titled “Paul’s Understanding of Same-­Sex Relations in Romans 1: Recent Discussions.” (This was published in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Theological Essays, edited by Douglas J. Moo, Eckhard J. Schnabel, Thomas R. Schreiner, and Frank Thielman.) As Gagnon is arguably the most prolific non-affirming biblical scholar, I was looking forward to reading his response and addressing it in the updated edition of my book. I may write a longer post about it at some point, but I confess that I found his essay disappointing, as he frequently either misunderstood or misrepresented both Brownson’s and my arguments. I don’t assume this was willful, but since we seemed largely to be talking past one another, there wasn’t as much to respond to in Gagnon’s piece as I’d hoped.

That said, one of Gagnon’s core points is simply a disagreement (and not a misunderstanding): Romans 1 says that certain truths about God are visible in creation—specifically, his eternal power and divine nature. So, he asks, “If God is known by means of the things that God made, why isn’t God’s will for human sexuality also known by means of the way he shapes our bodies sexually?” Gagnon believes that it should be, but neither Brownson nor I are persuaded. As I write in an endnote on page 272:

This proposed parallel can sound compelling on the surface, but it fails in practice. Men’s bodies are designed to be able to impregnate many women simultaneously, but that doesn’t mean they should. Girls become capable of pregnancy early in puberty, but no one would argue that adult men should seek them out as sexual partners based on this fact about their bodies. In fact, I can think of no other issue of sexual ethics—­not adultery, lust, promiscuity, incest, or rape—­where the physical structure of human bodies tells us right from wrong. That simply isn’t how sexual morality works.

Finally, I include a brief response to non-affirming author Preston Sprinkle’s claims that the “excess lust” reading of Romans 1:26-27 fails because female same-sex behavior wasn’t associated with excess lust in the ancient world. While it’s true that female same-sex activity was discussed much less frequently than male same-sex activity, it is not true that “[f]emale same-­sex relations were rarely (if ever) considered to be the byproduct of excessive lust” (Sprinkle, People to Be Loved, p. 99).

This is a particularly strange assertion from Sprinkle because one of the most famous ancient references to female same-sex relations says exactly this. Plato wrote the following in his fourth-century BC dialogue Laws: “The pleasure enjoyed by males with males and females with females seems to be beyond nature, and the boldness of those who first engaged in this practice seems to have arisen out of an inability to control pleasure” (emphasis added). This text is also the first extant usage of the Greek phrase para physin (“against nature” or “beyond nature”) in reference to same-sex relations, so it’s particularly relevant for interpreting Romans 1:26-27.

Moreover, Plato isn’t the only ancient author who associated female same-sex relations with excess. As I describe in Appendix B, a memorable (and disturbing) first-century text by the poet Martial described a woman who ate and drank to excess. Her lack of self-control extended to abusive and lustful sexual behaviors, including same-sex behavior. As Martial wrote, she “penetrates boys and, more harsh than the lust of a husband, hacks at eleven girls a day.” Sprinkle’s critique here, then, is wrong.

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So there you have it: the main updates to the first half of the book. And the second half has quite a bit more new material than the first!

Thank you again to everyone who has supported the book over the past decade and to those of you who have already purchased a copy of the revised and expanded edition. As you can probably tell, I really enjoy this sort of research and writing, and I’m truly grateful to have had the opportunity both to write the book in the first place and now to be able to update it a decade later.