John Perry. Journal of Religious Ethics. Volume 38, Issue 2. June 2010.
This paper examines the argument that moral approval of homosexuality is analogous to the early church’s inclusion of gentiles. The analogy has a long but often overlooked history, dating back to the start of the modern gay-rights movement. It has recently gained greater prominence because of its importance to the Episcopal Church’s debate with the wider Anglican Communion. Beginning with the Episcopal Church argument, we see that there are five specific areas most in need of further clarification. In this essay I examine significant uses of the analogy from the prior 25 years to see how effectively they address these five areas. I conclude that the conversation surrounding the Gentile Analogy is the current, best hope for mutual understanding among Christians about homosexuality. However, if the analogy is to advance the Christian conversation, much greater care and precision is needed in its application from traditionalists and revisionists alike.
In August 1953, ONE magazine published a cover story advocating homosexual marriage. ONE was America’s first pro-gay magazine and what is most surprising about the article was the controversy it provoked among homosexuals, many of whom found the idea of samesex marriage preposterous. The article presents a thought experiment:
Imagine the year were 2053 and homosexuality were accepted to the point of being of no importance. Now, is the deviate allowed to continue his pursuit of physical happiness without restraint as he attempts to do today? Or is he, in this Utopia, subject to marriage laws? It is a pertinent question. For why should he be permitted permiscuity [sic] when those heterosexuals who people the earth must be married to enjoy sexual intercourse? [Saunders 1953, 10].
In other words, the article argued that insofar as homosexuals did not accept the sexual self-discipline and ethical obligations of monogamous marriage, the gay-rights movement was morally bankrupt. One gay reader’s letter to the editor was indignant, insisting that there can be no gay marriage, for “seeking many companions” is simply part and parcel of being homosexual: gays “would fight enforced monogamy tooth and nail.” “As for children,” he continues, “I have never heard a homosexual express any desire to adopt a child”—“How damn fool can you get?” (Karcher 1953, 14–15). When the Ramsey Colloquium’s famous statement opposing “The Homosexual Movement” appeared 50 years later, the view in the letter to the editor is exactly the conception of homosexuality it had in mind. The letter-writer and the Colloquium agree that approval of homosexuality is inseparable from a wholesale rejection of traditional sexual ethics—no children, no fidelity, and no sexual discipline. Yet in 2003, exactly halfway between 1953 and the imagined 2053, a group of gays and lesbians appealed to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts for the right to marry. Not only were they successful, but the very same month an openly gay man was consecrated as an Episcopal Bishop. Halfway to 2053, it is remarkable how distant we are from the future envisioned by both the Ramsey Colloquium and the gay letter-writer who declared the idea damned foolishness.
The implications of this contrast for Christian debates about homosexuality are captured well by Thomas Williams’s response to the Ramsey Colloquium. He writes, “It seems clear to me that the sexual revolution has indeed been aimed at undermining the traditional understanding of marriage and the family”; “but it seems equally clear to me that homosexuals need not go along with the sexual revolution on this point” (Williams 1997, 70). And indeed, many Christian homosexuals have not gone along with the sexual revolution on this point. Many have instead sought to provide what Jeffrey Stout describes as “reasons distinguishable from secular liberalism—reasons consistent with orthodox Christian theology—in favor of same-sex coupling” (Stout 2003, 169).
The Ramsey Colloquium statement and the ONE article remind us that the Christian conversation about homosexuality could be quite different than it is. It could be a debate between orthodox Christian theology and militant sexual revolutionaries—and were it like that, the conversation would have to follow accordingly. At its best, however, the conversation does not proceed in these terms, and this means that it must go in quite a different direction. In short, it is a dialogue among various sorts of Christians who recognize the Bible and tradition as authoritative in various sorts of ways, and who worry about whether same-sex coupling can be morally approved for Christians in light of the longstanding prohibition. This conversation seeks to answer the following questions: given the longstanding Christian prohibition of homosexuality, can it be morally approved without rejecting the authority of Scripture and tradition and, ultimately, descending into a bare libertinism? Can there be a gay sexual ethics that recognizes distinctively Christian commitments such as fidelity, love of neighbor, the place of monogamy and celibacy in the history of the church, obligations to care collectively for children, and so on? Or is all of this an impossible oxymoron—“damned foolishness,” as the letter to the editor said?
As it happens, there is a distinct, though often unobserved, strand to this conversation that runs from the very birth of the modern gay-rights movement to today. It centers on a very particular analogical argument: despite the longstanding prohibition of same-sex coupling, the church can come to accept it without abandoning its theological commitments because the change is analogous to the church’s acceptance of gentiles in Acts 10–15. The early church viewed gentiles much in the way it has long viewed homosexuals—that is, as sinners by virtue of their distinctively gentile behavior (like eating non-kosher food, forgoing circumcision, and so on). However, so the argument goes, when the church welcomed gentiles without requiring circumcision it did not depart from orthodoxy. Rather, it was a faithful development itself grounded in Scripture, tradition, and experience.
What I will call the Gentile Analogy is currently the most important line of argument for discussions of homosexuality that are not rooted in secular-liberal notions of sexual autonomy. The Gentile Analogy is surprisingly old (dating at least to the 1970s), it is surprisingly widespread (found across denominational lines), and it is increasingly prominent (serving as the “official” scriptural basis provided by the Episcopal Church for ordaining a gay bishop). Unfortunately, the various strands in the conversation have not been brought together or analyzed systematically. Filling that void is one of the goals of this paper. As we shall see, the Gentile Analogy is both richer and more complex than either side in the debate appreciates. It has strengths that traditionalists often overlook, and pitfalls that revisionists ignore. It has the promise to open up new avenues in the increasingly stagnant conversation about sexuality, but it is also surprisingly indeterminate as to its ultimate conclusion; in fact, depending on how one weighs the nuances of the analogy, it can be used either to approve or disapprove of homosexuality on Christian grounds.
Following a brief discussion on the concept of analogical moral reasoning, I outline the significance of the Gentile Analogy. I then proceed to discuss five key issues or hinge-points upon which the viability of the analogy depends. How one weighs these details in invoking the analogy largely determines the conclusion one reaches. The second half of the paper brings together, for the first time, the major uses of the analogy that have appeared during the past three decades. This use includes those who use the analogy in support of homosexuality as well as those who believe the analogy helps us perceive why Christians cannot endorse same-sex relationships. Since it offers the most recent and prominent use of the Gentile Analogy, I begin my analysis with the Episcopal Church’s To Set Our Hope on Christ (2005). After noting certain problems with the way it employs the analogy, I turn to earlier contributions to the conversation to see if the shortcomings of the Episcopal document have been better met by others.
As we shall see, earlier uses of the analogy vary greatly in how successfully they address the five key issues I identify. Some uses are strong on certain points, while neglecting others. Further, some of these issues are almost wholly ignored in every published treatment. I therefore conclude that much work still needs to be done in order for the analogy to successfully demonstrate what its supporters claim. Like all good analogies, this one initially raises more questions than it answers. That is how analogies advance discussion. But at some point, the questions raised must be addressed. So far, that has been lacking.
Yet the Gentile Analogy is still exceedingly valuable because it provides a framework within which the conversation can proceed. This analogy remains the best current hope for advancing mutual understanding in the Christian debate about homosexuality. Though I am dismayed by how easily Christian conversations about homosexuality descend into culture-war skirmishes, I am nevertheless encouraged by how generous both sides tend to be when invoking the Gentile Analogy. What is needed next—and what I hope this article inspires—is far greater precision from both sides about why the analogy does or does not succeed.
Analogical Moral Reasoning
One of the reasons to study this analogy in particular is that it can help us better understand analogical arguments more generally. I see my task as similar to Lisa Sowle Cahill’s: in her 1982 article, “Abortion and Argument by Analogy,” Cahill sought to evaluate whether moral debate about abortion could be advanced by the use of certain analogies about the mother’s relation to the fetus. What she found was that while argument by analogy is a useful tool, it can also be problematic if “the logic of the moral arguments adduced is not always given critical attention” (1982, 271). As she concluded, “The morally significant features [of the dispute] are partly revealed yet partly hidden by the analogical mode of moral argument” (1982, 271). Twenty-five years later, the importance of Cahill’s investigation is reinforced—what she says about abortion applies remarkably well to ongoing disputes about homosexuality. Analogy is a valuable tool for religious ethicists, one that can overcome impasses and reveal otherwise hidden morally significant features. Nonetheless, it is a limited tool. As we shall see, the further the analogy is pressed, the more it reveals the enduring complexity of the case it was intended to solve.
An additional goal of this article arises from the fact that the analogy in question is drawn from the New Testament. It therefore provides a fascinating case study of how the Bible is used in ethical debate. It reminds us that applying the Bible to contemporary moral problems is an inherently analogical activity because the Bible’s context and the contemporary context are, like analogies, neither univocal nor equivocal. As Richard Hays comments, “In order to practice New Testament ethics . . . we will have to formulate imaginative analogies between the stories told in the texts and the story lived out by our community in a very different historical setting” (1996, 298).
At their best, analogies do not merely provide new arguments for a particular position; rather, they create a new conversation. In debates that have become overly hostile or lack sufficient common ground for rational engagement, analogies can in some cases open up new avenues of discussion. Ideally, then, an analogy will be plausible to multiple sides in a dispute despite the fact that the different perspectives will disagree about how the analogy works—that is, about how the analogues apply to the specific case at hand. One side may say, “We can see from this analogy that thus-and-such follows.” The other side can respond, “That only follows if you assume this-and-that; however, you have overlooked a particular detail within the analogy, attention to which leads us to the opposite conclusion.” In this way, arguments by analogy advance dialogue and reveal otherwise hidden details.
The criteria used in assessing an analogy that seeks to advance a contentious debate are complex, but two in particular are worth highlighting: the analogy should have the capacity to generate surprise, and it should be a sufficiently imprecise comparison to allow “play” in how it is applied. As one author explains:
Analogies are the stuff out of which normative moral philosophy is made. They shed new light on old problems, they reveal the importance of aspects of situations that otherwise remain hidden or obscure, and they have the power to change one’s view of the world. It is true that students of moral philosophy learn primarily the structure and texture of prominent moral theories, but the one thing students are trained to do is to generate analogies and examples designed to illustrate and test the moral theories they’ve learned [Wiland 2000, 466].
Analogies work because they reveal what was previously obscured. When forced to see a familiar situation in a new light, we say, “Aha! I had not realized that this is like that.” This capacity is especially significant in highly controversial, culture-war type cases. All too often, these culture-war debates are “clouded by self-interest, inertia, a lack of empathy, defensiveness, and caricature” (Wiland 2000, 466). Fortunately, analogies can dispel these clouds.
Arguments by analogy also tend to be most effective when the comparison is sufficiently imprecise to allow “play” in how the terms are related. Opposing sides can agree about the analogy’s general applicability, but they may continue to disagree about whether the presumed conclusion follows. This process allows the discussion itself to reveal which relevant details alter the conclusion, therefore helping each side better understand what the morally relevant factors in the dispute are. For example, facilitating this type of understanding was a key goal of Judith Thompson’s famous analogy, in which she compared pregnant women to a kidnap victim who had been medically attached to an unconscious violinist with kidney failure. Was it morally obligatory to stay attached for nine months, preserving the violinist’s life until a suitable kidney donor could be found? Prior to Thompson’s analogy, the abortion debate was at a stalemate between those who affirmed the fetus’s right to life and those who denied it, offering no apparent grounds for further discussion (Thompson 1971, 48). Thompson believed that the debate about the fetus’s right to life was actually a red herring, for even granting its right to life would not (in her estimation) necessarily require the mother to carry it to term—just as the kidnap victim would not be morally obligated to remain attached to the violinist. Regardless of whether she is right in this claim, it nonetheless demonstrates how the analogy’s success in advancing debate depends upon it having room for “play”—for allowing disagreement within the terms established by the analogy.
Critics can enter into Thompson’s argument and, by modifying details of the story, highlight factors of special relevance that may alter her conclusion. For example, one critic accepts Thompson’s basic framework but reworks the story to be about conjoined twins (Wiland 2000). This process of reformulating the debate is how the best analogies function. They are sufficiently broad in their construction that both sides in the debate can engage and learn from them. With the Gentile Analogy, traditionalists and revisionists alike can be committed to using the analogy, even if the conclusions they reach differ. At a minimum, perhaps each side of the debate will better understand their opponent and the reasons that set them apart.
Five Key Issues in the Gentile Analogy
The analogy in question seeks to explore whether Christians could morally approve of homosexuality given the longstanding prohibition. As described in the book of Acts, the first Christians assumed the church would be exclusively Jewish. Following Peter’s rooftop vision and visit to the gentile Cornelius, the church—after no little debate— concluded that gentiles were to be welcomed into the church even without abandoning distinctively “gentile behavior” (for example, eating pork or being uncircumcised). This decision surprised many of the early church leaders, but they concluded that to do otherwise would be to work against God. “If God gave them the same gift that he gave to us,” asks Peter, “who was I that I could hinder God?” (Acts 11:18). A variety of Christians have argued that what Peter says about gentiles applies to homosexual Christians as well. Having seen God’s Spirit at work among gays and lesbians, who are we to hinder God? Such a momentous development in theology and ethics may surprise the church today—just as Peter initially, and conscientiously, resisted the voice in his vision. But according to its advocates, such acceptance is nonetheless a faithful development of the tradition.
Because the analogy first gained widespread notice in Jeffrey Siker’s 1994 article, I will allow him to present it in his own words:
Recall that the earliest post-resurrection vision of Christianity did not conceive that Gentiles would become part of the Christian movement as Gentiles, namely apart from essentially first converting to Judaism and abiding by the Jewish law (circumcision, Sabbath, food laws, and the like). Recall Peter’s vision from Acts 10, where he is scandalized at the notion of eating anything he considered impure and unclean, a metaphor for Gentiles. But much to the shock of Peter and his associates, God had poured out the Spirit on the Gentiles as Gentiles. None had expected such a scandalous thing. To be a Gentile was, in the eyes of Jews and Jewish Christians alike, the same as being a sinner, since the Gentiles did not have the law, since they were by definition unclean, polluted, and idolatrous. And yet the experiences of Peter and Paul led them, and eventually many others, to the realization that, even as a Gentile, one could come to know God, to worship God, and to receive and show the Spirit of God. To be a Gentile did not by definition mean to be a sinner. Before I came to know various Christians who are also homosexual in their sexual orientation, I was like the hard-nosed doctrinaire circumcised Jewish Christians who denied that Gentiles could receive the Spirit of Christ as Gentiles. But just as Peter’s experience of Cornelius in Acts 10 led him to realize that even Gentiles were receiving God’s Spirit, so my experience of various gay and lesbian Christians has led me to realize that these Christians have received God’s Spirit as gays and lesbians and that the reception of the Spirit has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Indeed, the church has long honored as esteemed brothers and sisters in Christ many gays and lesbians who were simply never known as such. I once thought of gays and lesbians as Peter and Paul thought of “Gentile sinners,” but now, with Peter I am compelled to ask, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” [1994, 230–31].
Siker’s presentation is rhetorically effective, especially in the way he places himself within the story to show his own change of mind. It draws readers further into the story, prompting us to reread Acts 10–15 while asking, “Is that how the story goes?” The beauty of this analogy is that the underlying story is sufficiently rich in detail to allow for such further inquiry.
The earliest applications of this story to homosexuality appeared in the 1970s. The story has subsequently been invoked by various denominational documents, sermons, book, and articles. In these exchanges, five key issues have emerged as the hinge-points in determining the conclusion one draws from the analogy. Simply put, these are five details upon which the viability of the analogy turns.
The Prohibitions of the Jerusalem Council
By far the most significant question in applying the analogy concerns the contemporary analogue to the prohibitions of the Jerusalem Council. Although the church in Acts ultimately welcomes gentiles without requiring complete Torah observance, it nonetheless requires observance of certain parts of Torah. In particular, sexual immorality (porneia) and various non-kosher meats are prohibited even for gentile Christians (Acts 15:29). But if Acts 15 is analogous to the present day, what is the present-day equivalent for these prohibitions? In other words, what are the limits to the increased acceptance? Gentiles were welcome even when they practiced characteristically gentile behavior, such as forgoing circumcision and eating pork. Still, not all gentile behavior was permitted (eating the meat of strangled animals, for instance, remained prohibited). Would an analogous prohibition today be to require homosexual celibacy? Or would it be more analogous to simply require homosexual monogamy? For example, some Conservative Jewish Seminaries now admit gay rabbinical candidates on the condition that they refrain from the particular act mentioned in Leviticus 18—a condition that appears to function rather like the Council’s prohibitions did in Acts.
“Kosher” for Christians
As the analogy is typically applied, the gentiles of Acts are said to be analogous to homosexuals, while Jews are analogous to heterosexual Christians. In order for this to make sense, however, we must recall that Judaism already distinguished laws binding on all humans from laws binding only on Jews. So while the Torah forbids a Jew from eating non-kosher food, the gentile is permitted to do so (or, at the very least, the Torah remains agnostic on the question). The very way the problem arises in Acts, and the solution it supplies, takes for granted the possibility of distinguishing what is “wrong for Jews” from what is “wrong for gentiles” without thereby slipping into moral relativism. This distinction appears to be a kind of theoretical prerequisite for the solution as it is worked out in Acts. Do such distinctions have a place in Christian ethics? Can there be genuinely moral precepts that are non-universal in scope? And if such a distinction is theoretically possible, what would this analogously entail? Would it mean that homosexuality is wrong for Christians, but not necessarily for others? Or is the analogous distinction not between Christians and non-Christians, but rather, between homosexual and heterosexual Christians, such that there are slightly different expectations on each—just as the Jews and gentiles of Acts were held to different requirements?
The Nature of the Change in Teaching
Supporters of the Gentile Analogy endorse a change in Christian teaching on homosexuality. But what is the nature of this change? Is it that homosexuality is now no longer considered to be immoral although it used to be? Or is it rather that homosexuality (perhaps when practiced in certain forms, such as lifelong monogamy) has always been moral, but is only now perceived to be such? Reading through the previous uses of the analogy, this point is rarely addressed with any clarity. All appear to agree that Christians could not say, “The Torah was simply wrong on sexuality”—just as they could not say that the Torah was wrong on kosher and circumcision. But then how do we understand the change in question?
Israel and the Trajectory of Salvation History
There are two aspects to this issue. First, how clearly did the characters in Acts believe gentile inclusion was anticipated in their Scriptures? How clearly would it need to be anticipated for their decision to be justified? Second, would welcoming homosexuals today be a continuation of the inclusion begun in Acts (that is, an extension of what distinguishes Judaism from Christianity), or is this a new change over and against earlier forms of Christianity? Behind both of these lies the importance of avoiding supersessionism and antiSemitism. There is a fine line between perceiving God’s progressive revelation in abrogating Torah observance and not demeaning Torah observance itself. Not all those who approve of homosexuality on the basis of the Gentile Analogy walk this line with caution sufficient enough to avoid traces of, perhaps unintentional, anti-Semitism.
Gentile God-fearers
In Acts, Cornelius is distinguished from other gentiles by being a “God-fearer” and “doing what is right” (10:22). But he is also distinguished from Jews by being uncircumcised and not keeping kosher. What are today’s analogues to the following groups, and how would one distinguish between them: (1) gentile God-fearers (2) gentile sinners, and (3) observant Jews? Siker portrays gentiles as a monolithic group—all equally unclean, and all without the law. However, the actual picture is more complex. It appears that Peter’s resources for determining morality are not merely limited to measuring one’s behavior against the whole of Torah. The author of Acts—and presumably Peter—either had in mind a more general moral law that they used to determine which gentiles “do what is right,” or they had in mind a subset of Torah requirements obligatory even for gentiles. What is this standard, and what would be its analogue today?
These five points are best understood not as discrete topics but as a closely related cluster of issues. Nonetheless, for heuristic purposes, it will be helpful to have them catalogued in this way. In the remainder of this article, I survey the most important uses of the analogy, examining how (if at all) they address the five issues listed above.
To Set Our Hope on Christ
In 2003, an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, was consecrated as Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire. The ensuing controversy spread across the worldwide Anglican Communion, and, in 2004 it requested “a contribution from the Episcopal Church (USA) which explains, from within the sources of authority that we as Anglicans have received in scripture, the apostolic tradition and reasoned reflection, how a person living in a same gender union may be considered eligible to lead the flock of Christ” (Windsor Report 2004, par. 135). In response, the Episcopal Church offered the Gentile Analogy.
Its presentation of the analogy is now published in To Set Our Hope on Christ (hereafter TSH). I begin my analysis here because this is the most recent and most notable use of the analogy. However, as we shall see, this presentation of the analogy is not particularly successful. The analogy has a significant history in its own right (with contributions and criticisms offered from both sides), but TSH ignores these previous voices almost entirely. In comparison to earlier works such as Siker’s, TSH displays a decided lack of care. I begin with its strengths.
The Episcopal Church’s statement explicitly rejects the notion that the Christian acceptance of homosexuality has anything to do with overturning sexual ethics generally. In fact, it “emphatically disavow[s]” the belief that “we today know better than the biblical writers” (2005, 19). It supplies a list of sexual sins that it finds incompatible with Christian morality and concludes, “Clearly some expressions of sexuality are inherently contrary to the Christian way of life and are sinful” (2005, 19). Nevertheless, these sinful expressions of sexuality “stand in stark contrast [to] holiness in the lives of Christians of same-sex affection” (2005, 19).
The first notable problem with TSH’s application of the analogy relates to the third and fourth issues above: namely, what is the nature of the change (Is it a change in perception or a substantive change in teaching?), and what does the change imply for the church’s relation to Israel? We can best address these questions by comparison to Siker’s treatment
Siker explicitly rejects possible supersessionist implications of the analogy, refusing to say that the church improves on or replaces a flawed “Old” ethic (1994, 230). Contrast this position with how TSH portrays the church’s connection to Israel: “As part of Judaism, Christianity was accustomed to thinking of itself in biblical terms and describing itself in biblical language” (2005, 11). Notice that it does not say the earliest Christians were Jews, for whom the Hebrew Scriptures were Scripture; rather, they were “accustomed” to thinking in that way. However, this interpretation greatly distorts how the Christians of Acts understood their relation to Israel. A Jew like Peter did not see himself as a Christian who just happened to be “accustomed” to thinking of himself in the terms and images supplied by Torah. Rather, for Peter, Torah simply is God’s law.
Yet there are points where TSH shows more sophistication. Overall, it does not portray the New Testament as an improvement on a flawed Old Testament. Instead, it seeks to portray the New as a clarification and reinterpretation of a complex, multi-voiced, and sometimes contradictory Old. It lists numerous apparent conflicts within the Hebrew Scriptures, such as the two creation stories, the different attitudes toward foreign wives portrayed in Ruth and Ezra, the different perspectives toward virtuous reward found in Job and Deuteronomy, and so on. In light of these conflicts, TSH argues, the decision for gentile inclusion is a decision in favor of one part of the Old Testament over and against another part.
Making this case is important for the analogy’s overall viability. Just as the early church in Acts pointed back to antecedents in the Hebrew Scriptures that it interpreted as anticipating gentile inclusion, so also, the Episcopal statement seeks to show that such clarifications are widespread. Indeed, tensions internal to the Hebrew Bible regarding the bindingness of ceremonial observance form a pattern. The specific passage TSH uses to make this argument is from Ezekiel:
On the one hand, Peter was rightly reluctant to cross traditional clean/ unclean boundaries. At the same time, there is an implied criticism of Peter’s certainty that he knows what is clean and unclean in the face of a vision and a voice from heaven inviting him to eat (see Ezekiel 4:14–15 for an important predecessor text in which the prophet’s allegiance to earlier biblical prohibitions is countermanded by God). It is this very certainty about biblical prohibitions in Leviticus that God leads Peter beyond, precisely to serve the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation. On the other hand, the Gentile Cornelius is described as a righteous man, famous for his ethics and in no way inferior to Peter. He is, however, unfamiliar and clearly outside what the Church, following one part of the Bible (Leviticus, not Ezekiel), thought it should include [2005, 13–14; my emphasis].
This paragraph seeks to explain the nature of the change in teaching (subsection 2.3 above): is it that homosexuality is no longer wrong but previously was, or is it that it has always been acceptable but Christians have only now perceived its acceptability? TSH seeks a third way between these options. Because the Old Testament is filled with apparent contradictions, faithfulness to God requires perceiving this complexity. God leads those who listen beyond their “certainty about biblical propositions” (2005, 13).
As far as Peter’s intellectual journey is concerned, this claim plausibly fits the story. After all, Peter initially held the “conservative” position, and we see clearly that the church as a whole ultimately rejected this position. Yet there is a serious problem with how TSH actually makes this argument, and it relates to its references to Ezekiel. What does Ezekiel 4 say? In it, God appears to the prophet and commands him to symbolically enact the punishment that God is about to inflict upon Jerusalem. For example, Ezekiel is told to lie on his side for 390 days, representing the 390 years that Israel will be in exile, and is told to ration his food and water to represent the limited food that will be available during the coming siege. Finally, in the verses cited in TSH, God commands Ezekiel to eat bread baked over human waste because “thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread, unclean, among the nations to which I will drive them” (4:13). The prophet protests since bread cooked over human waste would be ceremonially polluted, and God relents, ultimately allowing him to use cow’s dung instead.
By invoking this passage, TSH argues that some parts of the Old Testament (Leviticus) command kosher, while other parts (Ezekiel) command not keeping kosher. In light of this contradiction, with regard to homosexuals, we must—like Peter with regard to gentiles—listen to God’s Spirit in order to discern which of the contradictory commandments wins out. Even if the larger point holds, this argument cannot be supported by reference to Ezekiel. Indeed, the attempt involves a gross distortion of Ezekiel 4. The point of God’s command to Ezekiel is, of course, that God is commanding something sinful in order to demonstrate the wickedness of Israel’s offenses. Ezekiel and Leviticus agree that eating unclean food is an offense against God, even though Ezekiel is asked to “offend” God in the mode of prophetic enactment. Ezekiel and Leviticus do not offer differing perspectives on whether Jews ought to observe the Torah’s dietary laws. It is simply impossible to imagine that the church in Acts, when gentiles received the Spirit, asked itself, “Shall we follow Leviticus, and require Cornelius to observe Torah, or Ezekiel, which does not require it?”
The reason TSH cites Ezekiel is that, were it actually applicable, it would help to clarify the moral status of kosher. When Peter’s vision declares that the unclean has been cleansed, this implies that it previously was not clean; the boundaries of ritual purity have thus been altered. Peter was right to have obeyed them before, but things have now changed. If we apply this point analogically, it would seem to necessitate conceding that same-sex expression is no longer wrong although it previously was, which may be a concession that the Episcopal Church was unwilling to make in its debate with the Anglican Communion.
Other Revisionist Uses of the Analogy
The issue that the Episcopal Church sought to address via Ezekiel is engaged in quite different ways by two other articles. Recall that the question is whether the moral status of non-kosher food and homosexuality has changed in substance or merely in perception. TSH attempts to side-step the question by invoking Ezekiel, but Siker’s original article and a study paper commissioned by the United Presbyterian Church face it head-on—and they both respond in quite different ways.
Siker’s presentation of the analogy actually involves a careful, though brief, exegetical study of the New Testament’s references to sexual ethics, especially the Pauline condemnations of same-sex relations. Regarding these, Siker asks, “But is what Paul knew in his day analogous to what we know in ours?” He concludes that it is not; rather, Paul was condemning only “exploitive forms of homoerotic expression… which are apparently all he knew about” (1994, 227). So in Siker’s use of the analogy, Paul was not condemning sinful acts that have subsequently been cleansed. Rather, the church on its own accord has traditionally, but mistakenly, condemned acts that are clean. Thus, Siker holds that Paul was correct in condemning what he condemned, but we would be mistaken if we apply this condemnation to monogamous and mutual same-sex couples, with which Paul was wholly unfamiliar.
The earliest use of the analogy that I have been able to find is in a 1978 study paper by the United Presbyterian Church. On this point, the paper goes in the opposite direction from Siker. Whereas Siker affirms Paul’s condemnations of homosexuality but interprets them as applying only to exploitive sex, the Presbyterian Church paper rejects what Paul says about homosexuality: “One may now ask whether Israel’s and Paul’s understanding of the exclusiveness of humans’ heterosexual design is not a misreading of nature” (Shafer 1978, 238). The paper then presses the reasoning one step further:
In Paul’s day, there was a similar but different set of questions. Ought Gentile civilization and culture ever to have been developed? Palestinian Judaism viewed Gentile culture with great disgust. Certainly one could not remain an uncircumcised, non-kosher Gentile and be fully obedient to God. “Ought Gentile civilization and culture ever to have been developed?” was replaced by a fact—God chose to sanctify some uncircumcised, non-kosher Gentiles [1978, 239].
Applying this to the contemporary situation, the paper continues as follows: “Has the very question, ‘Ought humans to have developed homosexual behavior?’ been replaced by the fact that God has chosen to sanctify some homosexual persons?” (1978, 34–36). The paper then tentatively concludes by answering in the affirmative.
A further difference between the Presbyterian Church paper and Siker’s is that the Presbyterian Church does not consider in detail those passages that prohibit homosexuality. It notes that Paul and Israel disapprove, but it does not identify the verses in question—nor does it seek to interpret them (beyond judging them to be misreadings of nature). Whereas, for Siker, dealing with those texts must precede the analogy, in the study paper by the Presbyterian Church, the analogy is a prerequisite to reading those texts; that is, it is the analogy that allows us to re-read them rightly
Though both Siker and the Presbyterian Church paper offer more sophisticated responses than TSH, neither is wholly unproblematic. In particular, Siker’s analogy depends on a particular interpretation of Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6—especially regarding the translation of two Greek words (malakoi and arsenokoitai). His interpretation is not impossible, but it has been challenged (Hays 1996, 382). Perhaps more troubling is the Presbyterian paper’s claim that Paul and Israel were mistaken in their reading of nature. Among the problems facing this view is the fact that this interpretation steps away from the analogical mode of argument and moves into a direct claim (one without a referent in the analogy). For this claim to be truly analogous, the church of Acts would have had to conclude that requiring circumcision or adhering to kosher laws are both misreadings of nature. However, there is no indication of this position in the text, and it is hard to imagine Jews such as Peter and James making this conclusion.
These and other problems with the analogy are the basis for a number of traditionalist responses that reject the revisionist conclusion in one of two ways. Some argue that the Gentile Analogy completely fails on the level of analogy, thus leaving revisionists without a scriptural basis for their proposed change in teaching. On the other hand, more sympathetic traditionalists endorse the analogy but believe that careful attention to the details of the story shows that homosexuality cannot presently be approved for Christians. To these I now turn.
Traditionalist Uses of the Analogy
The voices addressed so far all conclude that approving same-sex coupling—at least in some forms—is indeed analogous to the events of Acts 10–15. Such approval thus constitutes a faithful development of Christian ethics. Nevertheless, the analogy is also invoked by some traditionalists who believe that examining Acts 10–15 can help us to perceive important dis-analogies between the two cases. From this perspective, the analogy helps to better clarify why Christians ought not approve of homosexuality. I here examine one vigorous critic, Christopher Seitz, and two more nuanced critics, Andrew Goddard and Richard Hays.
Seitz treats the analogy only briefly—indeed it is limited to a long footnote in a single article. That said, Seitz’s treatment is important because he introduces the analogy in order to refute the conclusion revisionists draw from it (and, in particular, how it is employed by Siker):
To depict as analogous the inclusion in the modern Christian church of men and women engaged in homosexual conduct is simply wrong. The analogy breaks down by simple virtue of the plain sense of Scripture. The New Testament does not break ranks with the teaching of the Old Testament on this matter. If anything, it makes yet more stringent the Old Testament’s plain sense, as a text like Mark 10:2–12 makes clear [Seitz 1995, 240].
To understand Seitz’s critique, and to evaluate its merit, it is important to be clear about how he understands the analogy itself. Seitz sees gentiles as non-analogous to homosexuals because the inclusion of the former is, in his view, clearly anticipated in the Hebrew Scriptures. Gentiles can be included because this movement of God’s Spirit is “grounded in promises of old, made to God’s own special people Israel” (1995, 240). However, if there are no similar promises regarding homosexuality, its inclusion must be merely a blind endorsement of progressive morality. In particular, he accuses Siker of “having reduced the plain sense of the Old Testament to an ancient teaching in need of repair” (1995, 240).
Although Seitz’s goal is to undermine the analogy, his criticisms are helpful for both sides in advancing the conversation. In particular, Seitz is correct that some uses do embrace the notion of moral progress without an obvious sense of where that progress is headed. In addition, he emphasizes the importance of the need for a precise and definitive explanation of the nature of the change in teaching. On that point, Seitz believes that the analogy’s proponents implicitly attribute the following view to the Acts church: How foolish of us to insist on keeping kosher for all those years; what an outrageous idea that some food could be unclean. Thank God we have now abandoned such superstitions! In fact, however, Siker says nothing of the kind. Still, Seitz is right at least to the following extent: for the analogy to succeed, it must be clearer in how it understands the early church’s position on kosher laws and on what it meant for gentile Christians to forgo them. It is certainly hard to imagine that the church in Acts simply supposed that kosher laws were a foolish legacy of the past, best left behind.
As Seitz correctly interprets him, Siker does see gentile inclusion as a “fresh reinterpretation of Israel’s ethic” (1995, 240). However, when understood properly, says Seitz, the church was actually concerned with “proper hearing of the Old, not correction or spirit-filled illumination ad extra” (1995, 240). The difference is vitally important, but there is a fine line between “proper hearing of the Old” and “fresh reinterpretation.” One can easily imagine the circumcision party making Seitz’s own argument against Peter: “Go back and re-read Amos; it does not rescind the Torah’s commands. Peter and James, yours is a ‘fresh interpretation’, and not a ‘proper hearing of the Old.’”
Seitz is right to press the analogy’s advocates for greater clarity, but his critique almost works too well. If Amos’s anticipation of Cornelius is as clear as Seitz suggests, why is there such a dispute? The dispute is precisely over what constitutes a proper hearing of the Old. In addition, although Seitz is correct that the Old Testament antecedent is essential to the church’s eventual decision in Acts 15, he overlooks the fact that the antecedent is absent from Peter’s vision in Acts 10. Does Peter’s response to the vision indicate that he saw it as revealing a proper hearing of the Old or was it rather a spirit-filled illumination ad extra? This distinction cannot be drawn as easily as Seitz suggests. We must not lose sight of Peter’s resistance to the vision, nor the fact that, on biblical grounds, Peter was right to refuse what the voice commanded.
One of Seitz’s implicit concerns is that overly loose reinterpretations lead to a slippery slope. If the Old Testament’s explicit condemnation of homosexuality can be trumped by the experience of God’s Spirit at work among homosexuals, Seitz wonders where the line will be drawn. Suppose Peter had come down from his rooftop vision to find waiting at his door three Mafiosi, sent there by Cornelius, godfather of the Italian Cohort. Would this scenario have been any more of a stumblingblock to Peter than being told to kill and eat unclean animals? “I went with the men,” he could later report, “and behold, as I was speaking, the Spirit fell upon the entire Mafia gathered in Caesarea. Who was I that I could hinder God?”
Such concerns appear to lie behind Seitz’s objection. The effectiveness of the analogy depends upon the possibility of revising ethical norms in response to God without thereby undermining moral judgment. For if Peter advocated welcoming the Mafia as Mafia on the grounds that the Spirit was powerfully at work among them, then the church would have rightly doubted Peter’s experience of the Spirit. Is the analogy able to account for this decision, and if so, how? To give an actual example, some homosexual Christians have argued that marriage is itself a heterosexual requirement just as keeping kosher is a Jewish requirement. To require homosexuals to limit sexual expression to lifelong exclusive relationships would be tantamount to “a refusal to let gay people be accepted as gay people” (Goddard 2001, 20). Here is where we see the analogy’s potential for creating a new conversation on both sides since revisionist and traditionalist arguments alike could be served by responding to Seitz’s objection.
More helpful than Seitz’s criticisms are those raised by Hays and Goddard: both find the Gentile Analogy a fruitful launching point for conversation, but both also conclude that, on the balance of the evidence, it does not demonstrate what revisionists such as Siker hope. Hays is open to the analogy in principle and even shows how it could hypothetically succeed. By showing more generosity as a reader than Seitz, he is able to make the points of dispute much clearer: “The analogy is richly suggestive, and it deserves careful consideration”; “the question is whether the analogy is a fitting one and whether it can overrule all the other factors enumerated here [that is, biblical passages condemning homosexuality]” (1996, 396).
Like Siker, but unlike the Presbyterian Church paper, Hays sees the analogy not as revising ethical norms but as calling for a new reading of Scripture. Siker and Hays agree that the analogy would fail if it merely involved (1) encountering holy homosexuals and (2) the conclusion that the Bible was wrong after all. The analogy must be a new reading of the Old and not an outright rejection of it. For Siker, the new reading is legitimate. For Hays, however, “this is the point at which the analogy to the early church’s acceptance of Gentiles fails decisively” (1996, 399). The decision for inclusion follows from how its experience of gentile converts “led the church back to a new reading of Scripture” (1996, 399). It is worth quoting Hays at length on this point:
This new reading discovered in the texts a clear message of God’s intent, from the covenant with Abraham forward, to bless all nations and to bring Gentiles (qua Gentiles) to worship Israel’s God. That is, for example, what Paul seeks to establish in …Galatians and Romans. We see the rudiments of such a reflective process in Acts 10:34–35, where Peter begins his speech to Cornelius by alluding to Deuteronomy 10:17–18 and Psalm 15:1–2 in order to confess that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Only because the new experience of Gentile converts proved hermeneutically illuminating of Scripture was the church, over time, able to accept the decision to embrace Gentiles within the fellowship of God’s people. This is precisely the step that has not—or at least not yet—been taken by the advocates of homosexuality in the church. Is it possible for them to reread the New Testament and show [that] this development can be understood as a fulfillment of God’s design for human sexuality as previously revealed in Scripture? [Hays 1996, 399].
What allows the church to come to its radical conclusion is that Scripture is found, given Peter’s experience, to anticipate it. The church therefore is able to praise Torah-obedience for Jews while simultaneously welcoming gentiles without the obligation of Torah obedience. It does not involve the judgment that, say, kosher laws turned out to have been nothing more than a narrow-minded approach to food. It was part of God’s plan that for a time Israel would be set apart by, among other things, dietary restrictions. God is now acting in a new way, however, for at least some of God’s people (gentiles) are no longer set apart in this way.
What would this understanding mean if applied to the present debate? One possible revisionist response would be to grant that, for a time, Christians were set apart by how they limited sexual expression to two forms—either celibacy or heterosexual marriage. Now, however, God is doing a new thing. Christians are no longer distinguished in this way. It would seem to follow from this view that it was previously wrong for Christians to engage in same-sex expression, just as it would have been wrong for Peter not to keep kosher.
Goddard’s God, Gentiles, and Gay Christians is the longest engagement with the Gentile Analogy. Like Hays, he is sympathetically critical. Goddard strongly argues in favor of the importance of the Gentile Analogy for the contemporary debate. He lists a series of common objections to the applicability of the analogy and refutes them. He argues at length that all of the “characters” in Acts fit the case at hand very neatly. Goddard thus finds the analogy to be helpful, but he nevertheless concludes that it ultimately confirms the traditionalist position on sexuality.
His conclusion is based on the prohibitions of Acts 15:20: “Abstain from things polluted by idols and from fornication [porneia] and from whatever has been strangled and from blood.” Gentiles were not required to be circumcised or keep kosher, but this much was still demanded of them. What is special about these actions and why does the church forbid them in particular? There are three possible sources for the prohibitions: (1) They are allusions to the Noahide covenant (that is, moral laws that Jews believe apply to all humans as such); (2) they are taken from Second Temple rabbinic literature or oral tradition; or (3) they are taken from Leviticus 17–18, which lists rules for foreigners living in Israel. None of these can be proved definitively to be the source, but a 1996 article by Richard Bauckham finds Leviticus to be the most likely candidate. Goddard is persuaded by this finding, therefore concluding as follows:
The failure of “revisionist” advocates to consider the limits placed on Gentiles by the Decree has always been a problem in their argument. The seriousness of that problem is now deepened if the Decree is based on Lev. 17 and 18 and the prohibition of porneia rooted in Lev. 18:26. Among the “detestable things” prohibited by that text are the male homosexual acts described in Lev. 18:22. [If so,] viewing homosexual practice as acceptable for gay Christians is not only to push the analogy from Acts 15 further than it can logically go. To make such a claim would explicitly contradict one of the requirements placed on those Gentiles who entered the church as Gentiles [Goddard 2001, 21].
This is a sophisticated and subtle argument, which we must examine carefully. First, Goddard is correct when he observes that revisionists have heretofore ignored the significance of the prohibitions. Siker mentions the prohibitions very briefly in a footnote but offers no response. Second, Goddard’s ultimate rejection of the analogy is based on his conclusion, following Bauckham, that the source of the prohibitions is the laws for gentiles living in Israel. This position raises two questions: Is Bauckham, and therefore Goddard, correct? And, even if so, would this defeat the analogy?
Bauckham’s thesis is plausible, but it is not as decisive as Goddard suggests when he calls it “highly probable” (2001, 22). A thorough study of the prohibitions has appeared since, and it somewhat calls into question Bauckham’s thesis (Savelle 2004). In particular, there is not the linguistic similarity between the Septuagint and Acts 15 that one would expect if it were a direct reference.
More problematic for Goddard’s argument is whether—even granting Leviticus as the source—his reasoning follows. His argument is that by invoking Leviticus 17–18, Acts 15 incorporates those precepts for gentile Christians today. Gentiles need not keep the whole law, but they must keep those specific requirements, among which is the prohibition of male homosexual sex. First, taking this strategy would seem to prove too much. For example, today’s Christians would need to visit only kosher butchers to ensure that they avoid blood (though Goddard does not acknowledge this). Second, to make his argument, Goddard actually slips out of the analogy and makes a direct argument from the text. If Acts 15 does indeed incorporate Leviticus 18:22, then we would need to add this verse to the list of relevant passages that prohibit homosexual acts. And, as Hays shows, the challenge these passages pose to the revisionist position is considerable. However, that is a different sort of argument than the argument by analogy—which is what Goddard is investigating. In other words, he has slipped from the analogical into the identical.
The Gentile Analogy is supposed to provide a general paradigm for how the church might revise a longstanding traditional teaching in light of new experience. At the original Council at Jerusalem, it was of course the case that Leviticus 18:22 continued to apply because the definition of porneia was not then in dispute: it was a debate primarily about circumcision. Nonetheless, the point of using the story analogically is that the definition of porneia is now in dispute. As Goddard argues, revisionists do need to account for the prohibitions. However, in the context of the analogy, they must do so analogically. It will not work to take the content of the prohibitions within one analogue in order to apply them literally to the other.
Despite these flaws, one of the virtues of Goddard’s study is that he takes seriously the position he opposes. Thus, after rejecting the analogy, he proposes grounds under which it could still support the revisionist position. Perhaps the prohibitions were intended to function socially. It may be, Goddard suggests, that the prohibitions were culturally bound and therefore do not directly apply to all Christians for all time (as we would gather from the fact that most Christians do not eat only kosher-prepared steak). Ultimately, however, Goddard concludes that at present the analogy more effectively decides in favor of the traditionalist position for two reasons: we do not today have a church consensus analogous to the consensus in Acts, and secondly, the revisionist position lacks positive antecedents in Scripture analogous to the passages invoked by Peter, James, and Paul in advocating gentile inclusion.
Revisiting the Five Key Issues
We have seen in this survey that although the traditionalist criticisms of the analogy are not as effective as sometimes claimed, the revisionist uses of the analogy are problematic. None of the revisionist accounts adequately address the prohibitions of the Jerusalem Council, even though this would seem to fit the analogy’s formal framework without much difficulty. Would modern versions of the prohibitions require homosexuals to accept the sexual discipline of life-long commitment and monogamy, together with a complete rejection of promiscuity and pre-marital sex? Or would a modern equivalent require celibacy unless or until Christians around the globe more widely recognize God’s Spirit to be welcoming these “homosexual Corneliuses” qua homosexual? The answer depends in large part on how one interprets the Council’s purpose in the prohibitions. A plausible reading is that they were issued to avoid scandalizing conservative Jewish Christians, so that the standard becomes the conscience of the community’s most traditionally minded members. If so, it may suggest that the appropriate modern analogue is quite restrictive on the Christian practice of homosexuality.
Turning to the second of the five key issues, none of the uses of the analogy address the theoretical question of whether Christian ethics has room for a concept such as kosher. Are there certain standards of discipline that oblige Christians but not non-Christians—or are Christian ethics by definition universal? The analogy appears to depend upon the former because of how Cornelius can be praised as righteous even apart from Torah; yet he is also, ultimately, called to obey some of Torah. In fact, it is not just porneia and meat with blood that are prohibited to gentile Christians (though those are explicitly mentioned). Presumably all sorts of other characteristically “gentile behaviors” were prohibited without being made explicit in the Council’s declaration—behavior such as oppressing the poor, pagan worship, and Roman empire-building.
But even if we answer in the affirmative and conclude that Christian ethics includes a variety of such obligations, this does not answer the subsequent question of whether and how homosexuality fits into the picture. On the one hand, it may follow that Christians could see homosexuality as forbidden for Christians in the same way unclean meat was forbidden in Acts—thereby remaining agnostic as to whether either is forbidden for non-Christians. But on the other hand, Christians might argue that what is distinctive about Christian sexual practices is not its heterosexuality but its monogamy.
Of the five key issues, the third has received the most attention in the debate thus far: What is the nature of the change in teaching according to the analogy’s supporters? Is it that homosexuality was previously immoral and has been made moral? Or is it that Christians wrongly believed it to be immoral when it is not? Despite the attention it has received, the answers supplied are frustrating and vague. Much more precision is required if the analogy is to be successful. The clear implication of Peter’s vision appears to entail that the animals in the sheet were previously unclean but that, by God’s unilateral declaration, they are now holy: “What God has cleansed, you are not to call profane” (Acts 10:15). If analogous, this declaration implies that samesex expression was correctly held to be wrong in the past, but is now cleansed. Unfortunately, none of the revisionist contributions to the debate follow the analogy on this point, nor do they provide reasons for their departure from it. Thus, on this third point, the traditionalist use of the analogy is on stronger ground.
The third key issue is closely related to the fourth, which concerns how changes in teaching on homosexuality relate to the larger Christian understanding of salvation history and Israel. The church in Acts navigated this potential difficulty by rooting the change in the Hebrew Scriptures. Gentiles were accepted not only because of Peter’s experience with Cornelius (though that was crucial), but also because, as Hays puts it, the experience “proved [to be] hermeneutically illuminating of Scripture” (1996, 399). Having met Cornelius, the church looked back to prophets such as Amos and found that they now understood them more completely. Revisionists have not yet provided an equivalent explanation in terms of the analogy, though some have laid out the groundwork for such a response. For example, Eugene Rogers reads the analogy in light of Pauline theology, especially Galatians 3 (1999, 53). At the very least, this area is where one might expect the analogy’s advocates to begin addressing the issue.
The need to address the fifth and final issue is emphasized by one of the notable shortcomings of Siker’s article. Siker claims that “to be a Gentile was, in the eyes of Jews and Jewish Christians alike, the same as being a sinner” (1994, 230). However, the real picture is more complicated than this since Acts and Peter both emphasize Cornelius’s piety and morality. Second Temple Jews recognized at least three relevantly different groups: Torah-observant Jews, gentile God-fearers, and gentile sinners. We know what separated Cornelius from Jews, but what separated him from the gentile sinners? In other words, what specific actions qualified him as “upright” or “just”? Siker, and the revisionist position more generally, ought to define the present-day analogues of these groups. This issue in particular calls for further historical study of the Second Temple period.
Conclusion
I began this article by recalling the controversy that filled the pages of ONE magazine in the early 1950s. There, a plea for same-sex marriage was met—at least by some homosexuals—with derision. According to one letter-writer, being gay simply means having many partners and no children, and suggestions to the contrary are “damn foolish.” With such arguments firmly in mind, the Ramsey Colloquium later rejected arguments for homosexuality partly on the grounds that it is inseparable from a wholesale rejection of sexual ethics, family obligations, and fidelity. Since at least the 1970s, however, a conversation has been ongoing among Christians that challenges the view shared by both this letter-writer and the Colloquium. Is there a way to understand a Christian acceptance of homosexuality that affirms monogamy and sexual fidelity, and also honors the Bible and longstanding Christian tradition?
The main work of this article has been to bring together the various ways the Gentile Analogy has been applied during the past 25 years. As we have seen, various issues remain unaddressed by the analogy’s supporters. The conversation thus has some way to go before it can show decisively what it set out to accomplish. Nonetheless, it has already achieved one notable goal: namely, it has advanced a conversation otherwise mired in the cruelty and simple-mindedness of the culture wars. “Clouded by self-interest, inertia, a lack of empathy, defensiveness, and caricature,” debates about human sexuality are but one of the culture war’s many conflicts that can benefit from the use of analogy (Wiland 2000, 467).
Stepping back from this particular analogy, two general lessons about analogical moral reasoning stand out. First, the most effective analogies derive their power in part from being compelling narratives. It is no coincidence that Judith Thompson includes superfluous details in her famous analogy. Who cares, after all, what musical instrument (if any) the unconscious patient plays? Why tell us that the kidnappers belong to a fictional organization called the Society of Music Lovers? Although not morally relevant, these details are part of what gives the tale its imaginative force. A great analogy is often a great story. But in this quality of analogy also lies a pitfall, for significant details can easily be overshadowed by the story’s drama. Notice that To Set Our Hope on Christ makes no attempt to explain how the prohibitions function in the analogy. Nor does it explain if the moral status of homosexuality has actually changed (like kosher laws), or whether homosexuality has always been acceptable but was mistakenly thought to be forbidden. Given how earlier voices on both sides of the question engaged these details, it is hard to see why this document, written so recently, ignores them—unless, that is, the details were simply lost in the telling of the story (an easy pitfall to slip into, but one that must be avoided).
A second general lesson to be learned is the complexity of “real” as opposed to hypothetical analogies. Thompson can add or remove whatever details she likes when writing of the unconscious violinist. By contrast, the analogy from Acts is a defined literary narrative; its effectiveness depends upon the integrity with which it can re-tell the story while at the same time casting the characters in new roles. If a certain detail is problematic for one side, it cannot simply be removed from the story. This complexity means that the body of skills required in applying such analogies is akin to the study of literature or the theater. How do we understand the characters, the plot, the setting? It depends upon an imaginative entering into the story on the part of both sides, and a shared commitment to grant the story authority. This process is what makes “real” analogies notoriously tricky but so potentially fruitful, especially for creating new conversations in stalemate debates. What makes it difficult is that neither side may overlook the details they find inconvenient to their preferred conclusion. But this difficulty is also what ensures that a conversation is possible, for the analogy itself supplies a rich common language. It is this rich language that has been recently exchanged for the cheap barbs of a culture war. Hopefully the conversation surrounding this analogy can renew the conversation in more charitable terms.