I’m trying very hard to like Greg Gilbert’s book Who is Jesus?, really I am, but he is a classic example of someone caught between two paradigms. On the one hand, he wants to take on board new perspectives arising out of biblical studies. On the other, he doesn’t want to let go of core Reformed-evangelical doctrinal commitments. He has set out boldly in search of biblical understanding but has brought so much theological baggage with him that he will have a hard time getting through the narrow exegetical gate that leads to the life of the narrative to come.

His identification of the prince of Tyre and king of Babylon with Satan is one example. I may, at some point, get on to his misrepresentation of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. But here I want to lodge a vigorous complaint against his interpretation of the episode in Genesis 2 when Adam names the woman.

I have never understood why the prophecy about the prince of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:1-19 and the taunt against the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14:3-23 have traditionally been interpreted as having reference to Satan. I have just come across the argument again in Greg Gilbert’s book Who is Jesus?

Gilbert accepts that the Ezekiel passage is ostensibly about the prince of Tyre but insists that it makes no sense to speak of the ruler of an obscure coastal city in the ancient Near East as an anointed guardian cherub, who was in Eden and on the holy mountain of God: “even as poetry, it would be overkill to the point of absurdity and poetic failure”.

In response to this tweet by John Piper, Scot McKnight has posted a collection of Jewish texts from the second temple period which he thinks demonstrate a spectrum of views, from annihilationism (the destruction of the wicked at or after death) through “earthly judgment” to the dreaded eternal conscious punishment. On examination, however, the evidence for eternal conscious punishment appears to be less clear than Scot takes it to be.

This is not going to be a conventional review of James Brownson’s book on gender and homosexuality in the Bible. I’ll begin with two very broad assertions, then look at the texts, and finish with some cautious and increasingly opaque conclusions—be warned. For a summary of Brownson’s argument see this post. For a detailed critical evaluation of the book see Andrew Goddard’s essay.

I mentioned that I have been working my way through James Brownson’s book Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships. I have looked at his argument that the “one flesh” motif in Genesis 1:24 speaks of kinship bonds rather than biological gender complementarity. Here I have set out a synopsis of the overall thesis of the book, drawing mostly on the convenient summaries provided at the end of each chapter. It is rather too condensed and may be a bit difficult to follow, but it should give an idea of his argument. I plan to attempt an assessment over the next few days. Andrew Goddard, however, has kindly drawn attention to his review of the book for Fulcrum and a longer critique written in his capacity as Associate Director at the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics.

Moving on…. Yesterday I summarized James Brownson’s argument that when the author of Genesis says that a man leaves his mother and father and clings to his wife so that they become “one flesh”, he does not mean that they become a sexual union; he means that they become the basis for a new family group. What lies behind the idea of the man and woman becoming “one flesh” is not their sexual complementarity for the purpose of procreation. It is their genetic similarity for the purpose of forming a new kinship bond.

He then rather muddies this elegant distinction by suggesting that there is, nevertheless, an implied link between kinship and sexuality. The one flesh relationship “flows from sexual union, but is distinct from that sexual union, and is expressed in ways that extend beyond sexual union alone” (87). The reason for this complication is that although the Hebrew word translated “cleave” or “cling” in Genesis 2:24 (dabaq) does not have sexual connotations elsewhere in scripture, Paul speaks of a man being “joined” to a prostitute so as to become “one flesh” with her (1 Cor. 6:16). The Greek word for this joining is kollaō, which is related to the verb proskollēthēsetai, meaning “will be joined” in the Septuagint translation of Genesis 2:24.

I have been reading James Brownson’s Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships in preparation for a theological forum next week. The book basically attempts a re-thinking of “the moral vision regarding gender and sexuality that Scripture commends”, prompted not least by the fact that Brownson’s eighteen year old son had confided to his parents that “he believed he was gay”. Brownson describes himself as having taken, prior to this, a “moderate, traditionalist position”. We are clearly heading in a less traditionalist direction, but I’m only on page 85.

One of the main biblical arguments against same-sex erotic relations is that the creation narrative in Genesis 2 describes a fundamental “gender complementarity” based on biology. The woman is created out of the man, therefore for the man to be complete again as “one flesh” he must be joined with a woman. Brownson quotes Robert Gagnon:

Only a being made from ʿadam can and ought to become someone with whom ʿadam longs to reunite in sexual intercourse and marriage, a reunion that not only provides companionship but restores ʿadam to his original wholeness. (25)