Jesus was a genius. Even many people who don’t believe he was the Son of God are happy to admit that. The teachings and interactions recorded in the gospels reveal a figure of exceptional wisdom and intellect.
If this was Jesus’s view, he did a really poor job of demonstrating it.
But there seems to be one place where Jesus failed to apply his genius, according to claims sometimes made about him. It is sometimes suggested that the example and teaching of Jesus – and what he omitted from his teaching – show that he affirmed same-sex sexual relationships as acceptable to God. But if this was Jesus’s view, he did a really poor job of demonstrating it. If the claim sometimes made about Jesus’s view is true, it would be the one area where Jesus’s genius seems to have failed him.
A key point made in support of the idea that Jesus affirms same-sex sexual relationships is the fact that he never talks about them. And of course, in the strictest terms, this is true: never in the recorded teaching of Jesus are same-sex sexual relationships explicitly mentioned. This, so it is argued, proves that he can’t have had a problem with them. His silence shows his support.
But, when considered in context, the opposite must be true. In the Judaism of Jesus’s day, same-sex sexual relationships were considered sinful. We know of no exceptions to this fact. Into this context comes Jesus, a genius who challenges many of the traditions and the ways of thinking common among the Jewish people of his day. And yet, not once does he ever say anything to try and challenge the universally held view that same-sex relationships are sinful. If he had wanted to, he could have done. It was not unlike him to challenge strongly and widely held Jewish views. And yet he didn’t. If Jesus wanted to challenge the Jewish prohibition on same-sex sexual relationships, he did a pretty poor job at doing so. His genius seems to have failed him at this point.
And then you’ve got the fact that Jesus said things which his Jewish contemporaries would have understood as affirming their understanding on same-sex sexual relationships. Jesus includes ‘sexual immorality’ (porneia) within a list of evil things that defile a person (Mark 7:20-23). Jews in Jesus’s day would have understood ‘sexual immorality’ to refer to any sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage.1 In the background would be lurking Leviticus 18 where various forms of sexual sin are identified, including same-sex sexual activity. Jesus makes no attempt to ensure his hearers don’t assume same-sex sexual activity is included within ‘sexual immorality’. Another failure of the genius of Jesus it seems.
Jesus states that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.
On top of this, Jesus actually states that marriage is, by definition, the union of a man and a woman. In his discussion with the Pharisees on divorce and remarriage in Mark 10:1-12, Jesus takes the conversation back to what marriage actually is. He quotes not just Genesis 2:24 (‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’), but also Genesis 1:27 (‘male and female he created them’). This second quote wasn’t necessary for the point Jesus was seeking to make and yet he chose to include it. In a context where he didn’t need to, Jesus quoted the Old Testament to show that marriage is, by definition, an opposite-sex union. If Jesus was trying to affirm same-sex sexual relationships, he did a bad job here. Again, his genius seemed to fail him.
Those who say that the gospels reveal a Jesus who views same-sex sexual relationships as acceptable to God are claiming that in this one particular area the genius of Jesus failed to show through. That’s a big claim to make, and I don’t find it very convincing.
Maybe it’s more likely that the genius of Jesus is evidence that he is who he said he was – the promised Messiah, the Son of God incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And maybe that’s a good reason to listen to what he says about human sexuality and what is best for us, even if it clashes with what we feel we’d like him to say or what our culture tells us he should say. Maybe Jesus really is a genius and he really does know what’s best for us.
- Porneia ‘can be found in Greek literature with reference to a variety of illicit sexual practices, including adultery, fornication, prostitution, and homosexuality. In the OT it occurs for any sexual practice outside a man and a woman that is prohibited in by the Torah’. James R Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Apollos, 2012), p.213.
