You may know that I’ve recently started an MA in Christian Apologetics and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I’ve been really excited about this for a long time, and now I’m almost finished with my first course!
Apologetics is a branch of theology that seeks to commend the Christian faith to its believers by building them up in truth and reason, and to defend against opposition and arguments against Christianity. Apologetics comes from the Greek word ἀπολογία (apologia), which means to defend someone accused. The word apologetics is now used to describe the branch of Theology that I’ve mentioned that defends Christianity.
In a recent assignment, I was given the choice of 3 memes that I had to write a response to using the Bible, plus teaching and reading from the first course in my MA. Below is the meme that I responded to, with my response below. P.s. I may respond to the other two memes at some point and add them to my blog!
This meme is probably one that many might identify with, and the topic of homosexuality and Christianity is highly emotive. However, there are several things wrong with this meme, a couple of which I aim to comment on or challenge, although it could also draw some interesting truths.
Suppose it were to be converted into a single sentence in expression. In that case, the meme might say, “the Bible is absurd in teaching that homosexuality is wrong because it also teaches that incestuous rape is okay.”
I don’t particularly wish to argue the point of homosexuality explicitly. Still, it is worth saying in transparency that I think the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin because it stands in contradiction to the natural order of the world created by God, taught by Jesus during his time on Earth. (Matt 19:4-6)
I want to start by addressing the second half of the meme, referring to “two girls getting their father drunk and raping him.” This is, in fact, an account of the Old Testament character Lot and his two daughters, who recently fled from the destruction of their city because of its great evil and rebellion against God. Lot’s daughters, fearing that their family line will not be perpetuated, decide to entice their father to drink so much wine that he does not notice or understand that they went in and slept with him to get pregnant. Not once but twice, one daughter and then the other. This account of incestuous rape, therefore, is a biblical account. Still, the assumption made in this meme is that it is an example of exemplar behavior to be tolerated or copied. It is not. In his book Why Should I Trust the Bible?, Timothy Jones states, “The bible rightly records what happened even when what happened wasn’t right: The Bible was never intended to provide a pristine list of human triumphs to celebrate or praiseworthy acts to imitate.” [1] The books of Judges, Kings, and Chronicles are further examples of horrendously bad behavior recorded for the sole purpose of recording history and showing how depraved men in power can become and the lengths to which the chosen people of Israel can go to rebel against God. Dr. Jones later wrote that “much of the time, bypassing the original context results in relatively harmless misapplications of a text.” I would argue that this is not entirely harmless; we are talking about our friends’ and neighbors’ eternal state, after all!
With that in mind, the overall aim of this meme is undermined. The creator has made what can be referred to as a Straw Man; the idea that someone creates a misrepresentation of something that they attack and defeat through some means. In this case, the argument in favor of same-sex union uses a total misrepresentation of what the Bible truly teaches. The Straw Man is that the Bible holds up Lot and his two incestuous daughters as an example of good practice when it does not. One might ask if any rational person thinks the Bible, which has been revered for almost 2000 years, could argue that incestuous rape is “okay.”
Now that we’ve identified the straw man in this meme, we find ourselves in an interesting position. Since the whole argument is saying, in effect, the Bible is absurd in teaching that homosexuality is wrong because it also teaches that incestuous rape is okay, now that we’ve established that the Bible does in no way condone—and condemns—both incest and rape, is the Biblical teaching that homosexuality is wrong actually absurd?
There is perhaps an undercurrent of progressive Christian liberalism in this meme, and there is nothing to say that it could not have been created by a Christian wishing to justify same-sex relationships. A common argument that progressives use is that the Bible is outdated and not relevant to modern society, meaning that if we love each other and hold to the positive messages that Jesus taught when he was alive, we might not even have to believe in the resurrection, the incarnation, or even original sin. Jones, in his book, quotes an American pastor, Oliver Thomas, who said, “It’s difficult to watch good people buy into the sincere but misguided notion that being a faithful Christian means accepting everything the Bible teaches.” Admittedly, and in agreement with Dr. Jones, I wish I could ignore the complex parts of the Bible and concentrate on the feel-goods; however, with any intellectual honesty, I cannot. Christopher Hitchens, a renowned Atheist, once responded to a pastor who confessed to being a Christian who didn’t believe in the Bible or the resurrection. He responded, “You’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”
Much of the argument comes down to another misunderstanding of old and new covenant (promise) laws and guidance, even within Christianity. Since Jesus came to fulfill the [Old Testament] Law (Matt 5:17), as Jones rightly says, “the laws in Leviticus aren’t the best place to begin when making [one’s] case, and there’s really no need to start with these laws in the first place.” This extends to life and times before the coming of Jesus, in which Lot and his daughters indeed were situated.
There are plenty of reasons why we should indeed believe what the New Testament of the Bible teaches. In his lecture Was the Bible Miscopied?, Dr. Jones stated and later expounded on his point that the Bible “has been preserved with sufficient accuracy for us to get God’s intended message,” not least because we can be sure it has been copied with a high degree of accuracy, is represents eyewitness testimony from many sources with nothing to gain, the claims are contextually credible and were recorded within decades of the events described. To that end, the author of this meme has stated that “two girls having sex is unnatural” one could argue that by removing the fallacy of the argument, the assertion itself is the only thing left standing and suggests that it could be true. Although I haven’t extensively written about the reliability of the Bible, if you are willing to follow that track, then this could be stated in the following logical argument:
The Bible is reliable and can be taken to be true.
The Bible teaches that “two girls having sex is unnatural.”
The teaching that “two girls having sex is unnatural” is reliable and can be taken to be true.
[1] Jones, Why Should I Trust the Bible?
Commenti