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Beliefs Are Not Set in Stone, Except for When They're on Tablets

July 2nd, 2013 | 7 min read

By Derek Rishmawy

Rachel Held Evans believes we shouldn't be too scared about changing our minds on religious questions, as these things aren't always "set in stone." Addressing religious believers in light of the SCOTUS decisions on gay marriage, she encourages us to realize it's possible to shift your beliefs without being a culturally-accommodating flip-flopper. Her biblical paradigm for this? Peter and Cornelius.

Breaking through years of religious training regarding Gentiles, the Apostle Peter included the Roman centurion Cornelius when he encountered his sincere faith, learning to not call impure what God names as clean. Just as the theological conversions of Paul, Augustine, and Luther have been a blessing to church history, Evans encourages us to model Peter's example of open-mindedness and inclusion--especially as we think about same-sex attraction.  "A person of conviction is not one who is unyielding to change, but one whose beliefs evolve based on new information, new movements of the Spirit, new biblical insights and, yes, new friends."

In reading Evans' piece last week, I was grateful for the basic point she made that Christians ought to be ready to have their beliefs challenged and corrected at some point. As we seek Christ, who is the Truth, pilgrims with fallen and finite minds must be open to theological correction; we are still in via, still on the way. As such, shifts shouldn't simply be chalked up to mere accommodation or calcification. To think you've got it nailed when it comes to God at 25, 45, or even 85 is simply hubris.

You're Not Peter

That said, I'm not convinced Peter's encounter with Cornelius is an adequate model for Christians reconsidering their position on same-sex relationships within the Christian body. Ironically enough, it highlights a number of reasons for caution against breaking with 2,000 years of the Church's scriptural teaching on this point:

1. No New Revelation - One clear distinction between the two situations is that no special revelation has happened with respect to same-sex relationships. Peter wasn't transformed by a mere experience of the "sincere faith" of the Other he had despised, but was given a supernatural revelation and confirmation in the form of a vision and the Spirit empowering Cornelius with visible, supernatural signs, so that as an authoritative apostle, he could testify to God's acceptance of the Gentiles by faith. As far as I know there aren't any apostles, witnesses of the risen Christ, walking around having experienced new, authoritative revelation on this issue. We should be careful not to act is if there has been.

2. Sexual Attraction is Not Race - Without fully elaborating on this point, the analogy problematically presumes a Biblical equivalence or adequate similarity between sexual attraction and race or ethnicity. I'll just say that even when inborn, sexual attraction is not equivalent to race or ethnicity. My Arabness is not something I act on in the same fashion as my sexual and romantic inclinations. That is an increasingly common category mistake that does injustice to the complexity of both race and sexuality, especially within a Biblical framework.

3. There Was a Plan For Cornelius 

What's more, the Scriptures have always testified to the future-inclusion of the Gentiles as Gentiles within the covenant people of God. Passages could be multiplied ad nauseum, but Isaiah presents us with a vision of God's plans for the nations:

It shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:2-3)

Being a Gentile was never sinful per se, but only as it was connected to idolatrous practices that inevitably went along with being outside the covenant. In other words, the Israelites were commanded to be holy, different from the Gentiles because of election and the unrighteousness of Gentile actions, not because non-Jewishness was inherently unrighteous.

Peter's experiences with Cornelius then, are a personal, experiential confirmation of a movement already foreshadowed in Scripture. They are a pointer to revelation, not a contradiction or modification of it, but only of the extra-biblical traditions that had grown up alongside it. As difficult as it is to accept, there is no such prophecy, foreshadowing, or hinting that homosexual behavior is something that will one day be sanctioned and blessed for God's children.

4. The 1970s Were Not Eschatological - Following this is an insight from Katherine Greene-McCreight: The Sexual Revolution is not a new eschatological event. Cornelius' inclusion, along with the rest of the Gentiles, was brought about by the eschatological turning of the ages. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the particular covenant with national Israel was fulfilled, pouring forth into the always-intended blessing of Gentiles joining Jews in being built up into Christ. (Rom. 4; 15:8-12; Gal. 3; Eph. 2:11-22) Nothing similarly climactic has happened in salvation history to suggest a new administration of God's covenant is in place, which includes behaviors clearly forbidden to God's people in both Old and New Testaments. In that sense, unlike Peter, we're not standing in a eschatologically-new situation calling for a radical revision of Christian theological ethics. The 1970s were a big deal, but not that big.

5.  About Those Conversions... -  Which brings me to the theological repentance of Paul, Augustine, and Luther. Paul's conversion of attitude towards the Gentiles was, as with Peter, the result of scales falling from his eyes in light of the Risen Christ, to see past his own religious nationalism. It was an authoritative revelation that shifted his perspective, not a new experience of diversity. Augustine changed his mind on a number of issues, but in his Retractions you see that it's constantly a process of going back to the Word and letting it correct his earlier Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism. Luther's theological reformation was an attempt to recover what he believed had actually already been revealed, but was covered over by years of scholastic teaching.

While Paul's conversion was qualitatively different from Luther's and Augustine's, all were transforming encounters with God's Word, Incarnate, written, or both. Paul's was inspiration, and we could say Augustine and Luther's experiences were illumination of what had already been said. We need to make sure that when we change our minds about something on the basis of "new biblical insights, movements of the Spirit, and new friends" we don't turn God into a confused deity who contradicts himself because he's changed his mind.

6. Already Included--In Christ - Finally, and this one is probably the most crucial to understand, the New Testament already includes those with same-sex attractions on the same grounds as it does everybody else--union by faith with Christ whose shed blood purchases forgiveness and whose Holy Spirit sanctifies us from all uncleanliness. The Gospel is for everyone. Really. God's family is open, adopting new sons and daughters with all sorts of struggles and backgrounds. I too shudder at the idea of calling impure that which Christ calls clean. I too think the grace of God extends far and wide–if it didn’t, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

What I also don’t want to do, though, is blunt the Gospel and its promise of new Creation that says, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:11) I would hate to look at my brother struggling with same-sex attraction and say, "Yeah, that's true of everything except your sexuality." No, the Gospel gives us a better, if not always easier, hope than that.

Sometimes God Hands Out Tablets

Evans quotes Rob Bell from his book Velvet Elvis:

“Times change. God doesn’t, but times do. We learn and grow, and the world around us shifts, and the Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating, letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us be more and more the people God wants us to be.”

The times might change, but God does not. Amen to that.

We need to be careful about who we listen to though, and be a bit wary of too much "morphing [and] innovating" with the times. People trying to hold on to "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) in order that they might not be "tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching" (Eph. 4:14), need to discern whether it is God's Spirit speaking through his already-revealed Word, or another spirit that needs to be tested.

While not all religious beliefs are set in stone, God put plenty in print. I recall that some of them were even on tablets.

Derek Rishmawy is the Director of College and Young Adult ministries at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Orange County, CA, where he wrangles college kids for the gospel. He’s been graciously adopted by the Triune God. That God has also seen fit to bless him with lovely wife named McKenna. He got his B.A. in Philosophy at UCI and his M.A. in Theological Studies (Biblical Studies) at APU. His passions are theology, the church, some philosophy, cultural criticism, and theology. He has been published at the Gospel Coalition and Out of Ur blog. He writes regularly at his Reformedish blog, and is a staff writer at Christ and Pop Culture. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Derek Rishmawy

Derek Rishmawy is the RUF campus minister at the University of California-Irvine, and is a systematic theology PhD student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He contributes to Christ and Pop Culture, Christianity Today, and writes at his own blog, Reformedish. He also co-hosts Mere Fidelity. You can follow him on Twitter @dzrishmawy.