Answering LGBT Objections to Biblical Marriage – Part 2

James Tissot,
The Betrothal of the Holy Virgin and Saint Joseph,
1886-1894

Nuclear Family

In the last post, I stated the position that the Bible only prescribes heterosexual monogamous marriage. In this article I am going to expand on that idea to lay the foundation for the rest of the articles on LGBT objections to Biblical Marriage.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

– Genesis 1:27

¹⁸And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. ¹⁹And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. ²⁰And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

²¹And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; ²²and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

²³And Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. ²⁴Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

– Genesis 2:18-24

³The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?”

⁴And he answered and said unto them, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, ⁵and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? ⁶Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

– Matthew 19:3-6

God’s original created design was for marriage to be one man and one woman. If there were any other pattern that God approved of, it would have been that way in the very beginning.

There are essentially four groups that oppose the biblical view on homosexuality in their advocacy of gay rights and gay marriage.

The first group are people of other faiths, agnostics, and atheists who feel the Bible has no authority anyway. They will appeal to the Bible to try and shame Christians into accepting homosexuality, or they will attack the validity of the Bible to try and weaken the faith of Christians.

The second group are those that consider themselves Christians, but believe that some portion of the Bible is not necessarily historical. On the liberal side of this group are people who reject not just the miracles and creationist portions of scripture, but often the historicity of everything from Genesis through Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. When it comes to the rest of the historical books, they question the reliability of these books. If you doubt or question the reliability and historicity of the first five books of the bible, then the religious basis for rejecting homosexuality goes away.

The third group is the conservative side of biblical theology and are those that accept the historicity of the stories from Genesis 12 on, but question the historicity of the first 11 chapters. Many hold to theistic evolution, progressive creationism, or some other compromise that accepts evolution as true. One of the arguments in favor of homosexuality is that it is an evolutionary adaptation. If a Christian accepts evolution, then why reject this argument?

Most in this third group believe that Genesis 1 is an allegorical passage that allows for evolution. However, they believe that the creation of Adam and Eve was a special creation, or they believe that when the first Homo sapiens evolved, God specially blessed the first pair and the rest of mankind descended from them. There are other variations on these themes, all of which fall within the pale of orthodoxy and the normal creationist defense of the biblical model of marriage applies and so they are not LGBT advocates.

The fourth group is a very fringe element of LGBT activists that hold to a historical view of Genesis 1 to 11. They believe that gay marriage was a moot point in the original creation because there was only Adam and Eve and heterosexual marriage was necessary to populate the earth. This group argues that now that there are more than 7 billion people on the planet, homosexual marriage is no longer an issue.

In these series of articles, I’m not taking much time, if any, to defend the authority of the Bible. I am presupposing that the Bible is authoritative. What I can say is that in all orthodox views, whether young earth creationism, theistic evolution, progressive creationism, or even the gap theory, the belief is that God created man specially and separate from the rest of creation.

If a Christian has a problem with the historicity of the Bible, and Christianity is just a feel good club, then you can make the Bible mean whatever you want it to.

The only objection I am going to address in this article is the idea that when God created Adam and Eve, there were only two people, so heterosexuality was a necessity. Also, there was only one man and one woman, so no other kind of marriage was possible. As I stated above, the objection to this is that there are now more than 7 billion people on planet earth, so populating the earth isn’t an issue any longer.

My question is why is 7 billion the magic number? The Law was delivered to Moses in about 1450 BC. At that time, the estimated population of the earth was about 37 million. That’s a lot of people. The number of Israelites leaving Egypt has been estimated to be between 400,000 to 2.5 million. That’s also a lot of people.

In America today, less than 3% of people identify as homosexual, if we assumed the number of homosexuals was the same back then that would only be between 12,000 and 75,000 homosexuals. Even if there were 75,000 homosexuals in a population of 400,000 (18.75%) that would have left 325,000 people to procreate and continue populating the earth. Why then did God still outlaw homosexuality? Was there a magic number? Is there a scientific, logical, or any other reason to make the argument that population was really an issue? Not really.

How Would Jesus and the Apostles Respond?

Too many Christians, when asked why they oppose same-sex marriage will say, without missing a beat, “Because God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” While this statement is true, it is not helpful. It comes across as mean spirited because it is always used in a snarky manner. It also comes across as ignorant.

When I hear Christians use that statement I am usually embarrassed for them. When they use it trying to explain the Christian position on homosexuality, I just get sad because if the person to whom they are speaking is an unbeliever, I know that the door is closing to any future opportunity to share the claims of Christianity with them.

Let’s look at how Jesus answered a question regarding the sanctity of marriage.

³The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

⁴And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, ⁵and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? ⁶Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

⁷They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

⁸He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. ⁹And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

– Matthew 19:3-8

Jesus wasn’t snarky or mean in His response. When challenged on the biblical position regarding marriage, divorce, and remarriage, Jesus didn’t say, “God wants marriage to be between one man and one woman because God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Eve and Eve and Eve and Eve.” Jesus kept it simple and He based his response to the religious leaders by appealing to the scriptural creation account.

Jesus used the scriptural approach all the time. He always appealed to scripture, never to the culture. Based on Jesus’ habit of appealing to scripture to make his case, it can be assumed that if Jesus came across a liberal theologian who wanted to know why He disapproved of homosexuality and same-sex marriage that He would turn to scripture to make His case – “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning…?” “It is written…”

Jesus could appeal to scripture because He was dealing primarily with Jewish people and their religious leaders. We may not always be able to have the common point of scripture when discussing these issues and when that happens, the “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” argument will never work.

Paul used a different approach to making his case to non-believers. In a previous article, I showed how Paul used Greek philosophy to make his case against idolatry. Paul could just as easily appealed to Greek and Roman culture and philosophy to make a case against homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

In modern times, the study of other cultures around the world has shown that heterosexual monogamy isn’t the historical norm for all cultures which is why appealing to “traditional marriage” is a shaky position. For the Christian, the strongest base for supporting monogamous heterosexual marriage is the Bible. If the person with whom you are discussing the issue doesn’t believe in the Bible or the historicity of the first 11 Chapters of Genesis, your position is going to be much harder to defend.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t defend the biblical position without the Bible. There is a lot of research out there that has studied all kinds of marriages and families that show that the healthiest kind of relationship to be in is a heterosexual monogamous relationship. Of course opponents to the biblical position have their research too. You'll have a lot of studying to do if you want to have chance at providing a refutation for that research.

In the end, you may never convince a LGBT activists that God mandated heterosexual monogamous marriage. You may not be able to demonstrate the problems with same-sex and other kinds of relationships. Before you enter into these kinds of conversations, you need to pray. When you are finished having these conversations, you need to pray. Do all you can to leave the door open to future conversations. There are going to be some who will think that you are hateful no matter what you say or how you act. You're not going to convince everyone.