Tag: Matthew Vines

Book Review: “A Response to Matthew Vines” ed. Albert Mohler

Mohler and a merry band of contributors have produced a very short, punchy and substantive 62-page rebuttal to Matthew Vines’ book (see my review of Vines’ work). There are five chapters which discuss, in turn, (1) an overview of Vines’ position and the dangers it presents, (2) Vines and the Old Testament, (3) Vines and the New Testament, (4) Vines and Christian history, and (5) Vines and the Gospel.

This book is remarkable because it is so substantive, yet so short. The contributors each manage to accurately distill Vines’ arguments and highlight the dangers to orthodoxy:

  • Mohler. Vines has severed the relevant texts from the meta-narrative of Scripture, particularly Genesis 1-2, and thus erased any definition of what it means to be human. This hermeneutical decapitation allows Vines to “relativize” the meaning to suit his purposes.[1] Indeed, Mohler argues, Vines allows experience to drive nearly everything he says.[2] Mohler invokes a boogeyman argument by suggesting that a repudiation of gender complementarity[3] will lead, inevitably, to a capitulation of sexual complementarity. This does not logically follow.[4]
  • Hamilton. The author generally echoes Mohler. Vines allows experience to guide his thinking, isolates texts from the meta-narrative and assumes the Biblical authors wrote from a secular worldview.[5] Vines’ work “is a study in sophistry.”[6] His analogy to an eyewitness description of a plane crash (“the witness never said gravity caused it to fall to the ground”) to illustrate Vines’ approach is excellent.[7]
  • Burk. The author largely summarizes some of his arguments from Transforming Homosexuality. Like other contributors, he realizes Vines will not allow the text to have a Scriptural worldview. “Vines has an undue fascination with Paul’s Greco-Roman context to the near exclusion of his Jewish identity.”[8]
  • Strachan. This section was less convincing, but this is not Strachan’s fault. It is rarely convincing to watch two authors toss historical quotations back and forth like dueling wizards. Strachan does a good job, but it is unlikely many readers will be helped. At best, Strachan’s effort will allow Christians to see Vines’ framing of the history is inaccurate.
  • Lambert. Like Burk before him, Lambert echoes and summarizes his own work from Transforming Homosexuality and discusses whether being an unrepentant “gay Christian” is compatible with the Gospel.

The book would have been strengthened by a short chapter each on identity and a “me-centered” hermeneutic. Each author makes references to these, but never directly engages. Vines does make his “gayness” his controlling badge of self-identity. He does have a hermeneutic of winsome narcissism; Vines even opens the book with his ridiculous “bad fruit” discussion. These are the controlling presuppositions that make Christians want the hermeneutic Vines is selling. A rebuttal of Vines’ position that does not attack these false presuppositions is incomplete.

Nonetheless, this is an accessible and substantive response to Vines and every church should provide it as a downloadable resource. It and several other ebooks are available free of charge at the SBTS website.

[1]  Albert Mohler, ed., God and the Gay Christian?: A Response to Matthew Vines (Louisville: SBTS Press, 2014; Kindle ed.), KL 58-70.

[2] Mohler, Response, KL 125. “Vines claims to hold to a ‘high view’ of the Bible and to believe that ‘all of Scripture is inspired by God and authoritative for my life,’ but the modern concept of sexual orientation functions as a much higher authority in his thinking and in his argument.”

[3] I assume Mohler is referring to the complementarian/egalitarian debate.

[4] Mohler, Response, KL 125-150.

[5] Mohler, Response, KL 191.  

[6] Mohler, Response, KL 191.  

[7] Mohler, Response, KL 216-228.

[8] Mohler, Response, KL 483.  

Book Review: “God and the Gay Christian” by Matthew Vines

Matthew Vines’s book release in 2015 was a watershed event in conservative-ish Christian circles. He effectively popularizes the scholarly arguments for unrepentant, monogamous, same-sex Christian relationships. He has 10 arguments. Here is a representative sample:

  1. A tree and its fruit. Vines argues, based on Mt 7:15-20, for an “experience-based test” that evaluates truthfulness on whether it makes him feel bad.[1] This is narcissism and the fruit of moral, therapeutic deism.
  2. Bad traditions and sexual orientation. The Church was wrong about the earth being the center of the universe, and it is likewise wrong about homosexual orientation. New information about “orientation” gives the church a new lens through which to interpret the Bible.[2] Vines claims ancient sexual preferences were fluid and homosexuality was due to excess passion. He engages no Biblical texts and assumes Scripture is heavily shaped by secular culture, but does not demonstrate this assertion.[3]
  3. Gift of celibacy. Not all homosexual Christians have the gift of celibacy,[4] so Christians must decide which teaching to modify – homosexuality or celibacy. Vines suggests homosexuality, because the traditional view produces “bad fruit” in individuals. This is a version of the prosperity gospel, because Vines refuses to accept mortification of sin as a component of repentance.[5] 
  4. Real Sin of Sodom. Christians only began to interpret this sin as homosexuality until the Greco-Roman era, because of an over-emphasis on ascetism.[6]

The pattern is clear. Vines is largely a popularizer. He is to James Brownson what Kevin DeYoung is to Robert Gagnon. For example, Vines concludes (or, rather, he echoes a scholar who has concluded) that malakoi in 1 Cor 6:9 really means a lack of self-control.[7] What does a word study tell us? The word appears six times in the New Testament and the LXX:[8]

  • Proverbs 25:15 (“gentle”): the sense is gentleness
  • Proverbs 26:22 (“soft”): the sense is pleasant, perhaps tasty
  • Matthew 11:8 [x2] (“soft”): the literal sense is fancy or dressy, but Jesus’ point is something like soft or white-collar in a figurative sense
  • Luke 7:25 (“soft”): identical to above

The sense, then, is “softness.” Words can be literal or figurative. In 1 Corinthians 6, the word is in list of other vices that exclude one from the Kingdom. Is having a gentle or soft character grounds for damnation? Clearly, the word must have a figurative meaning. Because the term is between “adulterers” and “active partners” in a homosexual act, it seems logical to understand it to mean “soft” in the sense of a sexual role. Indeed, this is precisely what lexicons such as BDAG (“pert. to being passive in a same-sex relationship”), Louw-Nida, Friberg, Gingrich, Danker and even Thayer conclude. Which sexual act excludes one from God’s family? Homosexuality. Vines is incorrect, and he can only appeal to revisionist scholars for support.

This, in sum, is how Vines argues. He never does source language word studies, he never exegetes a text, he assumes secular culture had a controlling influence on the Biblical authors, and he appeals to empathy from a place of narcissism.

Vines’ book is infinitely dangerous for the believing Christian, and every Christian leader must understand how the other side argues. This book is the best work a pastor can find to review the revisionist arguments at a popular level.

[1] “Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:13, ‘[God] will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.’ But mandatory celibacy for gay Christians is more than many of them can bear. It produces bad fruit in many of their lives, and for some, it fuels despair to the point of suicide. Such outcomes made it difficult for my dad to see how the church’s rejection of same-sex relationships could qualify as a good tree that, according to Jesus, produces good fruit,” (Matthew Vines, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships [New York: Convergent, 2014; Kindle ed.], pg. 19).

[2] “Here’s what I want you to notice for our discussion about sexual orientation: Christians did not change their minds about the solar system because they lost respect for their Christian forebears or for the authority of Scripture. They changed their minds because they were confronted with evidence their predecessors had never considered. The traditional interpretation of Psalm 93:1; Joshua 10:12–14; and other passages made sense when it was first formulated. But the invention of the telescope offered a new lens to use in interpreting those verses, opening the door to a more accurate interpretation. The telescope didn’t lead Christians to reject Scripture. It simply led them to clarify their understanding of Scripture,” (Vines, Gay Christian, pg. 24).

[3] “Christians made remarkable shifts in their understanding regarding Gentiles, slaves, and the place of the earth in relation to the sun. And as we are about to see, the new information we have about sexual orientation actually requires us to reinterpret Scripture no matter what stance we take on same-sex relationships,” (Vines, Gay Christian, pg. 42).

[4] “But Jesus’s teaching does not support mandatory celibacy for people to whom celibacy has not been given. If even some gay Christians lack the gift of celibacy, we have reason to doubt interpretations that force celibacy upon them,” (Vines, Gay Christian, pg. 48)

[5] Vines Gay Christian, 43-44. 

[6]  “Christians were influenced by their ascetic environment to interpret Scripture in ways that explicitly condemned taboo practices. In later Christian thought, same-sex relations were thought to be ‘unnatural’ in the same way as masturbation, contraception, and non-procreative heterosexual sex. Each of those practices was understood as going beyond nature’s basic requirement of engaging in sex for the sake of having children,” (Vines, Gay Christian, 74-76).

[7] “New Testament scholar David Fredrickson has argued that malakoi in 1 Corinthians 6:9 be translated as ‘those who lack self-control.’ Based on the evidence, that translation stands on firmer footing than any interpretation that defines the word as a specific reference to same-sex behavior. As we’ve seen, malakoi doesn’t refer to merely a single act. It encompasses an entire disposition toward immoderation,” (Vines, Gay Christian, 122).

[8] The quotations which follow from the LXX are from the Lexham English Septuagint.