The Earth Is Flat

It’s tempting to say “The world can use more men like Robert J. Schadewald.”

Tempting.

And true. 

The greater truth would be to say “As self-proclaimed ‘Christians” continue to attack LGBT children and adults, the world could use new versions of Mr. Schadewald.”

But not really necessary. There’s baskets-loads of Schadewalds out there. The problem is that some people – denizens of the world of Internet conspiracy theories and pseudoscience – don’t pay attention to folks like the former president of the National Center for Science Education. Instead, they choose – a real problem with free will and free choice – to believe in creationism and a flat earth. Schadewald examined the parallels between the two beliefs, contending they relied on the authority of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures as a scientific guide to the natural world.

He noted that “biblically-based” flat earth argumentS are also “geocentric” – viewing the earth as immovable and the universe moving around it. Biblical geocentrists base their arguments, in part, on scriptural lines like “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable,” (1 Chronicles 16:30), “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm…” (Psalm 93:1), “…who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast.” (Isaiah 45:18). Flat earthers take their cues from verses such as Matthew 4:8 in which Satan took Jesus “to a very high mountain and showed him all of the kingdoms of the world [cosmos] in their glory…,” and Revelation 1:7 – “Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him…,” as well as a number of references to the “four corners” of  the Earth. 

In 2018, astrophysicist (and self-described “agnostic”) Neil deGrasse Tyson responded to stand-up comedian Chuck Nice’s question “Is the Earth flat?” “We have video from space of the rotating, spherical Earth. The Earth is round. What’s odd is there are people who think that Earth is flat but recognize that the moon is round. Mercury, Venus Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the sun are all spheres. But Earth is flat… something doesn’t square here.”

To the question “So what if people still believe the earth is flat?” Tyson quipped “That’s OK, as long as you don’t run NASA.”

Like 2021 versions of Schadewald or deGrasse Tyson asserting heliocentrism and a global Earth, come the sixty-plus theologians and other academicians who have contributed to the England’s Wijngaards Institute For Catholic Research “Academic Statement on the Ethics of Free and Faithful Same-Sex Relationships” to nudge and prod Christians – especially the Roman Catholic Church to whom they address themselves – to a new understanding of human sexuality, especially homosexuality and committed same-sex relationships.

The authors note, “The current and most comprehensive official exposition” of the Church’s 2021 “condemnation of homosexuality” – “intrinsically disordered” - “dates back to 1986” and is “based on two main arguments: that the bible prohibits them and that they are biologically infertile, and so unable to fulfill ‘procreation’…”

Nonetheless, “the sciences of biology, psychology, sociology, and genetics have made significant progress towards understanding the causes, purposes, and consequences of sexual orientation.”

However, perhaps even more significant from the theological perspective, “The same can be said of biblical studies on what the Bible affirms with regard to the meanings and purposes of human sexuality in general, and same-sex behavior in particular… the bible remains one of the key obstacles to reform, not just within Catholicism but for many other Christian denominations.”

That’s a surprising assertion when we consider that the New International Version of the Bible contains 727,969 words and “in the entire bible, only five short passages have been identified as potentially referring to consensual same-sex behavior - the so called ‘clobber texts.’” The five – two parallel verses from Leviticus, and three from the letters of Paul constitute all the biblical justifications for prohibiting such relationships.

The Statement recognizes “Given the diverse but very real consequences that such biblical interpretations can have on LGBT people worldwide it is increasingly urgent to put them to the test… [and] ground-breaking findings… subvert the traditional interpretation of all five ‘clobber texts.’”

The authors first addressed the argument of “current papal teaching” condemning same-sex orientation as “objectively disordered” and same-sex acts as always “intrinsically disordered,” noting that neither is actually supported by “relevant evidence.”

The “intrinsically disordered” argument is based on the reality that same-sex acts are incapable of biological procreation – “an essential and indispensable finality” of all sexual intercourse. Nonetheless, “the vast majority of acts of heterosexual intercourse do not have the biological capacity for procreation, and…cannot have procreation as their proper ‘finality.” As a result, “non-heterosexual ‘acts’ are not different from the vast majority of heterosexual ‘acts’: in both cases, they are biologically incapable of procreation.”

In a blockbuster statement the academics report that “crucial” new research that “has only been published over the past two years… make[s] it possible to confirm that the two key verses in Leviticus – and, more generally, the entire Hebrew Bible – do not prohibit, much less condemn, free and faithful same-sex relationships. And they also allow a similar degree of confidence with regard to all three passages from the apostle Paul.”

The authors note, “In the world inhabited by the biblical authors, male same-sex sexual activity was expressed through sexual relationships which were ordinarily temporary (i.e. not lifelong), not free, and even exploitative, due to imbalances of age, status, and power. Therefore, no biblical passage condemning male same-sex sexual activity is relevant for morally evaluating free and faithful male same-sex relationships.” In addition, “nowhere in the Bible is female same-sex behavior explicitly condemned” nor “is an openness to procreation required in each and every sexual act, or in the life of a couple.” As a result, “the papal axiom that ‘openness to procreation’ is an essential requirement of each and every act of sexual intercourse does not conform to biblical teaching.”

Papal (and other denominational) arguments for prohibiting same-sex sexual activity are supposedly based on select biblical passages: Genesis 19:1-29, Leviticus 18:20 and 20:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:10 and Romans 1:26-27. All refer only to male sexual behavior. 

The Romans citation only mentions women’s “unnatural relations,” without further specifications and may well be a reference to ante-diluvian women having intercourse with angelic beings: “Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves… The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” [Nephilim are mysterious beings or people mentioned several times in the Hebrew Scripture. The term is alternately believed to refer to “giants” or “fallen angels.”]

Genesis 19:1-29 refers to the attempted gang rape of Lot’s angelic guests by the men of Sodom – a “wicked thing” compounded by its breach of the duty of hospitality; moreover, this “wicked thing” did not precipitate God’s decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah – a decision already made because all of the cities’ inhabitants had been guilty of “grievous sin.”

Contemporary research indicates that the Leviticus 18:20 and 20:13 prohibitions refer to a specific type of male same-sex relationship – those of married men (condemned as adulterous”) or unmarried but under the sexual guardianship of a Judean woman (condemned as incestuous). “The fact that the prohibition addressed a specific type of male same-sex relationship suggests that same-sex intercourse with males outside the forbidden category was viewed as permissible.” 

The authors of the Academic Study point out that two of the Pauline references – 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:10 - “are part of two ‘vice lists’ detailing the kind of sinners who will not enter heaven” and include the rare Greek term “arsenokoitai” – “male-bedders” - and the Corinthian citation is proceeded by the term “malakoi” (“softies” or “effeminates”).

Recent research indicates that “arsenokoitai” refers to the active partner in male same-sex intercourse – a term that must be understood in its cultural context. In the Pauline Greco-Roman world, “socially dominant men, generally married, had sex regularly with their slaves or prostitutes, boys as well as men, and would ordinarily take the active role. Their subordinates had little or no choice… Paul’s condemnation of male bedders’ likely referred to those socially dominant men’s roles and responsibilities in exploitative, and often adulterous, male same-sex intercourse.” Significantly, and apparently not without reason, Paul’s reference to “male-bedders” appears immediately before “slave-traders,” who were notoriously involved in the sex trade, in a list of vices.

In addition to “effeminates,” the term “malakoi” might be translated as “weak-willed” or “lacking self-restraint,” as well as “womanizer” or “pathic” – a reference to the passive partner in male same-sex interoucrse. It is possible that it refers to those males - ordinarily younger and of socially lower status such as slaves - who would sell sexual favours in exchange for money, patronage, or other social benefits.

Ultimately, however Paul’s condemnation does not appear to refer to free, faithful, and lifelong male same-sex relationships.

Finally, the authors of the new Academic Statement explain that to interpret Romans 1:27 as a universal condemnation of free, faithful, and lifelong male relationships is to read into the text something it does not say. Such an interpretation would also be at odds with the tolerance of consensual homosexual behaviour implicit in the lack of such a condemnation anywhere else in the Bible. It is impossible to determine with absolute certainty whether Paul and the author of 1 Timothy were referring to consensual or exploitative relationships in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 respectively. The latter were by far the more widespread, and so the likelihood is that they are the object of the biblical author’s condemnation.

Finally, the authors reflect Neil deGrasse Tyson’s succinct statement “something doesn’t square here.”

The biblical arguments against “free and faithful” same-sex sexual relationships appear to fall apart in the face of modern – truly academic – theological and anthropological study. “The Bible contains no prohibitions or condemnations of free, faithful, and lifelong same-sex relationships.” 

To the question “So what if people still believe the earth is flat?” Tyson quipped “That’s OK, as long as you don’t run NASA.” It is no longer OK to condemn “free and faithful” same-sex relationships – especially when such condemnation destroys families, young and not-so young men and women, and their lives and souls. 

Perhaps those who signed the Academic Statement are the Twenty-first Century’s heirs to Robert J. Schadewald, calling believers to a new understanding of free and faithful same-sex relationships. 

Perhaps.