Richard’s announced departure from orthodoxy (or, more specifically, orthopraxy) has been mourned by the Right and celebrated by the Left. Jonathan Merritt, a “gay” propagandist, wrote an article on the book for Religion News Service, itself largely a propaganda organ for the LGBTQ+ cause, five months before the book appeared. It was breathlessly entitled “Conservative Christians Just Lost Their Scholarly Trump Card on Same-Sex Relationships.”3 CNN came out with its own propaganda piece just after the book was released, written by a senior producer at CNN who identifies as “gay,” entitled “He Wrote the Christian Case against Same-Sex Marriage. Now He’s Changed His Mind.”4

Christopher’s impact, while not as significant as his father’s, is still notable. He is chair of the department of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, which is supposed to be an evangelical seminary (albeit an outlier one). His contribution, along with Fuller’s newly revised sexuality policy,5 will signal for most evangelicals Fuller’s full and final departure from evangelicalism.

Proponents of homosexual relations had high expectations that the two Hayses would deliver a powerful, ground-breaking refutation of Scripture’s stance against homosexual practice. They should be greatly disappointed. The hype generated by the background of the authors has not been matched by noteworthy content. Christopher and Richard disappointingly rehash old revisionist arguments without dealing with any of the scholarly counterarguments raised since 1996 or even addressing the most important biblical texts against their position.

In a nutshell, they argue that there is a larger “story” or “narrative pattern” throughout Scripture of a God who repeatedly “changes his mind” to “reveal an expansive mercy that embraces ever wider circles of people, including those previously deemed in some way alien or unworthy” (p. 206). They claim that “sexual minorities” deserve to be the next group in this ongoing narrative.6 The larger story of Scripture, they believe, entitles them to ignore all the biblical texts that speak negatively about homosexual practice. They seem to be unaware of other biblical texts that establish a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations as foundational, including Jesus’s remarks on marriage (Mark 10:2–12; Matt 19:3–9) and the Genesis creation texts (Gen 1:27; 2:19–24).

Let me be frank: showing that the “widening of God’s mercy” is an important theme of the Bible’s story (well-known long before the Hayses wrote this book) does not establish that God has “changed his mind” about the male-female foundation of Christian sexual ethics rigorously affirmed by our Lord himself and by which he limits the sexual bond to two persons. The “widening of God’s mercy” is not even a universal theme of the Bible. It is often supplanted in the NT by an intensified ethical demand placed by Jesus and the apostles on followers of Christ, a demand accompanied by severe warnings about potential loss of salvation for those who do not do what Jesus commanded but instead primarily live out of the sinful desires of human flesh. Even when present in the biblical story, the theme of God’s expansive mercy everywhere presupposes repentance from immoral conduct. And, finally, not only is this theme never applied in the Bible to an acceptance of homosexual practice, but it is categorically rejected whenever homosexual practice is mentioned. Yet, in spite of all that, we are supposed to take Christopher at his word (and Richard makes similar statements) when he declares, “I remain committed to the unparalleled centrality of the Bible for Christian ethical discernment.” Pardon our skepticism.

1. What Is Really Going On: An Inverted Revisionist Hermeneutical Scale

In reality, for the Hayses, self-interpreted “experience” is king of hermeneutics (i.e., how to interpret the biblical text for our contemporary context). Anything in Scripture that does not comport with their own experience of “LGBTQ” Christians (note the inclusion of the “T”)7 is discarded as an “isolated text” (p. 206). They operate with an inverted “revisionist hermeneutical scale,” descending criteria for making decisions in the church, which is the exact opposite of the church’s “traditional hermeneutical scale”:

The Church’s Traditional Hermeneutical Scale

• Scripture
• Philosophic Reason (Nature Argument)
• Scientific Reason
• Experience

The Inverted Revisionist Hermeneutical Scale

• Experience
• Scientific Reason
• Philosophic Reason (Nature Argument)
• Scripture

Traditionally, what Scripture has to say about a given matter (especially as regards the NT witness) has preeminent authority. It is not just one among four considerations; it is head-and-shoulders above the other three. Moreover, the degree to which a given position shows pervasive, strong, absolute, and countercultural affirmation or rejection in the pages of Scripture is the degree to which that position can be characterized as a core value of Scripture. The degree to which it is a core value of Scripture determines the degree to which the scriptural view cannot be challenged by any of the other considerations. This is particularly true in the Protestant Evangelical tradition. In other ecclesiastical communities (notably Roman Catholic and Orthodox), tradition (i.e., from the Church Fathers onward) may play a co-equal role with Scripture. As regards the issue of homosexual practice or a male-female prerequisite for sex, Scripture and tradition agree that this is a core value of Scripture.

As to a nature argument from philosophic reasoning, the rejection of homosexual practice is predicated on a transparent observation of the complementary sexual features of man and female that makes evident that homosexual unions are structurally incongruous (cf. the nature argument in Rom 1:24–27). A same-sex union does not pair sexual counterparts or “other halves.” Biologically related impulses are less reliable indicators of what is natural than the compatible structures of maleness and femaleness.

With respect to scientific reasoning, homosexual behavior is characterized by higher rates of measurable harm, which differ for homosexual males and homosexual females in ways that correspond to typical male-female differences. Experience is placed last in the decision-making process, largely because experience should be assessed from the three prior considerations, especially Scripture. It may involve encounters with persons who are same-sex oriented but who live in obedience to the biblical witness on homosexual practice.

What the Hayses have done (along with others before them) is to invert the traditional hermeneutical scale into a revisionist scale that prioritizes experience (as though it were self-interpreting) above all other considerations. Here experience involves the persuasive power of “fruit-bearing” LGBTQ Christians who need to be in homosexual unions to cure their loneliness. Scientific reason factors secondarily, here involving the idea of a homosexual orientation heavily influenced by congenital factors and viewed as resistant to change. Philosophic reason enters in a tertiary sense, often in a “born that way” argument. Finally, Scripture comes last as an influence in decision-making for the revisionist scale.

When it comes in last, Scripture really plays no significant role at all in the decision-making process. It is there to rubber-stamp what has already been decided by experience, assisted by scientific and philosophic reasoning. What we see in the Hayses is what I have seen in nearly every book and article of the past 40 years written by a Bible scholar, church historian, or Christian theologian supporting homosexual unions: while a small number of passages in Scripture appear to oppose homosexual practice, these passages do not oppose caring homosexual relationships between homosexually oriented persons. Scripture’s focus on mercy, grace, and love, along with its special concern for the marginalized and oppressed, leave room to support loving homosexual unions despite its “isolated” prohibitions. Changes in the Bible’s views on slavery, women’s roles, and divorce/remarriage give hermeneutical license for developing a new perspective on homosexual practice.

It is important to realize that what the Hayses are doing here (as many others have done before them) is not just overturning one isolated issue of Scripture but rather inverting the whole scale for decision-making in the church. Experience is king while Scripture is dethroned. For all the claims made by the Hayses to have embraced Scripture’s larger “story” more fully, what is actually going on is the dethroning of Scripture’s preeminent role in decision-making—and not just Scripture generally but the teaching of Jesus in particular.

Think of this as a card game between two teams. One team decides that the priority of trumps will be, from highest to lowest, (1) spades, (2) clubs, (3) diamonds, and (4) hearts. The other team says, “We like the general concept, but we prefer to prioritize the suits in reverse order,” namely, (1) hearts, (2) diamonds, (3) clubs, and (4) spades. Now try to play the game. You can’t because the two “teams” don’t agree on what has priority in decision-making. This is what is happening in mainline denominations. Different rankings for different elements in this modified Hermeneutical Quadrilateral have arisen, creating confusion all around.

2. The Deficiencies in Richard Hays’s Earlier Work on Homosexual Practice

Richard, known especially for his important work in NT intertextuality and ethics, was thought to be (till 2001) a go-to biblical scholar on the issue of the Bible and homosexuality, even though the sum total of his contributions from 1986 through 1996 amounted to less than 75 pages of material (and much of that was repeated material). What he wrote had great influence because of his scholarly stature at an elite institution.

As important as Richard’s work was for many evangelicals, even then it had significant problems:

(1) Richard dismissed the relevance of the Sodom text in Genesis 19 (and the related story of the Levite at Gibeah in Judg 19), failing to grasp the ancient Near Eastern context and to think analogically.

(2) He argued that sexual orientation is a modern construct unknown to the ancient world. Hays failed to grasp that rudimentary but real notions of “sexual orientation” already existed in the ancient world, including among Greco-Roman moralists and physicians who still rejected the behavior arising from said orientation.

(3) Richard asserted that active, unrepentant homosexual sin should be no bar to church membership, even though (a) the early church clearly made abstinence from egregious sexual immorality a condition for church membership (Acts 15) and (b) Paul’s words regarding the incestuous man in 1 Corinthians 5 clearly show that a self-professed believer engaged in serial, unrepentant, egregious sexual sin had to be put out of the community pending repentance.

(4) Richard already leaned toward accepting the ordination of homosexually active candidates for ministry.

(5) For Richard, then, self-affirmed, serial, unrepentant homosexual practice was a relatively minor sin. He deduced this from the hermeneutically unsophisticated move of confusing infrequency of mention with importance. Richard never gave thought to the fact that infrequency of mention was due both to infrequency of commission and to the severity of the offense, which was scandalous to talk about even in a negative manner. A simple analogy to incest and bestiality illustrates the point nicely. Instead of comparing adult-consensual homosexual practice to adult-consensual incest as he should have, Richard wrongly argued that homosexual practice was less severe than any form of “materialism,” “greed,” or “self-righteousness” (all near-universal sins), without any regard for differentiating extreme versions from milder forms.

In conclusion, Richard Hays already held significant anti-scriptural views about homosexual practice back in the 1980s and 1990s. No wonder that he has now caved so completely on the issue.

3. What Changed Richard’s Mind about Homosexual Practice

Richard tells the story of his change on pp. 5–10 (“Richard’s Story”) and pp. 222–26 (“Epilogue: Richard B. Hays”). He presents his own prior view on homosexual relations as tenuous. His chapter on “Homosexuality” in Moral Vision, he says, was merely a proposal designed “to stimulate conversation, not to end it.” It was not intended as “a definitive pronouncement” (p. 224) or “final word” (p. 9).

He mentions two things that pushed him over to the other side. First, he recounts “a tipping point” five years earlier when his brother had refused to attend his mother’s funeral if it were not moved from an “LGBTQ”-affirming church that displayed a rainbow banner next to the church sign outside. An “incredulous” Richard could not believe that his brother would make this issue “a matter on which the faith stands or falls” or “a heretical betrayal of Christian faith” (all anti-biblical positions held by Richard even back then). Again, for Richard affirmation of homosexual practice was nothing to get upset about, as though it were on the level of “the doctrine of the Trinity or justification by faith” or “Nazism’s ‘German Christianity’ or apartheid” (p. 6). Should we assume that Richard would have felt the same way if the church in question had celebrated adult-consensual incest and polyamory?

The second (and I suspect more significant) influence on Richard’s change was his “experience of participating in a church where gay and lesbian members were a vital part of the congregation’s life and ministry,” which caused him “to stop and reconsider what [he] wrote before” (p. 10). His earlier judgments were “not informed by patient listening to my fellow Christians who found their identity indelibly stamped by same-sex attraction and by the longing for companionship” (p. 224). Previously, he said, “I was more concerned about my own intellectual project than about the pain of gay and lesbian people inside and outside the church” (p. 225). Again, should we presume that if Richard were able to witness persons in incestuous or egalitarian polyamorous unions be a vital part of his church he would embrace this, too, as a new expansion of God’s mercy?

There is the inevitable mea culpa to the “LGBTQ+” community. Richard has co-authored this new book with his son “to repent of the narrowness of my earlier vision” in light of his new grasp of “the widening scope of God’s mercy” in the big picture of Scripture (p. 12). This felt need to tell readers that he has repented of his earlier views on homosexual practice is ironic given that the Hayses depict God’s mercy as coming to new groups without typically requiring repentance for the behaviors that led to their exclusion in the first place. “The present book is, for me, an effort to offer contrition and to set the record straight on where I now stand…. I can only say to anyone and everyone who has been hurt by my words: I am deeply sorry” (p. 225).

Richard claims that it is his experience of “gay” and lesbian persons that led him to see Scripture’s expansive vision of mercy with new eyes. Yet it is arguably the case that he only sees what he wants to see in Scripture based on a decision already reached by his experience. Far from any biblical texts being supportive of homosexual practice, all that speak to it are negative, as even Richard acknowledges in The Widening of God’s Mercy:

My chapter [on “Homosexuality” in Moral Vision] argued … that “though only a few biblical texts speak of homoerotic activity, all that do mention it express unqualified disapproval” (p. 389)…. That statement still seems to me to be correct. (pp. 7–8)

Many of the passages are unambiguous in their disapproval of homosexual activity…. I (Richard) stand fully behind the descriptive exegetical judgments I made there about the meaning of all these texts. (p. 245 n. 2; referencing Moral Vision, 381–89)

The Hayses in their book cannot cite a single biblical text about homosexual practice that is anything other than extremely negative. Of course, they characterize this issue as a minor one in Scripture, even though the mandate of a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations is strong, pervasive, absolute, and countercultural throughout ancient Israel and early Christianity. They can cite only other groups of people included under the umbrella of God’s mercy but not apart from repentance for the behaviors that previously excluded them, including homosexual behavior.

4. The Overall Thesis of the Book

The overall thesis of the book is simply this: There is “a deeper logic,” “narrative pattern,” or “ongoing story” in the Bible, where “God repeatedly changes his mind” to “widen” or “expand” “the scope of his mercy” (grace, love) and to embrace previously excluded or downgraded “fixed classes of human being” (foreigners or Gentiles, women, eunuchs, and “tax collectors and sinners”), which in turn allows us in our own day to “trace a trajectory of mercy that leads us to welcome sexual minorities” and override the biblical texts that speak against homosexual practice (pp. 2, 10, 125, 186, 207). In short, God (not just the two Hayses) has allegedly changed his mind about homosexual relations, and we all better follow suit.

Accordingly, they opine that “we have lost the forest for the trees, and we need to return to a more expansive reading of the biblical story as a story about the wideness of God’s mercy” (p. 2). “Our goal is to demonstrate that the biblical story, taken as a whole, depicts the ever-widening path of God’s mercy” (p. 22). They urge readers “to explore a new way of listening to the story that scripture tells about the widening scope of God’s mercy” (p. 10, emphasis theirs). “Jesus’s teaching and actions encouraged his followers to think more broadly about the expansive grace of Israel’s God” (p. 150). “Luke’s account of the Jerusalem Council” provides “a promising model, fully consistent with the flow of the Bible’s ongoing story of God’s expansive grace” (p. 186). “God repeatedly reveals an expansive mercy that embraces ever wider circles of people, including those previously deemed in some way alien or unworthy” (p. 206).

The Hayses repeatedly deny that they are rejecting biblical authority:

Welcoming sexual minorities in the church need not be based on claiming “to know better than the Bible.” Instead, the argument for inclusion can be grounded in a broader understanding of how the biblical narratives … can reshape communities of faith as visible signs of God’s mercy. (p. 7)

We advocate full inclusion of believers with differing sexual orientations not because we reject the authority of the Bible … [but] because we affirm the force and authority of the Bible’s ongoing story of God’s mercy. (p. 214, emphasis theirs)

The inclusion of sexual minorities is not a rejection of the Bible’s message but a fuller embrace of its story of God’s expansive mercy. (p. 221)

The argument for God’s gracious inclusion of people of different sexual orientations does not hang by the thread of a single analogy to Acts 10–15. Instead, it rests on the broad base of scripture’s comprehensive story of God’s counterintuitive but persistent mercy. (p. 223)

They repeatedly claim the authority of the Holy Spirit for their move in their “Introduction” and final chapter:

Contrary to the common idea that the New Testament brings complete and final closure to God’s revelation, the New Testament itself promises that the Holy Spirit will continue to lead the community of Jesus’s followers into new and surprising truths [citing John 16:12–13]…. If God’s Spirit is still at work in the communities of faith that are grounded in the Bible, then that process must surely continue even now…. Any religious tradition that fails to grow and respond to the ongoing work of the Spirit will stagnate or die. (pp. 3–4, 6)

New prophecies, new visions, and new dreams are potentially exciting stuff…. Some may object that the “moral vision” of the Bible is a different matter from the visions of prophets and other visionaries, but the former is inevitably and profoundly based on the latter. The work of the Spirit is ongoing, and the exegesis of texts does not excuse us from the need to recognize it…. Christians across time have found the Spirit-led freedom to set aside biblical laws and teachings that they deem unjust, irrelevant, or inconsistent with the broader divine will. It is not hard to see how the prohibition of same-sex relations could fall into the same category…. We forthrightly offer here a re-visionary theology—one that … re-envisions some ancient realities…. It’s time to see new visions and dream new dreams. (pp. 208, 211–13, 218)

At this moment of the review, it may be helpful to raise four critical points. First, despite their efforts at downplaying a radical move, their rejection of a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations, coupled with an attendant acceptance of homosexual relations, are in fact a major “rejection of the Bible’s message,” namely, the very foundation of the Bible’s sexual ethics, including in the witness of Jesus. No amount of lipstick on the pig can cover up that fact. They are eviscerating not only an inerrancy view of biblical inspiration but also any special authority ascribed to Scripture, and indeed any special authority ascribed to the teaching of our Lord Jesus.

The Hayses implode the canonical authority of Scripture in general and of Jesus in particular when they adopt such an unprecedented, massive about-face, and all the more so given their claim to the Spirit guiding them to this “new and surprising truth.” Their prooftext for this claim is John 16:12–13: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” Of course, any rogue can appeal to the backing of the Spirit for “new and surprising truth.”

If only the Hayses had read on from John 16:13, they would have discovered that the Spirit’s job is to “take from me [Jesus] and report it to you” (16:14–15). The Spirit of Jesus fleshes out the teaching of Jesus in specific areas. Yet this “spirit” that Hayses speak about is not elaborating or expanding on Jesus’s teaching about a male-female prerequisite for sex for a new context but rather diametrically opposing that teaching. Thus, it is far more likely that the Hayses are imbibing from the spirit of this age rather than from the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Second, in their unstinting promotion of God’s “ever-expanding grace” (p. 4), “ever-widening path of God’s mercy” (p. 22), “God’s ever-expanding mercy” (p. 214), and “God’s wide and ever-opening mercy” (p. 215), they seem to be bent on universalism, since anything less would be a narrowing of God’s “ever-expansive” and “ever-widening” work. They don’t say that, but that is the inexorable moral logic of their overarching argument.

Third, their overarching thesis poses a problem for fidelity to the faith of ancient Israel and early Christianity. That ancient faith looks rather “narrow” (not wide) in relation to other religious approaches within the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman milieu. That is certainly the case as regards its worship of one God and one Lord and Savior (Jesus) and as regards its consequent rejection of all else as idols, along with rigorous rejection of sexual immorality. Hence, this saying of Jesus: “Enter through the narrow gate, for … narrow is the gate … that leads off into life and few are those who find it” (Matt 7:14; cf. Luke 13:23–24: “Struggle to enter through the narrow door, for many seek to enter and are not able”). So much for the ever-widening, ever-expanding mercy and grace of God.

You will not hear much about this distinctively and progressively narrow aspect of the unfolding story of the Bible in the book by the Hayses, even though it, too, is an integral part of the broader story. Indeed, as we shall see, while Jesus promotes change regarding sexual ethics, he does so in precisely the opposite direction of a “widening of God’s mercy,” closing remaining loopholes on the basis of a rigorous application of the moral logic of God’s intentional creation of a sexual binary. The Hayses completely ignore all of this, intentionally so, because it is inconvenient for their overall thesis.

Fourth, there is no connection whatsoever between (1) God expanding in the pages of Scripture the circle of recipients of his mercy and grace, which presumes that all such recipients repent from their sins; and (2) claiming that God, millennia after the canon of Scripture was closed, has now “changed his mind” by declaring that God’s people should celebrate what throughout Scripture, from Genesis to the Book of Revelation, was viewed as an egregiously sinful violation of the very foundation of sexual ethics. To me, it sounds like a very dim-witted and self-contradictory picture of who God is. It took God a long time, apparently, to catch up with large swaths of the pagan world on the subject of homosexuality.

5. An Overview of the Book’s Contents

Apart from the table of contents and acknowledgements, this hardcover book is 220 pages of main text, plus twenty-one pages of endnotes, with a twelve-page general index and a twelve-page index of ancient sources. The book is on the smaller size. Adapted to a standard-size, hardcover volume, the 65,000 words of main text and endnotes would amount to less than 150 pages. So, it is a relatively short book.

The book is organized into seventeen chapters, plus a twenty-two-page introduction and a four-page epilogue written by Richard that explains “why my mind has changed.” Richard also gives an explanation for his change of mind on pp. 5–10 of the introduction (“Richard’s Story”). The introduction and the last chapter (“Moral Re-Vision”) were jointly written by Christopher and Richard. The chapters are divided into two parts: “The Widening of God’s Mercy in the Old Testament,” written by Christopher (pp. 26–108); and “The Widening of God’s Mercy in the New Testament,” written by Richard (pp. 111–202).

There is little value to the chapters between the introduction and the last chapter because none of the arguments therein support their conclusion that “sexual minorities” who profess Christ as their Savior and Lord should be fully included in the body of Christ while they are actively engaged in egregious, unrepentant sin. There is no trajectory to build on from within Scripture for accepting homosexual unions, insofar as homosexual practice is consistently treated in Scripture as a denial of the very foundation of God’s and Jesus’s sexual ethics. None of the other groups that get included in God’s “ever-expanding mercy” in chapters 1–16 get a pass for immoral behavior.

For example, most of these chapters focus on the inclusion of foreigners or Gentiles. How does this lead to embracing homosexual practice? God includes Gentiles, but he does not give Gentiles a pass for behavior, especially sexual behavior, that characterized their former life as Gentiles and which is still at odds with God’s consistent will revealed throughout Scripture. That is why Paul can say to the Gentile believers at Thessalonica, when he introduces the subject of sexual purity, “This is the will of God: your holiness, that you abstain from sexual immorality (πορνεία) … [and not live] like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thess 4:3, 5 emphasis mine). They are Gentiles, but as Gentile believers in Christ they can no longer live like Gentiles.

6. The Same Old Tired Trajectory Argument with a Wrinkle: God Changing His Mind

Many before the two Hayses have appealed to a form of trajectory hermeneutics by way of analogical reasoning. The Hayses do not use this precise phrasing but instead refer to a “trajectory of mercy” (pp. 206–7) and “an imaginative reinterpretation of Scripture” by way of “analogical inference” (p. 184) or more boldly “analogical imagination” (p. 222). Remove some of the veneer and you will discover the same old tired revisionist argument:

Major Premise: The church has deviated from Scripture on a number of issues to take a more liberating posture, in keeping with the core values of the faith.

Minor Premise: The scriptural position on homosexual practice is oppressive.

Conclusion: So, we should follow the trajectory of those analogies by endorsing homosexual relationships.

This is old stuff. It has been done before. And it has been answered before by others, including by me.8 The two Hayses never treat counterarguments. Even the title of their book resembles the title of another book published in 1992, though there applied differently to world religions.9

The only thing slightly new in this book is the authors’ literal embrace of the scriptural anthropomorphic imagery of God “changing his mind.” The point is made in the introduction and in the last chapter, “Moral Re-Vision”:

God repeatedly changes his mind in ways that expand the sphere of his love … and show mercy. (p. 2)

If we take the biblical narratives seriously, we can’t avoid the conclusion that God regularly changes his mind, even when it means overriding previous judgments. (p. 207)

Between the first and the last chapter it is mentioned only in the OT sections written by Christopher, probably because the NT witness does not talk explicitly in terms of God changing his mind, though it is implicit in all the warning passages (e.g., in Rom 11:17–24, where God is willing to change the fate of believing Gentiles who do not “remain in [God’s] kindness” and of unbelieving Jews who do not “remain in unbelief” in the cultivated olive tree analogy). The topic of God changing his mind is addressed primarily in chapter 6: “I Knew That You Are a Gracious God, and Merciful.” Christopher asserts:

The idea that God does not foresee and control everything, and feels pity and regret even concerning his past judgments, is troubling for some theological views, but if we take the Bible seriously, it is hard to deny. (p. 86)

Christopher concedes that there are texts that seem to suggest that God does not change his mind; for example, in the words of Balaam: “God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he not promised, and will he not do it?” (Num 23:19).10 “In light of what we know about the Bible as a whole, it may be better to admit that there are indeed contrasting perspectives in dialogue with each other in the Bible…. Perhaps we should say that God changes his mind about whether he changes his mind” (pp. 90–91).

In fact, what the Hayses rightly treat as the biggest expansion of God’s mercy is not treated as a change of mind on God’s part in the NT but rather as part of God’s eternal plan for the world. It is unfolded in stages to God’s people, but it had been God’s intention all along. God works in dispensations. The new covenant brings with it a full flowering of the promise made to Abraham that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed [or: bless themselves, gain blessing for themselves, find blessing]” (Gen 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14), accelerated in the vision of the book of Isaiah that Israel become “a light to the nations” (Isa 42:6–7; 49:6; 51:4–5), among other texts.

We see this clearly in the Pauline corpus. At the end of his unpacking of the gospel in Romans 1:16–11:36, Paul expresses amazement at God’s “unsearchable judgments” and “inscrutable way,” by which God found a way to “coop up” both Gentiles and Jews “into disobedience in order that he might show mercy” to both groups (11:30–35). Ephesians 1–3 refers to the union of Jew and Gentile in Christ as the first and decisive step in God’s grand cosmic plan to sum up everything in Christ (1:9–10; 2:12–22). Paul’s job as apostle to the Gentiles was to enlighten them to this mystery now-revealed to his “holy apostles,” namely, “that the Gentiles are co-heirs and sharers of the same body and of the same promise” (3:5–6, 9). Thus, Gentiles are not an afterthought in God’s plan. Even Richard, in his discussion of Gentile inclusion in Acts, refers to the Holy Spirit changing the church’s mind, not God changing his mind. This would suggest that God is still not changing his mind.

On what matters does God change his mind, according to the Scriptures? Other than God changing his mind about (or regretting) the selection of Saul as king (1 Sam 15:11, 35), God mostly changes his mind about the extent of punishment that he decides to mete out. God develops in response to the deep-seated problem of sin in the human heart (poignantly addressed in the aftermath of the Flood in Gen 8:21) a new covenant predicated on forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit writing the law of God on our hearts. Yet, again, what the OT anthropomorphically presents as God’s developing response to intractable human sin, the NT presents as God’s actualization of his plan from ages past.

In the course of making a new covenant, God does alter ritual and ceremonial laws that inhibit the extension of the gospel to Gentiles and that are inappropriate in a move from the earthly theocracy of Israel to the heavenly theocracy of the kingdom of God. It is a change, not a change of God’s mind but a change to a new covenant that brings fulfillment to the old. But God does not radically redefine his moral law for Gentiles, as though declaring egregious immorality to be a positive good so that Gentiles can gratify the sinful desires of their hearts.

How does Jesus explain his rejection of divorce and remarriage-after-divorce that was allowed in the Law of Moses? He appeals to God’s creation will as a trump card to God’s accommodation to male “hardness of heart,” which allowance God was now retracting (Mark 10:5). He did not say that God had “changed his mind” about divorce and remarriage-after-divorce, as though God was once for it and now is against it. He said that God had accommodated to male “hardness of heart” but only for a time that had now passed.

The Hayses do not even consider this option for understanding change. Why? Because they want nothing to do with Mark 10:2–12 (par. Matt 19:3–9). They know that what Jesus says in that passage of Scripture runs absolutely counter to their main thesis. It does so because Jesus here adjusted the OT law to a more (not less) demanding moral standard, closing a loophole in the law, which is the opposite of an “ever-widening mercy” that lets go moral standards. More importantly, it runs counter to the Hayses’ main thesis because Jesus based his rejection of remarriage-after-divorce (and implicitly of polygyny as well) on a rigorous application of the logic of God’s intention in creation, that of a sexual binary—two sexes—as the foundation of sexual ethics. And it is this foundation that the Hayses want to eviscerate.

Clearly, Jesus was not declaring a male-female requirement for sexual relations an accommodation to human “hardness of heart.” Quite the reverse. For him it was the foundation, going all the way back to the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2, for establishing the essential twoness of the marital bond, allowing him to reject the accommodation to divorce and remarriage-after-divorce as a serial version of polygyny. So, naturally, the Hayses did not want to touch this text with a 10-foot pole. This text shows that God could not have “changed his mind” about a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations. He rather changed his policy on divorce and remarriage-after-divorce based on the moral logic of God’s “male-female” creation. This one passage alone sinks the Hayses’ new ship. And there is no way around it. That is why they ignored it. They could not come up with a reasonable or faithful explanation against it. But how can responsible scholars simply ignore the single most devastating text for their position?

This explanation by Jesus for a change in God’s policy (but not in God’s morality), one of temporary accommodation to male “hardness of heart,” would fit changes like the one that Christopher addresses in chapter 3 concerning Numbers 27:1–11, where God approved a new law (albeit limited) that allowed women, whose father had no sons, to be apportioned land in Canaan. The absence of such a law was apparently an accommodation to male “hardness of heart,” which God was no longer allowing, owing to the pleas of these women. God did not change his view about women. He ended a specific inequity to women in a patriarchal society.

Christian theologians have long discussed the concept of God “changing his mind.” John Calvin, as Christopher notes, explained the image of God “changing his mind” as “figurative” language “accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it.”11 This is a possible solution for today’s believers in hindsight, even though the biblical authors in these texts really do seem to think that God is changing his mind about the degree or extent of punishment. God presents himself in texts about punishment as someone who, due to his great magnanimity (as the credo in Exod 34:6, cited by Christopher in ch. 6), is willing to relent on continued punishment if his people (or even other peoples, like the Ninevites) turn to him in repentance. This does not mean that God always relents on punishment. It can also go in the opposite direction, as when King Saul disobeys Yahweh’s command.

Others would cast this language of God changing in mind as really a changing of the mind of biblical writers and their heirs when they come to a clearer understanding of God’s will. The literal way in which the two Hayses, particularly Christopher, embrace the concept of God changing his mind suggests that they have adopted “open theism” and challenge the immutability of God, although they never discuss it in those terms. Perhaps this is nothing more than a rhetorical smokescreen on their part, a means to shift the blame to God for the changing of their own minds about homosexuality.

My point here is not to resolve, once and for all, the thorny question of biblical texts that present God as changing his mind. I rather like the fact that God lets me think that my prayers can have some impact on the direction of God’s actions within a limited leeway of his will, especially as regards the prevention of suffering that does not lead to immoral actions. (Some suffering and deprivation are inevitable in a life that involves denying one’s sinful urges.) My point here is to show that there is no reasonable or faithful basis from the biblical depiction of God in Scripture for showing that God “changed his mind” about the moral foundation of sexual ethics as understood by Jesus our Lord.

7. Two Obvious Deficiencies of the Book

There are at least two major scholarly deficiencies of The Widening of God’s Mercy. First, the Hayses fail to consult virtually any of the scholarship that has been written on the Bible and homosexuality since the publication of Richard’s Moral Vision almost three decades ago.12 Apparently, their excuse is that the book is written for “laypeople in the pews,” “clergy,” and “our students.” As such, there are “few footnotes” and “few new or controversial (academic) ideas,” except that they do claim to “retell the biblical story in a way that it is often not told” (although, in my experience, it is the usual retelling in non-evangelical seminaries).

The excuse won’t wash. Even for a book written for a broad audience this is inexcusable. Almost all of the heavy-duty work on the subject of the Bible and homosexuality, on both sides of the issue, has been written since Richard’s work. This includes not just biblical scholars who uphold the scriptural male-female prerequisite, among which I would cite my own work (a 470-page book, a shorter Two Views book, a 150-page chapter in an edited book, articles in academic journals and edited volumes, and encyclopedia entries),13 as well as the work of Preston Sprinkle, William Webb, and Darrin Snyder Belousek, among others.14 It also includes biblical scholars who support homosexual unions, some of whose views (e.g., admitting that the biblical indictment included committed homosexual relationships) do not support the assumptions of the Hayses, most notably Bernadette Brooten, William Loader, and Martti Nissinen.15

In failing to consult with such literature, they ignore research done not only on exegetical issues surrounding the most relevant biblical texts but also on hermeneutical concerns that directly impact several assumptions that they carry over into this book. In my own work, I have written hundreds of pages over the years (including 150 pages in The Bible and Homosexual Practice) refuting hermeneutical revisionist arguments for discounting the biblical witness (for example, refuting the exploitation, orientation, and misogyny arguments, as well as the few-texts argument and the use of alleged analogies like Gentile inclusion, slavery, women’s roles, and divorce). There is no response to any of this in the Hayses’ book.

This failure to acquaint themselves with the scholarly literature since 1995 becomes most problematic in four areas. (1) They fail to consider that Jesus’s discussion of divorce and remarriage, along with the creation texts to which he refers (Gen 1:27; 2:24), establishes a male-female requirement for marriage as foundational for biblical sexual ethics. (2) They adopt a hermeneutically shallow assumption, especially with regard to sexual offenses, that infrequency of biblical mention equates with relative insignificance. (3) They assume that the Greco-Roman and early-Jewish milieu out of which the NT texts emerged were unacquainted with the idea of committed same-sex relationships. (4) They sloppily apply analogies to the Bible’s indictment of homosexual practice, where they favor remote analogues (slavery, women’s roles, the consumption of blood) over the more proximate analogues (incest, polyamory) that do not get them to their desired ideological destination.

Truth be told, the authors are engaged in mass censorship of an array of counterarguments to their positions on the Bible and homosexual practice. One would think that, if they had such confidence in their overall position, they would have been more than willing to present the counterarguments so that they could dismantle them for their readers. That is what I have tried to do in writing on the subject. It is standard procedure for responsible scholars, especially on controversial issues. Instead, they ignore every single counterargument to their position, as if they have no response to offer.

This would be unacceptable in an undergraduate senior thesis. In this case, it is appalling on the part of the seasoned scholars who wrote the book and appalling on the part of the prestigious academic press that published it.

Second, Hays and Hays avoid virtually any discussion of biblical texts that make the case for a male-female prerequisite or against homosexual relations (two sides of the same coin). They try to turn this shocking neglect into a virtue: “The repetitive arguments about the same set of verses, and the meaning of specific words, have reached an impasse; they are superficial and boring. We have lost the forest for the trees” (p. 2).

“Repetitive” and “boring”? This is a puerile remark for scholars to make. Their concern should rather be defending their position against “the same set of verses” that pose the greatest obstacle to their thesis. The “impasse” is only for those who want to promote homosexual relationships, because the evidence is overwhelming that these texts disallow any and all homosexual relationships.

“Lost the forest for the trees”? The Hayses claim that the examination of these texts is “superficial” because it misses the larger narrative pattern of the allegedly ever-widening mercy of God. The problem here is that what they identify as “the forest” is not the whole forest. Ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity had clearly defined theologies and ethics that were in most respects far more exclusive, “intolerant” (in a good sense), and demanding than what existed in the religions of the ancient world. Monotheism led to an intensive one-way approach. The movement in Scripture is not just toward an ever-wider embrace of marginalized groups irrespective of repentance for the sins that lead to their marginalization. There is no “trajectory” toward greater license in sexual behavior. Jesus certainly believed that there was change in moving from the old covenant to the new, but that change was often toward greater ethical demands, including a more rigorous application of the moral logic of a sexual binary, leading to a rejection of polygyny and a revolving door of divorce and remarriage (Matt 5:17–48; Mark 10:2–12). Hence Jesus’s remark about the narrow gate or door that few find and many cannot enter (Matt 7:14; Luke 13:23–24).

They speak disparagingly of “the inertia of tradition and the force of a few biblical prooftexts on these questions,” which they think “experience outweighs” (p. 213). “We believe that this debate should no longer focus on the endlessly repeated exegetical arguments about half a dozen isolated texts that forbid or disapprove of same-sex relations. (The regularly cited texts are Gen 19:1–9, Lev 18:22, 20:13, 1 Cor 6:9–11, 1 Tim 1:10, and Rom 1:18–32.) In this book, we have not revisited them” (p. 206). This is equivalent to making the case for adult-consensual incestuous or polyamorous unions while ignoring the texts that speak most directly to such behavior.

The Hayses insinuate that the biblical disapproval of homosexual practice is relatively insignificant to the Bible’s sexual ethics and even less significant to the Bible itself. But would any Jewish or Christian author of Scripture, or indeed any first-century Jew or Christian, have thought that? Do the Hayses seriously believe that Paul treated the case of incest at Corinth as a relatively insignificant matter (of all the sins that occurred at Corinth, of which there were many, this is the only one that in Paul’s view required immediate expulsion of the offender), or that if Paul had encountered at Corinth, instead of the case of the incestuous man, a case of a man having sex with another male, he would have treated it as a relatively insignificant matter? Is infrequency of mention as regards sexual offenses a good indicator of degree of significance and severity? The evidence indicates “no” to all these questions, but the Hayses want to leave the impression that dumping these texts poses no significant obstacle to fidelity to the authority of Scripture.

The idea of determining the significance of specific acts of sexual immorality on the basis of counting texts indicates a semi-Gnostic approach to “texts without flesh.” I have never heard a pastor give a sermon, in whole or in part, on why one should not have sex with one’s parents, siblings, or children. I do not deduce from that absence of mention that all these pastors thought incest was a minor sin. On the contrary, I deduce the exact opposite, namely, that it is scandalous to have to broach the subject at all, so egregious and offensive is the sin of incest.

It used to be the same with homosexual practice, but now the full-court press of the secular culture has made it necessary to address the issue from the pulpit (and, even so, only rarely in churches that do regard it as egregious sin). I suppose that we should be grateful that there was a perpetrator of incest at Corinth, for without him there might be people arguing in the church today that an absence of mention indicates the insignificance of the sin of incest for NT authors. Since bestiality receives no mentions in the NT (and only four in the OT), it must be an exceedingly insignificant sin or no sin at all, if we follow the logic of the Hayses. It is shocking to see two scholars of the Bible of their caliber make such an egregious hermeneutical blunder.

Let us also be clear that their bare listing of texts that speak more or less directly to the immorality of homosexual sex is truncated (Gen 19:1–9; Lev 18:22; 20:13; Rom 1:24–27; 1 Cor 6:9; 1 Tim 1:10). We would have to add other texts: Genesis 9:20–27 (Ham’s offense against Noah); Judges 19:22–25 (the Levite at Gibeah, a virtual carbon copy of the Sodom story); the “shrine guys” (קְדֵשִׁים) texts in Deuteronomy (23:17–18) and the Deuteronomistic History (1 Kgs 14:21–24; 15:12–14; 22:46; 2 Kgs 23:7), to which one should compare also Revelation 22:15 (“dogs”), Rev 21:8 (“the abominable”), and various texts that interpret the sin of Sodom as homosexual practice or at least “sexual immorality” (Ezek 16:49–50; 18:12; Jude 7; 2 Pet 2:6–7, 10). Readers can consult a detailed defense of the relevance of all these texts in The Bible and Homosexual Practice.

Most importantly, the Hayses fail to mention texts that substantiate a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations, the flip side of the same coin that excludes homosexual relationships. Of these the most important are: (1) Jesus’s discussion of divorce and remarriage in Mark 10:2–12 (parallel in Matt 19:3–9; plus the eunuch text in 19:10–12); and (2) the two texts from Genesis that Jesus therein cites as normative, with proscriptive implications for all sexual behavior (Gen 1:27; 2:24, to which add the preceding narrative in 2:21–23). I regard these texts as so important to the issue of homosexual practice that, when I give presentations on the Bible and homosexuality, I nearly always begin with these texts.

The Hayses treat opposition to homosexual practice as an isolated view in the Bible. The truth of the matter is very different. From an historical perspective, we can state categorically that every biblical author recognized that homosexual practice was a heinous offense to God. That it does not appear more frequently in Scripture is testimony to the near universal aversion for the behavior in ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity. This is why every text in Scripture having anything to do with sexual intercourse, whether narrative, law, proverb, poetry, moral exhortation, or metaphor, always presupposes a male-female prerequisite. No exceptions.

For example, in OT legal material there are constant efforts at distinguishing appropriate forms of other-sex intercourse from inappropriate forms but nothing of the sort for same-sex intercourse. The reason for this is apparent: since same-sex intercourse was always unacceptable, there was no need to make such distinctions. Another example involves metaphor: even though ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity were male-dominated cultures, they imaged themselves in relation to Yahweh or Christ as a bride to a husband so as to avoid the imagery of a man-male sexual bond (see especially Eph 5:22–33, inter alia).16

For a fuller defense of the scriptural support for homosexual practice being a particularly severe sexual sin, readers can consult my online article, “Is Homosexual Practice No Worse Than Any Other Sin?”17

8. Conclusion

The fact that the Hayses feel compelled to minimize the biblical texts against homosexual practice underscores how desperate they are to convince readers that Scripture’s rejection of such is no big deal. Yet, as I have just shown, homosexual practice was universally regarded in ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity as a severe sin that violated the male-female foundation of sexual ethics. Would acknowledgement of this truth make the Hayses back down on their main thesis? Certainly not, for the obvious reason that they have already made up their minds based on their own experience and now only seek to justify that decision to the rest of the church.

They know it will be a harder sell to the church if it looks like they are discarding an important element of the biblical witness. However, whether it is one way or the other would not change their own verdict derived on entirely separate grounds. That is why they were not interested in doing their homework to see if rejection of homosexual practice really is an important concern within Scripture. They do not want to know, and they certainly do not want their readers to know. Ultimately, the Hayses do not care about what was important to Jesus and the apostolic witness to him. Their own self-interpreted experience is Lord, not Scripture, not even Jesus—at least not the real Jesus as opposed to the ideological cipher that they call “Jesus.”

I close with my own conclusion that God hasn’t changed his mind. The Hayses have. In so doing, they reject the clear and overwhelming witness of Scripture (including Jesus) for an embrace of behavior that leads to exclusion from the kingdom of God. As such, they are now swimming in a sea of heresy and no longer walking in love.

[1] Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays, The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024).

[2] In 1986, Richard Hays wrote “Relations Natural and Unnatural: A Response to John Boswell’s Exegesis of Romans 1,” in Journal of Religious Ethics 14.1 (1986):184–215. He followed this up five years later with “Awaiting the Redemption of Our Bodies,” in the magazine Sojourners 20 (1991):17–21. Finally, he included a chapter on “Homosexuality” in his seminal work, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: Harper, 1996), 379–406.

[3] Jonathan Merritt, “Conservative Christians Just Lost Their Scholarly Trump Card on Same-Sex Relationships,” Religion News Service, 8 April 2024, https://tinyurl.com/42sh3yuk.

[4] Ryan Struik, “He Wrote the Christian Case against Same-Sex Marriage. Now He’s Changed His Mind,” CNN, 20 September 2024, https://tinyurl.com/2jhek3cm.

[5] See Robert A. J. Gagnon (@RobertAJGagnon1), “An Open Letter to Fuller Seminary Faculty and Administration regarding Its Proposed New Sexuality Standard,” X, 12 June 2024, https://twitter.com/RobertAJGagnon1/status/1800971246835806269.

[6] The euphemism “sexual minorities,” used fourteen times in the book, is an attempt to equate “LGBTQ” persons positively with ethnic minorities. The problem is that, while ethnicity is an intrinsically benign facet of human existence, sexual impulses and behaviors are not always so. I think we can all agree that pedophiles, sexual sadomasochists, polyamorists, and those who engage in consensual incest or in bestiality are “sexual minorities,” too, but not to be promoted as such. When your choice of descriptors takes in commonly acknowledged immoralities, it is probably best to choose another term.

[7] The acronym “LGBTQ” is used 25 times by the Hayses in their book.

[8] Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon), 441–52, 460–69.

[9] Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).

[10] Christopher also cites Hebrews 13:8 (God “is the same yesterday and today and forever”) and Isaiah 40:8 (“… the word of our God will stand forever”; The Widening of God’s Mercy, 2). Richard has no problem embracing Romans 11:29 about Israel: “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (p. 194). The Hayses could have added still more texts (e.g., Ps 33:11, on how “the counsel [or: plan(s), decision(s)] of Yahweh stands forever”; Heb 6:17–18, regarding God’s “unchangeable” purpose in blessing Abraham, confirmed by oath, by which “two things” it is “impossible for God to lie”; Jas 1:17, about every good and perfect gift coming from the Father of lights, “with whom there is no change or shadow of turning”). Christopher qualifies Malachi 3:6 (“I Yahweh have not changed,” often translated “… do not change” despite the perfect tense), contending that this is about a specific list of sins such as adultery, swearing falsely, and oppressing others that constitute “enduring principles” (p. 90).

The book starts on p. 1 with a citation of 1 Samuel 15:29, where, after Saul begs Samuel to pardon his sin but Samuel responds that “Yahweh has rejected you from being king over Israel,” Saul accidentally tears the hem of Samuel’s robe, with Samuel responding that “the Glory of Israel will not recant [or: lie, deceive, break covenant] or change his mind [or: regret, be sorry or remorseful] (Heb. נחם), for he is not a human to change his mind.” Christopher rightly points out that in the context Yahweh says the opposite: “I regret [נִחַמְתִּי] that I made Saul king” (15:11) and the narrator confirms that “Yahweh regretted (נִחָם) that he had made Saul king over Israel” (15:35).

[11] Hays and Hays, The Widening of God’s Mercy, 89; from Calvin’s Institutes 2.13.12–13.

[12] There are only a few exceptions. Christopher cites in a footnote an article by OT scholar Thomas Römer to claim (without any documentation) that biblical passages speaking against homosexuality “were not envisioning LGBTQ Christians in the pews today who abundantly manifest the fruits of the spirit” (“Homosexualität und die Bibel: Anmerkungen zueinem anachronistischen Diskurs,” JBTh 33 [2018]: 47–63). Richard cites a 2021 essay by NT scholar J. R. Daniel Kirk in a festschrift for Hays, challenging Richard’s thinking on the subject (Hays and Hays, The Widening of God’s Mercy, 247 n. 2). The Hayses cite a paragraph from a 2002 article by “gay” theologian Eugene Rogers regarding the need to mine Scripture and tradition for “new rules” to govern “gay” relationships (Hays and Hays, The Widening of God’s Mercy, 217, 246 n. 9).

[13] Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice; Gagnon and Dan O. Via, Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); “Paul’s Understanding of Same Sex Relations in Romans 1: Recent Discussions,” in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Theological Essays, ed. Douglas J. Moo, Eckhard J. Schnabel, Thomas R. Schreiner, and Frank Thielman (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2023), 48–85; “The Scriptural Case for a Male-Female Prerequisite for Sexual Relations,” in Homosexuality, Marriage, and the Church: Biblical, Counseling, and Religious Liberty Issues, ed. Roy E. Gane, Nicholas P. Miller, and H. Peter Swanson (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2012), 53–161; “Why the Disagreement over the Biblical Witness on Homosexual Practice? A Response to David G. Myers and Letha Dawson Scanzoni, What God Has Joined Together?,” Reformed Review 59 (2005): 19–130, https://tinyurl.com/2r8vwm52; “An Exegetical Case for Traditional Marriage,” in Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues, ed. Joshua D. Chatraw and Karen Swallow Prior (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 72–78; “Accommodation and Pastoral Concern: What Does the Biblical Text Say?” and “How Seriously Does Scripture Treat the Issue of Homosexual Practice?” in Embracing Truth: Homosexuality and the Word of God, ed. David W. Torrance and Jack Stein (Haddington, Scotland: Handsel, 2012), 138–50, 151–78; “A Book Not To Be Embraced: A Critical Appraisal of Stacy Johnson’s A Time to Embrace,” SJT 62 (2009): 61–80; “The Old Testament and Homosexuality: A Critical Review of the Case Made by Phyllis Bird,” ZAW 117 (2005): 367–94; “Does the Bible Regard Same-Sex Intercourse as Intrinsically Sinful?” in Christian Sexuality: Normative and Pastoral Principles, ed. Richard E. Saltzman (Minneapolis: Kirk House, 2003), 106–55; “Are There Universally Valid Sex Precepts? A Critique of Walter Wink’s Views on the Bible and Homosexuality,” HBT 24 (2002): 72–125; “Understanding and Responding to a Pro-Homosexual Interpretation of Scripture,” Enrichment 16:3 (2011): 92–101; “Sexuality,” in Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology, ed. Gerald R. McDermott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 449–64; “Homosexuality,” in New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics, ed. Walter Campbell Campbell-Jack, Gavin McGrath, and C. Stephen Evans (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 327–32; “Sexuality,” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 739–48; “Scriptural Perspectives on Homosexuality and Sexual Identity,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 24 (2005): 293–303; “Gays and the Bible: A Response to Walter Wink,” The Christian Century (2002): 40–43; “Are There Universally Valid Sex Precepts? A Critique of Walter Wink’s Views on the Bible and Homosexuality,” HBT 24 (2002): 72–125; “A Comprehensive and Critical Review Essay of Homosexuality, Science, and the ‘Plain Sense’ of Scripture, Part 1,” HBT 22 (2000): 174–243; “A Comprehensive and Critical Review Essay of Homosexuality, Science, and the ‘Plain Sense’ of Scripture, Part 2,” HBT 25 (2003): 179–275.

[14] Preston Sprinkle, Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage? 21 Conversations from a Historically Christian View (Colorado Springs: Cook, 2023); People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015); Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook, 2021); Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church: Theological Discernment on the Question of Same-Sex Union (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021); William J. Webb, Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001).

[15] Bernadette J. Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); William Loader, Sex, Then and Now: Sexualities and the Bible (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022); “Paul on Same-Sex Relations in Romans 1,” Int 74 (2020): 242–52; “Reading Romans 1 on Homosexuality in the Light of Biblical/Jewish and Greco-Roman Perspectives of Its Time,” ZNW 108 (2017): 119–49; “Same-Sex Relationships: A 1st-Century Perspective,” HvTSt 70.1 (2014): 10.4102/hts.v70i1.2114; The New Testament on Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 22–33, 83–91, 293–338; Making Sense of Sex: Attitudes towards Sexuality in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 131–40, 146–47; Sexuality in the New Testament: Understanding the Key Texts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 7–34, 106–8, 120–26); Sexuality and the Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), esp. ch. 2; Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998).

[16] Also: Isa 5:1–7; 54:5–7; 61:10; 62:4–5; Jer 2:2; 2:20–3:3; 31:32; Ezek 16, 23; Hos 1–3; Mark 2:19–20, par. Matt 22:1–14; 25:1–13; John 3:29; Rev 19:7–9.

[17] Robert A. J. Gagnon, “Is Homosexual Practice No Worse Than Any Other Sin?” (2015): 8–10, http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homosexAreAllSinsEqual.pdf.