New York Times Op-Ed: ‘A God Who Continually Surprises Us’: A Q&A With a Theologian Who Changed His Mind About Gay Marriage, by Peter Wehner (Senior Fellow, Trinity Forum):
I’ve spent my life in politics, but faith has been most central to shaping who I am. My conversations with people of faith have been among the most enriching of my life. Richard Hays, an ordained minister who is an emeritus professor at Duke Divinity School, is one of the world’s leading New Testament theologians. In 1996 he wrote The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, in which he argued that gay and lesbian sexual relationships distort God’s created order and that churches should not bless same-sex unions. In his new book, The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, written with his son Christopher Hays, Richard Hays says he was wrong. I spoke to Richard Hays about his journey and what changed his mind. This conversation, which has been lightly edited, is the first of what I hope will be a series exploring the world of faith.
1. A Different Way of Looking at How God Sees Gay Relationships
Peter Wehner: You now hold an affirming view, the belief that gay relationships are not sinful and that sexual orientation and gender identity are not justification for exclusion from church membership or leadership. You had a very different view in 1996 when you wrote “The Moral Vision of the New Testament.” What do you see now that you didn’t see in 1996, and what would Richard Hays circa 2024 say to his younger self?
Richard Hays: What I see now has been over the last 10 to 15 years, the experience of having gay and lesbian students in my classes, when I was still teaching, who were very clearly committed to the church and to Christian faith and who were seeking conscientiously how best to serve going forward. That couldn’t help but make an impression on me.
And the other thing closely related to that is that in my own experience in the church, I saw church members who were not theological students or anything like that but who were exercising roles of gracious and meaningful leadership.
The other thing that I’ve seen is that in the conservative evangelical churches, there was a kind of smug hostility toward gay and lesbian people, and the attitudes that I was encountering there didn’t seem to me consonant with the New Testament’s portrayal of what people seeking to follow Jesus should be like. That they should be patient, kind, generous. And I didn’t see that.
I saw ugly condescension in those churches where that was the strongly held view. And the most dismaying thing about that is that people who were manifesting those attitudes were appealing to my book as a justification, which I actually think means they didn’t read my book very carefully. Because back in 1996, at the time when gay marriage was illegal in the United States and forbidden in just about every church, with maybe one or two exceptions, I saw that chapter as, in part, making an appeal for people to be graciously accepting of gay folks.
I even wrote in that 1996 chapter that if gay people are not welcome in the church, then I will have to walk out the door with them and leave in the sanctuary only those entitled to throw the first stone. But I combined that with the opinion that if they’re going to be in the church, they should remain celibate. And I didn’t think that there was any warrant biblically for same-sex unions. But just over time, my opinion on that eroded.
So what would I say to myself from 1996? I would say, first of all, look around you and see the evidence of experience that the spirit is at work in people with a same-sex orientation. And second, I would say that the way I was appealing to the Bible or the way I was interpreting the Bible was too narrowly focused on the few texts in Scripture that do say something explicitly about homosexual relationships. The dictum in Leviticus is that for a man to lie with a man as with a woman is an abomination. And those texts had a certain impact on my opinion. But I think I was I was far too narrow in the way I thought about how the Bible speaks to issues like this.
What I came to think over time is that what the Bible shows is not some isolated proof texts or isolated statements of law, but it shows us a much bigger picture of God as a God who continually surprises us, continually surprises his people with the scope of generosity and grace and mercy. And that bigger picture is the context in which we ought to think about same-sex relationships in our time. …
Wehner: What would be the most important thing you would want to impart to those who hold the traditional view of human sexuality and homosexuality? What do you think they are missing and that they get wrong today?
Hays: Well, the first thing I would want to say is that I get it. I understand where you’re coming from. I understand why you hold the view that you do. What I don’t want to do is to try to convince you that those biblical condemnations of same-sex relationships don’t mean what they appear to mean. That’s a strategy that a lot of interpreters have tried to do. They say: Well, no, Paul isn’t really talking about what we know; he’s thinking of exploitative pederastic relationships. I don’t think that’s true. So I understand why people hold the view that they do.
I think the only thing I would say to them is to spend some time getting to know gay and lesbian Christians who are actively engaged in seeking to follow Christ faithfully and who are performing significant ministries in the church and then come back and let’s talk. I would also urge them to just read the book and think about the passages we discussed that provide these analogies for a change in the belief and practice of people in the church.
2. Does God Change His Mind?
Wehner: Well, that leads into a new set of questions. The central argument of “The Widening of God’s Mercy” is that God often changes his mind in Scripture. And you and your son Chris cite many examples of that happening in the book. Is it your view that God has gotten wiser and more merciful as history unfolds?
Hays: I wouldn’t put it that way. It would be presumptuous for me or anyone to say God has gotten wiser. I think the way I would put it is that for reasons that I don’t understand, God has chosen to act in ways that gradually, over time, unfold the wideness of mercy. And that over time, God reaches out to embrace more and more folks in the scope of the people that he regards as his own people.
Wehner: Traditionalists or orthodox Christians, Richard, would say that you’ve opened a theological Pandora’s box, that the changes you and your son want in terms of interpreting the Bible and changing doctrine and upending tradition is arbitrary. You might decide that God’s widening mercy now provides for full inclusion of L.G.B.T.Q. people in Christian communities, despite the verses that seem to argue the opposite. But what keeps people from constantly reinterpreting the Bible in order to fit whatever people decide at any moment in time falls under the banner of God’s widening mercy and overturning scriptural teachings in the process? I want to give you a chance to address that concern. …
Hays: Well, I think that anybody who’s proposing a change as momentous as what Chris and I are arguing for would recognize or should recognize that we’re doing this with fear and trembling, that we’re not doing it lightly. But our culture over time has advanced in a number of ways. For example, some of the Bible’s teachings about roles of women are terribly restrictive. So we’re saying this is not the only thing. Slavery is another one that I’ve already mentioned. There are a lot of things that we look at and say: Well, that was then; this is now. That there’s a new, I would put it — I presume to put it as strongly as this — that there’s a new movement of God’s spirit in the world in our time and that we need to recognize where that is happening, in just the same way that the first-century church understood that a new thing was happening with the inclusion of gentiles.
And this is of no less magnitude, really, than that as a change. I think people in modernity tend to underestimate how momentous the change was for Jewish people to say: OK, gentiles can come be part of our Jesus community. That was a shocker. And for them, table fellowship was as critical a taboo area as sex is for some people in our time. In a sense, I can say it took me 25 years to come to the position I have now. So I certainly don’t propose this lightly.
Preston Sprinkle (President, The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender), Book Review (reviewing Christopher B. Hays & Richard B. Hays, The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (2024):
To summarize the authors’ main argument, they write:
The many biblical stories of God’s widening mercy invite us to re-envision how God means us to think and act today with regard to human sexuality. The biblical narratives throughout the Old Testament and the New trace a trajectory of mercy that leads us to welcome sexual minorities no longer as “strangers and aliens” but as “fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (Eph 2:19). (p. 206).
In this review, I’ll look first at some of the things I appreciate about the book (“The Pros”), then at my most significant disagreements (“The Cons”). I’ll include a lengthy addendum where I discuss several other noteworthy aspects of the book.
The Cons
Many of the book’s significant problems emerge as the authors begin applying their argument to Christian debates about marriage and sexual ethics today. In fact, one of my biggest critiques is that they don’t really apply their argument. The book contains no definition of marriage (the word marriage is hardly ever mentioned), and there is virtually no biblical argument about how God intends for his followers to faithfully steward our sexuality. There is a passing reference to the (rather secular) notion that any sexual expression is fine as long as it’s not “abusive or otherwise harmful” (p. 18). The authors also write that what they call “covenanted unions” between people of the same sex should be faithful and exclusive, just as opposite-sex marriages should be (p. 216-17). But they give no theological articulation of what marriage is or what sex is for. There is no theology of marriage or sexual ethic in the book. A rather large lacuna for a book that depends on a revised marriage and sexual ethic for their argument to succeed.
Instead, the authors rely on popular catch phrases like “full inclusion” (p. 214), “welcomed fully” (p. 216), and “excluding and harming people” (p. 11) to do the heavy lifting. But the current sexuality debate is not about (or shouldn’t be about!) whether gay people are to be accepted. The debate is about which marriage and sexual ethic they are accepted into.
Is sex difference an essential part of what marriage is? This question is never raised or answered. The authors reduce the theological debate about same-sex marriage to “endlessly repeated exegetical arguments about half a dozen isolated texts that forbid or disapprove of same-sex relations” (p. 2)—arguments they find to be “superficial and boring” (p. 206).
I appreciate their reluctance to relegate this debate simply to six passages of Scripture. However, it seems a bit too convenient to wave a dismissive hand at the very passages that directly address the kinds of relationships the authors claim have been wrongly interpreted by the historic, global, and multiethnic church for nearly 2,000 years. More importantly, the authors ignore the very part of the debate that moves beyond these six passages: the way the whole witness of Scripture talks about marriage.
The fundamental theological and ethical question in this debate is whether sex difference is an essential part of what marriage is. This question is never mentioned, let alone answered, in The Widening of God’s Mercy. I was eagerly waiting for a robust reinterpretation of Genesis 1-2, which (according to the author’s viewpoint) must argue that sex difference is not a necessary part of the “one flesh” union we now call marriage. Or a rereading of Jesus’s interpretation of the creation story in Matthew 19:4-6, where he says that the two who become one flesh are “male and female.” I was a bit shocked that these fundamental issues are never addressed. The authors never even mention Matthew 19:4-6.
I find it telling that the authors think “[t]he most significant objection to our interpretation of the God of the Bible is one that simply says, ‘This God of widening mercy whom you describe is not one that I have ever experienced’” (p. 220). I’d say the most significant objection to their interpretation is that they offer a revision of the historically Christian view of marriage and sexual ethics without providing any argument for a revision of marriage and sexual ethics.
Second, the main argument of the book—we’ll call it a “trajectory argument”—is well known to anyone who’s been following the sexuality conversation. I’m not sure who the first scholar was to propose it, but it was pretty popular in the ‘90s and early 2000s. The trajectory argument was thoroughly addressed (I would say roundly refuted) by William Webb in his book Slaves, Women & Homosexuals, a book-length treatment of this argument published in 2001. Others have also examined trajectory arguments and found them to be rather weak.
It’s certainly true that many things change between the Old and New Testaments: food laws; circumcision requirements; the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles, eunuchs, and Samaritans. However, there’s no evidence of a similar trajectory where sex difference is no longer part of marriage or where prohibitions of same-sex sexual relationships are reversed. Some laws change, but not all laws change. We can’t just point to some changed laws and assume that others (of our choosing) have changed as well. There’s simply no evidence of a scriptural trajectory moving away from sex difference in marriage or same-sex sexual relations being accepted by God.
In fact, if a biblical trajectory does exist for sexual ethics, it would move towards greater strictness, not greater openness. Polygamy, for instance, is treated more leniently in the Old Testament, but we see the New Testament moving back toward the creational ideal of one man and one woman (Matt 19:4-6). Divorce too was allowed in the Old Testament (Deut. 24:1-5), but Jesus explicitly tightened Deuteronomy’s looser divorce laws (Matt 5:31-32; 19:1-10). Adultery is condemned across both Testaments. But in the New, Jesus says that even lust is adultery (Matt 5:27-30). When the Bible revisits its vision for marriage and sexuality, it moves towards a stricter ethic, not a more permissive one.
To be fair to Hays and Hays, they don’t claim that they’re presenting any new ideas in the book. “We are not really introducing anything new here,” they say (p. 218). “Although we are informed by our years of scholarship, there are few new or controversial ideas here from the standpoint of biblical studies” (p. 4). Fair enough. But the book never addresses the many counterarguments to the trajectory argument. (Webb’s book, for instance, is never mentioned.) It’s one thing to say: This is a popular level book, so we’re not going to bog it down with endless interaction with other scholars. It’s quite another thing to repeat an old and often refuted argument without showing any awareness of how that argument has been treated in the scholarly discussion.
In short, The Widening of God’s Mercy is a book that makes no theological defense of same-sex marriage and chooses not to deal with the passages that prohibit same-sex sexual relationships. Instead, the book rehearses an old argument and doesn’t address how that argument has been refuted. Essentially, the argument runs like this: Since God changed his mind about foreigners and eunuchs, therefore … sex difference is no longer part of what marriage is. …
Third, while I appreciate Richard’s description of Jesus hanging out with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners, he doesn’t always make a clear distinction between sinners and sin. Jesus wined and dined with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners, but this obviously doesn’t mean he supports tax collecting, prostitution, or sin. Richard is clear about the ethics of tax collecting; it was an “oppressive tax-farming operation,” and tax collectors who decided to follow Christ would need to repent by “the generous setting right of economic wrongs” (p. 136). Sinners who are accepted are still called to repentance.
But this clear ethical distinction between tax collectors and tax collecting disappears when Hays tries to map these gospel stories onto modern questions about sexual minority people and sexual ethics. It’s assumed throughout the book that God blesses same-sex sexual relationships and marriage. But the authors offer no biblical defense of how or why. God’s blessing is just assumed under the umbrella of catchphrases like “full inclusion” and “fully welcome.”
Fourth, the authors argue that the New Testament does not bring “complete and final closure to God’s revelation,” but that “the Holy Spirit will continue to lead the community of Jesus’s followers into new and surprising truths” (p. 3). They believe the modern church should not just listen to what God has said through Scripture in the past, but that we should join God by listening to what his Spirit might be saying to us today (p. 221). “Any religious tradition,” they say, “that fails to grow and respond to the ongoing work of the Spirit will stagnate or die” (p. 5). They imply that any church that doesn’t “fully accept” all people of differing sexual orientations by affirming same-sex marriage is not listening to the Holy Spirit. These churches should “repent of the narrowness of [their] earlier visions and…. explore a new way of listening to the story that scripture tells about the widening scope of God’s mercy” (p. 10, emphasis in the original).
I don’t necessarily disagree with the premise of this argument; God’s Spirit might open our eyes to fresh revelations, provided that these revelations follow the trajectory of the storyline of Scripture. This is, of course, debated, but let’s assume the Holy Spirit can open our eyes to “a new way of listening to the story.” Well and good. But the way Hays and Hays employ this argument is profoundly ethnocentric.
The global church is growing exponentially in the Global South, Southeast Asia, China, the Middle East, and elsewhere in the majority world. Almost all of these churches believe that sex difference is an essential part of what marriage is and that all sexual relationships outside this covenant of marriage are sin. The Widening of God’s Mercy implies that all these non-western Christians are not listening to the Holy Spirit, who is allegedly opening up fresh ways to read Scripture.
The ethical viewpoint advocated for in The Widening of God’s Mercy is held primarily by a relatively small number of (mostly white and affluent) modern Christians living in the West. Is the Holy Spirit really speaking much more clearly to western Christians than those in the majority world?
Christopher bemoans the fact that the Church is in decline. He must be thinking of the Western church, since the Church is not at all in decline in places like Nepal, China, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia. It’s bold of Christopher to argue that “the church … is in decline because of its lack of curiosity and hardness of heart” (p. 16). Not only is this a very Western perspective, but it also implies that Christianity’s explosive growth in hard-to-reach places is being carried out by hard-hearted Christians who aren’t listening to the Holy Spirit. The authors of The Widening of God’s Mercy essentially call on the non-Western church “to repent of its narrow, fearful vision” (p. 220) and “lack of curiosity and hardness of heart” (p. 16).
And so we come full circle. The authors paint a beautiful picture of the widening of God’s mercy, which includes the poor, the outcast, the marginalized—indeed, many of the same people who live throughout the majority world. But these same people end up being scolded and shamed for believing that sex difference is part of what marriage is.
Conclusion
I have to admit, the scholarly side of me was excited when this book was first announced. Some Christians immediately trashed the book on social media—something no thoughtful Christian should ever do with books they haven’t read—but I was genuinely excited to read it. Richard is a brilliant scholar (I wasn’t familiar with Christopher’s work), and his article on Romans 1 in particular was one of the most thorough and exegetically responsible treatments of this tough passage. I was deeply curious how he was going to refute his previous argument. I also wondered if The Widening of God’s Mercy would tease out a fresh argument for same-sex marriage that hadn’t yet been made.
To my surprise, the book did neither. Instead, it simply repackaged an old trajectory argument to make a questionable logical leap: since God welcomes foreigners, eunuchs, tax collectors, and sinners, therefore sex difference is no longer part of what marriage is.
Addendum
In addition to what I’ve discussed in my main review, many things in The Widening of God’s Mercy struck me as uncompelling, unclear, or downright wrong. Here are six of the most notable.
- Lack of interaction with, or apparent awareness of, scholarship in the sexuality conversation. …
- An unclear posture toward those who hold the historically Christian view of marriage. …
- Ambiguity about what has changed in Richard Hays’s view. …
- Questionable assumptions about God changing his mind. …
- Traditional views on sexuality leading to LGBTQ suicides. …
- Unclear and uncompelling treatment of porneia (“fornication”). …
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