"Difficult Texts: What is Scripture?"

So scripture is unique... It is authoritative... It is God’s word to us... and finally, scripture leads us to believe and do particular things as people of God.

Selected versus from Leviticus 11, 19, and 18

July 20, 2025

Dr. Todd R. Wright

What makes for a difficult text?

When the volunteer group met, we singled out a few of the laws in Leviticus as problematic.

We asked, why do we ignore some of the prohibitions and cling to others?

But then someone observed that those texts are only problematic because they are scripture. And scripture holds a certain weight where random writings don’t.

So let’s take a moment and talk about what scripture is … and is not.

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In the Presbyterian church, we have a high view of scripture!

When we ordain people, we ask two questions about scripture:

“Do you accept the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the church universal, and God’s word to you?” and

“Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what scripture leads us to believe and do … as you lead the people of God?

So scripture is unique – not just one of many equally valid collections of stories and laws.

It is authoritative – it has weight, power, influence over our lives.

It is God’s word to us – that means it is something more than human words and is personal!

And finally, scripture leads us to believe and do particular things as people of God.

That’s more nuanced than, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.”

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And it is not just us Presbyterians who think that way about scripture.[1]

Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, writes,

“[Scripture] invites multiple interpretations while grounding diverse Jewish experiences – ancestry, history, homeland and diaspora, ethics and theology, practice and belief … [and] provoking questions individuals and generations will answer differently.”

Debra Dean Murphy, professor of religion at West Virginia Wesleyan, muses,

“Neither rule book for gatekeeping not field guide for an imagined apocalypse, the Bible scripts a community’s enactment of a strange, improbable story of divine-human encounter. The liturgy provides the Bible’s context and coherence, as bread and wine make alive in those gathered the Word who interprets the word for all.”

And Robin Lovin, an ordained Methodist minister, author, and professor of ethics, asserts,

“The Bible’s words come from other times and places. It becomes the word of God only after we recognize that its words and worlds are not of our own making.”

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So then, what are we to make of these passages from Leviticus?

First, a prohibition against the people of God eating things like shrimp and lobster.

And then a prohibition against tattoos.

They are surrounded by many other rules, but the group here selected them because for all their scriptural weight, they are both largely ignored by Christians.

Oh we can acknowledge that they were once important for hygienic reasons, or to set God’s people apart from their neighbors, or as a test of faith and practice. (The original “Just do it!”)

Still, the early church struggled with what to do with such rules.

For those who grew up Jewish, the answer was obvious. The rules still applied.

But for those who were drawn to follow Christ from other faiths, Peter and Paul counseled leeway. They said food was no longer unclean. And that God was baptizing people like the Ethiopian eunuch who had been gashed. God was doing a new thing!

Because this “new thing” meant greater freedom, and because so many gentiles became Christian, and because grace is so beguiling, mostly ignoring Leviticus seemed to win the day!

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But, for many, that leeway dries up when we get to the prohibition in Leviticus 18: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman.” Suddenly, obeying the law becomes very important!

You can see why this is a difficult text, right?

It is not just the specific prohibition; it is a question about the nature of scripture.

Is scripture timeless or culturally bound?

Is it straight from God’s lips or necessarily limited by human language?

Is it the plain truth or subject to interpretation?

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Presbyterian pastor and professor, Richard Boyce, reflects on our dilemma:[2]

“Food and sex. It does not get much more basic than this. A Holy God requires a holy people. Not just in the sanctuary, but also in the supermarket and in the bedroom.”

But he notes the irony of the differing ways we treat these passages:

“Given the general lack of interest in Levitical instructions regarding food, it is interesting how high runs the interest in Levitical instructions regarding sex, at least in the arena of public debate ... This may well tell us more about us than about Leviticus.”

So what do we know about ourselves? How does that impact our views of these passages?

We Americans like freedom and were founded in rebellion, so it is no surprise that we delight in deciding we can eat whatever we want and express ourselves with tattoos if we choose!

We are also a society molded by cars and fast-food, by sound bites and salesmen, so it is no surprise that we have little patience for context and comparison, for nuance and detail, for the study of history and cultures. We want a bumper sticker summary – quick and easy!

So when Leviticus says, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman,” it is easy to read it literally. It says what it says. There is no need for interpretation, right?

Well, some scholars I respect would disagree.

One of them, Samuel Balentine, who in his obituary last summer was described as “a professor known for pushing the boundaries and pushing his students to think outside the box,” lists four points he thinks deserve careful reflection when looking at this passage:

First, “the ban on homosexuality is but one of more than a dozen behaviors prescribed in Leviticus 18 [and] is accorded no more importance than the others many of which [like killing children who curse their parents or men who commit adultery] seem not to have made much impact on the community of faith.”

Second, “All the prohibitions in 18 assume a patriarchal structure for society. As such they address males not females.” The implication is that lesbianism is not addressed.

Third, he points out that the phrasing “as with a woman” is “an idiom used only for homosexual acts performed by heterosexuals.” So “the text does not address homosexuality in terms of permanent sexual orientation.”

Finally, he reminds us that the rationale behind all of these prohibitions is to promote relationships that reflect the compassion of God; “they do not endorse discrimination and abuse that destroy people by labeling them as enemies of God.”[3]

He gives us much to think about, and he is only scratching the surface of the difficult texts in the Bible that reference homosexuality.

This is just the first week of this series looking at difficult texts. There are many more and they are always more complicated than we would wish they were. But here’s the thing: they force us to consider what being a people of God really means. And for that I am grateful! Amen

[1] All three quotes are from “What is the Bible for?” the Christian Century, April 2025

[2] From Leviticus and Deuteronomy, page 65

[3] From Leviticus, page 159