Sex and Shellfish

Today's morning Facebook ritual found a friend's posting of a Christian Science Monitor article on evangelicals and homosexuals. It's worth a read but don't expect to find any new arguments. Evangelicals like Mohler point out that the Bible teaching on homosexuality is "very clear" in its prohibition of homosexuality. 'Exangelicals' like McLaren condemns the evangelical "obsession with sexuality." Jay Bakker even chimes in with the ever popular remark about shellfish, "the simple fact is that Old Testament references in Leviticus do treat homosexuality as a sin ... a capital offense even... But before you say, ‘I told you so,’ consider this: Eating shellfish, cutting your sideburns and getting tattoos were equally prohibited by ancient religious law.”

I sometimes wonder if future historians will be puzzled by our pairing of sex and shellfish. It is like some special case of Godwin's Law, "as a discussion involving Christian views on homosexuality grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving shellfish approaches 1." It is a remark that makes it seem like Christians have no response for the contrast between laws we follow and laws we don’t. But by presenting itself as a real conundrum, the contrasting between sex and shellfish must be viewed as a purely rhetorical feature, as most of the major frameworks for viewing OT law see no conundrum.

Protestants have long had the categories of moral, civil, and ceremonial laws. The moral laws are binding omni-temporally and exemplify God's nature. The civil laws explain the working out of the moral laws and thus contain a truth to be contextualized for our time. The ceremonial laws were to keep the Jews clean and separate and were restructured by Jesus or satisfied supremely by being baptized in his perfect ceremonial cleanliness, thus they no longer apply. To contrast a ceremonial shellfish law with a civil law drawn from the 6th commandment in this framework is to confuse the law categories.

But the threefold moral, civil, and ceremonial framework isn't the only game out there. Another framework views all of the laws in the Torah as explanatory of one law, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all of your strength." In this framework, we are commanded to love God with our entire being and the rest of the laws shows us how this works. We love God by not having idols. We love God by being faithful to our spouse. We love God by not deceiving, murdering, or blaspheming. We love God by loving our neighbor. Every law in this framework finishes the sentence, "we love God by..."

"So we love God by not eating shellfish?" Not specifically. We love God by desiring to be in his presence and be part of his people. The shellfish bit in the Law was part of the system God put in place for people who desired God and wanted to be in his presence to prepare and seek for that reality, for to be in the presence of a holy (separate and perfect) God, one had to be holy. So you kept yourself "clean" by not eating the foods God said not to eat. We don't worry about shellfish now because we do not worry about being "clean" because we are made clean through Christ. So in this framework, to contrast shellfish and homosexuality is to confuse the difference between two outworkings of loving God, wanting to be in his presence and doing what is required for that and obeying his design for human sexual interactions.

The final framework builds off of this last framework. I hinted that in the Law there is a clear category of "cleanliness" laws. These are the laws about shellfish, mildew and all those sorts of things. Generally when there is a law in the OT that Christians think no longer applies it is one of these laws. Why do we think these laws no longer apply? Because the son of God placed the emphasis on personal righteousness in his lifetime and after death "declared all things clean" through a vision to Peter.

The shellfish law, as a food cleanliness law, is very specifically addressed by Jesus when he says "it is not what enters a person that defiles them but what is in their heart." The cleanliness (meaning the perfection required to be in the presence of a Holy God) of Christians is not based on what we eat or touch but on is instead based on Christ's perfection which is attributed to us.

"Clean" is not synonymous with "moral" however. One is an issue of purity, of being without defect, and the other is a matter of righteousness, of acting without defect, a difference in justification and sanctification. In this framework, contrasting homosexuality with shellfish laws confuses the difference between acting defectively and being defective. Through Christ, we are no longer defective, but we can still act defective and should avoid doing so.

I'm sure there are other frameworks for viewing OT law. These are just the ones I'm most familiar with. In each, contrasting "no shellfish" and "men with men" makes no sense because the framework accounts for differences between the laws. Of course this post isn't developing a robust theology of homosexuality. Rather it is just showing that contrasting sex and shellfish is a rhetorical device, not an unanswered question within Christianity. Paul used rhetoric based on theology. We too often give credence to views with good rhetoric divorced from theology.