The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story
I was beyond intrigued when I learned that Richard Hays and his son Christopher Hays had written a new book on human sexuality. Like many, I was assigned the Moral Vision of the New Testament for a seminary class. Richard Hays’s conclusions about sexuality in that book became a bulwark for the traditionalist view of human sexuality in scripture. Now, the word was out that Richard Hays had changed his mind. I was eager to read the new book to learn more about that and how his views had changed over the course of almost three decades.
However, by the book’s release date, the floodgates opened with a predictable flow of commentary. Praise and rejoicing exploded among many who endorse an open and/or affirming view of the biblical witness of matters of human sexuality. Conversely, there was hand- wringing by those who hold a traditionalist interpretation of scripture.
The Gospel Coalition produced a review of the book and it was negative. Of course it was negative. The Gospel Coalition wasn’t about to print a review that said, “Oh no guys, we were wrong!” To be fair to the reviewer, it is well-written and well-reasoned, but the conclusions are the same old traditionalist conclusions. There is nothing new there.
This is, in essence, what we have been doing with this debate for years. This is part of the reason the two authors wrote the book (see p. 2). The same old arguments and the same old back and forth about a handful of verses, often yanked from context, produce the same set positions among the same set groups (an exception being Preston Sprinkle’s review).
The Church in general has had little to no imagination and even less humility about this topic for some time. I wonder what is the point of writing or reviewing another book about the same issue? I hesitate to review this book, fearing I will just be another voice shouting into the void of this old conversation.
When people with the least to lose talk the loudest, and those with the most to lose are kept at the margins of the conversation, just as we have kept them on the margins of our churches and communities, then we have lost the plot. I am a straight cisgender white man. I don’t have anything to lose in this conversation. I want the church to be open and affirming with full inclusion for our LGBTQIA+ siblings, and I hope that I am doing enough to lovingly shepherd the diversity of thought of people that God has placed in the pews to which I preach, helping them understand the widening of God’s mercy. But I am not going to lose my job for saying that. And, my denomination probably isn’t going to discipline me for believing that. And I have sat and cried and lived with far too many people to know that this isn’t just an issue to stay entrenched over. The stakes are too high for the Church to just wait for a new book to come out only to dig into the same positions we already hold without even reading it.
So here is my quick review for those who are in their settled camps: This is a good book and you should read it. The biblical scholarship is sound, but it won’t satisfy those who hold a conservative view of human sexuality, which doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Those holding to a conservative view aren’t going to be convinced by any book–not even by these two accomplished scholars, and those who are open and affirming don’t need any more convincing, but it will serve as another feather in the cap or arrow in the quiver of those who want to boast that their position is right or winning or whatever.
On the contrary, this book is written for people who are tired of the tenor of the conversations on human sexuality and want a different way to talk about it. It is a book for those who desire to have a loving conversation with those who may disagree, or not, about a God who actually is doing something new in this world. This is a book that is empathetic and tender.
Moreover, The Widening of God’s Mercy is an easy, accessible read that brims with two things the Church has lacked in its conversations on human sexuality and scripture – Generosity and Curiosity.
Richard Hays begins the book with a heartfelt apology for the harm that Moral Vision has undoubtedly caused. Christopher, for his own right, shared his failure to speak up for the marginalized at Fuller Seminary. This is disarming and effective and sets the tone for the book. Some reviewers have already commented on their disappointment with the level of scholarship in the book but, anticipating this, the authors make clear that this book is not only for the pastors but also for the families who are trying to find a way to be faithful to Jesus while navigating a brave new world. As Christopher Hayes himself says, it is for the next generations who we are actively raising in the faith (see p. 16).
The point of the book is that the Church has not understood the idea of God’s mercy as ever widening and expanding through the biblical narrative. Further, it is to declare that in the ever-widening arc of God’s mercy, God has created the possibility for God to expand our perspectives on human sexuality and gender identity. And finally, it is to show how, through the biblical witness of the Old and New Testament, there is precedent for this ever-widening arc of God’s mercy to be extended to those who seem too far outside the love of God.
Through the first seven chapters, Christopher Hays uses examples of God shifting God’s own perspectives on ideas, traditions, and laws within the text of the Old Testament. In this first section, he shows creation as always revealing more of who God is: “The fact that we exist at all is an effect of the initial expansion of God’s grace and love to include things other than himself, and that expansion of grace and love is consistent with who God is.” (p. 29) Creation itself is a widening of God’s mercy and, in that creation, mercy will continue to expand and grow just as the universe continues to expand and grow beyond the comprehension of the scientific community.
Then, just as in creation, Hays walks us through the narrative of the Old Testament, (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the flood narrative, the grumbling in the desert) and shows us how God changes, shifts, and expands the scope of mercy, or even the laws themselves, all to constantly expand and widen mercy in spite of Human failure.
What Christopher Hays does for the Old Testament, Richard Hayes does for the New. Chapter after chapter reminds us what we know to be true about scripture when we actually sit and read it. Jesus upset people and pushed boundaries that got him killed: he took what was most Holy (the temple) and said that it should be a house of prayer for all nations.
Hays continues to unfold in the following chapters the inclusion of Eunuchs by Philip, Samaritans (who would have been excluded based on their ethnicity) and the Jerusalem council when the church had to come to terms with things that were violating Jewish laws of food and circumcision. All these things are done in the name of an ever-expanding mercy of God which seeks to include and heal instead of separate. Hayes even engages with the origin story of the Apostle Paul, pointing us to the transformation of a dogmatic zealot into a messenger of the wideness of God’s mercy. Hays writes, “It was a remarkable reversal: a paradigmatic demonstration of the way in which the gospel of grace can knock people off their high horses and lead to surprising transformations.” (p. 167) As Richard sweeps through grand narratives and familiar stories in the New Testament, it sparkles with new life animated by God’s generous spirit.
To see these two biblical scholars at work in this book is a real treat. They are playful and curious, yet they know the seriousness of what they speak. They do not let their interaction with the text get loose, but deal with it as the sacred, holy text that it is.
Finally, then, they get to their conclusions. This is the shortest part of the book and something that goes so quickly that you might fail to remember their promise at the beginning: “We do not extrapolate very much on the application of our biblical and theological analyses…Our task is to explore and expound what the biblical text says, with a view toward their theological significance.” (p. 17-18) This is a task that they accomplish with aplomb, holding a generous spirit throughout.
And so, after walking us through scripture, they present us with this proposal: “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. Full stop.” (p. 207) For a book that is so empathetic and gentle they don’t mince words. They don’t tell it slant. The time for clarity has come, and they let the biblical narrative speak for itself. God is always working to draw all things to God’s self. God is always bending creation to shalom. That is the story painted all over the pages of scripture. The authors of this book use their intellectual expertise and humble spirit to point to the truth of God making all things new in Jesus Christ.
Read this book. Read it because it’s a brilliant book by brilliant scholars who provide a different platform for conversation than picking through the same old texts. Read the book because it is loving and open, insisting on the centrality of Jesus Chirst, while pushing the church deeper into the mystery of his love.
Read this book most of all because it can be a setting for good conversation for people who are generous and curious about who God is and who we are in God.
