Heresy presented as mercy

In case you haven’t caught on, here’s how the world now works. If you want major attention and applause from the cultural left and its influencers, offer a loud and apologetic shift to a more liberal position on an issue of cultural obsession—especially an issue related to LGBTQ priorities. If you have ever affirmed a Biblical vision of human sexuality, you had better apologize profusely. If you ever put your more Biblical convictions into print as a book, you better be ready with another book that explains your newfangled beliefs.

That is exactly what New Testament professor Richard B. Hays, for decades a major figure at Duke Divinity School, has done in the new book he has co-authored with his son Christopher B. Hays, an Old Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. In The Widening of God’s Mercy, the father and son team now offer a call for the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the Church and its ministry. This book is sending shockwaves through the Christian community, precisely because a book released almost 30 years ago by the elder Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, is one of the most-cited works of New Testament scholarship that presents a clear argument that the Bible condemns homosexual behaviors.

Back then, Hays argued that “the New Testament offers no loopholes or exception clauses that might allow for the acceptance of homosexual practices under some circumstances.” As he rightly noted, the New Testament “requires a normative evaluation of homosexual practice as a distortion of God’s order for creation.” As he wisely said then, the church must be ordered by “the univocal testimony of Scripture and the Christian tradition” on such issues. What was not so clear, even then, is that Richard Hays meant for now.

In the new book, soon to be released by Yale University Press, Hays seeks, in cooperation with his son, to signal a reversal of his previous and long-standing position. The advance publicity indicated that the book would be a blockbuster. In a sense, it certainly is, though the main response of the LGBTQ movement is likely to be a rather condescending version of “better late than never.” But a closer look at the book indicates that it deserves even more attention than it will probably get. The Widening of God’s Mercy is mostly important, not for the fact that it represents the surrender of two more scholars to the LGBTQ movement (which it certainly does), but for the fact that the argument in this new book contains one central component that sets it apart. And this component is huge.

Astoundingly, in this new book, Richard Hays does not revise his exegetical conclusions about, most importantly, the writings of the Apostle Paul on the issue of homosexuality. Unlike most liberal approaches that try to revise or relativize Biblical interpretation, Hays doesn’t change his interpretation of key texts, such as Romans 1. While other liberal revisionists have tried all sorts of hermeneutical high-wire acts to try to argue that the Bible doesn’t mean what it says, Hays is pretty sure that Paul’s understanding of homosexuality is what he thought it was decades ago. The argument now offered by Richard and Christopher Hays is that the commonly cited texts in both testaments “view homosexuality negatively, even if they do not envisage covenanted same-sex partnerships as we know them today.” They are certainly right on that point, and the new book basically affirms that the Biblical authors were clear in their categorical condemnation of homosexual acts.

What is the new argument? In reality, it is far more explosive than any revision of their argument about the Apostle Paul. Richard and Christopher Hays actually argue that the Church must move on, leaving the Biblical texts condemning homosexuality in the rearview mirror. They deploy a “trajectory hermeneutic” that attempts to trace “a trajectory of mercy” that will take today’s Church far beyond the text of the Bible. In their words, “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 members of the household of God.” In other words, the Church must move beyond the Bible. As the authors state, “New prophecies, new visions, and new dreams are potentially exciting stuff.” But, recognize clearly, that means any Biblical text can—and will—be relativized into nothingness.

Upon reflection, it now becomes clear that Richard Hays had put this little bomb into the argument of his earlier book, which so many thought was conservative. Looking back, it’s now clear that he, in some sense, saw this coming. In The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Hays offered as a “guideline” that “claims about divinely inspired experience that contradicts the witness of Scripture should be admitted to normative status in the church only after sustained and agonizing scrutiny by a consensus of the faithful.” In other words, the Church can set Scripture aside when a sufficient consensus to do so exists. That is an astounding claim that totally relativizes Biblical authority.

In the new book, Hays tells us that he has reached the judgment that the Biblical texts condemning homosexuality are now to be set aside. He cites his experience of being in a congregation with openly gay and lesbian members who changed his mind. He argues that a new “consensus of the faithful,” informed by experience, should now prompt the Church to repent and revise its moral judgment on LGBTQ issues. He now says that he wants “to start over—to repent of the narrowness of my earlier vision and to explore a new way of listening to the story that scripture tells us about the widening scope of God’s mercy.” The Biblical texts, and any substantial claim of Biblical authority, are simply left behind.

But that’s not even the most explosive dimension of the book. In the end, Richard and Christopher Hays call for rejecting the Church’s historic understanding of God’s very being and character by arguing that God, in moral terms, evolves. God, as presented by these authors, is a very different deity than we thought—and a very different deity than the Church has worshipped. They argue that God changes his mind: “It may be difficult to get our minds around this idea, but 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.”

It turns out that, though the driving publicity around the release of The Widening of God’s Mercy is all about normalizing and accepting LGBTQ behaviors and relationships, the actual argument of the book is for a new religion and a newly conceived deity. This is exactly what J. Gresham Machen famously condemned a century ago. This kind of liberalism is not a different form of Christianity—it is a deliberate replacement of Biblical Christianity with a completely new religion.

Finally, I must make clear that this book is not going to impress anyone in the LGBTQ movement or the theological left. No, other than the obligatory act of “repentance” by Richard and Christopher Hays, the real purpose of this book is to reach a target audience of faint-hearted and squishy folk on the evangelical left and all those seeking some escape from Biblical authority, the orthodox tradition of the Church, and the principles of Christian morality. The theological left has been revolting against Biblical authority for well over a century, and it joined the LGBTQ revolution a long time ago. No, the greatest danger of this book is that some weak-minded evangelicals of a sort will see it as a convenient escape hatch and that some others will simply be confused.

Be not confused. The Widening of God’s Mercy is a call for a new religion to replace Biblical Christianity. What it calls for is not a revised vision of Christian morality. This is a call for complete theological surrender.