The City or the Garden?
A Critical Review of Preston Sprinkle's "Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage? 21 Conversations From A Historically Christian View"
It is probably a sign of the times that Preston Sprinkle has chosen to write another book about homosexuality. He hasn’t really been writing on the subject since 2017 when he published Grace//Truth 1.0 through his Center just after serving as the editor for Two Views on Homosexuality, The Bible, and the Church in 2016 and of his two books People to Be Loved and its teen companion edition Living in a Gray World in 2015. Since then his focus (at least on the LGBTQIA+ front) has mostly been on transgender people with his book Embodied which I am reviewing HERE. Sprinkle is (and I don’t mean this as a critique, it’s how public theologians work) inclined to publish on topics at the intersection of what is being debated and what he feels qualified to comment on. So the fact that he has returned to the topic of same-sex marriage can, I think, reasonably be read as an indication that Dr. Sprinkle has sensed and uptick in Evangelical interest in debating this topic and, what with the Dobbs decision and increasingly ominous murmurings from the Evangelical right concerning Obergefell, I worry that he could be right.
I am, unfortunately, not entirely sure under what terms I could recommend Sprinkle’s book. As I will detail below, I found it to be lacking both theologically and in terms of scholarly discipline. It will, I think, be useful as a sort of rapid review primer for the state of the argument between affirming and non-affirming Christians as Evangelicals seem to be eyeing gay marriage as a new hill they hope to take in the culture war.
At any rate, the book dropped on August 1st and, as a Christian, and Anabaptist transgender lesbian who has extensively critiqued Sprinkle’s work1, it seemed a good idea to review this one. My goal and my promise in writing this review was to keep it to a single essay and to publish it within a week of the book’s launch. I have already failed in my second goal but remain committed to the first. With that said, this book is a series of attempted rebuttals to arguments in favor of same sex marriage and I certainly hope that someone will elect to write a 21 part chapter-by-chapter response. If any reader is interested in the job please contact me and I will be happy to assist.
Structurally, Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage starts with a chapter outlining Sprinkle’s theory of healthy discussion/disagreement and a second chapter outlining his own theology of marriage (and why he thinks it just has to be straight) before launching into the 21 reasons, each with a chapter in which Sprinkle first outlines an argument in support of same sex marriage, then identifies points of agreement or appreciation for that argument, and ends with his attempted rebuttal of the argument. In an effort to provide a useful review I have elected to respond in detail to the second chapter (Sprinkle’s theology of marriage) and then supply a few broad observations about his method as a whole before concluding with my understanding of what this book is functionally designed to do.
Sprinkle’s Theology of Marriage
The title for this chapter is The Historically Christian View of Marriage and right out the gate there are problems. The view of marriage that Sprinkle outlines cannot really be accurately referred to as “The Historically Christian View” and he admits as much saying
Just to clarify, when I say “historically Christian” or “traditional,” this does not at all mean I’m advocating for everything that historic or traditional Christianity has believed about men, women, marriage, and sex. Nor does it mean that Christians have historically affirmed every single aspect of what marriage is. My focus here in on marriage’s essential nature (what marriage is) and purpose (what marriage is for) refracted against the question of whether same-sex unions can be considered marriage.
so despite the apparent meaning of the phrase, Sprinkle’s use of “Historically Christian” is not about the things Christians have historically believed about marriage and in fact there have been Christians who would disagree with many parts of Sprinkle’s definition (we’ll get to it in a second). In fact all that he actually means by “the Historically Christian View of Marriage” is “The conclusion that marriage has to be heterosexual”. Certainly Sprinkle believes many things about marriage; its just that the only thing he is actually claiming to be historically Christian is that it must be straight. If this seems like pedantry I need to draw your attention to the fact that most Christians (and especially Evangelicals) think of themselves as traditionalists insofar as the longevity of a theological position carries a weight of it’s own and that, by overstating the historicity of his own view (despite immediately caveating it) Sprinkle is already creating the impression that he is standing on firmer ground than is actually the case in this book.
But on to the definition itself. According to Sprinkle:
Marriage is a lifelong one-flesh covenant union between two sexually different persons (a male and a female) from different families, united with the purpose of telling God’s story of faithfulness and creativity; and sexual relationships outside this covenant relationship are sin.
He then claims (inaccurately) that “the historic Christian church, in all its diversity, would agree with the essential aspects of this definition”. It isn’t clear which aspects Sprinkle sees as “essential” but the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines marriage without reference to “telling God’s story” or “different families”; and the Statement of Faith in an Anabaptist Perspective doesn’t mention those (or “one-flesh unions") either. The SBC’s Baptist Faith And Message leaves those elements out too as does the PCA’s Book of Church Order. In fact Sprinkle seems to be rather alarmingly overstating his case here and this does matter since Sprinkle puts a lot of weight on the “telling God’s story of faithfulness and creativity” bit of the definition throughout his book. Certainly it is the case that a slew of theobrogians2 over the last few decades have latched on the a belief in marriage’s importance as a metaphor for Christ and the Church, but it is hardly the case that supplying a metaphor is part of any historical Christian view of marriage.
Moving on though, Sprinkle goes on to identify five reasons for his finding “a good deal of scriptural and theological support for this definition”. Let us review them.
1. SEX DIFFERENCE IS AN INTRINSIC PART OF WHAT MARRIAGE IS
Sprinkle contends that this is the “most important reason” he believes in what here here does call the “traditional view”. He roots his belief that sex difference is intrinsic to what marriage is (he is talking about sex difference being a necessary as opposed to accidental quality of marriage) almost entirely in Genesis 1 and 2 and in Jesus’ citation of the creation narrative in the bit about divorce in Matthew 19.
Elsewhere in the book (Chapter 3) he attempts to refute the standard affirming interpretations of these texts—that they are descriptive rather than prescriptive and that “Male and Female” in Genesis 1 represent the two ends of a spectrum (Male Female and all else on the spectrum) in the same way that all of the other pairs (land and sea, fish and land animals, walking animals and birds, etc…) in Genesis 1. A full representation of his argument would require its own paper at the least and I would recommend the work that Megan DeFranza and Matthew Vines have already done. In the end, it seems to come down to whether or not you read the “therefore” between Genesis 2:23 and 24 as referencing the full Genesis 2 creation account or merely verse 23 and to whether or not you want to insist that when Jesus cites Genesis 2 in Matthew 19 his answer is a partial tangent to the question he was asked (they asked about divorce so I think it is odd to claim that Jesus decided to slip in an “oh by the way I just want to clarify that this is only about heterosexual couples”). Beyond that Sprinkle puts a lot of weight on the concept (riffing off of “suitable helper” in Genesis 2:18 and 20) of similarity in difference which flat out ignores the many ways in which same-sex couples (indeed, any plurality of people) are able to embody a similarity-in-difference. I would suggest that, in fact, the inclusion of queer relationships and identities as part of the tapestry of created humanity further fulfills the Genesis description of similarity-in-difference by offering the glorious diversity of queer marriages as further similar-and-different relationships to straight marriages as part of the larger and extend community that is the Body of Christ.
2. SAME-SEX SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS ARE ALWAYS PROHIBITED
This is a popular observation among the non-affirming crowd and, while I do have a minor quibble with it3 I don’t substantially dispute it as such. With that said, Sprinkle admits early in the section that “[t]here’s a dispute whether these passages [prohibiting same-sex sexual relationships4] are referring to all same-sex sexual relationships or only certain kinds. But he waves this away on the basis that “the meaning of pretty much every verse in the Bible is disputed by somebody somewhere”—ignoring the whole concept of good scholarship and significant vs. marginal interpretive disputes—and that, regardless, there are no positive references to same-sex relationships in the Bible.
I always find this odd as an objection. Condemning harmful iterations of a thing is not at all the same as condemning the thing. There are positive and neutral representations of sex in the Bible and the fact of the matter is that gay sex is sex. So we have a situation where clearly harmful iterations of gay sex (rape, temple prostitution, pederasty) are condemned and where sex as such is not condemned. Sprinkle’s decision to approach the question from the bottom up rather from the top down is arbitrary and betrays a concern to read into the Bible an answer to a question the Biblical authors were not asking. Then also there is the simple fact that the argument he is making is an argument from silence.
3. THE MULTIETHNIC CHRISTIAN CHURCH AFFIRMS THE HISTORICALLY CHRISTIAN VIEW
The very first paragraph of this section limits the claim:
The multiethnic global church across all denominations has agreed that sex difference is an intrinsic part of marriage and that same-sex sexual relationships are sinful, since they can’t be considered marriage.
and I would like to make a few observations. First, Sprinkle has now somehow reduced his definition of the “historically Christian view of marriage” to only that sex difference is intrinsic and that gay sex is wrong; a far more limited definition than what he provided at the outset but far more defensible given the specifics of this claim regarding the “multiethnic Christian church”. Second, even this limited claim is simply wrong. There are, as we all know, Christians, churches, and entire denominations that affirm same-sex marriage. If we charitably(?) interpret “multiethnic” as non-white—although that presents us with the possibility that Preston is treating white, European people as the norm or baseline rather than as being situated within a particular culture and ethnicity—then he still isn’t right. Many churches haven’t really commented on gay sex or gay marriage. Certainly affirming same-sex marriage is the minority view but it is not at all non-existent.
Sprinkle then tries to go back in time but tells on himself when the furthest back he can find evidence for is the 4th century. The fact of the matter is that many many churches, denominations, and other Christian groups just never really commented on the topic, especially in terms of same-sex marriage.
4. MARRIAGE AND SEX ARE NOT ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN FLOURISHING
I have to admit that I found this section rather irritating. Sprinkle clearly drops it in in an attempt to defang Conversation 11: Paul Said It’s Better to Marry than to Burn and to prop open the “called to celibacy” response that he routinely espouses. He also uses this to take a rather cheap shot at affirming Christians accusing them of functionally perpetuating purity culture’s obsession with marriage as an outlet for sexual desire. While interpretations of 1 Cor 7 are worth discussing, it simply isn’t the case that affirming Christians believe that or behave as if marriage and sex are essential to human flourishing. When a gay Christian says that she should be allowed to marry her girlfriend she is claiming nothing more than the assent that is already offered to straight Christians. Sprinkle here is neglecting to recognized that, since both Jesus and Paul speak as though marriage is more of a concession than something they recommend, one might as well tell straight people that they had better choose celibacy (the better way) since “marriage and sex are not essential to human flourishing”. Every gay Christian recognizes the legitimacy of celibacy for those who sense a call to that vocation and that doesn’t really change anything about the rest of this conversation.
5. MARRIAGE HAS A PURPOSE
Sprinkle identifies three purposes for marriage in this section, recognizing that “Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians have wrestled with this question [the purpose[s] of marriage] for millennia and haven’t all landed on the exact same page.” But he is ready to claim that he has identified three “broad points of agreement”.
Symbolism
In Sprinkle’s words:
God wants to be one with us. He’s given us his Spirit as a down payment of the ultimate and final unity he’ll have with us (Eph. 1:13-14). And human marriage is one signpost pointing to that great and final moment when God will “bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Eph. 1:10), when we will “participate in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) and celebrate “the wedding of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7), when heaven and earth will become one. The one-flesh union formed by a man and woman, therefore, tells God’s story of creation and redemption.
This proposed purpose of marriage has always perplexed me. Not because I have any difficulty with the fact that marriage is often used as a symbol but because I don’t see any particular indication in the Bible that marriage is for symbolizing anything else. The fact that it is used to symbolize the relationship between God and the church, makes sense, generally when we engage in symbolism we identify something familiar (and therefore comprehensible) and use it as a symbol or metaphor for something less familiar or tangible. I might use my son in a poem as a symbol for compassionate intelligence but that should not be taken to think that I see symbolizing compassionate intelligence as a purpose for my son. For sure, marriage is a useful symbolism for Christ’s relationship to the church but that does not for a second mean that marriage exist with a purpose of symbolizing the church. And nowhere in the Bible is there any indication that God instituted marriage for the purpose of providing us with a symbol of his relationship to us as though God, having just created the first human sad down and thought “now how am I going to explain my relationship with them to them? I know, I’ll institute a particular human relationship for that purpose.” and, of course, notably God never lists “for the purposes of symbolizing” anything in the parts of Genesis 2 leading up to Genesis 2:24.
Beyond this over-assertion, Sprinkle cites a wide variety of Biblical passages in which marriage (or at least sex) is used as an image of God’s relationship with Israel and the church. It was interesting to me to note that he included several passages from Revelation (17:7-9; 21:2,9-10; 22:17) as a part of this recitation and even quoted the part of it about “The New Jerusalem adorned like a bride” as an example of the rejoining of heaven and earth. I will have more to say about this in my concluding thoughts.
Throughout this section Sprinkle writes about unity-in-difference as though it were somehow damaging to the affirming argument to do so despite the fact that, as I have said above, queer relationship work just as well (and their inclusion ultimately strengthens the theme) as examples of unity-in-difference.
Procreation
Here, Sprinkle picks up on a traditional Roman Catholic theology of marriage5 arguing that marriage exists for the purpose of procreation. My response is first that I am not a Catholic, and that protestants have not historically held to the belief that procreation (or even openness to procreation) is a necessary purpose of marriage. My second (and possibly overly cynical) response is that, Sprinkle’s move in a Roman Catholic direction on this subject is suspiciously convenient given his investment in holding to a non-affirming position. I have written both HERE and HERE on the concerns I have with the correlation between Evangelical felt need for stronger anti-LGBTQIA+ arguments and Evangelical embrace of this aspect of Natural Law theory.
My third reaction is a degree of confusion. Surely Dr. Sprinkle is well aware of the fact that many gay couples have children? The fact of the matter is that it is rather common for queer couples to have our own children, pretty much always through means which are also in use by straight couples (surrogacy, artificial insemination, adoption, etc…) and which I have not seen any condemnation for. In this instance it is hard not to conclude that Dr. Sprinkle has fallen into the trap of thinking of queerness solely in terms of sex and has, from there, written as though the only way in which married people can procreate is through a specific type of sex that is closed to most (though certainly not all) queer people.
In the third paragraph of the section Dr. Sprinkle does briefly address the concerns that would undoubtedly come from straight childless couples saying:
This doesn’t mean that every marriage will result in procreation. A marriage can be open to procreation yet suffer from infertility. The same goes for couples who marry in old age, past the point of procreative probability. Due to advanced age, such marriages might not result in procreation apart from a miracle from God but as male and female they still embody the structures of a procreative union and therefore testify to God’s creative design. [emphasis mine]
This is really slippery and I hope you won’t mind my breaking it down a little. First I want to note that Sprinkle is using the phrase “open to procreation”, which is lifted directly from natural law theory (it is the language used to forbid all non-procreative sex). Second I want to point out that he is then carving out an exception for people who are no longer able to procreate and that the exception is “a miracle could happen” which certainly ought to leave us wondering why he thinks that being willing for God to do a miracle is enough for a couple “past the age of childbirth” but not enough for a gay couple. I can imagine plenty of lesbian couples who would, if you asked, be very much open to just such a miracle given the opportunity. His justification in withholding the miracle possibility in that instance is that the gay couple fails to “embody the structure of a procreative union and therefore testify to God’s creative design”. But we must remember that lacking or possessing “the structure of a procreative union” is just a really fancy way of saying “being straight cis people”. And that means that Sprinkle here is only saying that God won’t do a miracle for gay couples because they aren’t straight—which is entirely circular since all of this is an attempt to justify the idea that gay marriage doesn’t count. If Dr. Sprinkle’s argument here is that gay marriage doesn’t count because it is gay marriage then it is not clear to me why he put this section in his book in the first place other than the fact that most straight people do see gay marriage as non-procreative and that he is therefore here able to create the impression of an argument without the substance of one.
Companionship
Sprinkle is a little odd on this topic. He concedes (and it does read like a concession) that companionship (which gay couples are clearly capable of) is a purpose of marriage. He is at great pains, though, to point out that marriage is not the only way for humans to find companionship, concluding the section with
The historically Christian view of marriage considers companionship to be one prupose of marriage alongside all others, but it doesn’t consider marriage to be the only—or even the primary—way in which humans find love. And this “it’s not the only way” theme permeates the section. His overall point here seems to be that marriage exists for specifically sexually procreative companionship. In an effort to box gay marriages out of the companionship he is talking about here, Sprinkle links Genesis 2:18 “It is not good for the human to be alone” with Genesis 1:28 “be fruitful and multiply” which, I would argue, is rather a stretch. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are generally recognized to be distinct creation accounts (much Evangelical and Fundamentalist ink has been spilled trying to reconcile the order of creation in Genesis 1 with the order of creation in Genesis 2) and the fact of the matter is that when we get to it is not good for the human to be alone” in Genesis 2, procreation hasn’t been mentioned since Genesis 1:28 and quite a few other points have been made. Instead, the link between those two passages seems to be one of Dr. Sprinkle’s invention. In his words:
It wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, not because he needed a spouse to solve his loneliness but because he couldn’t fulfill the command he was given without a procreative partner.
I don’t see any biblical evidence for this claim and, frankly, it betrays a distinct lack of imagination on Dr. Sprinkle’s part—Can he not imagine a world in which humans procreate by other means? And the fact of the matter is that procreation simply isn’t in view in Genesis 2. Directly before Genesis 2:28 is the command to Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and immediately following that observation, God brings all of the animals to Adam who names them and we find out that none is a suitable companion. If the immediate context of this passage is telling us anything about what part of Adam’s alone-ness couldn’t have been solved without Eve it is his need to be helped to obey God’s command to to eat from the tree. In fact it is hard to see how Dr. Sprinkle could have arrived at his view unless he were trying to read his pre-made conclusions on to the text.
Concluding Thoughts
I want to end with two disjoined observations on the book as a whole: Sprinkle’s scholarship is problematic, and Sprinkle’s eschatology is regressive where it should be progressive.
Some scholarship problems
I was disappointed to note in this book that Dr. Sprinkle’s scholarship doesn’t seem to have updated or changed much since his last book. As I have been documenting in detail in my series critiquing Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and what the Bible has to Say, Dr. Sprinkle has an unfortunate habit of misrepresenting his sources and of failing to read sufficiently arguments made against the position he takes. In this book, he has set himself the daunting task of responding to 21 arguments in favor of gay marriage. The fact of the matter is that any adequate treatment of that subject would have to be five to six times the length of this text.
Dr. Sprinkle’s model for each chapter is to summarize the argument he is preparing to refute, identify one or more points of agreement with or appreciation of that argument, and then present his refutation. It is a solid method derived from scholastic debate. The problem is that it would have been impossible for him to respond adequately to 21 arguments this way in the space of 172 pages giving him an average of 8 pages per argument. The shortest chapter is Conversation 14: The Trajectory of Women and Slavery Justifies Same-Sex Prohibitions, coming in at 4 pages while the longest is Conversation 15: The Traditional View of Marriage is Harmful toward Gay and Lesbian People which is about 12 pages long. Dr. Sprinkle’s therefore uses footnote citations to flesh out his arguments.
Now on the one hand I am not prepared to assert that Dr. Sprinkle is not well read as a whole. Generally his citations are varied and he makes a point to source each argument he is trying to rebut6 the problem is that when I read the book I had already engaged with Dr. Sprinkle and his thought on a number of these arguments. Ken Wilson asked me to compose a response to Dr. Sprinkle’s initial objection to his Third Way argument back in 2015—it was published on his blog and I have republished it HERE—so I was I was disappointed to note that Dr. Sprinkle has not significantly updated his argument. It still contains the same objections and problematic citations (citations he also uses elsewhere in this book). The closest he has come to responding to those critiques is in this blog post which he footnoted in the text of this book. In the post he is responding to a video Matthew Vines had posted critiquing some of the same claims I had critiqued. The argument gets rather dense but the short version is that Sprinkle is trying to argue for an awareness of gay marriage in the 1st century which would meaningfully parallel the version of gay marriage being championed by queer Christians in the 21st century. The specific claim that Vines made is “So when we are talking today about lifelong, monogamous, equal-status same-sex relationships, we are talking about something categorically different than anything that we find in the biblical world”, and that none of Sprinkle’s counter examples—examples Sprinkle simply re-used in this text after adding a few caveats—meet these criteria. Sprinkle’s defense of the historic examples he cited turns out to be that while none of them meet the necessary criteria alone, together then can be sort of shaped to make up a gestalt counter example.
You see the problem. Sprinkle has effectively moved the goalposts but is continuing here to use his old examples as if they had not already been shown (and tacitly admitted by Sprinkle) to be insufficient to justify his claims.
A second example of Sprinkle’s questionable scholarly use of his sources comes from his near total reliance on Kyle Harper for a particular theme. In Conversation 10: Jesus Never Mentioned Homosexuality Sprinkle cites Harper for the following claim:
Jesus also mentioned and condemned “sexual immorality” (Matt. 15:19; cf. Mark 7:21). The Greek word for “sexual immorality” is porneia. It usually referred to prostitution in the ancient world, but in first-century Judaism and Christianity, it came to refer to all forms of sex outside of a male/female marriage. So when Jesus said that sexual immorality (porneia) was wrong, this included same-sex sexual behavior.
which would be an important argument (though hardly devastating to the affirming view as I have referenced HERE) except for the fact that Sprinkle is not actually citing Harper accurately on the scope of meaning for porneia in the 1st century Jewish and Christian world. Harper’s actual definition of porneia is far more complicated and included, rather specifically, exogamy (marrying outside one’s tribe) it did not refer “to all forms of sex outside of a male/female marriage” (exogamy being a necessarily inside of marriage activity) and at one point in time Sprinkle didn’t claim that it did. In 2015, in his book People to be Loved Sprinkle included a footnote on porneia, specifically citing Harper which is well worth contrasting with the quote above:
[T]he world porneia is used with some flexibility in the first century. Sometimes it includes many different types of sexual sins, while other times it only includes adultery or other specific sins. I find it tough to say that porneia clearly includes same-sex relations when Jesus uses it in Matt. 15:19. See further Kyle Harper, “Porneia: The Making of a Christian Sexual Norm,” JBL 131 *2011): 363-83 [bold emphasis mine]
Clearly this is an argument that Sprinkle has updated since 2015 which of course would be fair aside from the fact that he gives no reason for having changed his mind. In fact his argument in 2015 that Jesus was silent on the subject of gay sex is rather more fully developed than his 2023 argument to the contrary.
Certainly these are not the only places where Sprinkle engages in slippery or inconsistent scholarship, but as these two examples are, I think, representative of the sort of mistakes he tends to make, I will move on to my final point.
From the Garden to the City
As I have read and studied Sprinkle’s theology of sexuality and gender over the years I have become convinced that one of my deepest theological disagreements with him has to do with eschatology—the study of the ending of things—and the way our respective eschatologies influence the way we read and interpret the Bible. Where Sprinkle sees the Bible as a narrative of creation—fall—redemption—return; I see the Bible as a narrative of creation—fall—redemption—glory. Sprinkle seems to see the end as a return to the Garden whereas I see the end as a journey forward to the city, and this has a profound impact on the way we read the Bible. In Embodied Sprinkle claims that “Creation and resurrection are the twin pillars of Jesus’ ethic” and, as I have quoted above, in this book Sprinkle (quoting N.T. Wright) associates even “the New Jerusalem” with “God’s intended creation”. The theme of the Creation Edenic state as what we should be looking to (and what Jesus looked to) as a model for what redemption and life as a Christian ought to look like is present throughout Sprinkle’s work.
And this is a theological outlook I very much disagree with. My own understanding is that God’s new creation, the beloved community that we will one day enjoy, will not be a return to the Garden of Eden but a move forward into a city—The New Jerusalem. This is not to cast a slight on Eden or on God’s creation (though I would, I think, differ with Sprinkle on the question of whether or not Genesis portrays God as intending every being in Eden to stay as it was or as intending development, sub-creation, and growth) but rather I would say that in the act of salvation and redemption, Christ makes all things new; not the same and not fixed, but new. I haven’t ever seen this put more beautifully than by C.S. Lewis in Perelandra where two angels, describing God’s actions throughout history to the protagonist says:
Never did He make two things the same; never did He utter one word twice. After earths, not better earths but beasts; after beasts, not better beasts, but spirits. After a falling, not a recovery but a new creation. Out of the new creation, not a third but the mode of change itself is changed for ever. Blessed is He
As a transgender Christian I have long been fascinated by the fact that Jesus carried his scars after the resurrection. The theme of redemption does not, to me, look at all like a return to some original state but rather it is a movement forward—growth—into the glory that God has for us and for all of Creation. And I believe that the road into that heavenly city is fundamentally shaped by our lives, actions, and decisions. At the end of time (which will of course still be only the beginning of the beginning) we will all have told a story with our lives and the nature of the new heavens and earth is even now being shaped by the stories we are telling.
And so far as I can tell this looking ahead to a city, as opposed to looking back at a garden is what shaped Jesus’ ethic and what ought to shape ours. Where Sprinkle sees Jesus’ ethic as rooted in resurrection and creation, I would argue that it is rather rooted in resurrection and glorification. Jesus’ teaching is riddled with descriptions of the coming Kingdom of Heaven and He shocked his contemporaries with his willingness to update the rules and laws from earlier times.
So long as Sprinkle remains determined to look back, he is going to have trouble seeing the beloved queer community God is building ahead of him.
Most Recently Josh Butler dove rather alarmingly if hilariously into this claim.
I have argued HERE that polygamous marriages in the Bible amount to marriages in which women were married to members of their own sex.
Why can’t he just say “gay sex”? Is there something intrinsic to being an evangelical that makes it hard for them to just say “gay sex”?
It is more than a little striking to me that so many evangelical theologians are rediscovering Roman Catholic theologies of sex and marriage recently. The two that spring immediately to mind are Al Mohler who argued in 2015, in a book denouncing LGBTQIA+ people and relationships, that Evangelicals might need to start considering openness to procreation as a necessary element in marriage, and more recently Josh Butler who rather embarrassed himself with a book based on a wild overapplication of marriage as a symbol for Christ and the Church. Particularly striking is the fact that so many of them see to be doing so in the context of trying to find stronger arguments against same-sex marriage. I would suggest that shopping for a new theology in order to bolster an anti-queer position is both eisegetical and nakedly homophobic.
A future reviewer who was looking for a point-by-point refutation of this book would do very well to examine each of those sources to examine the quality of Dr. Sprinkle’s summary of his opponents.