Albert Mohler: What the Bible Really Says About Sex . . . Really?

The Bible is brutally honest about human sinfulness in all its forms, including sexuality. Nevertheless, the Bible presents a consistent and clear sexual ethic. The issue is not a lack of clarity.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Has the church misunderstood the Bible’s teachings on sexuality for over two thousand years? The current issue of Newsweek magazine reports on “new scholarship on the Good Book’s naughty bits” that is supposed to turn our understanding of the Bible’s teachings on sex upside down.

Lisa Miller, Newsweek’s religion editor, wrote the article entitled “What the Bible Really Says About Sex.” Well, the one thing you need to know up front is that the article falls far short of its title.

Miller bases her report on two recent books — Michael Coogan’s God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says and Jennifer Wright Knust’s Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire. Neither of these books breaks new ground. Instead, the books distill arguments that have become common among liberal and revisionist Bible scholars and homosexual activist groups.
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The most important point I made to Lisa Miller is that revisionist interpreters of the Bible are playing a dishonest game. Consider the audacity of their claim: they claim that no one has rightly understood the Bible for over two thousand years. No Jewish or Christian interpreter of the Bible had ever suggested that the relationship between David and Jonathan was homosexual — at least not until recent decades. The revisionist case is equally ludicrous across the board. We are only now able to understand what Paul was talking about in Romans 1? The church was wrong for two millennia?