Parsing Same-Sex Attraction: A Plea for Precision
Part 1
Sam Allberry’s recent admissions and resignations have reignited discussion about the nature of same-sex attraction (SSA) and where to place the phenomenon within a biblical anthropology and hamartiology (doctrine of sin). Of course, as expected, in many cases the disagreements have been sharp, the other side “doesn’t understand,” and the very Gospel is at stake. Par for the course.
My contribution—which will appear in two parts—is to point out that meaningful portions of the present tension seem to be attributable to conceptual imprecision on the part of people who may not disagree as much as they think (or may disagree quite a bit more than they realize!). While I’ll do some weighing in, for now I’m content to simply give examples and ask questions in two important areas of the discussion. My primary (underwhelming?) contention is that many people with very confident views on the topic haven’t been conceptually careful enough to justify their confidence.
What Is a Desire?
What is the nature of desire? Checking the standard Greek New Testament lexicon (BDAG) won’t help here because one will simply find synonyms—this is inevitably what occurs when we get to basic concepts within lexicons and dictionaries. In this case, we find the narrow range of words that can be translated as “desire” only to learn that they mean “to wish, long for, crave, have urges toward….”
Excellent.
But what we are really after is the nature of desire, a subject which philosophers have explored in far greater depth than theologians (as the eye-watering entry on “desire” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reflects). Schroeder summarizes the landscape in a manner that has obvious application to discussions surrounding SSA:
“To desire is to be in a particular state of mind. It is a state of mind familiar to everyone who has ever wanted to drink water or desired to know what has happened to an old friend, but its familiarity does not make it easy to give a theory of desire. Controversy immediately breaks out when asking whether wanting water and desiring knowledge are, at bottom, the same state of mind as others that seem somewhat similar: wishing never to have been born, preferring mangoes to peaches, craving gin, having world conquest as one’s goal, having a purpose in sneaking out to the shed, or being inclined to provoke just for the sake of provocation (italics mine).”
Does desire require an element of delight or pleasure as part of the analysis, or can it be explained by duty alone? Do desires require a certain psychological experience, or can they be explained simply by appeal to one’s estimation of the good (“I donated my hard-earned money because it was a good thing to do”)? Are all desires teleological (having a goal or end in mind), or can desires be directed toward nothing in particular? Is genuine desire always indicated by taking steps to achieve its end, provided such achievement is within one’s power to realize (e.g., “You don’t really desire to lose weight, or you would be exercising”)? What do we make of desire in the case of someone who says, “I didn’t want to do X, but I did it because…”? We could go on. One’s answers are not only relevant for providing responses to the challenges posed by SSA but are necessary for even formulating the challenges coherently in the first place.
For now, let the reader understand.
A second question surrounding desire concerns how we relate to them. Robert Gagnon recently offered an excellent example of the need for clarity in this area. After plainly stating that desires for things forbidden by God are sinful, he writes, “The mere experience of sinful desire is not a defeat.” Whatever could this mean? How could I experience a sinful desire in a manner distinct from sinful desiring? One suggestion might be that I could think about sinful desires and imagine what it might be like to have them. Relating to sinful desires in this manner is clearly not sinful but also is clearly not what Gagnon has in mind.
Can I experience the sinful desire to besmirch my neighbor because he embarrassed me without any genuine desire to besmirch my neighbor? If so, we need to hear a story about how we can relate to desires without them being our own (see below?). To all appearances, however, Gagnon is actually trying to say something similar to the well-known Piper/Wilson story about concupiscence from James 1:14–15: provided I do not act on my sinful desires, nothing sinful has occurred. Outside of acting or not acting on them, Gagnon isn’t trying to make a meaningful statement about how we relate to desires at all, but the imprecision plays a critical role in the resultant plausibility of his view.
This leads to a final question we might ask about desires—must they be occurrent, or can they also be standing? Alternatively, do I have desires that “exist” in the absence of me desiring them in a particular moment? Or are desires similar to thoughts: if I am not thinking them, they don’t “exist” in any independent, meaningful sense? One’s conclusion here is substantive: if the only desires we have are occurrent desires, then concepts like “orientation” only serve as summaries of the kinds of desires we have had in the past: “In the past, I have desired X with regard to context Y. When I consider Y in the future, my guess is I will desire X again.”
By contrast, if desires can be standing, orientation can plausibly be explained in light of them: “In the ‘background’ of my heart and mind, I desire X with regard to Y. This ‘macro-desire’ is always there, even when I am not feeling or experiencing it consciously.” But perhaps this is something different altogether, something closer to disposition, understood not as a desire but as something about who we are that tends to produce desires with a certain kind of consistency.
Or perhaps not.
That these distinctions are important when it comes to discussions of SSA, desire and culpability should be obvious even if one are left with more questions than answers after considering them.
And yet, they are woefully underdiscussed.
What Is Temptation?
The standard distinction employed when discussing the nature of temptation is external vs. internal temptation. Most people agree that the distinction between the two is important, and many suggest that it explains, for example, how Jesus could have been genuinely tempted while James can nevertheless insist, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (Jas. 1:13). So understood, evil external to Jesus tested his faithfulness, but in virtue of being the Son of God, Jesus did not have evil desires or inclinations to overcome in the first place.
In more mundane circumstances, external temptation might look like a recovering alcoholic spotting liquor in the hotel mini fridge. Internal temptation, on the other hand, might look like the same person strongly desiring to get plastered after work. In both cases, resistance is possible in the power of the Holy Spirit, and both cases are regularly discussed under the umbrella of “temptation.”
But does the external/internal distinction really deliver what it promises? Imagine that instead of an alcoholic discovering the stocked mini fridge, a teetotaler who hates the taste of alcohol stumbles upon the liquor instead. Of course, they don’t partake. Have they experienced and/or overcome temptation in any meaningful sense? Despite experiencing the same external conditions as the alcoholic, most people would not be willing to affirm that the envisioned teetotaler overcame temptation—in fact, it seems that they didn’t experience temptation at all.
The obvious question is: if Jesus merely experienced this second kind of temptation, how is that supposed to be encouraging to us or enable him to sympathize with us in our temptations (Heb. 4:15)? Given that he had no sinful nature and was perfectly righteous, clearly Jesus did not experience “internal temptation” like the man desiring to get plastered. Suggesting that Jesus had sinful desires he successfully overcame is simply not orthodox Christology.
But is the author of Hebrews just saying that Jesus’s experiences with overcoming temptation were like the teetotaler “resisting” the liquor? If so, how is that supposed to be encouraging to us or enable Jesus to sympathize with our weaknesses in temptation, which always involve an experiential/internal component? Recall: the alcoholic who resists the “merely external temptation” of the stocked mini fridge still experiences and overcomes an inward draw toward it (which is why we consider it temptation), unlike the teetotaler.
Are we forced to choose between either an unorthodox Christology or an all-but-impotent understanding of Jesus’s overcoming temptation? We are not—but I think you would be led to believe that we are by most of the current dialogue.
Why does all this matter if we are not Jesus and do, in fact, have sinful natures? Consider another Gagnon goof from the same post: “Temptation to sin, even internal temptation, is not an act of culpable sinning.” I think there is an interpretation of this phrase that can be correct, but it isn’t Gagnon’s. He suggests that, per a text like Galatians 5:17 (we’ll say), to experience sinful desires (here we go again) in conflict with our spiritual desires is not sinful—it is only when we acquiesce to them that sin occurs. So long as we carry our sinful desires in our pocket and don’t take them out, we aren’t culpable.
But on this understanding, how do we account for the 10th commandment? The whole commandment is a prohibition of desire sans action: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Ex. 20:17). Furthermore, drawing on the 10th commandment Paul says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Col. 3:5–6).
Is it really plausible to step away from these prohibitions and exhortations and believe that I can sit in my house desiring to have sex with my neighbor’s wife without moral culpability, provided I don’t actually take steps to make it happen? Even if I don’t sabotage my friend, should I not repent for privately desiring their moral failure because I think they need to learn humility? Surely these aren’t more than rhetorical questions.
Hopefully your interest is piqued.
In part two I’ll propose a more coherent framework for thinking about temptation, desire, and culpability that informs, but is not limited to, discussions surrounding SSA. I’ll suggest that there is conceptual space to acknowledge what can plausibly be considered “internal temptation” that is neverthessless not a species of occurrent desire. Sometimes this stripe of internal temptation will flow out of our sinful natures that require forgiveness but have been addressed in justification and sometimes it will flow from human frailty/limitations. This will allow us to simultaneously affirm the genuine temptation of Jesus, clarify culpability for our sinful desires and avoid making certain people feel as though they need to constantly feel guilty and repent for little more than their conscious existence.