The Evolution of LGBTQ Doctrine: Jesus, Scripture, and the Expanding Circle of Grace

In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, Greg explores the long and complex evolution of Christian doctrine surrounding LGBTQ inclusion, tracing the conversation from ancient purity codes and Greco-Roman assumptions to modern understandings of sexuality, human dignity, and the radically expansive love of Jesus. Drawing on Scripture, church history, theology, and lived human experience, the episode asks whether Christianity is ultimately about protecting boundaries of exclusion—or participating in the ever-widening circle of grace revealed in Christ.

Transcript

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There are moments in church history when Christians are forced to ask a difficult question. Were we defending eternal truth or merely inherited assumptions wrapped in religious language? The church has faced this before with slavery, with women, with cosmology, with democracy, with interracial marriage, and now with LGBTQ inclusion. For centuries, Christianity largely viewed homosexuality through the lens of sin, disorder, and exclusion. And yet today, many faithful Christians, including theologians, biblical scholars, priests, bishops, and entire denominations, have come to affirm LGBTQ relationships and identities not as a rejection of Christianity, but as a deeper fulfillment of the gospel's call to love. Not because culture changed and the church surrendered, but because Christians continued wrestling with scripture, history, science, human experience, and above all, Jesus. And that's really the center of this conversation. Because ultimately, the deepest theological question is not what verse can we quote? The deeper question is how should Christians interpret scripture in the first place? What is our hermeneutic? What is the lens through which we read the Bible? And for Christians, the answer is supposed to be Jesus, not fear, not legalism, not isolated verses removed from context. Jesus. One of the great misunderstandings in modern Christianity is the assumption that the Bible speaks with one unified voice about everything. It doesn't. The Bible is a library written over more than a thousand years, across different cultures, different languages, different political realities, different theological understandings. The Bible itself contains development and evolution. Early Israelite religion was not fully monotheistic in the way later Judaism became monotheistic. Concepts of Satan evolved, concepts of heaven and hell evolved, concepts of atonement evolved, concepts of violence evolved. Even within Scripture itself, we see theological movement. The prophets challenge earlier assumptions. Jesus reinterprets Torah. Paul rethinks Gentile inclusion. The early church radically expands belonging. And this matters deeply when discussing LGBTQ inclusion, because many Christians were taught to approach Scripture as if every verse carries equal weight and equal clarity. But historically, Christianity has never functioned that way. The church has always interpreted Scripture through larger theological frameworks. And the center of Christian interpretation is supposed to be Christ Himself. As Karl Barth famously said, the word became flesh, not text. Or as the Gospel of John puts it, in the beginning was the Word. Christians believe Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, meaning, if our interpretation of Scripture contradicts the character of Jesus, we should pause. This is where the conversation becomes deeply theological. In Luke 24, after the resurrection, Jesus walks with the disciples on the road to Emmaus and reinterprets Scripture through Himself. He becomes the lens. The early church fathers often spoke of Scripture having layers, literal, moral, allegorical, spiritual. The Bible was never meant to be read merely as a rule book detached from discernment. The Anglican tradition especially emphasizes what Richard Hooker called the three-legged stool, scripture, tradition, and reason, not scripture alone interpreted in isolation, and Jesus becomes the interpretive center. This is why many progressive theologians argue Christ is not merely one topic inside Scripture. Christ is the lens through which scripture itself is understood. As Brian McLaren writes, Jesus is what God has to say. That changes everything. Because when Jesus encounters people condemned by religious systems, his posture is consistently mercy before judgment, relationship before exclusion, compassion before purity codes. Let's talk about the passages themselves. The most commonly cited verses come from Leviticus. You shall not lie with the male as with a woman. It is an abomination. But understanding ancient context is crucial. Ancient Israel existed in a tribal patriarchal world obsessed with inheritance, purity, survival, male dominance, and distinction from surrounding nations. The Holiness Code in Leviticus also prohibits shellfish, mixed fabrics, certain farming practices, and menstruation-related impurity. The Hebrew word toeba, translated abomination, often refers to ritual or cultural impurity, not timeless universal morality. Many scholars argue these prohibitions were connected to patriarchal assumptions, concerns about male status, fertility practices, or cultic distinctions from neighboring religions. And perhaps most importantly, the biblical writers had absolutely no concept of sexual orientation as we understand it today. None. The modern understanding that some people are naturally and enduringly attracted to the same sex simply did not exist. The Bible addresses acts within ancient social systems. It does not address loving, mutual, covenantal same-sex relationships between equal partners as understood today. And that distinction is enormous. And then we come to Jesus, who says nothing about homosexuality. Nothing. Not in four gospels, not in hundreds of teachings, not while addressing greed, violence, hypocrisy, prayer, power, wealth, forgiveness, enemies, or religious legalism. And this silence matters because Jesus was not shy about confronting things he believed harm people. Instead, Jesus repeatedly confronts exclusion itself. Again and again, the gospel showed Jesus crossing boundaries, touching lepers, eating with sinners, speaking with Samaritans, defending women, praising foreigners, restoring the ritually unclean. The scandal of Jesus was not moral rigidity. The scandal was radical inclusion. The religious leaders of his time were constantly asking, why does he eat with these people? And Jesus constantly responds by widening the circle. Richard Rore says, Jesus did not come to create a new tribe that could exclude others more effectively. He came to reveal the universal and utterly inclusive love of God. That's a radically different framework for much of modern Christianity. Now, inevitably, people turn to Paul. Romans 1 becomes the centerpiece, but historical context matters enormously. The dominant same-sex practices in the Roman world often involved prostitution, slave exploitation, temple sexuality, domination, and status assertion. Roman sexuality was deeply tied to hierarchy and power. Elite men were often permitted to violate slaves, servants, or lower status males without social stigma, provided they maintained dominance. That's profoundly different from modern same-sex partnerships rooted in fidelity, equality, and covenant. New Testament scholar James Brownson argues that Paul was addressing excessive lust, idolatry, exploitation, and dishonorable social relationships, not loving same-sex unions. Even the terminology is debated. The Greek word arsenokoites, often translated homosexuals, is extraordinarily rare and historically ambiguous. Many scholars believe modern translation imposed meanings the ancient text itself does not clearly contain. And this is important. Translation is interpretation, always. To understand Christian doctrine, we also have to understand Greek philosophy, especially Plato. Early Christianity absorbed significant dualistic thinking. Spirit is elevated, the body is suspect, the flesh, dangerous. Then came Augustine of Hippo. Augustine profoundly shaped Western Christianity's sexual ethics. After his own turbulent relationship with desire, Augustine increasingly associated sexuality with original sin and disordered passion. Sex became tolerated primarily for procreation. Pleasure itself became morally suspicious. This framework shaped Christianity for over a millennium, and eventually homosexuality became viewed not simply as sinful behavior, but as an unnatural disorder. Yet even here, doctrine evolved historically. The church once condemned lending money with interest, questioned democracy, defended monarchies, justified slavery. Doctrine is not static. The church is always interpreted and reinterpreted. Then modernity disrupted everything. Psychology evolved, neuroscience evolved, human understanding evolved. People began recognizing sexual orientation not as rebellion or pathology, but as a part of human diversity. And perhaps even more importantly, Christians began actually listening to LGBTQ people, their faith, their suffering, their humanity, their longing for God. And many Christians noticed something devastating. The fruits of condemnation were often despair, shame, suicide, estrangement, and spiritual trauma. Jesus said, You will know them by their fruits. That became a profound theological question. If a doctrine consistently produces destruction, what does that reveal? This is where many churches begin reevaluating everything, not by abandoning Christianity, but by returning more deeply to Jesus. The Episcopal presiding bishop Michael Curry said, this is not a capitulation to contemporary culture. This is about listening to the Spirit of God and seeing the biblical witness through the lens of the radical sacrificial love of Jesus. That quote matters deeply because critics often frame LGBTQ affirmation as surrender to secular culture. But affirming Christians would argue the opposite. They would argue that this is about taking Jesus more seriously, especially his command, love one another as I have loved you. And love in Scripture is not mere sentimentality, it is self-giving, dignifying, liberating, restorative. One of the deepest patterns in Scripture is the continual expansion of belonging. Again and again, the outsider becomes included. Gentiles, women, foreigners, eunuchs, those once considered outside the covenantal boundaries. Acts chapter 10 becomes pivotal. Peter receives a vision overturning categories he believed were eternal. And Peter says, I truly understand that God shows no partiality. The early church had to decide who belongs. And every time the Spirit keeps expanding the answer. The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8 is especially powerful here. A sexually marginalized person, according to ancient categories, becomes fully welcomed into the people of God without condition. That story matters a lot. At its deepest level, this conversation is not really about homosexuality. It's about what Christianity fundamentally is. Is Christianity primarily a boundary marking system organized around purity, fear, and exclusion? Or is it participation in the radically expansive love revealed in Christ? But historically the church has often defended exclusion, long after the spirit was already moving toward inclusion. Women's ordination was once called a heresy. Interracial marriage was condemned from the pulpits. Segregation was defended with Scripture. And now many Christians believe the Spirit is once again calling the church wider, not away from Jesus, but toward him. I keep coming back to this image. Jesus almost never stands at the gates deciding who is worthy to come in. He is almost always outside the gates, already among the rejected. And maybe the real question is whether the church is willing to go there too.