Why creation is ‘straight.’
by Martin Davie, Reflections of an Anglican Theologian:
In the latest essay in the ViaMedia.News series ‘Does the Bible Really Say…?’, Dr Simon Taylor looks at the question ‘Does the Bible Does the Bible Really Say…that Creation is Straight?’[1]
Dr Taylor’s argument.
In the introductory paragraphs to his essay Dr Taylor explains that the idea that ‘creation is straight’ is his shorthand for the ‘complementarian’ understanding of creation ‘’in which human beings are made and meant to be male and female.’
Dr Taylor then further explains that he is ‘far from convinced that this is the right way to be reading Scripture’ and that in his essay he is going to ‘look at some key Biblical texts and then to see if a larger Biblical vision might be offered.’
The three biblical texts that he looks at are Genesis 1:27-28, Genesis 2:18-24 and Matthew 19:3-9.
Genesis 1:27-28.
On Genesis 1:27-28 Dr Taylor notes that:
‘A complementarian reading of this passage attends carefully to the way in which the image of God structures humanity as male and female. Combined with the injunction to procreation, this is then taken to require heterosexual relationships.’
He then identifies three ‘serious difficulties with this approach’:
‘First, it is in danger of requiring couplings of male and female in order to display the image of God. What then do we have to say for single people?’
Second, it takes the command to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ as a command for every couple, rather than for the species as a whole. What then of the childless, the elderly and the infertile?
Third, it loses the way the passage insists that the image of God is seen in women as well as in men. This has not, through the history of humanity and the history of the Church, been something seen as obvious. Sexual relationships have been constituted as expressions of male power, underwritten by a male God. Genesis 1.27-28 begs to differ.’
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