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Homosexuality, Marriage, and the Church
a result of natural selection, time, and chance. Thus the argument
for the naturalness of homosexual orientation actually supports the
doctrine of evolution and denigrates, if not implicitly rejects, the
doctrine of Creation as described in Genesis 1-2, in which humans
are created in the image of God, and heterosexuality is the divine
mandate for humanity.
So at stake are both the doctrine of Creation as a whole and hu
mankind’s creation in the image of God in particular. But this doc
trine cuts both ways. Even though we reject homosexual practice
as not God’s will, a high doctrine of Creation calls us to treat every
human being as our brother and sister in the human race.
THE THEOLOGY OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
Related to the doctrine of Creation is the theology of marriage,
since human sexuality according to the Edenic divine paradigm finds
expression in a
heterosexual
marital form. Genesis 2:24 presents a
succinct theology of marriage: “therefore a man leaves his father
and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh”
(r s v
) . 16
The introductory “therefore” [
cal-ken]
indicates that the re
lationship of Adam and Eve is upheld as the pattern for all future
human sexual relationships.17The reference to “a man pis]...and...
his wife pisto]”— literally, a “man and his woman”— indicates a
het
erosexual
marriage relationship of a man and woman as the Edenic
model for all time. The heterosexual marital form involving the
sexual union of a man and a woman (not a man and another man,
or a woman and another woman) constitutes the divine paradigm
for humanity from the beginning. This Creation pattern of hetero
sexual relationships remained the norm throughout the canonical
Old Testament Scriptures.
Only two institutions have come down to us from the Garden of
Eden: the Sabbath and marriage. It is not surprising that in the last
days both of these divine institutions, these divine gifts to humanity
from the Creator’s hand, are under attack.