Sensus Divinitatis

I heard of this dramatic documentary 1946 months ago, and when I saw the preview, I had my doubts that this movie would add anything constructive to the rancorous debate that forms the ethical divide in both church and society today. The subtitle was especially presumptuous: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture.

Mainstream reviews lacked any critical angle, and conservative reviews dismissed the entire premise of the film as faulty. I was urged to go see the film for myself, as many friends from my home congregation and the larger denomination of which I am a part were being encouraged to see it.

While I still feel the movie is a heavily biased set up of the various ethical positions on same sex sexuality, after seeing it through to the end, I must admit it does have a few virtues worth exploring. This may not redeem the film, but it may allow for some meaningful conversation and even some warnings to Christians who may be too glib about Bible translation and interpretation. Let me tell you why it only gets two stars.

I did know about the insertion of the modern word “homosexual” into certain Bible translations before I heard of this movie, but I did not know all the details of that story. In a nutshell, it seems in 1946 the RSV took the illicit same sex behaviour that is named in the Greek vice list of 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11, and turned it into an identity–namely “homosexual.” They realized their mistake with the help of a well-informed letter from a young gay man in Quebec named David, and revised the next edition (1952) to read “sexual perverts” instead. Other versions of the Bible, however, apparently took license with the RSV’s translation (like The Living Bible 1971) and used the word “homosexual” not just in that one verse, but in a number of other verses, too. The Living Bible was the best-selling version of the Bible at one point (more of a personal paraphrase than a translation, really) and that makes the mistranslation culturally noteworthy.

That adding the modern term “homosexual” was wrong, but the movie makes too much of this mistranslation, and claims that turned the verses into a “sacred weapon” that “shifted culture”–empowering the politics of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other leaders of the Moral Majority and Religious Right. It also claims that what was first an act of “ignorance and assumptions” soon became an “act of malice.” Motives are hard to ascribe to such a large group of people, let alone determining what best informed their ethical position, but there was at least some willful ignorance in the Bible translation world as the RSV corrected itself in the next edition (1952) while other translations persisted with the mistranslation. (Incidentally, I looked up the New Living Translation 1996, 2004, 2015, and they have changed four verses in their paraphrase to say “practise homosexuality”–so they retain a version of the word “homosexual” while reverting back to focusing on the act, not the identity. I also looked up the Updated Edition of the RSV 2021, and it changed again to say “…male prostitutes, men who engage in illicit sex” to claim the word in question is only about abusive same sex sex.)

The Greek word in question (arsenakoitai) is apparently hard to define (combined in the text with malakos), as it is rather unusual in the literature of the day. It combines two Greek words, arsen, meaning “male,” and koite, meaning “lying.” So the NIV translations put the phrase as “men who have sex with men” and have a footnote to explain that the Greek words suggests an active and passive partner in sexual relations. One fellow film viewer said to me afterward: “whatever word you choose to define it, the meaning seems the same to me.” But others disagree: identity is different from behaviour, and abusive sexual behaviour is different from just the behaviour, which could be acting out of a created condition that bears no inherent moral wrong.

Some conservatives have for decades been clear that matters of orientation are demonstrably morally different from behaviour. Thus the words matter.

Here is a small chart of Bible translations I cut and pasted from Steven Willing’s review of the movie on the Christian Medical and Dental Association website.

Year	Title	Translation
1382	Wycliffe*	“thei that doon letcheri with men”
1526	Tyndale	“abusars of them selves with the mankynde”
1611	King James Version	“abusers of themselves with mankind”
1862	Young’s Literal Translation	“sodomites”
1890	Darby Translation	“who abuse themselves with men”
1901	American Standard Version	“abusers of themselves with men”
1946	Revised Standard Version	“homosexuals”
1970	New English Bible	“homosexual perversion”
1971	New American Standard Bible	“homosexuals”
1978	New International Version	“men who have sex with men”
2001	English Standard Version (ESV)	“men who practice homosexuality”

Steven Willing–a conservative on this issue–agrees that using the modern term “homosexual” (it was coined in the 1800s) in this verse was a bad decision, as translations like the NIV are more accurate when they just describe the behaviour and really cover wider territory than using a term that limits the meaning to self-identifying homosexuals. He explains: “Thus, translating arsenokoites as ‘homosexual’ penalizes the innocent, excuses the guilty, and shoehorns a modern social construct into a first-century document. It is a poor translation and ought to be rejected.”

This film could become a good lesson in Bible translation, and the way in which it can be swayed by grammatical assumptions, ethical biases and religiously motivated politics. It also shows that some translators can learn and change their biases, correcting them over time (RSV). But the fact remains that this mistranslation played only a very small role in the church’s consensus on same sex sex. There are more than 2000 years of teaching on the normativity of the male/female bond for marriage and family, not to mention Judaism before and during this time. This mistranslation may have lent extra support for the traditional case for those who used certain translations, and maybe it was manipulated for a political moment (they didn’t show any footage where it was quoted by Falwell or Robertson), but it was by no means the core of the historic Christian teaching. Not even close. Genesis 1 and 2 or Romans 1 would be more important, but proof-texting is already a poor way to go about developing sexual ethics.

Willing stridently concludes: “the mistranslation had absolutely no effect on anything” noting that evangelicals despised the RSV because of its removal of the word “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But the film overstates the case to be sure.

What the film does accomplish is setting up the common arguments against the historic Christian teaching on the matter of marriage through the drama of a documentary film. At the centre is a lesbian daughter and her traditional father (who is also a pastor) and the tensions that keep them at odds. The daughter, Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, is the director of the film and so she sets up the case against her father’s traditional view.

Uneven and Caricatured

There is another lesson to be had here, and this is where the film is more fundamentally flawed. Beyond the over-attributed significance of this one mistranslation, the movie is a set up from the start in terms of the larger ecclesiastical debate about what the biblical books say about same sex sexuality. The movie pits a self-educated fundamentalist pastor (the director’s dad) verses PhD-wielding professors from Yale (and other universities). It suggests a confirmation bias operating in an exaggerated way. In the end, her father further discredits himself by insisting that Genesis’ term for “day” is 24 hours and thus the universe must have been made in six days. He is both a young earth creationist (a more modern interpretation of Scripture) and a proponent of the historic Christian teaching on marriage, which turns him and his stance into a fundamentalist caricature.

I teach World Religions, and one thing I say to my students about inter-religious debate is that you should not pit your best practises against another religion’s worst practises. Similarly, you should not pit your most learned scholars against another religion’s backwater clerics. It is not a fair debate, it skews the outcome, and it will appear you are more concerned about looking better and winning than about the truth that you claim to be seeking.

This could have been a much better movie if they had the integrity to interview professors who hold to the historic Christian teaching on sexual ethics and who have studied and published on this very mistranslation and the other passages they discuss in the film. It would have complicated the film, but it would have strengthened it immensely in the end. It would certainly be (potentially) more convincing with that kind of honesty, providing the affirming case has more warrant for its take (which is what the film assumes). Then showing the film to congregations that are deeply divided over the issue might be a constructive exercise that facilitates a fair conversation.

Consider Bishop N.T. Wright in the UK, or Preston Spinkle, Darrin Belousek, Mark Yarhouse and Christopher Yuan in the USA or Patrick Franklin here in Canada. Another qualified professor has critically reviewed the film here–a Christian Reformed seminary professor named Jeffrey Weima. (Activist Kathy Vandergrift chastises him for his tone and choice of language here. She doesn’t really engage his argument, but pushes him to be more charitable in his writing.) The director could have let the viewers judge the arguments if they had “both sides” presented fairly (in fact, it can be argued that there are actually six or seven different positional options on this issue. So even the two options in the film is skewing the conversation on ethics).

Be aware that the film isn’t just about that one verse. Multiple scholars are interviewed, including an Orthodox rabbi, who all insist that every passage in the Bible’s books that refers to sexual ethics only prohibits exploitative, abusive, or manipulative forms of same sex sex. They argue the Bible nowhere addresses the possibility of loving, covenanted same sex bonds. For some, this silence is an opening for championing same sex marriage–assuming the ancients didn’t consider the option at all. For others, it remains a good reason to shun such sexual relations–the whole idea is assumed unthinkable to the ancients. The approach that sees this lacuna as permission-giving is not a new argument, although it is a significant one that many have taken to be the final word.

If taken at face value, this movie may sway some people to an affirming stance. But to a discerning viewer the discrediting of the father and his position makes the film appear very weak in its own interpretative commitment. It echoes the prejudice of dominant culture in the West and fails to present our cultural, moral, and religious dilemma for what it is: a very difficult struggle for discernment that shows both love and faithfulness, grace and truth.

We would not have this long and intractable debate if the nature of the call of love and justice were crystal clear.

I am not a Greek scholar, nor is sexual ethics my academic department. So the question becomes quite personal: which scholars or pastors will you trust? Conforming to the views of the people around you is a common human tendency, but we need to examine our conscience and do some homework. Which translation is most faithful, and after that, which interpretation of the translation is the best approach to applying it today? The stakes are high, as we are talking about people’s lives, loves, and limits. Is “do no harm” the extent of ethics, and how is “harm” to be understood? How is the love command to operate when it comes to the meaning inscribed in our bodies and the vagaries and varieties of our desires? What are the norms based in creation that are given for our flourishing and freedom? These and other questions remain unaddressed in the film and linger in our debates.

More Questions to Consider

There are three more aspects to the film I want to draw attention to.

First of all, there are at least two moments in the film when a gay person is questioning the ethics of their sexual feelings and they turn to the internet for a google search. Both times they are surprised that there are others out there asking the same questions, and finding different answers.

This is not highlighted in the movie at all, but I think the role of electronic communications in this issue is profoundly important. People who struggled with their same-sex desires in the past would have an immensely difficult time finding others who share their story. Now they are only a click away. This kind of instant solidarity was not available before, and it makes a tremendous cultural difference. Whether it merely allows for the political policy shifts we have witnessed or if it is also a revelation of a hidden condition/orientation that conservative religions need to come to terms with is something not yet clear. But it is a question that lingers.

Secondly, there is a point in the film where they assume the mistranslations are the result of “patriarchy”–the domination by male leaders who want to distract from their own abusive behaviours by scapegoating a sexual minority. I’m not convinced yet that “patriarchy” is more than a villainous abstraction used to explain all what ills human society. But because of the long string of clergy sexual abuse I have witnessed in the last 5-10 years, I’m not ready to dismiss some version of this argument. Are we focusing too much on the atypical attractions of a sexual minority when powerful leaders continue to abuse their female colleagues and employees, some of which is covered up or excused?

The two issues do not have to be played off each other like that, but it does press those in orthodox churches for some self-examination, whether or not you accept the notion of an undefined “patriarchy” that coercively controls human institutions.

Finally, the movie has other stories woven into it. Ed Oxford is a middle-aged man who went to seminary but slowly realized his gay orientation and went into the finance industry instead. He has a collection of ancient Bibles and is a key resource in the investigation into the mistranslation with author and activist Kathy Baldock. Ed has remained celibate.

There is one moment where he is asked on camera if his failure to develop an intimate relationship is due to his upbringing in a conservative Christian home and church. He responds by talking about how every time he tried to talk with someone about his sexual feelings they would immediately distance themselves from him. He was profoundly lonely and became suicidal because of these rejections.

There is something horribly sad about this exchange, and it can bring tears to your eyes. Yet I did not see it as an exclusively homosexual experience: it was a deeply human moment. Seeking intimacy–in both good places and all the wrong places–is close to the heart of what it means to be human. We all feel isolated at times, some of us more often than others, and yet others of us live persistently, excruciatingly lonely lives. Some lack an intimate partner even in a marriage. Apparently only about 60 percent of the population above 18 is married at any given moment–for over 100 years already. But we are much lonelier today, some calling it an epidemic.

This is part of our human predicament, and while the internet promises connection, it falls woefully short. We must open our hearts and homes wider in this polarized era, even as we disagree profoundly about ethical, religious, and political issues. We must continue to cut across cultural and political differences in our social interactions, or we will exacerbate the social isolation.

Near the end of the movie the pastor father and film director daughter both refuse to compromise on their opposing views of same sex sexuality, but they embrace. It’s tense, hopeful and unsatisfying; yet it is a very real picture of our conflicted communities and families, where we disagree, but want to be together. Perhaps that is the best we can do for now.