Bible lessons

How coincidental that I should read Cal Thomas's commentary on the Book of Revelation just after finishing Elaine Pagels's new study of the controversial scripture. That puts me in a position to give the horselaugh to Thomas when he attributes Revelation to "the Apostle John," since Pagels nicely summarizes the argument that John of Patmos, the reputed author of the book according to scholars, is not the same person as John the son of Zebedee, the disciple, apostle and supposed gospel author. Few of the early church fathers attributed Revelation to the Apostle, and those that did sought to improve the pedigree of a disputed tome because they could use its prophecies as allegories for their own struggles with alleged heretics. Thomas cites Revelation to criticize President Obama's supposed "spin" of scripture. He has a notion that the President is trying to cite biblical authority for his new position in favor of same-sex marriage, though he produces no more evidence for this than Obama's citation of the Golden Rule. Assuming that Obama means the Golden Rule to abrogate the familiar animadversions against homosexuality, Thomas accuses the President of "claim[ing that Scripture] says something it does not," an offense the columnist equates with heresy. Revelation comes into it because the final book of the Bible ends with a threat of punishment for anyone who tries to add or subtract from it. Pagels argues that authoritarian early Christians like Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria liked that bit because it helped them enforce a canon and exclude more problematic writings. They liked Paul's warnings against preaching "another Gospel," also cited by Thomas, for the same reason.

At this late date, I'm stunned to find a Christian homophobe like Thomas arguing against selective reading of the Bible. Don't you suppose that he gets hundreds of e-mails every time he raises the subject citing all those nasty prohibitions and death penalties from the Old Testament (for disobeying one's parents, eating shellfish, etc.). Liberals and atheists have those lists readymade, and you know that Cal Thomas will never affirm any of those exotic strictures. Doesn't that make his a selective reading bordering on heresy? You can't criticize anyone else for a selective or insidiously creative reading unless you're prepared to affirm the whole thing, verse by verse, or you can claim some sort of divine revelation of the correct reading of the Old Testament. But to my admittedly limited knowledge I know of no officially established rationale for ignoring all the zany and barbaric prohibitions while continuing to affirm ancient homophobia.

Thomas himself appeals to a divine totalitarianism to validate his discrimination.

Scripture teaches that the marriage union between a man and woman is an illustration of how Christ and the church are one (Ephesians 5:32). It also teaches that since God made us, conceived of marriage and created sex to be enjoyed within the marital bond, He gets to set the rules and establish the boundaries for human behavior, not because He is a curmudgeon who wants to deny us pleasure, but because He knows what is best for us.

But the argument from universal creation that God knows what's best is equally applicable in defense of every archaic taboo in the Bible, even those from which even Thomas might recoil.  Some Christians argue that Jesus abrogated the Old Testament and that Leviticus and Deuteronomy can be ignored, but Thomas isn't one of them. Historically, what's happened is that Christians stopped caring about most of those primitive mandates, but continue to care about stigmatizing homosexuality. Christian homophobia has less to do with God than with Christians -- and when Christian homophobia is rampant in Africa or the U.S., it probably has less to do with Christianity than with the attitudes of Americans and Africans. That should be obvious whether you believe in God or not. It's up to homophobic Christians to explain why they care so much about this issue, compared to everything else in the Bible -- and not for politicians to square their literary allusions with anyone's selective orthodoxy.