False Bible Argument - Born Eunuchs are gay

THE METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY CHURCH (GAY CHURCH) 

MCC justifies its existence on interpreting Bible scripture that appear to say that God made homosexuals. In particular, wouldjesusdiscriminate.com simply states that - Born Eunuchs are homosexuals, hence Jesus affirms - You can be born gay. But is this a correct interpretation of Matthew 19?

Below is the statement from "Would Jesus Discriminate" 

Here Jesus refers to "eunuchs who have been so from birth." This terminology ("born eunuchs") was used in the ancient world to refer to homosexual men. Jesus indicates that being a "born eunuch" is a gift from God.

SO LET'S EXAMINE IN CONTEXT THIS STATEMENT OF JESUS

Matthew 19:12 The linking γάρ (‘for’) confirms the role of v. 12 as explanatory of v. 11. But the explanation is anything but immediately transparent. We are introduced to three kinds of eunuchs, each introduced in a separate clause and classified in terms of how they came to be eunuchs.

1. The impression is that the listing is intended to be logically comprehensive: the situation is either a natural state or it results from the actions of others or of oneself.
2. The first two items on the list correspond to a known Jewish division.
3. The third item is distinctive in providing a reason for the emasculation: ‘for the sake of the kingdom of heaven’. διά (‘for the sake of’) could mean either ‘on the basis of’ and point to what lies behind and energises the self-emasculation or ‘in order to gain’. 

Scholarship has often preferred the former or left the matter open, but in the wider context concern about entering the kingdom, entering life, and having eternal life favour the latter.

What kinds of images would have been evoked by talk of ‘unmanned’ men?

In the LXX εὐνοῦχος regularly renders srys. In oriental courts eunuchs were used for roles in the royal court (initially, no doubt, because this made them ‘safe’ in relation to the royal harem, but then also to develop a cast who could devote themselves to public affairs on behalf of the monarch without the distraction of family). Over time this seems to have generated a class of people who were prepared for civil service by means of castration (mostly at a post-puberty stage?) and whatever training was deemed relevant. Among their number were those who attained to high office and great power. So a first image for eunuchs is that of members of a class of castrated civil servants.

There is a question, however, about whether the word srys necessarily continued to imply a castrated state, or whether it eventually came to be used of those who were exercising a role which in the history of the language had at an earlier time been restricted to eunuchs. 

The reason for raising the question is Gn. 39:1, 7, where we meet a srys who has a wife!  In OT usage much of the time the most natural translation is ‘official’ because that is the role in view. Only in Is. 56:3, 4 is the castrated state clearly in focus, but the role of the castrated state is clear enough in Est. 2:3, 14–15. 

And with these texts we should probably also set 2 Ki. 20:18; Is. 39:7, where royal sons are reduced to ‘srysym [the plural] in the palace of the king of Babylon’. Without Gn. 39:7 there would be no question to raise, but Gn. 39:7 is there. The sense of the Greek term εὐνοῦχος is drawn into this uncertainty only because of the LXX translation pattern. There is otherwise, as far as I have been able to discover, no evidence of any use of εὐνοῦχος that does not imply castration.

Eunuchs by birth at the beginning of the list make it quite clear, however, that Matthew has lack/loss of male potential in view. 

As now, children were occasionally born with defective genitals and subsequently would fail to develop male secondary characteristics as they grew up. The primary context in which eunuchs would have been made eunuchs by others is that mentioned in the paragraphs above.

Xenophon reflects on the change of temperament sought by castration: eunuchs are less aggressive and more loyal. Not among Jews, but more broadly, there was also some use of castration as a punishment. Self-mutilation would have been extremely rare, but some devotees of Attis are known to have been self-castrated. Those born with defective genitals would never properly mature, along with the castrated would never carry on the family line, and were to be excluded from the worshipping community of Israel (Dt. 23:2[ET 23:1]). The contempt in which eunuchs were normally held is well reflected in the quotation from Xenophon in n. 51, but so is the value that could be placed on their loyalty and single-minded devotion. The same bifurcation of attitude is true of the self-castrated devotees of Attis.

In general, humans view castration as a horrible thing, reducing the significance of the person in various respects, but they also recognize that the eunuch state may be beneficial in some cases.

In the present context a brief exploration of attitudes to sexual abstention may also be of value.

In general Jewish men felt a strong obligation to marry and reproduce. Regular sexual relations with one’s wife were a solemn obligation. The focus was on the obligation to reproduce, but the role of sex in marriage in the avoidance of immorality and of impure sexual thoughts was also recognised.

Nonetheless, both Josephus and Philo report the Essenes as consisting of celibate males. The explanations of this by Josephus and Philo are highly misogynist, but within their comments we may note in Philo an emphasis on the maintenance of the specific vision of religious community to which the Essenes were committed and in Josephus the Essene commitment to ‘shun pleasures as a vice and regard temperance and the control of the passions as a special virtue’. 

The latter smacks of Hellenistic dualism and may tell us more about Josephus than the Essenes, but even so it points to values present in some sections of Judaism. Stoic influence may be suspected of lying behind Jewish texts which set over against each other sex for procreation and sex for pleasure.

More centrally Jewish roots for valuing abstention from sex, at least temporarily, are not hard to find. 

In the Jewish purity system sexual activity temporarily rendered one ritually impure. To be ready to meet God on Sinai and later in the temple one needed to have refrained from sex in the immediately preceding period. As with other extensions of the scope of the purity laws, the restriction on sexual activity was readily generalised to cover such things as the Day of Atonement and times of fasting for rain or for the relief of famine.

The rabbis were in conflict over whether one should be allowed to delay marriage in order to study Torah, recognising that marriage and children could be a real distraction from intense study. In Je. 16:2 Jeremiah is instructed not to marry and have children: this will make a symbolic statement about the dreadful future that is coming for the families of Judea.

In the wider Greco-Roman world early medical science held that sexual continence meant that vital energy was retained in the body, to the benefit of its health and vitality.

NOW HERE IS THE EXPLANATION

Against this background of images evoked by the eunuch state and attitudes to sexual abstinence, what could Matthew mean by ‘make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven’? 

Nothing in Matthew provides encouragement to make a narrow link with one of the strands of culture and belief surveyed above. Three preliminary points can be made. 

First, it is highly unlikely that castration is intended any more here than was self-mutilation in 18:8–9. Despite the pull towards literalness produced by the first two of the three parallelled statements, the third is ultimately in a class apart; and this fact is signalled by the asymmetry produced by the presence of a motivational phrase in just this case. Making oneself a eunuch is a grotesque and powerful metaphor for something else. 

Second, the link with the discussion of marriage and divorce makes it most likely that the eunuch image has been chosen precisely because some form of self-denial in relation to sexual activity is in view. 

Third, the imagery of becoming a eunuch is chosen precisely because it takes up and intensifies the negative feelings engendered in a Jewish context by the notion that one should abstain from marriage and subsequent sexual expression within marriage.

We are left needing to find a form of sexual abstinence that will allow v. 12 to support and explain v. 11 and in turn make sense of its connection back to v. 10. 

Fidelity to marriage can hardly be called castration. The resolute refusal to enter a new marriage after divorcing one’s wife for adultery fits better but depends on an understanding of v. 9 that has been rejected above. 

The reference has been taken to be either to childless marriages where the husband does not send his wife away for her sterility or to leaving one’s wife for evangelistic work without divorcing and so forcing childlessness, but neither of these suggestions allows for a satisfactory link with the context. 

Countryman tries out the loss of the man’s patriarchal supremacy in the family in the new egalitarian Christian vision. This is an intriguing and challenging proposal, but it cannot be made to fit the Matthean context.

The points of best guidance for the present text would seem to come from 18:8–9, from which we may draw the principle that any sacrifice is worth making for the kingdom of heaven, and from 19:16–29, which press the need to be prepared to leave everything to follow Jesus. Precisely because the vision of marriage that Jesus promotes is so permanent, some people will sense the challenge to forego the possibility of marriage for the sake of the call of the kingdom of heaven. This is presumably what Jesus himself had done. 

But it clearly was not a general condition for being one of the disciples called by Jesus to travel with him and for him. Perhaps the Matthean Jesus saw in the unmarried state some of the advantages that Paul saw in 1 Cor. 7.68 It does not seem possible to be any more precise.

The concluding challenge picks up on the use of χωρεῖν (‘grasp’) in the previous verse. The clause is likely to be modelled on ‘The one who has ears to hear, let them hear’ language already used several times, one of them in 13:9, just before the verse (v. 11) which has such strong links with 19:11. As in 13:11 the call is to understand. One must penetrate a parablelike enigma here. Not all are called to make themselves eunuchs, but all are called to understand and affirm the priorities involved. But only those who have been able to engage with the kingdom of heaven through the presence of Jesus will be able to do so.

References

Bailey, J. L., ‘Experiencing the Kingdom as a Little Child: A Rereading of Mark 10:13–16’, WW 15 (1995), 58–67. • Beisser, F., ‘Markus 10, 13–16 (parr)-doch ein Text für die Kindertaufe’, KD 41 (1995), 244–51. • Brown, R., ‘Jesus and the Child as a Model of Spirituality’, IBS 4 (1982), 178–92. • Busemann, R., Jüngergemeinde, 119–28. • Carter, W., Households, 90–114. • Chilton, B. D. and McDonald, J. I. H., Ethics, 80–89. • Crossan, J. D., ‘Kingdom and Children: A Study in the Aphoristic Tradition’, Semeia 29 (1983), 75–95. • Derrett, J. D. M., ‘Why Jesus Blessed the Children (Mk. 10:13–16)’, NovT 25 (1983), 1–18. • Hahn, F., ‘Kindersegnung und Kindertaufe im ältesten Christentum’, in Urchristentum, ed. H. Frankemölle and K. Kertelge, 497–507. • Heckel, U., ‘Die Kindersegnung Jesu und das Segnen von Kindern: Neutestamentliche und praktisch-theologische Überlegungen zu Mk 10, 13–16 par’, TB 32 (2001), 327–45. • Kümmel, W. G., ‘Das Urchristentum, II: Arbeiten zu Spezialproblemen, c. Taufe und Gottesdienst’, TRu 51 (1986), 239–58. • Liebenberg, J., Language, 462–66. • Lindars, B., ‘John and the Synoptic Gospels: A Test Case’, NTS 27 (1981), 287–94. • Lindemann, A., ‘Die Kinder und die Gottesherrshaft’, WD 17 (1983), 77–104. • Patte, D., ‘Jesus’ Pronouncement about Entering the Kingdom like a Child: A Structural Exegesis’, Semeia 29 (1983), 3–42. • Ringshausen, G., ‘Die Kinder der Weisheit: Zur Auslegung von Mk 10:13–16 par’, ZNW 77 (1986), 34–63. • Robbins, V. K., ‘Pronouncement Stories and Jesus’ Blessing of the Children: A Rhetorical Approach’, Semeia 29 (1983), 43–74. • Robbins, V. K., ‘Using a Socio-Rhetorical Poetics to Develop a Unified Method’, SBLSP 31 (1992), 302–19. • Sauer, J., ‘Die ursprüngliche “Sitz im Leben” von Mk 10.13–16’, ZNW 72 (1981), 27–50. • Schlosser, J., Règne, 2:477–508. • Silberman, L. H., ‘Schoolboys and Storytellers’, Semeia 29 (1983), 109–15. • Stegemann, W., ‘Lasset die Kinder zu mir kommen’, in Traditionen der Befreiung: Sozialgeschichtliche Bibelauslegung, Vol. 1: Methodische Zugänge, ed. W. Stegemann and W. Schottroff (Munich: Kaiser, 1980), 114–44.

See further at 18:1–5.

Nolland John. (2005). Preface. In The Gospel of Matthew: a commentary on the Greek text (pp. 782–783). Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press.