Should Christians Believe in Stoning Prostitutes?

Introduction to the Program’s Two Main Arguments

Let's talk about what we're going to do on today's edition of Fighting for the Faith. Segment number one, I have entitled, although this is not the only aspect of this that we're going to be covering, but I've named segment number one for today's program, Should Christians Believe in Stoning Prostitutes?

You can't make this stuff up. Yeah, the reason, just let me give you a little bit of backstory, okay? Somebody, a listener, happened to put on my Facebook wall a link to a video from a gentleman I have never seen on television, and you gotta understand something.

I so rarely watch television that I don't really know who the popular commentators and things like that, you know, news people are. I just don't have time, and so, in fact, nothing personal, but I have found that I'm a much happier person when I don't watch the evening news every night, and I find that I'm much happier not getting caught up in all of the drama in the political world and all that kind of stuff.

You know, for me, news is which sports teams that I follow won or lost last night or last week, and what's the weather going to be. Now, I know that seems like maybe I'm shirking some kind of civic responsibility here, but the reality is that preparing for this program and the theological work and the other school work and things like that, I just don't have time, and so, I don't know who this person is, but somebody put a link up to a video by an MSNBC commentator by the name of Lawrence O'Donnell, and the screenshot is just absolutely priceless in the worst way, but he claims to know a thing or two about the Bible, and it's clear by what he says that he doesn't know what he's doing with the Bible, and so, he makes some very interesting claims in this particular thing, and of course, he's commenting on the Louis Giglio thing, and I guess MSNBC is like a way liberal outfit, and so, he's quoting the standard liberal line, and the things that he says are so bad that, I mean, it makes me wonder, I mean, where did this guy learn these arguments from because they're horrible, and so, the segment, I've named it, Should Christians Believe in Stoning Prostitutes?, but we're going to take a look at two little things that this guy, Lawrence O'Donnell, said in his TV commentary that show that he don't know what he's doing, but the other thing is this, is that if you're out there, you know, having conversations with co-workers and family members who are not Christian, they, having watched Lawrence O'Donnell, might, you know, at the next family gathering, you know, throw these things at you as if somehow these are decisive zingers that are going to shut you down and cause you to put your tail between your legs as a Christian and scamper away in shame and stuff like that, and don't, don't scamper away in shame.

What I'm hopefully going to be able to show you is that these are not even remotely difficult arguments to overcome as long as you understand what's, you know, what the right answer is. So, with that, we're going to dive into our program proper, and with that, we've got to do this.

Lawrence O'Donnell's Claim That the Bible Says "Homosexual" Is a Translation Issue

So, does the Bible need a rewrite? Well, according to Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC, apparently the Bible needs to be rewritten, and so I've named this segment, by the way, is Should Christians Believe in Stoning Prostitutes?

Okay, now, the first thing I'm going to do, I'm not going to actually play the stoning prostitutes bit, I'm going to play for you a portion of Lawrence O'Donnell's commentary from MSNBC from last week regarding the Louis Giglio flap, where he says, basically, he's commenting on the sermon that surfaced from Louis Giglio, where Louis Giglio was pointing out in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9, it talks about, you know, homosexuals not inheriting the kingdom of God, this is what it says.

And so, Lawrence O'Donnell, he decided to weigh in on this, and he considered what Louis Giglio said, you know, regarding homosexuals to be off the mark and not accurate,.

And here was his argument. Now, I heard that, and I didn't think the word homosexual appeared in the Bible, and so I checked it today, where he says the word homosexual, the Bible actually.

Uses the word effeminate. Now, I'm going to stop right there. Oh, the Bible doesn't actually use the word homosexual? Um, actually, that portion of the Bible wasn't written in English. Did you know that?

Yeah, it's true. It wasn't written in English. In fact, it doesn't use the English word homosexual in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9, because it was written in Greek, and that was not the word that they used back then.

And like I pointed out last week on the episode, and you know, I think we can tell, this episode is banned by the official religion of, you know, state religion of the United States of America. Well, what I pointed out in that is that the phrase used in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9, which in the English standard version reads, let me read it, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality. Okay, that's what it says in the English standard version. Now, if you were to, let's go to the NIV, hang on a second here, I actually have multiple translations on my computerized Bible.

Let me go to the old NIV. Here's what it says, do not be deceived, the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders.

Okay, that's one translation here. And then, of course, let's pull up the King James just to be nice to the King James only crowd out there. Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards.

So, here's the idea, okay? Every one of these translations is translating from a Greek text. This letter written by the Apostle Paul was originally written in Koine Greek. So, each of the different translations is trying to translate what the Greek says there, and the Greek does not actually say homosexual, which by the way, if I'm correct on this, I did some research on this and people have been helping me with this, the word homosexual itself is a fairly recent term in the English language.

It's a term coined, if I'm not mistaken, really back in the 20th century. So, it's a new word, okay? So, the idea is this, is that, well, yeah, back in the year 50, 51, 52 AD when the Apostle Paul wrote this in Koine Greek, he did not use the word homosexual.

Did you know that? It's absolutely true. And so, when you look at these different English translations that have different words that they're using to describe or to translate the particular phrase, what they're looking at here, all you need to do is look at the Greek.

The Greek phrase, by the way, there's two of them, or do you not know, hootei malakoi, hootei arsenakoitai, two different phrases, both describing homosexual acts, which comes in the English Standard Version as a phrase, men who practice homosexuality.

But malakoi, basically referring to the effeminate receiver, arsenakoitai, kind of think of the person on top. That's the idea here. Both are described, both words are used. So, his argument, and let me back up the tape here a little bit here, his argument is silly.

And the reason why it's silly is because he's arguing that, oh, it doesn't say homosexual there. He's basically accusing Louis Giglio of engaging in falsehood, okay, because he says that the word homosexual is not there.

And what's he referencing? A different English translation. Does that really help? No. If you want to know what that passage really says, technically, you're going to need to look it up in the Greek. So, listen again to Lawrence O'Donnell's, yeah, amazingly, horribly bad and like silly argument.

I heard that, and I didn't think the word homosexual appeared in the Bible. And so, I checked it today, where he says the word homosexual, the Bible actually uses the word effeminate. Now, it turns out there are some very new versions of the Bible that do use the word homosexual now instead of effeminate.

So, the Bible, which is supposed to be the unchangeable word of God, hasn't been absolutely unchangeable by haters of gay people who are... What a dumb.

Argument. The absolutely unchangeable word of God hasn't been absolutely unchangeable. Yeah, Lawrence, seriously, you expect us to take this argument seriously? The part that hasn't changed is the original Greek.

Go back to the Greek and you'll see what it says. Now, the reason why English translations differ, for the most part, is because they're trying to translate from the original language into a vernacular form of English that a large majority of people can not only understand, but find readable.

For instance, if you were to look in my notebook, I keep a notebook of my translations of both the Old Testament and New Testament, from Hebrew into English and from Greek into English. If you were to look at my translations, trust me when I tell you this, you wouldn't find it to be the type of thing where, hey, let's check out the Roseboro Standard Edition and let's read it.

My translation is highly not readable because when I translate, I try to, for the most part, go word for word rather than thought for thought, and it reads kind of stiff and wooden. It's not really good English.

The reason why is because when I'm teaching from my notes, I want to be able to look back into the Greek using my translation, and so when I'm translating, my translation is wooden on purpose because it reminds me of what's there in the Greek if I don't have the Greek text in front of me.

So the idea is that I teach from the ESV and I keep notes of my translations that are, it just is not readable. That's all I'm saying is that you really wouldn't find reading the Roseboro Standard Edition to be all that fun, okay?

Let's just put it this way. It's very stiff, but that's on purpose because of what I want it for. I could polish it and make it more readable for an English translation, but it's for me, it's not for you.

Does that make sense? But the thing is, is that the part that doesn't change is the original document. The original, what we have in the Greek, that doesn't change at all. So here he's basically making this argument, listen, listen, okay?

The Bible, which is supposed to be unchanging, has been changed. No, it hasn't. It hasn't been changed. The Greek text is still intact, okay? What's happened is that we have a different translation trying to reach a current modern audience of English speakers.

By the way, the ESV itself, which I'm so fond of, there is a British English edition of the ESV as well as an American English edition of the ESV. Should I therefore say that because, well, there's a British English edition and a US English edition, well, therefore they're tinkering with the word of God?

No. Both of them are translations trying to reach a particular group of English speakers and readers and speak to them in a way that is not difficult and understandable. You get what I'm saying. Now let me fast forward a little bit.

Why the Old Covenant Law Does Not Require Christians to Stone Prostitutes

Now this comes back to the section that I've named, should Christians believe in stoning prostitutes? Well, here's another one of Lawrence O'Donnell's blisteringly banal and silly arguments against Christianity.

Listen in.

As I've pointed out in many previous episodes of The Politics of Religion, no one accepts all of the teaching of the Bible. No one. No one accepts all of the teaching of the Bible? No one? Well,.

Then we could just throw out any part we don't like. This is his argument. Listen.

There are no literal followers of the word of God as presented in the Bible. Really? Left on earth. They're completely gone? If there were any, they would have to be burning people at the stake.

All day, every day. Really? Because that's what the Bible says to burn people at the stake all.

Day, every day? For example, the Bible orders that prostitutes be burned at the stake.

Now this has all the appearances of, oh no, he's killed Christianity with this argument. No, he hasn't. Okay. This is like, it's a bad argument. And here's the reason why. Because he's not recognizing the Bible for what it is.

Okay. The Bible, 66 different books, 30, 31 authors, depending on how you slice it there. But here's the idea. Okay. Is that in the section that he's referencing, okay, this would be from the Mosaic covenant, probably from the book of Leviticus.

What he's citing there is a section of scripture that was the civil law for the theocracy of the nation of Israel. Do Christians, if they believe the Bible, do Christians have to believe in stoning and burning prostitutes?

No, they don't. And just because they don't doesn't mean that you don't believe the Bible or all of it. Okay. For instance, I absolutely believe that in the nation of Israel of ancient Israel, which went the time of its founding was a theocracy in the laws given in the Mosaic covenant that were the laws that governing the theocracy of Israel, that it was a capital crime to be a prostitute, an idolater, a false prophet, you know, and the list can go on and on.

Okay. I absolutely believe that. Do I therefore, by extension, am I required then to believe that the death penalty must be instituted for all prostitutes in the United States if I'm a believing Christian?

Nope, not at all. And here's the reason why is because the United States of America is not the theocracy of Israel. Okay. And there's this little distinction you've heard of these two little distinctions, right?

The Old Testament and the New Testament. A good way to refer to that is the old covenant versus the new covenant. Okay. We're not under the old covenant as Christians were under the new covenant. And the new covenant doesn't require us to stone prostitutes, but to call all sinners to repentance and faith and trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

So you can absolutely believe everything in the Bible and still not believe that the Bible is commanding you to stone prostitutes or to burn them at the stake or anything of the sort because the Bible doesn't command you to do that.

It doesn't command you to do that at all. The Bible, God commanded the people of the nation of ancient Israel who lived in that old theocracy, he commanded them to do that, not you and not me. Now, the fact that it was a capital crime should tell you something of what God thinks about it.

Okay. And God, on the last day, is the judge. You get it? So, I mean, these are not arguments. This is just ridiculous, silly, surfacy types of things from somebody who thinks he knows something about the Bible, but it's clear that he knows nothing about the Bible.

And so these arguments, I mean, they're super easy to shoot down, but see, here's the deal. There's a good chance that, you know, maybe at the water cooler tomorrow or at your next family gathering, you know, that person in your family who likes ribbing you and tearing you apart because they know you're a Christian, they might've heard this commentary and they know that you think that homosexuality is a sin.

And so they're going to throw these zingers at you. Well, now you're prepared to defend yourself and to be able to defend God's word and then turn the tables and give an answer and a reason for the hope that lies within you.

Proclaim Christ and him crucified for your sins and for their sins.