But I’m not interested in society, which is doomed to pass away (“the world is passing away along with its desires,” 1 Jn. 2:17), but in the church. Tell me, reader, how can the church be guiltless of partiality, inconsistency, and hypocrisy if it makes certain unnatural immorality nameable in polite Christian society, but wishes to regard others as unthinkable? If you ordain a man who lusts after his own sex, why not a youth pastor who lusts after children? Why say the first is an example of God’s sanctifying grace, his continued experience of such lust notwithstanding, but that the other is unacceptable?

In recent years there has been much debate about whether it is permissible to ordain to church office a man who experiences the unnatural lust of desiring other men if he refrains from acting upon it, recognizes it is sinful, and otherwise assents to the historic Christian position on marriage and sexual morality in both word and deed. Desiring to be loving and fair, many have asserted that it is permissible to do so. The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), for example, has both retained in office men who experience such lust and actively ordained at least one man even after he admitted such errant thoughts, and even after adopting changes to its Book of Church Order that prohibit such men from holding office.

Regrettably, this position has been promulgated with many euphemisms and with ideas taken from sources other than Scripture. Men have spoken rather of attraction than lust, and have spoken of sexuality as a constituent part of man that expresses itself in a fixed orientation (at least in men), that, they argue, cannot be truly changed, and the attempt to alter which poses great health risks, including mental and emotional disturbance, to those that experience it. The church, it is argued, must accept these men’s orientation, identity, and descriptions of self, else be guilty of ‘policing language’ and asking people to lie to and about themselves. Some even speak as though it is a Pharisaical laying of heavy burdens (Matt. 23:4) upon the tempted to ask them to forego referring to themselves in light of their lusts, or to work to eliminate them.

Such talk contradicts Scripture and our confessions and is sinful and shameful. One, it is not right to prefer concepts taken from either psychology – a field which has been heavily influenced by enemies and haters of the faith like Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud – or from secular society’s popular attitudes rather than to use Scripture’s understanding of human nature.[1] This is, incidentally, a fault in which many of the opponents of the sin in question have also been ensnared. For example, homosexual, which critics often use to decry this sin, comes from the 1892 English translation of psychologist Richard von Kraftt-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, a work in which he is said to have purposefully used Latin to discourage public readership of his study of deviant sex.

Two, it is dishonest to use euphemisms when they shade the truth by making sin seem to be other than it is. Scripture regards the sin prohibited in Leviticus 18:22 as “abominable.” Is the lust for what is abominable not also abominable itself? Is the desire to murder someone less depraved than the actual doing so? The practical result and degree of the evil may differ (to the would-be victim’s relief and continued health), but the type of moral character is the same in both cases, a heinous desire producing a heinous deed.[2] “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality” (Matt. 15:19). It is shameful to even speak of such things as Lev. 18:22-breaking and the lust for it, and tzhey occur in societies and people that God has given over to judgment (Gen. 18-19; Jdg. 19-21; comp. Rom. 1:24-28; Jude 1:7).

Three, and to our point here, those that speak of such things are opening the door to other sins being normalized. If it is permissible, in light of justice and charity, to ordain a man who carries such depraved sin in his own breast, then why not others? As long as he doesn’t act on it, why not ordain a man who:

• Feels recurrent desire for his female relatives? (Call it ‘same family attraction’)
• For livestock? (‘Other species attraction’)
• Dead bodies? (‘Other vital state attraction’)
• Children? (‘Minor attraction’)
• For multiple people at once? (‘Multiple partner attraction’)
• An AI chat program? (‘Digital companion attraction’)

If you think that it is acceptable to talk of ‘same sex attraction’ (SSA) where God speaks of “impurity” (Rom. 1:24) and “dishonorable passions” (v. 26) and says such things “must not even be named among you” (Eph. 5:3), why not think it is acceptable to talk of ‘minor attraction’? What basis is there for keeping pedophilia taboo and calling it such rather than renaming it ‘minor attraction’?

Indeed, how can one say that the temptation to man-bedding (the Gk. arsenokoitai(s) of 1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Tim. 1:10) is no longer unspeakably shameful, but still also object to any of those others above? By appealing to social custom? But our society is wrong about many things, is working to normalize or has normalized many evils, and is animated by many things besides our faith, even other faiths and human wisdom that is hostile to God’s truth (1 Cor. 3:19). Is it law? Yet the law permits many evils (as fornication and adultery) which God says are damnable, and which experience attests cause social strife. Should God’s church then make the customs of unbelieving society and law their authority in this matter? Only as an argumentum a minore ad maius, that is, as an argument from the lesser to the greater (as Paul did in 1 Cor. 5:1).

Yet we should not stop there, but go farther and have a higher and purer morality than the unbelieving (comp. 1 Cor. 5:6-6:20). Where society is right to despise pedophilia, it is wrong to celebrate the unnatural perversion of Leviticus 18:22-breaking. And as it changed its attitude for the worse on the latter, there is reason to fear it shall fall also in the former. At this point if it remains at least partly in the right, it will only be by being inconsistent. (And God be praised, men are often inconsistent; inconsistency is an eminently human trait, from which good often comes.)[3]

But I’m not interested in society, which is doomed to pass away (“the world is passing away along with its desires,” 1 Jn. 2:17), but in the church. Tell me, reader, how can the church be guiltless of partiality, inconsistency, and hypocrisy if it makes certain unnatural immorality nameable in polite Christian society, but wishes to regard others as unthinkable? If you ordain a man who lusts after his own sex, why not a youth pastor who lusts after children? Why say the first is an example of God’s sanctifying grace, his continued experience of such lust notwithstanding, but that the other is unacceptable?

You cannot do so but by submitting to society’s opinions and being inconsistent. But does such inconsistency do a good service to the church and unbelievers? Does it not rather sow confusion? Already I have read Substack commenters saying they don’t understand why their pedophilia should be called that rather than ‘minor attraction,’ and asking why they shouldn’t be allowed to speak openly about it and still be in full communion with the church and accepted by other believers.[4] Maybe that was sarcasm or a false flag comment. It didn’t seem like it, but these are such confused times it is hard to tell.

And if they are sincere, why shouldn’t they argue as they do? If we can redefine sinful lust as non-culpable attraction in the one case, why not all others? If we can look at a man who admits the recurrent experience of the most perverse and depraved lusts and respond with ‘you seem like a mature person to lead and teach Christ’s sheep’ rather than ‘are you sure you’ve examined yourself and can say with confidence that you’re actually in Christ?’ in the case of a man with catamitic thoughts,[5] why not say the same to one with bestialitious or pederastic ones?[6]

God regards these sins as accompanying each other, and where we find the one, we might expect to find the others (Lev. 18:6-23; comp. vv. 3 and 24-28). The US Supreme Court ruled that marriage is not inherently defined by the different sex of its two participants in 2015. The next year North Carolina was compelled to pass a law prohibiting the use of restrooms by members of the opposite sex because one of its cities wished to mandate private businesses allow men in women’s restrooms in response to a campaign pushed by a group headed by a former youth pastor convicted of molesting a boy. The next year a highly-acclaimed, award-winning film portrayed bestiality. There is no slippery slope fallacy here, just proof that sin of one type bursts forth in other and worse types unless it is restrained.

What then is to be done? “Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Cor. 14:20). We must return to thinking about these things as scripture does. The 2021 AIC Report on Human Sexuality is about 32,000 words, or one-fourth the length of the New Testament, all on this one topic. Exactly how does that comport with Eph. 5:3 (“sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints”)? How does it comport with our command to be “innocent as to what is evil” (Rom. 16:19)? That report was commended as “biblically faithful” and yet it actually delves so far into the matter as to ponder the physical elements of immoral sex acts and whether they bear on the meaning of malakoi in 1 Cor. 6:9. What kind of innocence is that?

Or again, we are to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:1). The AIC report mentions lust only 9 times, five of them in quoting older writers and the confession/catechisms. It mentions some form of gay, homosexual, same-sex, attraction, transgender, and sexuality 48, 60, 88, 112, 15, and 114 times respectively. Those are all from sources other than scripture. Curiously, lesbian gets but one mention, in Rosaria Butterfield’s biography. Desire is used plentifully (91), but in varied fashion, while concupiscence gets a decent number (53), though that archaic term is so far associated with Rome that a fair bit of the discussion has to go to dispelling Rome’s erroneous assertions about it. Lev. 18:22 is cited once and quoted never, as also Jude 1:7 and Rom. 1:18-32, while 1 Tim. 1:10 is cited twice but not quoted and 1 Cor. 6:9-11 is similarly not quoted but is cited, inc. once as proof that experiencing abominable lust is not disqualifying (“we do not consider this sin struggle automatically to disqualify someone for leadership in the church,” p. 31). God’s severe denunciation of this sin as “abominable,” “defiling passion,” etc., is therefore not repeated in the text, but is foregone for less pointed talk.

The thing is shot through with worldliness, in other words, and a reader could be forgiven for thinking that a significant point of the thing was to justify allowing men who experience the lust to break Lev. 18:22 into office. It is glozed over with very many true things, and with many things finely stated, though accompanied also with some objectionable statements and ideas, but giving such men a voice seems to have undergirded the report (not least that at least two of the seven report writers profess to experience unnatural lusts).

Now I say that we have already drunk from worldliness and disobeyed God in these matters, and that if we do not take pains to repent and modify our thinking we may well fall into worse difficulties. We have already laid the ground for accepting pedophilia and other evils by our arguments. We have been heartily ashamed to say that anything is necessarily beyond the pale if it is in abeyance or confined to the realm of thought or feeling. We have been loathe to recommend that private struggles ought to remain private. It has been said that the Church does not open windows into men’s souls; a fine principle, but at the present time she ought also to recommend that men not open the windows of their own souls to the wider world, lest further evils appear among us.

Tom Hervey is a member of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Laurens County, SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, and helped modernize Volume I of James Hervey’s classic dialogue on evangelical faith, Theron and Aspasio, available now at Monergism.

[1] In drawing a distinction between a Christian and a secular-psychological understanding of human nature and of morality I do not mean to imply that all psychological insights or studies are errant (either morally or as far as truth is concerned), nor that all Christian notions of the mind and how it works are right. Whether popular or high-brow, many Christian ideas about the mind and its workings and afflictions are wrong and unhelpful, whereas unbelieving psychology has valid understanding of some of those same things. Telling someone who suffers, say, depression, that it is purely a matter of having enough faith is not right and not helpful – to make a dramatic understatement – to those that suffer from that malady, nor is all psychological thinking about it wrong. Unbelieving students of that illness (whether common observers who reflect upon their experience of it, academic researchers, or psychological practitioners) have made valid insights about it, even where they have built upon a view of human nature that is otherwise mistaken. Common grace means the unbeliever is often right about many things, even if he is ignorant of spiritual truth and builds upon a bad foundation. Special grace does not always accompany excellence in thinking about earthly affairs.

[2] It is noteworthy that the PCA’s 2021 report on Human Sexuality says that “a sinfully disordered sexual attraction (of any kind) is properly to be called sin—and all sin, ‘both original and actual’ earns God’s wrath (WCF 6.6)—but it is significantly less heinous (using the language of the WLC 151) than any level of acting upon it in thought or deed” (p. 48). Actually Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 151 does not say that some sins are “significantly less heinous,” but speaks of “aggravations that make some sins more heinous than others,” and this in elaboration of Q. 150’s statement that “some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others.” The aggravation the report authors presumably have in mind is that a sin is aggravated if it is “not only conceived in the heart, but breaks forth in words and actions” (151.3), but the judgment that this makes a “significantly” large difference in heinousness is that of the report authors, not the catechism. It is noteworthy as well that the same section says that being against “the light of nature” is an aggravation and appeals to Rom. 1:26-7 as proof. It is true that sinning in external deed is generally worse than doing so in inner thought, but is also true that some inner sins are worse than some external ones, particularly where they are especially heinous. And abominable lusts are “aggravated” and therefore especially heinous.

[3] That inconsistency will probably hinge upon the concept of consent, which is about the only element of sexual morality as far as the unbelieving world is concerned, and which helps preserve a sense that rape and offenses against the young are abominable.

[4] Regrettably, I can no longer find this comment so as to provide a link to it.

[5] Those that claim to experience recurring unnatural lusts seem to take great offense at the suggestion that their faith should be questioned in light of their continued experience of such lusts, but other believers have the right and in some cases the duty to do so. The continued existence of such immoral desires may indicate they are true believers whose sanctification has not yet progressed to the point where such desires are extinct, or it might be that there is an element of sexual brokenness that is traceable not only to sin but to its consequences (i.e., that mental illness is partly to blame), or it may indicate that such people are unregenerate. It rather depends on what other fruit their lives show. If this seems uncharitable, consider that a) all believers are to examine themselves (2 Cor. 13:5) and to be examined by others in certain cases (such as candidacy for office); and b) there are many continuing internal sins that this applies to. No responsible presbytery would ordain someone who admitted to recurrent homicidal thoughts, nor someone who went about talking about his recurrent temptation to witchcraft or paganism. Those are desires that we fully expect to disappear or to never exist, and there are other sexual sins whose continued internal experience would be deemed disqualifying and an indication of either mental illness or a lack of spiritual maturity. If this be doubted, consider: how comfortable would you be with a man who talked about how enduring and unchangeable his adulterous lusts were, named himself by them, went to conferences to associate with others of like situation, and wrote articles about the unique advantages of his adulterous desires, and of how they enable to engage in deep spiritual friendship with women other than his wife? Would you want such a man as the spiritual leader of your wife and daughters, or of yourself if you’re a woman?

[6] Scripture does not directly condemn pedophilia, unlike some of the other sins which I mention here, but that such is egregious sin follows by obvious inference, provided we recognize that there will be some cultural disagreement as to what qualifies as a child. Marriage is between one man and one woman, each being sufficiently mature that they can leave father and mother and live together apart from their elders, replete with mental, emotional, social, and physical union (Gen. 2:24): i.e., maturity is assumed in such a relation. But what qualifies as maturity may vary, and in some societies an age that might be deemed so low as to involve criminal advantage taking and statutory rape in case of seduction might in other societies (or even in those same societies in other circumstances) be marriageable. I have personally known people who married young or whose parents did (say, 13 or 14, with spouses of similar age or several years older), though this is not necessarily advisable. Marrying a prepubescent girl should always be deemed wrong, and in general marrying young (less than 18) should be discouraged in our society in these days. The only scripture that might make it seem like what we would call pedophilia might be acceptable is Numbers 31:18 (“all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves”), and that only if we presume that “keep alive for yourselves” is with a view toward marrying them rather than putting them to domestic service, and in marrying them promptly rather than at a later date. The other Midianites were slain by God’s command because they had caused Israel to stumble into idolatry and sexual immorality (ch. 25). The young girls would have been guiltless of that offense, and hence spared on that account, the Midianites otherwise being regarded favorably in scripture as descendants of Abraham, Moses’ wife Zipporah and her family being Midianites as well. It is possible the spared girls were subsequently married in some cases, but there is no particular reason from scripture why we should assume that did not wait until they were older and more integrated into Israeli society, unless it be the general observation that the Israelites were prone to stumbling in many ways, and especially in questions of marriage and morality. Regardless, Num. 31:18 in no way permits believers or anyone else to marry young girls before their maturity.