One of the biggest challenges for Christians today is figuring out how to apply a very ancient book to modern moral issues. Society has changed a lot since the Bible was written, so we have to decide which biblical instructions are timeless rules for all generations, and which ones were just meant for the specific time and culture of the ancient world. This does not mean that every biblical rule is culturally relative. It means that Christians need a principled way to decide which rules express permanent moral principles and which reflect the particular world in which the Bible was written.
When Christians talk about how they study and understand the Bible, they use a word called “hermeneutics.” Hermeneutics is simply the set of rules or methods we use to interpret a text.
Both slavery and sexuality are talked about a lot in the Bible. When modern Christians read verses that allow slavery, they don’t just ignore them. Instead, they use a sophisticated hermeneutic—a careful method of interpretation—to look past those specific cultural rules and focus on the Bible’s bigger theological themes, like love and equality. The question of “hermeneutical consistency” asks a tough but necessary question: If we use these kinds of interpretative tools to understand what the Bible says about slavery, why do some Christians refuse to use those same interpretative principles when reading what the Bible says about sexual ethics?
Interpreting Regulated Institutions
If you read the Bible closely, you might be surprised to find that the Bible does not contain a straightforward command to abolish slavery anywhere. Instead, biblical laws regulate several forms of slavery that already existed in the ancient world.
Ancient biblical slavery wasn’t like the horrific, race-based slavery of early American history, but it included things like working off a debt you couldn’t pay, being captured in war, or working as a household servant. It clearly was a system where the text plainly allowed humans to own and control other humans.
Today, mainstream Christian traditions generally reject slavery as a legitimate institution, even though the biblical texts regulate rather than straightforwardly abolish it. They interpret these culturally embedded instructions by looking at the broader, bigger-picture principles of the Bible: the equal worth of all people, the importance of freedom, and the command to love your neighbor. Many Christians point out that the Bible planted the “seeds” of abolition. Over time, Christians followed the general direction—or trajectory—of those seeds to eventually conclude that all slavery is wrong.
Crucially, this proves something very important: Christians already accept that the Bible contains certain moral regulations that we no longer have to follow today, even when the ancient text originally allowed them.
How the Ancient World Understood Sexuality
If we take these same interpretative principles and apply them to sexual ethics, we have to carefully separate the history of the ancient world from our modern moral conclusions.
The historical difference here is not that ancient people were completely clueless about same-sex attraction while modern people suddenly discovered it. Ancient people clearly knew about same-sex desire and behavior.
The real difference is the conceptual framework—meaning, how they understood human nature. Today, sexual orientation is generally understood as a relatively enduring pattern of sexual and romantic attraction. The ancient world had no identical concept of sexual orientation as a stable aspect of personal identity. Because of this, we can’t just copy and paste ancient sexual categories directly into the modern world. It requires careful interpretation, not just quoting verses out of context.
Reading the Individual Texts
When scholars look at the history and culture behind the Bible (a process called historical-critical analysis), they see that the biblical texts talk about sexuality in very specific, ancient contexts.
- Leviticus: In the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus puts its rules about sex inside a larger set of laws about “holiness.” These laws were highly focused on ancient Israel keeping strict boundaries, protecting family lines, maintaining ritual purity, and making sure the Israelites stayed completely separate from the religious practices of the surrounding nations.
- Romans 1: The Apostle Paul writes about same-sex behavior in the context of his larger argument against idol worship and excessive, out-of-control desires. He argues using concepts and philosophical categories that would have made perfect sense to his specific audience in the ancient Greco-Roman world.
- 1 Corinthians 6 & 1 Timothy 1: In these letters, the writers use two very rare Greek words: malakoi and arsenokoitai. Even today, scholars disagree about exactly what these words meant. Some scholars have connected them with male prostitution, exploitative relationships, pederasty, particular sexual roles, or male-male sexual activity more generally. Because their exact meanings remain disputed, we should be cautious about assuming that these words map perfectly onto modern categories such as sexual orientation or same-sex marriage.
Even if the biblical authors believed that same-sex relations were generally wrong, the big ethical question remains: Should rules that were written for ancient ideas about sex, gender, purity, and household power be applied exactly the same way today, in a society that understands human relationships totally differently?
The Rules We Use to Interpret the Bible
When is it okay to say, “That was just for their culture,” and when is it changing the Bible too much?
When dealing with slavery, Christians often point to the overall trajectory of the Bible. They apply big principles like human dignity, justice, and loving your neighbor to move past those ancient economic laws.
If those interpretative tools are valid for slavery, we have to ask why they can’t be used to talk about biblical sexual rules. The important question to ask is whether a modern understanding of relationships lines up with the Bible’s ultimate themes: keeping promises, mutual respect, justice, mercy, and the equal dignity of all people.
The question isn’t whether applying this method will force us to reach the exact same conclusion in both cases. The question is whether it is fair to use the same interpretative tools in both cases.
Consistency Does Not Mean Identical Conclusions
Having a consistent way of interpreting the Bible (hermeneutical consistency) does not mean Christians have to reach the exact same conclusions about every single issue. Slavery and sexual ethics are handled in different books of the Bible, they involve different theological arguments, and they happened in different historical circumstances.
Consistency simply means that the rules we use to decide what is a cultural tradition and what is a permanent moral law should be applied fairly across the board.
A Christian might look at the evidence and decide that the Bible’s sexual rules still apply today, even while rejecting biblical slavery. But to make that claim, they need a better argument than just saying, “Slavery was a social issue, but this is a moral issue.” They have to explain why that distinction makes sense when interpreting the text. If considering historical context, the general trajectory of the Bible, human dignity, and the deeper purpose of God’s commands are all legitimate tools to use when reading about slavery, you have to explain why those same interpretative tools cannot legitimately be considered when interpreting biblical sexual ethics.
The Limits of the Analogy
A traditionalist Christian might argue that slavery is totally different. They might point out that the Bible often connects its sexual rules to the story of creation, the design of gender, and the idea of holiness, while slavery is mostly just treated as a fact of everyday ancient society.
That is a very good counterargument, and it deserves to be taken seriously. Taking that objection seriously also makes the argument stronger, because it forces us to identify the actual rules we are using to distinguish timeless commands from culturally specific ones. Just because a rule was given in a historical context doesn’t automatically mean it’s invalid today, but just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean it applies forever, either. We have to figure out our rules for reading the text before we can make our final moral conclusions.
Jesus and the Purpose of the Law
Looking at how Jesus read the Old Testament Law (the Torah) gives us a great framework for how to do this. Jesus didn’t just throw out literal interpretations completely. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, he actually made some rules even stricter, like his teachings on anger and adultery.
However, Jesus constantly focused on mercy, human need, and the underlying purpose of the rules. He taught that we should look beyond the surface of a command to understand the deeper purpose behind it. This gives Christians a very important model for figuring out if the lasting, theological purpose of a command can be separated from the particular historical form in which the command was given.
Conclusion
The challenge to traditional sexual ethics isn’t just that modern society’s opinions have changed. The real challenge is that Christians already have interpretative methods capable of distinguishing enduring theological principles from historically specific practices and instructions.
Having a consistent method of interpreting the Bible doesn’t guarantee everyone will agree on the final answer, but it does require using the same rulebook.
If Christians already accept that we have to read the Bible through the lens of historical context, the overall trajectory of God’s love, and the difference between timeless principles and ancient cultural rules, they have to explain why those tools aren’t allowed to be used when the topic changes to sexual ethics. The debate isn’t about whether we should take the Bible seriously. The debate is about whether we should interpret the Bible using the same kinds of interpretative tools we already use everywhere else.
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