by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; gagnon@pts.edu
May 12, 2011
I give my permission for this article to be circulated in print, email, and on the web.—RG

Rev. Sheldon Sorge

Pastor to the Pittsburgh Presbytery

Dear Sheldon,
This letter is in response to your pastoral letter to the sessions within the Pittsburgh

Presbytery, dated May 12, 2011 (http://pghpresbytery.org/news/sheldon_shares/2011/ss_051211.htm).

I can understand your desire to prevent fracture in the Pittsburgh Presbytery as Pastor to
the presbytery. However, I must express my disagreement with your use of Pauline texts
to buttress your position that the recent approval of Amendment 10A to the Book of

Order should occasion no deep soul-searching about staying in the denomination.

I do not say here that Presbyterians faithful to Scripture’s strong male-female prerequisite
for sexual relations should immediately leave the PCUSA. I only know that your exegesis
of Pauline texts on this matter are considerably off the mark and glosses over very serious
matters. The denomination’s allowance of “adult-committed” homosexual activity among
its ordained leadership is at least as morally problematic as if the denomination allowed

for “adult-committed” incest or polyamory among its ordained leadership.

In ignoring this I feel that you are doing the majority of the presbytery a disservice.

You cite 1 Corinthians 1:13: “Has Christ been divided?” Clearly the focus of most of 1
Corinthians is on church unity. Yet for Paul that overall emphasis on unity did not apply
to matters of gross doctrinal error, idolatry, or sexual immorality. It applied only to
matters of relative indifference, that is, matters that did not seriously affect entrance into
God’s kingdom. Paul never would have counseled an “agree to disagree” approach on
denial of the resurrection (ch. 15), eating at an idol’s temple and flirting with idolatry (ch.

10), or a case of egregious sexual immorality (chs. 5-6).

Indeed, in a letter that deals with numerous problems in the Corinthian community, only
at one point does Paul insist that the offender be put out of the community: the case of a
believer in an adult-consensual incestuous relationship (ch. 5). The similarity of vice lists
in 5:9-11 and 6:9-10 indicates that Paul insisted that the offender be expelled from the
community pending repentance (5:9-11) precisely because the offender was at high risk
of being excluded from the kingdom of God (6:9-10). Paul rebuked the leadership at
Corinth for being “puffed up,” inflated with pride, as regards their tolerance of such
behavior. They should rather have mourned the fate of the incestuous man, as one would

mourn at a funeral (5:2).

Given the intensity and outrage of Paul’s reaction, it doesn’t take a great deal of
imagination to realize that, had the Corinthian leadership not only ignored Paul’s demand
but, even worse, installed the incestuous man as a leader over the Corinthian church, Paul
would have come to them with the proverbial “rod” (4:21). Had this not worked there is
little doubt that he would have broken ties completely. Otherwise, the rest of
Christendom, including the great centers in Jerusalem and Antioch, would have
disassociated themselves completely from Paul as being the “libertine” that Judaizers had

falsely claimed him to be.

However, Paul would never have let matters get to that point since he took a backseat to
no one when it came to opposing sexual immorality. In our first extant Pauline letter, 1
Thessalonians, when Paul got around to moral exhortation in ch. 4, the first thing on his
list was to warn against any sexual immorality (4:1-8). He stated clearly that to oppose
his commands on sexual purity would be tantamount to a rejection of God that would

incur God’s avenging action (4:6-8).

The evidence that Paul not only opposed homosexual practice absolutely, without
exceptions for “adult-committed” homosexual relationships, but also regarded it as even
worse than adult-committed incestuous or polyamorous unions is, to say the least,
overwhelming. The case for asserting that Paul or any other Jew or Christian of the
period might have held some openness to committed homosexual unions entered upon by
homosexually oriented persons are historically indefensible. Even the top homosexualist
scholars today in biblical studies, classics, and church history acknowledge this point.
Claims to “new knowledge” today about homosexuality don’t fly. Committed
homosexual relationships were known in the Greco-Roman world, including semi-official
marriages between men and between women. We also have Greco-Roman moralists
opposing even such committed unions as being unnatural, to say nothing of similar

opposition from early rabbinic material and from Church Fathers. 

There were also widespread theories positing congenital influences on one or more forms 

of homosexual development. Indeed the idea of an exclusive, innate same-sex attraction for some was

acknowledged in many sectors of thought.

To suggest that Paul might have exhorted believers at Corinth to stay in fellowship with a
church that installed as leaders persons who were actually engaged in homosexual

practice or in incest, whether “adult-committed” or not, is bad revisionist history.

The same considerations apply to your use of the text of Ephesians. You cite Eph 4:2-3
(“bearing with one another in love, being in earnest to maintain the oneness of the Spirit
in the bond of peace”) and 2:14-16 (Christ removing the dividing wall of hostility
between Jew and Gentile). 

Paul is quite clear that unity is not to be safeguarded at the
expense of sound doctrine (4:7-16) or moral purity (4:17-5:12). Unity is not something
we fit Christ into but something that follows from putting Christ in the supreme place.

The writer of Ephesians insisted that there could be no unity bought at the price of
tolerating sexual immorality. He stressed that believers were “no longer [to] walk as the
Gentiles walk, … who have given themselves to licentiousness (aselgeia) for the greedy
doing of every sexual impurity (akatharsia)” (4:17, 19).

 In fact, he insisted: 5:3Sexual immorality (porneia) and sexual impurity (akatharsia) of any kind . . .
must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. . . .

 5 Know this indeed, that every sexually immoral person (pornos) or sexually impure person
(akathartos) . . . has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God
is coming on the children of disobedience. 

7 So do not become associates of theirs.

 8 For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk as children
of light. . . . 

10 determining what is acceptable to the Lord.

 11 And do not be partnering with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather even be
exposing/refuting them. 

12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that are

done in secret by them.

You assure us that persons on all sides of the homosexuality issue are “sincerely devoted
to biblical authority” and are all alike “committed to the lordship of Jesus Christ and the
authority of Scripture.” The Corinthians who tolerated a case of adult-consensual incest
in their midst could have claimed the same. But such claims ring hollow when support is
given for a form of behavior—among the leadership, no less—that Scripture treats as an

instance of egregious sexual immorality.

Your remark that “God’s people dare not let the world set our moral agenda” will strike
many of us as ironic. Denominational allowance for homosexual practice is precisely
that. You add: “The Bible is clear that many practices the world tolerates and even
celebrates – greed, envy, promiscuity, slander, inhospitality, and the like – have no place
in the kingdom of God, nor do they have any place in the church.” Exactly the same thing
can and should be said about homosexual practice. You even say: “This is a time to be
more attentive to the call to biblical holiness, not less.” Yet the denomination’s
willingness to accept the extreme sexual immorality of homosexual practice among its

ordained officers is the opposite of being “attentive to the call to biblical holiness.”

Characterizing soul-searching about the impact of this serious departure from Scripture
and holiness on denominational unity as “polarization,” “demonization,” and mere
“partisan hostility” is uncharitable and scripturally inaccurate. By the same reasoning,
Paul’s response to the case of gross sexual immorality at Corinth in 1 Cor 5 would have
to be viewed as an instance of polarization, demonization, and partisan hostility. That

makes no sense to me.

Your online title and preface to your letter cites the Bob Dylan line “The times, they are
a-changin” as if the promotion of homosexual immorality in the PCUSA is akin to the
civil rights movement of the ’60s. I do not know what your intentions were here but it
comes across as a partisan response inappropriate for a presbytery that this past year (and
consistently) voted by a two-thirds majority to retain the ordination standard that sexual

activity should be limited to the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman.

I do not wish you to think that I have any hostility to you personally. I do not question the
sincerity of your views. I just question them so far as their accuracy in interpreting and

applying Scripture is concerned.

Sincerely yours,
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of New Testament

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Comment by Truth Uncensored Africa:  At the time the homosexual issue came into the Presbyterian church, Sheldon Sorge was the moderator of the session when they were voting whether the Presbyterian Church would allow homosexuals in the pulpit.  The vote apparently passed. The above public letter to Sheldon was written to him as a result of that meeting in 2011.  Sheldon was raised in a devout Pentecostal church to his parents’ dismay. He has now retired from ministry 2022 as can be seen on Tribute to The Ministry of Sheldon Sorge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7vhj7eyAO8

His brother Bob Sorge  remained in the Charismatic Pentecostal Church and is very involved in IHOP that now has been exposed for sexual misconduct with the creator of IHOP Mike Bickle.

Go to part Three.