Vocation and Creation: Beyond the Gentile-Homosexual Analogy

One strand of the church’s conversation about homosexuality compares
present-day acceptance of homosexuals to the church’s acceptance of Gentiles
in Acts 15. In a previous article, “Gentiles and Homosexuals,” I
presented the history of that strand. In a reply to my article, Olson proposes
to reimagine the analogy via the “radical new perspective on Paul” and
argues that doing so exposes problems with my original analysis. I defend
myself against these criticisms, while also entering into the spirit of Olson’s
reimagined analogy. Expanding the scope beyond Acts to Paul opens up
important facets that might otherwise be obscured. In particular, it includes
voices that are sometimes silenced, and presses both sides for an account of
sexuality grounded in vocation and God’s purposes in creation.