I am always distressed when brilliant scholars like Hays (or anyone for that matter) get swallowed up by the spirit of the age, and thereby set themselves up for eternal destruction. Shame on him for deceiving God’s people, especially in light of his brilliant career of helping God’s people by upholding orthodoxy. May God call them to repentance so that God might have mercy their souls. I am also grateful for scholars like Mclaughlin for holding the line and exposing the vacuous thinking of heretics for what it is—destructive lies. The stakes are enormous and we dare not be deceived. Lord have mercy.

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

For decades, Christians seeking to uphold the Bible’s “no” to same-sex sexual relationships have quoted Richard Hays’s treatment of this topic in his Moral Vision of the New Testament. But Hays (emeritus professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School) has coauthored a new book, The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, arguing for “the full inclusion of LGBT+ people in Christian communities.”

Readers might expect to find that Hays has changed his mind about the meaning of the verses that apparently prohibit same-sex sex. But he hasn’t. Instead, he and his son, Christopher (an Old Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary), suggest God has changed his mind. If we read the Bible carefully, they argue, we’ll find that “God repeatedly changes his mind in ways that expand the sphere of his love” (2). In light of this, the Hayses “conclude that many religious conservatives, however well-intentioned, are wrong about the most essential point of theology: the character of God” (2).

My conclusions are profoundly different. But we agree on one point. What’s at stake here isn’t theological loose change, as if we can dispense with saying no to same-sex sex and keep the bigger-ticket items. What’s at stake is our understanding of who God is and how we can discern his will.

Read it all.