The Malcontents of Calvin University:  Is Sex NOT a “Salvation Issue”?

The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, . . . nor men who practice homosexuality, will inherit the kingdom of God.[1]

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?[2]

The claim seems innocuous and disarming:  “Don’t be concerned; it’s not a salvation issue.”  This slogan typically arises today when someone lobbies for a departure from ethical norms, particularly sexual ones.  The idea is that it’s okay to “agree to disagree” because something regarding sex and sexuality is “not a salvation issue.”  But, while that maxim may hold in some cases, is it universally applicable to every case?  In particular, is it true with respect to sexuality and sexual ethics?  Can someone support LGBTQ issues such as same-sex “marriage” and still hold a credible Christian profession? Are one’s sexual convictions – and practices – really a matter indifferent and unrelated to inheriting the kingdom of God?  Let’s get to the gist.

The TxC Analytic Lens

TxC centers its cultural apologetic upon the Apostle Paul’s analysis crystallized in Romans 1:25:  Because sinful man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, he exchanges the truth for the lie.  This results in unrighteousness, including sexually deviant desires and practices.  This creates cultural turmoil, and Christian institutions are not immune from it.  Case in point:  Calvin University which until 2019 had been known as Calvin College.

Controversy and Conflict in the CRC and at Calvin U

Turmoil currently boils at Calvin University, the keystone institution of higher learning for the Christian Reformed denomination.[3]  This most recent bruhaha arose because the Synod, the governing denominational body, chartered a study committee.  That committee had a central focus:

Essentially, the study committee was tasked with evaluating arguments for LGBTQ affirmation and deciding whether or not the CRC should consider these arguments. Additionally, the report needed to investigate whether its conclusions warranted declaring a status confessionis, elevating the church teaching to the authority of its confessions.

Their conclusion: the denomination’s current stance on sexuality is already confessional, and Synod 2021 should vote to affirm that.[4]

This Report – completed and published in 2020 – did affirm something.  It affirmed biblical sexual ethics, stating that same-sex relationships contradict scriptural norms and confessional standards.   As reported by Chimes, Calvin’s publication:

The crux of this report is that current CRC teaching already merits confessional status. The CRC’s confessions, the Heidelberg Catechism, Canons of Dort and the Belgic Confession, differentiate the denomination from other branches of Christianity. Only the Bible and the ecumenical creeds rank above the confessions in authority.

In short, this report states that disagreeing with what the CRC says about sexuality is a violation of the denomination’s confessions. Stances on LGBTQ issues are then as fundamental to denominational beliefs as issues like infant baptism and the doctrine of providence.[5] 

This – at first blush – seems like a “duh” moment or an ethical “nothing burger.”  Not quite for the university’s malcontents. The school has tolerated, if not celebrated, same-sex attracted and practicing students.  Indeed, the university’s 2020 student body President identified as LGBTQ.[6]  For years, many progressives within the CRC, including Calvin professors, had quietly – and not so quietly – pushed the sexual envelope in several ways:  

Nicholas Wolterstorff, a prominent philosopher in the denomination, went public with his support of same-sex marriage in 2016. “The Banner” [the denominational magazine] hosts regular debates regarding LGBTQ issues in its opinion section. This summer, Neland Avenue    CRC appointed a deacon who is in a same-sex marriage, a first for the denomination.

Classis Grand Rapids East released its own report in 2016 that concluded that Christians who held to traditional and affirming positions were both concerned with compassion for LGBTQ persons and adherence to scriptural sexual ethics. It held that the denomination could agree to disagree on the topic, much like how it does with the issue of women in church office.[7]

Note the dynamic:  the progressives treat sexuality as one of preference instead of precept – “not a salvation issue.”[8] Well, didn’t Synod in accepting this report settle the issue for the denomination once and for all?  That’s not how pagan-infused heresy works.  Fast forward. 

The Professors’ Pagan-infused Propaganda

Calvin professors continue to chum the waters.  How so?  By platforming progressive views in “hope that they foster continued dialogue on this issue.”[9]  This is how harmful leaven works:  “continuing the dialogue” by design pollutes the conservation with error – eventually resulting in – through this transgressive repetitive tactic – calling good evil and evil good.[10] 

One way to reject the denomination’s view of sexual ethics, the progressive professors contend, is to separate Calvin University from the denomination.  Calvin philosophy professor and noted author, James K.A. Smith, a vocal Biden supporter, coyly writes all around the kernel LGBTQ issue by camouflaging it in the husk of “institutional separation.”  Of course, what’s really going on is a desire to create legitimacy for LGBTQ behavior.  Dr. Smith explains his perspective:

Over the past several years, Calvin faculty have had to learn a new language that includes words like synod and gravamina and status confessionis. This is because, in 2022, the synod of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC)—the governing body of the denomination—adopted a report on human sexuality which stipulates that “homosexual sex” violates the definition of “unchastity” in the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the confessional standards for the university. To use evangelical nomenclature, this means sex was deemed “a salvation issue” and hence one on which disagreement was disallowed.[11] This decision had significant repercussions in the denomination because a number of CRC congregations, through a process of theological and pastoral discernment, have concluded that same-sex marriage can be a faithful expression of following Jesus for gay and lesbian Christians.[12] 

What really bugs Professor Smith is that “this now means agreeing with Synod’s interpretation of human sexuality.”[13]  Smith claims “that Synod had moved the goal posts.”[14]   Smith laments:

It has been jarring to see my intellectual heroes Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga dismissed and derided by CRC pastors. How strange that we’re becoming a university where a celebrated Reformed philosopher like Wolterstorff, who affirms same-sex marriage, couldn’t be on the Calvin faculty.[15]

So I mourn what the CRC has become; but I wasn’t surprised by Synod’s decision.[16]

Smith criticizes Calvin’s Board for “doubling down”[17] on “Synod’s narrowly dogmatic decision,” claiming – falsely – that the Board borders on breaching its fiduciary duty.  Next, Smith uses a slippery slope fallacy – as a trained logician, he should know this is fallacious – to generate fear:

[W]hat are they going to do when Synod 2030 decides that the confessions “already” teach that only men can be ordained? What are they going to do when, at Synod 2033, the remaining pastors and elders of the CRC decide that evolutionary readings of Genesis are inconsistent with a “high view” of Scripture? [18]

Note carefully:  the examples Smith gives – female ordination and evolutionary theory – often have prowled the pathway toward sexual apostasy.  Why?  Because the hermeneutic that permits female ordination is the same one that permits “affirming” LGBTQ notions and same-sex marriage.[19]  Like salt and pepper, they go together.  And, the nodding to evolutionary thinking likewise erodes creational norms, including the normativity of maleness, femaleness, and heterosexual marriage.  In other words, it was just random that marriage evolved as a male-female union; it could have been different, depending on the primordial soup mix.  There’s nothing creational (“from the beginning”[20]) or normative about sexuality – so the inference goes.  The Left’s playbook has not changed, whether cloaked in Christian regalia or not.

But here’s where Smith is really going.  While he’s coy of publicly owning his erroneous view of sexuality, here’s where he wants Calvin to go.  Claiming to be really Reformed, he asserts that “being Reformed”:

[D]oesn’t mean the university has to take a particular stance on the issue of Christian same-sex marriage.[21] As a Reformed Christian university, Calvin could say, like Whitworth University, that these are the sorts of questions on which Reformed Christians disagree and therefore room should be made for such disagreements at a Reformed Christian university. This doesn’t compromise our Reformed Christian identity; it would only compromise our narrow “Christian Reformed” alliance to one denomination.[22]

Notice too Smith’s cavalier attitude regarding what he calls “institutional divorce”:

Divorces happen all the time, including institutional divorces. They can even be amicable. Why doesn’t the BOT take this approach? Ending this “partnership” could make a new friendship possible.[23]

Marriage, divorce, sodomy, what’s the big deal – let’s just be friends (with benefits?) – all in the name of supposedly being Reformed!!

What can be learned from this sophistry?  First, let’s be clear: a vibrant and faithful Christian confession in fact includes ethics, particularly sexual ethics.  As early as the first century, Christians professed and practiced these ethical truths.  The Didache, an accepted church teaching document from about 70 AD, speaks about “Gross Sin Forbidden” and the “Way of Death” which includes sexual sinfulness:  adultery, pederasty, fornication, and “death of child by abortion.”[24]  These were not “matters indifferent” or matters upon which “we can agree to disagree” or fail to take a position.

Second, the CRC’s own Reformed confessional standards[25] address sexual ethics, teaching that all forms of unchastity transgress the law of God:

Q. What does the seventh commandment teach us?

A. That God condemns all unchastity, and that therefore we should thoroughly detest it
and live decent and chaste lives,
within or outside of the holy state of marriage.[26]

Some progressives have contended that same-sex “marriage” can be “chaste” and therefore, does not violate the 7^th Commandment or alternatively, because same-sex “marriage” did not exist when the catechism was crafted, it does not reach that issue.  These assertions are ethically illusory.  Why?  Because the primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism, Zacharias Ursinus, wrote a commentary for his catechism.  As to Question 108 expositing the 7^th Commandment, he explained that “chastity” shuns “all lust prohibited by God, all unlawful intercourse and inordinate copulation.”[27]  Moreover “marriage” consists of the “insoluble union between one man and one woman, instituted by God for propagation of the human race.”[28]

Note a few things:  sodomy remains unlawful and condemned by God;[29] it comprises “inordinate copulation” because it departs from the normative male/female design.  Also, marriage as structured and designed by God exists for and is ordered to a particular purpose:  the propagation of humanity.  In stark and undeniable contrast, same-sex behavior is inherently sterile and futureless.  It countermands the purpose of marriage as instituted by God.  The CRC Synod’s conclusion is therefore NOT some narrow denominational idiosyncratic picayune preference but rather, affirms Scripture’s plain teaching.  Smith is not rejecting a minor denominational distinctive; he’s rejecting Scripture and the Reformed standards that summarize Scripture’s teaching about sexuality.

Third, the reason I quoted lengthy excerpts from Smith’s op-ed is to show the method – the how – of pagan propaganda.  The advocates strive to make error seem reasonable, plausible, and future-oriented.  As we have repeatedly noted, “Satan doesn’t serve spinach.”[30]  The good news is that there is Good News:  Sexual sin, whether professed or practiced, can be redeemed.  Deception has been defeated by the foolishness of the Cross and the Light of Jesus.  Hear – and heed – the Christ’s potent redemption, particularly during Holy Week:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. . . .

The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.[31]

Smith and the other malcontents need to come clean and simply admit they reject Scripture’s teaching on sexuality and stop trying to mold the university to their own image and sexual predilections.  It’s intellectually unbecoming and procedurally pagan – and Smith – who’ve I personally known for about a decade and have repeatedly benefitted from his writings – I suspect, knows it well.

[1] 1Cor. 6:9, 10

[2] Matt. 19:4, 5

[3] I was ordained to the CRC’s diaconate in 1988 and served on the local congregation’s integrated consistory for several years.

[4] https://calvinchimes.org/2020/11/12/what-you-should-know-about-the-new-crc-report-on-sexuality/

[5] https://calvinchimes.org/2020/11/12/what-you-should-know-about-the-new-crc-report-on-sexuality/

[6] I am Calvin University’s first openly gay student body president [capitalization in original], https://calvinchimes.org/2020/10/16/i-am-calvin-universitys-first-openly-gay-student-body-president/

[7] Id. note 4

[8] See note 11 regarding sexuality and what’s a “salvation issue” in that context.

[9] https://calvinchimes.org/2025/04/07/christian-reformed-or-reformed-christian-should-calvin-remain-a-denominational-university/

[10] Is. 5:20

[11] Notice the sleight of hand here:  “salvation issue” is equated with “disagreement is disallowed.”  Smith is confusing categories.  Smith, I suspect, doesn’t really contend that Synod is saying one is damned with certitude for being Baptistic or even affirming same-sex “marriage;” rather, he’s irritated that he can’t kick against this Scriptural sexual norm. The point is that affirming same-sex “marriage” departs from a credible Christian profession of faith and thereby puts one into spiritual jeopardy.  It is a position rooted in deception that, as Paul says, will not inherit the kingdom of God.  1 Cor. 6:9.  So, in that sense at the very least, it certainly comprises a “salvation issue.”

[12] Id.  What Smith seems to ignore is that the reason Synod chartered the committee was precisely because “several CRC congregations . . . have concluded that same-sex marriage can be a faithful expression of following Jesus.”  THEY, the progressives, sought to “move the goalposts,” not the denomination.  See text accompanying note 13.

[13] Id.   But of course, this in Synod’s view means agreeing with Scripture’s view of sexuality, which Smith evidently rejects.

[14] Id.

[15] Id. Note the language of propaganda:  Smith considers it “strange” that a celebrated philosopher – who rejects foundational Christian sexual anthropology – would not be permitted to teach at a denominationally affiliated institution whose denomination affirms foundational Christian sexual anthropology.  What is “strange” is Smith’s comment.  Try substituting in place of “Christian same-sex marriage” a claim that affirms Christian: “child molestation” or “pornography” or “adultery” or “fornication, or “polyamory” or “incest” or “bestiality” or “domestic abuse,” or “human trafficking” or “serial killing.” Something IS strange, but it’s not Synod’s conclusion; it’s Smith’s claptrap.  Strange indeed.

[16] Id. Smith claims he’s not interested in debating what he calls the “merits of Synod’s stance on human sexuality,” but his perspective seems quite apparent, particularly venerating the apostate sexual stance of Professor Wolterstorff. 

[17] Again, using a propagandist term – no less than three times.

[18]Id.

[19] See, e.g., the sad trajectories of several denominations following the path from female ordination to “affirming” LGBTQ matters:   The ELCA, The United Church of Christ, The PCUSA, The United Methodist Church, The Episcopal Church, The Reformed Church in America, The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), et al

[20] Matt. 19:4, and 8.  It’s not accidental that the foundational ecumenical creeds (The Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed) commence with God as Creator.

[21] Using “Christan” as an adjective does not convert something inherently evil into something good:  Christian spousal abuse, Christian prostitution, Christian human trafficking, Christian child molestation, Christian adultery, Christian fornication, Christian incest, Christian bestiality, Christan academic plagiarism, Christian cheating in college, Christian nationalism, et al.  See also note 15.

[22] Id.

[23] Id.

[24] https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm

[25] These consist of what’s known as the Three Forms of Unity:  The Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dort.  https://learn.ligonier.org/collections/the-three-forms-of-unity

[26] Heidelburg Catechism, Q & A 108, references omitted.

[27] Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, Trans. 1851, 2025), 590

[28] Id. at 592

[29] 1 Cor. 6:9. Note carefully:  the deceived justify homosexual practice.

[30] For a helpful engagement of Smith’s thought – and its inherent incoherence regarding sexuality  – consider Stephen Alpine’s Off the Road and into the Ditch with James KA Smith, https://stephenmcalpine.com/off-the-road-and-into-the-ditch-with-james-ka-smith/.  For an analysis showing how far Smith has moved  – demonstrated from his own words – see Steven Wedgeworth, Being a Good Sport:  Calvin University, the Christian Reformed Church, and James K.A. Smith, https://wng.org/opinions/being-a-good-sport-1744326174

[31] 1 Cor. 6:9-11, 13