How Bad Is Homosexual Practice
According to Scripture and
Does Scripture’s Indictment Apply to
Committed Homosexual Unions?
by Robert A.
J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate
Professor of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
gagnon@pts.edu
January 2007
(slightly modified December 2007)
For a print copy use the
PDF version here.
This brief essay
explores two of the most common questions asked about the Bible’s
view of homosexual practice. First, how bad is homosexual practice
according to Scripture? Second, does Scripture’s indictment of
homosexual practice apply to committed homosexual unions?
I. How Bad Is
Homosexual Practice According to Scripture?
It is my contention
that homosexual practice is a more serious violation of
Scripture’s sexual norms than even incest, adultery, plural
marriage, and divorce. (The reader will note that I did
not mention bestiality because the evidence from ancient Israel and
early Judaism suggests that bestiality is a worse offense than
same-sex intercourse.)
A.
Different Degrees of Severity as regards Sin
At the outset there
will be some readers who contend that it is both unscriptural and
un-Reformed to argue that any sins are more severe than any other
sins. However, no one really believes such a claim. In fact, most
people in the mainline churches today who want to see some sort of
accommodation made to committed homosexual unions do so because,
they rationalize, even if it is not God’s ideal it is nevertheless
“not that bad of a sin” or at least a lesser evil than, say,
promiscuous homosexual behavior. Proponents of homosexual unions
often recoil in horror at the thought of any comparison with
consensual incest or with adultery (to say nothing of bestiality)
precisely because they operate with a notion that some sexual sins
are truly more severe than others.
Whatever
concessions have been made to fornication and divorce in the church,
I still see the mainline churches in the West holding reasonably
consistent positions against sexual unions involving more than two
partners and certainly incestuous unions of a first-order severity
(e.g., incest with one’s parent, full sibling, or child), to say
nothing of bestiality, sex with prostitutes, and sex with
prepubescent children. Are we being unreasonable in giving
precedence to some sins over others? Should we concede these other
matters as well and be more consistently disobedient to the will of
Christ? I don’t think so. Failing in some areas does not justify
failing in more foundational matters. The church’s current practices
tacitly acknowledge a different weight given to different sins.
It is true that any
sin, including sexual sin, can get one excluded from the kingdom of
heaven if merit is the means of entrance. In that specific sense,
all sins are equal. And there are certainly other sins, including
sexual sins, that the apostle Paul indicates create a risk factor
for the exclusion of Christians from the kingdom of God if they
persist in such behavior in a serial, unrepentant way. Paul mentions
in 1 Corinthians 5-6 incest, adultery, and sex with prostitutes
alongside same-sex intercourse.
Yet none of this
means that the church should regard all sexual sins, let alone all
sins of any type, as basically of equal import or even that God
views all sins as equally abhorrent. I am confident that few
Christians, at least when hooked up to a lie detector or given truth
serum, would assert that God views the taking home of a company pen
as endangering the eternal destiny of the Christian perpetrator in
the same way that, say, raping and eating children (thinking here of
the serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer). The image is offensive, I grant.
In fact, if you, the reader, feel any offense, this merely confirms
my point: you don’t really believe that all sins are equally
heinous, either to God or to us.
In short,
it is not true that all offenses to God are in all
senses equally offensive to God.
For those from the
Reformed tradition it should be noted that such a view is
“reformed.” For example, the Larger Catechism of the
Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) states the obvious: “All
transgressions of the law of God are not equally heinous; but some
sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more
heinous in the sight of God than others” (7.260; elaboration in
7.261; cf. the Shorter Catechism 7.083).
The claim that
Scripture does not support the notion of different weights of sins
is also inaccurate, in my view. To take a few examples:
-
In the Old Testament there is a
clear ranking of sins. For instance, when one goes to Leviticus
20, which reorders the sexual offenses in Leviticus 18 according
to penalty, the most severe offenses are grouped first, including
same-sex intercourse. Of course, variegated penalties for
different sins can be found throughout the legal material in the
Old Testament.
-
Jesus also prioritized offenses,
referring to “weightier matters of the law.” For instance, healing
a sick person on the Sabbath takes precedence over resting.
-
Paul’s attitude toward the case of
incest in 1 Corinthians 5 also makes clear that he differentiated
between various sexual offenses, with some being more extreme than
others. This is clear both from the horror in his tone at the case
of incest but, even more, from the fact that he has to arbitrate
between competing values when he condemns the incest. If there
were no ranking of priorities, how could Paul reject out of hand a
case of incest that was monogamous and committed? If the values of
monogamy and commitment to longevity were of equal weight with a
requirement of a certain degree of familial otherness, Paul could
not have decided what to do. Would commitment to a monogamous,
lifelong union cancel out the prohibition of incest? Obviously,
this was not a difficult matter for Paul to decide. He knew that
the incest prohibition was more foundational.
B.
Why Homosexual Practice Is One of the Most Severe
Sexual Sins
Having established
the principle that some offenses are more heavily weighted than
others, both by Scripture and by the church, the question arises:
How big a violation does Scripture view same-sex intercourse? I
believe that Scripture indicates that the only sexual offense more
severe is bestiality. Here are three main reasons why:
-
It is the violation that most
clearly and radically offends against God’s intentional creation
of humans as “male and female” (Gen 1:27) and definition of
marriage as a union between a man and a woman (Gen 2:24).
According to the story in Genesis 2, the
differentiation into man and woman is the sole differentiation
produced by the removal of a “side” (not “rib”) from the original
human. It is precisely because out of one flesh came two sexes
that the two sexes, and only the two sexes, can re-merge into one
flesh (2:24). Since Jesus gave priority to these two texts from
the creation stories in Genesis when he defined normative and
prescriptive sexual ethics for his disciples, they have to be
given special attention by us. Paul also clearly has the creation
texts in the background of his indictment of homosexual practice
in Rom 1:24-27 and 1 Cor 6:9.
-
Every text that treats the issue
of homosexual practice in Scripture treats it as an offense of
great abhorrence to God. This is
so from (a) the triad of stories about extreme depravity, Ham,
Sodom, and Gibeah (which incidentally are no more limited in their
implications to coercive acts of same-sex acts than is an
indicting story about coercive sex with one’s parent limited in
its implications only to coercive acts of adult incest), to (b)
the Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic legal and narrative materials
that rail against the homoerotic associations of the qedeshim
as an “abomination” or “abhorrent practice” (men who in a
cultic context served as the passive receptive sexual partners for
other men), to (c) the Levitical prohibitions (where the term
“abomination” or “abhorrent practice” is specifically attached to
man-male intercourse), to (d) texts in Ezekiel that refer to
man-male intercourse by the metonym “abomination” or “abhorrent
act,” to (e) Paul’s singling out of homosexual practice in Romans
1:24-27 as a specially reprehensible instance (along with
idolatry) of humans suppressing the truth accessible in the
material creation set in motion by the Creator, labeling it sexual
“uncleanness,” “dishonorable” or “degrading,” “contrary to
nature,” and an “indecent” or “shameful” act. These views are also
amply confirmed in texts from both early Judaism and early
Christianity after the New Testament period, where only bestiality
appears to rank as a greater sexual offense, at least among
“consensual” acts. There is, to be sure, some disagreement in
early Judaism over whether sex with one’s parent is worse,
comparable, or less severe, though most texts suggest a slightly
lesser degree of severity. While Scripture makes some exceptions,
particularly in ancient Israel, for some forms of incest (though
never for man-mother, man-child, man-sibling) and for sexual
unions involving more than two partners (though a monogamy
standard was always imposed on women), it makes absolutely no
exceptions for same-sex intercourse. Indeed, every single text in
Scripture that discusses sex, whether narrative, law, proverb,
poetry, moral exhortation, or metaphor, presupposes a male-female
prerequisite. There are no exceptions anyway in Scripture.
-
The male-female prerequisite is
the foundational prerequisite for defining most other sexual
norms. Jesus himself clearly predicated
his view of marital monogamy and indissolubility on the foundation
of Gen 1:27 and 2:24, texts that have only one thing in common:
the fact that an acceptable sexual bond before God entails as its
first prerequisite (after the assumption of an intra-human bond) a
man and a woman (Mark 10:6-9; Matt 19:4-6). Jesus argued that the
“twoness” of the sexes ordained by God at creation was the
foundation for limiting the number of persons in a sexual bond to
two, whether concurrently (as in polygamy) or serially (as in
repetitive divorce and remarriage). The foundation can hardly be
less significant than the regulation predicated on it; indeed, it
must be the reverse. Moreover, the dissolution of an otherwise
natural union is not more severe than the active entrance into an
inherently unnatural union (active entrance into an incestuous
bond would be a parallel case in point). The principle by which
same-sex intercourse is rejected is also the principle by which
incest, even of an adult and consensual sort, is rejected. Incest
is wrong because, as Lev 18:6 states, it involves sexual
intercourse with “the flesh of one’s own flesh.” In other words,
it involves the attempted merger with someone who is already too
much of a formal or structural same on a familial level. The
degree of formal or structural sameness is felt even more keenly
in the case of homosexual practice, only now on the level of sex
or gender, because sex or gender is a more integral component of
sexual relations, and more foundationally defines it, than is and
does the degree of blood relatedness. So the prohibition of incest
can be, and probably was, analogically derived from the more
foundational prohibition of same-sex intercourse. Certainly, as
noted above, there was more accommodation to some forms of incest
in the Old Testament than ever there was to homosexual practice.
Adultery becomes an applicable offense only when the sexual bond
that the offender is cheating on is a valid sexual bond. Needless
to say, it would be absurd to charge a man in an incestuous union
or in a pedophilic union with adultery for having sexual relations
with a person outside that pair-bond. One can’t cheat against a
union that was immoral from the beginning.
My purpose in
evaluating, from Scripture’s perspective, the severity of engaging
in same-sex intercourse is not to exhort believers to hate those who
engage in homosexual behavior but rather to inform love with
knowledge of the truth. Many Christians have attempted to respond in
love towards persons who act on homosexual urges, including ordained
officers, by either “tolerating” the behavior or, worse, affirming
it. If, however, same-sex intercourse is a high offense in the
sexual realm toward God, then there can be no question of ordaining
persons participating in such acts in a serial, unrepentant manner.
To do such would only confirm the sin, leave the individual exposed
to the wrath of God, and risk that one’s exclusion from an eternal
relationship with God—not to mention produce deleterious effects on
the community of believers (see 1 Cor 5:6-7: a little leaven leavens
the whole lump of dough).
It is also
important to determine the relative severity of an offense because
of polity decisions. Churches do not treat all sexual offenses as
equal when it comes to decisions of ordination (and sometimes even
membership) but rather make distinctions on the basis of the
severity of the offense, its repetitive character, and whether the
offender has expressed repentance. Churches will ordain persons who
have and occasionally entertain lustful thoughts, though I’m not
sure one will find many churches ordaining persons who affirm and
promote such thoughts. They will ordain persons who have been
divorced and remarried, though I know of none who will ordain
persons who have had five or more divorces and remarriages and plan
to continue the cycle. Some churches may even ordain heterosexual
persons in a committed sexual bond outside of marriage. However, few
if any churches will ordain—at least not as of today—persons who are
in committed sexual bonds involving close blood relations, more than
two persons concurrently, or an adult and an adolescent or child.
Few if any will ordain persons who are actively engaged in
adulterous behavior. So knowing the severity of the sexual offense
is an important factor in deciding what ordination decisions should
be taken when violations are committed—and not only committed but
committed repeatedly and, worse of all, unrepentantly.
In fact, the more
severe the sexual offense, the more acute becomes the question of
whether churches and individuals should stay in a denomination that
tolerates or perhaps even promotes such offenses among its ordained
officers. For I know of few, if any, reasonable persons who would
stay in a church that tolerated or promoted repetitive and
unrepentant incest, adultery, or polyamory among its ordained
officers. If same-sex intercourse is treated by Scripture as equally
severe or worse than these sexual offenses, then serious issues
about denominational unity are posed by a denomination’s toleration
or affirmation of homosexual practice among its ordained officers.
II. Does
Scripture’s Indictment Apply to Committed Homosexual Unions?
Many claim that the
Bible is opposed only to particularly exploitative forms of
homosexual practice; specifically, those involving an adult and
adolescent (pederasty), coercive sex with a slave, or solicitation
of prostitutes. However, this claim is generally made in ignorance
of the arguments that suggest Scripture’s absolute (i.e.
exception-less) opposition to homosexual practice. Because the
arguments for this latter position are so numerous and involve many
texts, I here restrict my remarks to the witness of Paul. This
witness is not unique among the authors of Scripture; indeed, it is
representative of the whole, including the figure of Jesus. Yet Paul
makes a good test case because he says the most about the issue and
provides us, among New Testament-era figures, with the broadest
array of contextual information for assessing his views.
The discussion
below has two parts: six synthesized arguments for why Paul’s
rejection of homosexual practice was total, followed by a citation
of some scholars who, though supportive of homosexual unions,
acknowledge that Paul’s indictment is not limited to particularly
exploitative instances of same-sex intercourse.
A.
Why Paul’s Indictment of Same-Sex Intercourse
Included “Committed” Unions
Below I offer six
arguments for concluding that Paul’s opposition to same-sex
intercourse was absolute and not limited only to particularly
exploitative forms of homosexual practice. Readers can consult my
two books as well as online material for further documentation.
Naturally, if I had opened the scope of the investigation below to
the whole range of scriptures that address the issue of homosexual
practice, the length of my presentation would have increased
significantly.
(1) Paul
clearly had in view the creation texts in Gen 1:27 and 2:24 behind
his two main indictments of homosexual practice, Romans 1:24-27 and
1 Corinthians 6:9 (cf. 1 Timothy 1:10).
There are eight points of correspondence, in a similar relative
order, between Romans 1:23, 26-27 and Genesis 1:26-27: human,
image, likeness; birds, cattle, reptiles; male, female.
This intertextual echo back to Genesis 1:26-27 occurs within a
context in Romans that emphasizes God’s role as Creator and the
knowledge about God and about ourselves that can be culled from
observation of the material structures of creation/nature.
Similarly, 1 Corinthians 6:9, in a context in chs. 5-7 that deals
with sexual vices, is in close proximity to Paul’s citation of Gen
2:24. These allusions to Gen 1:27 and 2:24 indicate that Paul’s
first problem with homosexual practice was that it was a violation
of God’s will for male-female pairing established in creation, not
that it was typically exploitative. Incidentally, Paul uses the same
two texts that Jesus himself defined as normative and prescriptive
(with proscriptive implications) for all matters of human sexual
ethics (cf. Mark 10:6-9; Matt 19:4-6). So the two most important
texts in Scripture for defining sexual ethics, at least in the view
of Jesus—Genesis 1:27 and 2:24—were at the heart of Paul’s rejection
of all forms of male-male and female-female intercourse.
(2) Paul’s
nature argument against homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27 does
not lend itself to distinctions between exploitative and
non-exploitative manifestations of homosexual behavior but rather to
an absolute rejection of all homosexual bonds.
By “against nature” Paul meant that the evidence from the material
structures of creation—here the complementary embodied character of
maleness and femaleness—gives clear evidence of God’s will for human
sexual pairing. Some have argued that this could not have been what
Paul intended by his nature argument, despite Paul’s clear statement
in Rom 1:19-20 that such matters are “transparent” and have been so
“ever since the creation of the world . . . being mentally
apprehended by means of the things made.” Yet the historical context
also confirms this way of reading Paul, whose views on the matter
were no different from Jesus’. “Basic to the heterosexual position
[against homosexual practice in the ancient world] is the
characteristic Stoic appeal to the providence of Nature, which has
matched and fitted the sexes to each other” (Thomas K. Hubbard,
Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents
[University of California Press, 2003], 444). “Some kind of
argument from ‘design’ seems to lurk in the background of Cicero’s,
Seneca’s, and Musonius’ claims [against homosexual practice]” (Craig
A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality [Oxford University Press,
1999], 242). Ancient writers “who appeal to nature against same-sex
eros find it convenient to concentrate on the more or less
obvious uses of the orifices of the body to suggest the proper
channel for the more diffused sexual impulses of the body” (William
R. Schoedel, “Same-Sex Eros,” Homosexuality, Science, and the
“Plain Sense” of Scripture [ed. D. Balch; Eerdmans, 2000], 46).
Part of Charicles’ attack on all homosexual practice in pseudo-Lucianic
text Affairs of the Heart, a work which contains a debate
about the respective merits of heterosexual love and male homosexual
love, is the assertion that male-male love is an erotic attraction
for what one already is as a sexual being:
She (viz., Aphrodite) cleverly devised a twofold nature in each
(species). . . . having written down a divinely sanctioned rule of
necessity, that each of the two (genders) remain in their own
nature. . . . Then wantonness, daring all, transgressed the laws of
nature. . . . And who then first looked with the eyes at the male as
at a female . . . ? One nature came together in one bed. But
seeing themselves in one another they were ashamed neither of
what they were doing nor of what they were having done to them.
(19-20; my emphasis)
(3) In
Rom 1:24-27 Paul emphasizes the mutuality of the homoerotic desires
(“inflamed with their yearning for one another,” “their bodies being
dishonored among themselves”) so he is clearly not restricting his
remarks to coercive, exploitative acts. Moreover, the wording of
“exchanging” and “leaving behind” the other sex for the same sex is
absolute and clearly inclusive of all same-sex sexual relations.
(4) The
indictment of lesbian intercourse in Rom 1:26 does not support the
view that Scripture’s indictment is limited to exploitative
homosexual acts, since lesbianism in antiquity was not generally
characterized by pederasty, prostitution, or abuse of slaves.
Indeed, Greco-Roman moralists in antiquity who argued against
homosexual practice sometimes cited intercourse between women as a
trump card against arguments for men-male sexual bonds (see, for
example, pseudo-Lucian, Affairs of the Heart, 28). For
consistency’s sake, advocacy of male homosexual bonds necessarily
entails acceptance of female homosexual bonds, something few if any
men in antiquity were willing to accept. It is a way of making an
absolute argument against all homosexual bonds, not merely
against particularly exploitative ones.
(5) The
terms malakoi (lit., “soft men,” but
taken in the sense of men who feminize themselves to attract male
sex partners) and arsenokoitai (literally, “men who lie with
[koite] a male [arsen]”) in 1 Cor 6:9 are clearly inclusive of all
homosexual bonds, as is evident from the following. With
regard to malakoi note: (a) its place in a vice list
amidst other participants in illicit sexual intercourse, (b) its
pairing with the immediately following arsenokoitai, (c)
Philo of Alexandria’s (a first-century Jew’s) use of cognate words
to refer to the effeminate male partner in a homosexual bond, and
(d) occasional Greco-Roman usage of malakoi (and the
comparable Latin molles) to denote effeminate adult males who
are biologically and/or psychologically disposed to desire
penetration by men. With regard to arsenokoitai
note: (a) clear connections of this word to the absolute
Levitical prohibitions of man-male intercourse (18:22; 20:13),
evident from the fact that the word, exclusively used in Jewish and
Christian contexts until late in antiquity, was formulated directly
from the Levitical prohibitions, that ancient rabbis used a parallel
Hebrew term, mishkav zakur (“lying with a male”), to apply to
all men-male sexual bonds, and that 1 Tim 1:10 explicitly connects
opposition to this vice (among other vices) to the law of Moses; (b)
early Judaism’s univocal interpretation of the Levitical
prohibitions against men-male intercourse as allowing only
sexual relations between a man and a woman (e.g., Josephus, Philo,
the rabbis); (c) the singular use of arsenokoites and related
words subsequent to Paul in connection with male-male intercourse
per se, without limitation to pederasts or clients of cult
prostitutes; (d) the implications of the context of 1 Corinthians
5-7, given the parallel case of adult, consensual incest in ch. 5,
the assumption of consent in the vice list in 6:9-10, the citation
of Gen 2:24 in 1 Cor 6:16 (see also 11:7-9, 12), and the presumption
everywhere in ch. 7 that sex is confined to male-female marriage;
and (e) the fact that the Greco-Roman milieu considered it worse
for a man to have sex with another adult male than with a boy
because the former had left behind his “softness.”
(6) A
conception of caring homoerotic unions already existed in Paul’s
cultural environment and yet even these unions were rejected by some
Greco-Roman moralists. For example, in a
late first-century / early second-century (A.D.) debate over
heterosexual and homosexual bonds, Plutarch’s friend Daphnaeus
admits that homosexual relationships are not necessarily
exploitative, for “union contrary to nature does not destroy or
curtail a lover’s tenderness.” Yet, he declares, even when a “union
with males” is conducted “willingly” it remains “shameful” since
males “with softness (malakia) and effeminacy (thelutes)
[are] surrendering themselves, as Plato says, ‘to be mounted in the
custom of four-footed animals’ and to be sowed with seed contrary to
nature” (Dialogue on Love 751). Even in the non-Jewish milieu
of the Mediterranean basin, “literature of the first century C.E.
bears witness to an increasing polarization of attitudes toward
homosexual activity, ranging from frank acknowledgment and public
display of sexual indulgence on the part of leading Roman citizens
to severe moral condemnation of all homosexual acts”
(Hubbard, Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, 383, emphasis
added). If even some sectors of the “pagan” world were beginning to
develop absolute opposition to all forms of homosexual practice,
what is the likelihood that Paul would have made exceptions for
committed homosexual unions, given that he operated out of Jewish
Scriptures and a Jewish milieu that were unequivocally opposed to
homosexual practice, and given too that he was a disciple of a
figure (Jesus) who predicated his views about human sexuality on the
exclusive male-female model in the creation texts?
Historically
speaking, then, the evidence is overwhelming that Paul, like all
other Jews and Christians of the period, opposed homosexual practice
categorically and absolutely.
B.
Scholars Supporting Homosexual Unions Admit Paul’s
Absolute Rejection
The best of the
scholarly proponents of homosexual practice recognize the point made
above. Note that I do not cite such
support for my own sake. I have researched the matter of Scripture
and homosexual practice in its historical and hermeneutical context
as much or more than the scholars below have. Rather I cite these
scholars for the sake of those who can’t hear truth from the
writings of someone who does not endorse homosexual practice but may
hear it from those who do endorse such behavior.
For example,
Louis Crompton in the massive Homosexuality and Civilization
(Harvard University Press, 2003) has written:
According to [one] interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at
“bona fide” homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a
reading, however well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical.
Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply
the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstance.
The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would
have been wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early
Christian. (p. 114)
Similarly,
Bernadette Brooten, who has written the most important book on
lesbianism in antiquity and its relation to early Christianity
(especially Rom 1:26), at least from a pro-homosex perspective,
criticized both John Boswell and Robin Scroggs for their use of an
exploitation argument:
Boswell . . . argued that . . . “The early Christian church does not
appear to have opposed homosexual behavior per se.” The sources on
female homoeroticism that I present in this book run absolutely
counter to [this conclusion]. (p. 11)
If . . . the dehumanizing aspects of pederasty motivated Paul to
condemn sexual relations between males, then why did he condemn
relations between females in the same sentence? . . . Rom 1:27, like
Lev 18:22 and 20:13, condemns all males in male-male relationships
regardless of age, making it unlikely that lack of mutuality or
concern for the passive boy were Paul’s central concerns. . . . The
ancient sources, which rarely speak of sexual relations between
women and girls, undermine Robin Scroggs’s theory that Paul opposed
homosexuality as pederasty. (Love between Women: Early Christian
Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996], 253 n. 106, 257, 361)
She also criticized
the use of an orientation argument:
Paul could have believed that tribades [the active female
partners in a female homosexual bond], the ancient kinaidoi
[the passive male partners in a male homosexual bond], and other
sexually unorthodox persons were born that way and yet still condemn
them as unnatural and shameful. . . . I believe that Paul used the
word “exchanged” to indicate that people knew the natural sexual
order of the universe and left it behind. . . . I see Paul as
condemning all forms of homoeroticism as the unnatural acts of
people who had turned away from God.(p. 244)
On the issue of
homosexual orientation, incidentally, which many today still falsely
claim to be radically new knowledge, note the following quotation
from Thomas K. Hubbard:
Homosexuality in this era [viz., of the early imperial age of Rome]
may have ceased to be merely another practice of personal pleasure
and began to be viewed as an essential and central category of
personal identity, exclusive of and antithetical to heterosexual
orientation. (Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook,
386)
William Schoedel
in a significant article on “Same-Sex Eros: Paul and the Greco-Roman
Tradition” states that “some support” exists in Philo, Abraham
135 for thinking that Paul might be speaking in Rom 1:26-27
“only of same-sex acts performed by those who are by nature
heterosexual.” But he then dismisses the suggestion:
Schoedel also
acknowledges that a “conception of a psychological disorder socially
engendered or reinforced and genetically transmitted may be
presupposed” for Philo (p. 56 [emphasis added]; see also my short
review and critique of Schoedel in The Bible and Homosexual
Practice, 392-94).
Martti Nissinen,
who has written the best book on the Bible and homosexuality from a
pro-homosex perspective and whose work I heavily critique in The
Bible and Homosexual Practice (precisely because it is the best
on the other side), acknowledges in one of his more candid moments:
Paul does not mention tribades or kinaidoi, that is,
female and male persons who were habitually involved in homoerotic
relationships, but if he knew about them (and there is every reason
to believe that he did), it is difficult to think that, because of
their apparent ‘orientation,’ he would not have included them
in Romans 1:24-27. . . . For him, there is no individual inversion
or inclination that would make this conduct less culpable. . . .
Presumably nothing would have made Paul approve homoerotic behavior.
(Homoeroticism in the Biblical World [Fortress, 1998],
109-12)
Dan O. Via
also acknowledges in his response to my
essay in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress,
2003) that the Bible’s rule against homosexual practice is “an
absolute prohibition” that condemns homosexual practice
“unconditionally” and “absolute[ly]” (pp. 93-95). In his essay in
Two Views he rightly notes:
The Pauline texts . . . do not support this limitation of male
homosexuality to pederasty. Moreover, some Greek sources suggest
that—at least in principle—a relationship should not be begun until
the boy is almost grown and should be lifelong. . . . I believe that
Hays is correct in holding that arsenokoites [in 1 Cor 6:9]
refers to a man who engages in same-sex intercourse. . . . True the
meaning of a compound word does not necessarily add up to the sum of
its parts (Martin 119). But in this case I believe the evidence
suggests that it does. . . . First Cor[inthians] 6:9-10 simply
classifies homosexuality as a moral sin that finally keeps one out
of the kingdom of God. (pp. 11, 13)
Even Walter Wink, in his generally
mean-spirited review of my book The Bible and Homosexual Practice,
had to admit:
Gagnon exegetes every biblical text even remotely relevant to the
theme [of homosexual practice]. This section is filled with
exegetical insights. I have long insisted that the issue is one of
hermeneutics, and that efforts to twist the text to mean what it
clearly does not say are deplorable. Simply put, the Bible is
negative toward same-sex behavior, and there is no getting around
it. . . . Gagnon imagines a request from the Corinthians to Paul for
advice, based on 1 Corinthians 5:1-5 [on how to respond to a man in
a loving and committed union with another man]. “. . . . When you
mentioned that arsenokoitai would be excluded from the coming
kingdom of God, you were not including somebody like this man, were
you?” . . . No, Paul wouldn’t accept that relationship for a minute.
(“To Hell with Gays?” Christian Century 119:13 [June 5-12,
2002]: 32-33; at
http://www.robgagnon.net/Reviews/homoWinkExchanges.pdf, fuller
responses at
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/gagnon3.pdf,
http://www.robgagnon.net/Reviews/homoWinkRejoinder.pdf)
In short, the
notion that Paul—or, for that matter, any
other author of Scripture or Jesus himself—would
have been favorably disposed to same-sex intercourse in the context
of a committed union shows a great misunderstanding of the texts of
Scripture in their historical context.