The Apostle Paul on Sexuality: A Response to Neil Elliott
By Robert A. J. Gagnon
My friend Neil Elliott has recently
posted a short article on the Internet entitled “The Apostle Paul on
Sexuality” (http://thewitness.org/agw/elliott071203.html).
Neil is the author of The Rhetoric of Romans (Sheffield Academic
Press, 1990) and Liberating Paul (Orbis Books, 1994). In his
internet article Elliott contends that Paul in Rom 1:18-32 was thinking
only of the emperor Nero and a predecessor, Gaius “Caligula,” both of whom
were connected with emperor worship and sexual excesses. Paul allegedly
did not have in view “faithful and loving” homosexual unions. Elliott
believes that his new reading makes sense of Paul’s argument—an argument
that otherwise “disintegrates” into the “incoherence” of “prejudiced
exaggeration,” “stereotype,” and “caricature.”
Neil creates a problem of his own
making and then attempts to solve it with a proposal that does not speak
to the concerns of Scripture.
1. There is no way that Paul’s argument
in Rom 1:18-32 can be restricted to, or focused primarily on, current and
recent emperors whom even “pagans” recognized to be exceptional
fruitcakes. The whole point of the discussion in 1:18-3:20 is to “charge”
that “both Jews and Greeks—all—are under sin” (3:9), that “no
one is righteous, not even one” (3:10, alluding to Eccl 7:20),
and that “the whole world” is “under God’s judgment” (3:19), “for
all have sinned and are lacking in the glory of God” (3:23). A
critique limited to a couple of emperors would not establish this point.
2. In Rom 1:18-32 Paul has in mind the
past lives of the converts at Rome, not the particularly dissolute
existence of Caligula and Nero. How do we know this? Later in Romans
6:15-23 Paul looks back on the discussion in 1:18-32 as he discusses the
question, “Should we sin because we are not under the law but under
grace?” Does he remind the Roman believers about the antics of a couple of
wacky emperors? No—he reminds them about their own behavior at the time
that they were unbelievers. Formerly they had been “slaves of sin”
(6:17-18, 20) and had “presented [their] members to sexual uncleanness and
to [other forms of] lawlessness for the [doing of] lawlessness” (6:19;
compare 1:24, 27-31). Paul characterized the “fruit” of their past life as
“things of which [they] are now ashamed, for the outcome of those things
is death” (6:21; compare 1:32). Paul had made similar remarks to the
Corinthian converts in 1 Cor 6:9-11 (note that the letter to the Romans
was probably written from Corinth): “Stop deceiving yourselves: Neither
the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor ‘soft men’ (i.e.,
effeminate males who play the sexual role of females), nor men who lie
with males . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God. And these things
some of you were; but you washed yourselves off, you were sanctified,
you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of our
God.” To make sense of Paul’s argument in Rom 1:18-32 one need not look
any further than the past behavior of his converts. The lives of Caligula
and Nero are quite beside the point.
3. Certainly the critique against
idolatry in Rom 1:19-23 was not limited to worship of the emperor, which
in any case met with widespread disapproval among the elite in Rome. In
the Roman forum or city center, as with the agora or marketplace of
provincial cities, there were more temples to more gods than one could
shake a stick at. Is Neil suggesting that Paul had in mind only emperor
worship and no other pagan cult when he spoke of exchanging “the glory of
the imperishable God in the likeness of a perishable human and birds and
four-footed animals and reptiles” (1:23)? And if Paul’s critique of
idolatry is not focused on emperor worship, why should the critique of
same-sex intercourse be so focused?
4. Paul condemns not just male-male
intercourse in Rom 1:24-27 but also female-female intercourse (1:26). What
does that have to do with the activities of Roman emperors? Neil points
out that Caligula and Nero sometimes forced themselves on other men. What
do coercive acts have to do with Paul’s description of the mutuality of
male-male intercourse in 1:27: “males . . . were inflamed in their longing
for one another, males with males . . . receiving back in
themselves the payback which was necessitated by their error”? And
does he think that Paul believed that males raped by the emperor were
recompensed by God for the sin committed against them? Moreover, is Neil
seriously arguing that, had Nero committed himself to a faithful sexual
relationship with one man, whether as the receptive partner, active
partner, or both, Paul would have had no qualms? Nero is reported to have
“married” his former slave Sporos, whom he treated as his “wife,” dressing
him as empress and even having him castrated. Would Paul’s only objection
have been to the castration and cross-dressing? What about Nero’s public
“weddings” to his slave Pythagoras or to his freedman Doryphoros, in which
Nero himself played the role of “wife,” replete with bridal veil and
dowry? Would Paul’s only problem here have been that Nero acted too much
like a woman? Or that a slave or a freedman was involved? We must
remember too that in using the term arsenokoitai in 1 Cor 6:9, “men
who lie with males,” Paul was picking up the Greek translation of the
absolute prohibitions of male-male intercourse in Leviticus 18:22 and
20:13, texts that use the terms “male” (arsen) and “lying” (koite).
In other words, Paul, with all other Jews, understood the prohibition of
male-male intercourse absolutely.
5. Neil’s argument is the equivalent of
contending that Nero’s sexual passion for his mother or Caligula’s sexual
exploits with his sisters gave incest a bad name. In other words, by this
line of reasoning, Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 was strongly opposed to a case
of an incestuous union between a man and his stepmother because some Roman
emperors had not done incest as well as it could be done. There was
nothing structurally incompatible about a man-mother or adult
brother-sister union per se that would have caused Paul to proscribe all
incestuous unions, regardless of degree of consent and commitment?
6. What about the fact that the
critique of same-sex intercourse is not limited to Paul but extends to the
whole canon of Scripture, to say nothing of the univocal perspective
against all same-sex intercourse that existed in the Judaisms of the
Second Temple and rabbinic periods? How could biblical writers not writing
in Paul’s time have had Caligula and Nero in view? Is Neil suggesting that
Paul’s view of same-sex intercourse represents a radical innovation to his
Jewish heritage? At the beginning of his article Neil states that “a
handful of Bible passages that seem to address homosexual practice have
received a degree of attention out of all proportion to their number or
weight.” This is a misunderstanding on two counts. First, there is an
array of interconnected texts in both Testaments, extending well beyond
the Levitical prohibitions and Rom 1:24-27, that clearly indicate a
strong, pervasive, and absolute opposition to same-sex intercourse (see my
book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice, for the evidence). Second,
the “number or weight” of scriptural texts given over to proscribing
man-mother incest and bestiality is comparable to, or less than, the
attention given same-sex intercourse. Is Neil contending that some authors
of Scripture might not have regarded man-mother incest or bestiality as a
big deal? Or that we should not regard such sexual immorality as a big
deal?
7. The truth is that Neil has
misunderstood Paul’s presentation in 1:18-32 in general and his critique
of same-sex intercourse in 1:24-27 in particular. Regarding the former: In
Rom 1:18-32 Paul is beginning his brief for universal culpability
(not just for the universality of sin). He starts with the easier case,
the culpability of Gentile idolaters, and brushes with broad strokes.
Those who disoriented themselves by a turn from the true God were more
likely to be disoriented in their behavior. Every Jew recognized that, on
the whole, idol-worshipping Gentiles were greater sinners, both
quantitatively (they sinned more) and qualitatively (they sinned more
egregiously). That was a “no-brainer,” though Paul stressed here not
merely this fact but also that Gentiles were rendered liable
because they sinned against the revelation about God and God’s will
available to them in creation/nature. Not every Gentile idolater committed
same-sex intercourse or every one of the sins mentioned in the
continuation of the vice list in 1:29-31. But collectively their
entanglement in sin was self-evident, certainly to any Jew or even to any
Gentile God-fearer. The harder case was to demonstrate that Paul’s own
people, the Jews, stood under God’s wrath. Paul already begins to make
that case in 2:1 (indeed, even in 1:23, which echoes Ps 106:20 on the
golden calf episode), but especially does so in earnest in 2:17-3:20
(continued, in fact, through the end of ch. 4). The different reading of
Rom 1:18-3:20 made by Stanley Stowers (to which Neil alludes), and to some
extent earlier by Neil himself and others, has not persuaded most Pauline
scholars.
8. As regards Rom 1:24-27, Neil argues
as if the only thing that would have upset Paul—or any other biblical
author, or Jesus—about same-sex intercourse was a tendency toward
exploitation, multiple partners, or impermanence. This is false. What made
same-sex intercourse in Paul’s eyes “unclean” or “impure,” self
“dishonoring” or “degrading,” “contrary to nature,” and “indecent” was not
a dearth of love or fidelity. There were enough examples of
non-exploitative forms of same-sex intercourse in antiquity (see The
Bible and Homosexual Practice, 347-60). Furthermore, there were many
theories in the Greco-Roman world positing biological influence on the
development of one or more forms of homoerotic behavior—Platonic,
Aristotelian, Hippocratic, and even astrological (see The Bible and
Homosexual Practice, 380-95; and especially my forthcoming article,
“Does the Bible Regard Same-Sex Intercourse as Intrinsically Sinful,”
Christian Sexuality [ed. R. Saltzman; Kirk House]). If Paul had wanted
to make exceptions for nonexploitative homoerotic unions entered into by
persons biologically or socially predisposed to homosexual behavior, he
could have done so within his own cultural context.
No, what troubled Paul and all the
authors of Scripture (and almost certainly Jesus; see The Bible and
Homosexual Practice, 185-228) was something endemic to all same-sex
intercourse, whether particularly exploitative or not. Same-sex
intercourse represented a structurally incongruous attempt at merging
sexually with a sexual same, with someone who was not a gender complement,
and therefore not a person that could bring completion in the sphere of
sexual relations to the sexual self. In short, the problem with same-sex
intercourse is that it does not restore the original sexual unity
portrayed in Gen 1:27 and 2:21-24. There a binary, or sexually
undifferentiated, human is split down the “side” into two constituent
parts, male and female. Sexual relations are pictured as a reconstitution
or re-merger of these two parts into a sexual whole. Men and women are
different. They are different in ways that complement—fill in the gaps and
moderate—the sexuality of the other. That difference constitutes an
essential prerequisite for all sexual unions. Sexual attraction for
persons of the same sex amounts to sexual self-absorption and narcissism
or, perhaps worse, sexual self-deception: a desire either for oneself or
for what one wishes to be but in fact is. It is a misguided attempt at
completing the sexual self with a sexual same when true integration
requires a complementary sexual “other,” a sexual “counterpart.”
“One-fleshness” is not just about intimacy. It is first and foremost about
structural congruity. Similarly, there is structural incongruity or
incompatibility in a sexual relationship between an adult child and
parent, a man and his adult sister, humans and animals, and adults and
children. Concerns about fidelity, monogamy, permanence, and love come
into play only once the prerequisites for an acceptable sexual union have
been met.
9. The echoes to Genesis 1-2 are
evident in Paul’s two main discussions of same-sex intercourse: Rom
1:24-27 and 1 Cor 6:9 (cf. 1 Cor 6:16; see The Bible and Homosexual
Practice, 289-97). Paul had in mind the standard set by God in
creation—as did Jesus in Mark 10:6-8—not how badly or well same-sex
intercourse was done in Paul’s cultural environment. His readers would
have picked up these echoes to the creation stories. But Paul’s argument
goes further in Rom 1:24-27. Paul is asserting that even Gentiles who are
unaware of the revelation of Scripture have enough revelation in
creation/nature to know that males and females, not females with females
or males with males, are complementary sexual beings. In effect, Paul is
saying: Start with the obvious “fittedness” of human anatomy; when done
with that, consider procreative design as a clue; then move on to a broad
range of interpersonal differences that define maleness and femaleness.
This is a much better clue to God’s will for human sexuality than
preexisting and controlling passions—passions that can be warped by the
fall and shaped by socialization factors.
10. Finally, Romans 1:18-32 gives no
support to the notions that same-sex intercourse is something other than
an egregious case of sin or that grace means not judging another person’s
behavior. Neil is incorrect when he claims: “homosexual desire appears [in
Rom 1:24-27], not as a sin, but as a punishment that God imposes on
idolaters.” Paul held up same-sex intercourse as a prime and extreme
example of human suppression of the truth about God and God’s will evident
in creation and nature. The term “sexual uncleanness” (akatharsia)
employed for same-sex intercourse appears later in Rom 6:19 as a synonym
for the word “sin” (hamartia, 6:16-18, 20, 22-23). It usually
occurs in conjunction with two other synonyms for sexual sins: porneia
(“sexual immorality”) and aselgeia (“licentiousness”); so 2 Cor
12:21; Gal 5:19; Col 3:5; Eph 4:19; 5:3; used of adultery in 1 Thess
4:6-7). The “punishment” or, better, “payback” (antimisthia, 1:27),
is not homosexual desire itself but God’s removal of all help in
restraining the behavior that issues from preexisting sexual desire. And
this “payback” is not distinguished from sin any more than is the
continuation of the vice list in Rom 1:29-31. Rather, God’s “giving over”
represents the first installment of divine wrath that culminates in
judgment on the final Day (1:32; 2:3-16). If the wrath of God manifests
itself in the present time by God allowing people to be controlled by
immoral innate desires that lead to self-degrading and impure behavior,
then the salvation of God can be nothing other than the deliverance of
persons from the control of such sinful impulses. This is the whole point
of Rom 6:19 and indeed of Romans generally: “For just as you presented
your members as slaves to sexual uncleanness and to [other forms of]
lawlessness for the [doing of] lawlessness, so now present your members as
slaves to righteousness (i.e., right behavior) for [the purpose of living
in] holiness.” As Paul makes abundantly clear in Rom 7:6 and 8:1-17, the
Spirit of Christ becomes our new empowering force for right conduct. This
does not mean, necessarily, that deeply ingrained sinful impulses will be
eradicated (see Gal 5:17). But it does mean that the Spirit, rather than
these impulses, can now exercise dominion over our behavior. Paul says it
best: “Sin shall not exercise lordship over you; for you are not under the
law but under grace” (6:14). “So, then, brothers and sisters, we are
debtors not to the flesh, that is, to live in conformity to the [sinful
passions of] the flesh, for you live in conformity to the flesh, you are
going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live. For as many as are being led by the Spirit of God,
these are the children of God” (8:12-14).
An opposition to same-sex intercourse
is not a “sexual prejudice,” as Neil suggests—at least not any more than
an opposition to adult consensual incest or “threesomes.” A “prejudice” is
“a judgment or opinion formed without knowing the facts or in spite of the
facts” (Webster). In this case, knowing what Scripture says and why it
says it decidedly favors those who lovingly and humbly hold to an
“other-sexual” (heterosexual) prerequisite for acceptable sexual behavior.
The real “sexual prejudice” is the insistence that such a prerequisite is
inconsequential to Scripture and inconsequential to Jesus. Conforming
oneself to homoerotic desires, like conformity to any sexual impulses that
God deems immoral, is “conformity to this world” and the opposite of
“transformation by the renewal of the mind” (Rom 12:2). At least this is
what Paul, Jesus, and the whole of Scripture tell us.
© 2003 Robert A. J. Gagnon