Jesus and Paul on homosexuality

You've excellently summarized my own thoughts on this subject, but don't forget the most important passage of all (I've looked up this passage so often that my Bible flipped right open to it): * * * And Pharisees came up to him and tested [Jesus] by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." [Matthew 19: 3-6] * * * As with the Creation story, the question is whether Jesus was citing Adam and Eve as an example of lifelong unions or whether he intended to suggest that the pairing of male and female was necessary for marriage to take place. (And if it was, whether he believed that marriages are the only sexual unions possible.) "Another point about secular influence is a curious reference Heather once gave me, quoting a Roman (or was it Greek?) secular writer who was condemning homosexuality in no uncertain terms using precisely the same language Paul uses in Rom 1. It would be nice if Heather could find that reference again, and I would make a more permanent record of it, but I fear, alas, it is lost." Heather the Pack Rat keeps everything. :) I checked through my files and located the post you're referring to; it's reprinted below. I still lean heavily toward the interpretation of Bernadette Brooten, in her giant section on Romans 1 in Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, that Paul was condemning homosexuality for the same reasons of gender that some pagan writers condemned homosexuality. However, I've discussed this topic with two other people who have an interest in this subject, and they both believe – one from a liberal point of view and one from a conservative point of view – that while Paul may have been drawing upon pagan arguments, he was also drawing upon Jewish arguments and providing innovative reasons for opposing whatever-it-is-that-he's-opposing-there. By the way, you might be interested in the article I've linked below. It's a lengthy, but extremely interesting, discussion of the meaning of Romans 1; the author's argument is that Paul is not referring to homosexuals at all but instead is referring to gender-variant members of the goddess religions. Heather St. Paul and pederasty Posted by Heather on 25th May 1999 at 15:31:42 In response to fascinating posted by F.O.D. on 25th May 1999 at 13:31:17 "why did the Holy Church ever defend so bitterly a Ptolmeic (that's the one, isn't it?) cosmology?????" Because Ptolemy's cosmology is so splendid! Oh, wait. You don't want me to get started on that. "What I find most interesting is the clear similarities to the language that Paul uses in Rom 1 (para physin and all that)." Yes, yes, yes! I analyzed that once; I've pasted below a letter I sent to an acquaintance about that. I can think of a few other possibilities besides the ones you mentioned. 1) Paul's objections were partly influenced by classical philosophy and partly by Jewish and Christian theology. 2) The anti-pederasty people based their arguments partly on good premises and partly on bad premises. 3) The pro-pederasty people based their arguments partly on good premises and partly on bad premises. 4) Both the anti-pederasty people and the pro-pederasty people were assuming that social conditions would always exist. I happen to believe that all of the above is true. Heather "I still think that the Hebrew Bible and Jewish view is more important than 'mainstream pagan opinion' in making sense of Paul on most things and would need persuading that this is not so here also esp given standard Jewish polemic against same-gender behavior." Yes, but my question is: Why would Paul stick with Jewish views on sexuality? He was prepared to depart from the Jewish law in other areas. The reasons that the Hebrew Bible opposes homosexuality are still not clear to me, and, knowing Paul, I'm sure he must have thought the matter through. One of the reasons he offers – that homosexuality is against nature – is a standard classical argument: you can find it in Plato's Laws. "The context of Rom 1 argument re Creator/creation, idolatry etc is, I think, a sign that even if he uses the Stoic or other pagan language, his frame of reference is quite different." I agree with you, of course, but the key question here is: Would Paul have seen homosexuality as a form of idolatry and of rebellion against the Creator if he had not already decided that homosexuality was against nature? Here's proof that there's nothing new under the sun: "Therefore do I at the very outset of my discourse call as witness to back my plea the first mother and earliest root of every creature, that sacred origin of all things, I mean [Aphrodite], who in the beginning established earth, air, fire and water, the elements of the universe, and, by blending these with each other, brought to life everything that has breath. . . . She devised in each species two types. For she allowed males as their peculiar privilege to ejaculate semen, and made females to be a vessel as it were for the reception of seed, and imbuing both sexes with a common desire, she linked them to each other, ordaining as a sacred law of necessity that each should retain its own nature and that neither should the female grow unnaturally masculine nor the male be unbecomingly soft (malakizesthai). . . . "In the beginning therefore, since human life was still full of heroic thought and honoured the virtues that kept men close to gods, it obeyed the laws made by nature (physis), and men, linking themselves to women according to the proper limits imposed by age, became fathers of sterling children. But gradually the passing years degenerated from such nobility to the lowest depths of hedonism and cut out strange and extraordinary paths to enjoyment. Then luxury, daring all, transgressed the laws of nature herself. And who ever was the first to look at the male as though at a female after using violence like a tyrant or else shameless persuasion? The same sex entered the same bed. Though they saw themselves embracing each other, they were ashamed neither at what they did nor at what they had down to them, and sowing their seed, to quote the proverb, on barren rocks they bought a little pleasure at the cost of great disgrace. . . . "Thus foul self-indulgence, teacher of every wickedness (pantos kakou didaskalos), devising one shameless pleasure after another, has plunged all the way down to that infection which cannot even be mentioned with decency, in order to leave no area of lust unexplored. "If each man abided by the ordinances prescribed for us by Providence, we should be satisfied with intercourse with women and life would be uncorrupted by anything shameful. Lions have no passions for lions but love in due season evokes in them desire for the females of their kind. The bull, monarch of the herd, mounts cows, and the ram fills the whole flock with seed from the male. Furthermore do not boars seek to lie with sows? Do not wolves mate with she-wolves? And, to speak in general terms, neither the birds whose wings whir on high, nor the creatures whose lot is a wet one beneath the water nor yet any creatures upon land strive for intercourse with fellow males, but the decisions of Providence remain unchanged. But you who are wrongly praised for wisdom, you beasts truly contemptible, you humans, by what strange infection have you been brought to lawlessness and incited to outrage each other? With what blind insensibility have you engulfed your souls that you have missed the mark in both directions, avoiding what you ought to pursue, and pursuing what you ought to avoid? If each and every man should choose to emulate such conduct, the human race will come to a complete end." This is from Pseudo-Lucian's "Affairs of the Heart"; it was published in the early fourth century A.D., so I can't rule out the possibility that Pseudo-Lucian was imitating Paul, but since Pseudo-Lucian shows no familiarity with Christian doctrine, I think it's far more likely that both Pseudo-Lucian and Paul were drawing upon arguments common in the classical world. If you compare this passage with Romans 1 – and particularly with verses 22, 27, and 30 – you'll see why I call Paul's arguments mainstream. He has certainly adapted the arguments to a Christian setting, but he's taking for granted (without bothering to support those arguments with his own reasoning) certain common pagan arguments against homosexuality. [Romans 1: "(18) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. (19) For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (20) Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; (21) for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. (22) Claiming to be wise, they became fools, (23) and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. (24) Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, (25) because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. (26) For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, (27) and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. (28) And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. (29) They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, (30) slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, (31) foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (32) Though they know God's decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them."] [Discussing Paul's use of the words malakoi and arsenokoitai, apparently to refer to homosexuals.] . . . Arsenokoitai seems to me essentially untranslatable, since (if I remember correctly) is the first instance of the word in classical literature. Certainly from Romans, though, we can infer that Paul saw both active and passive partners as equally wicked, which, as you say, was a break from pro-homosexuality pagan thought. I'm finding, though, that it's not a break from anti-homosexuality pagan thought. You'll note that, in the passage I quoted above, the speaker regarded the active partner as just as wicked as the passive partner. In a later passage, the speaker argues that a man is selfish if he has sex with a boy: "No, the active lover, according to his view of the matter, departs after having obtained an exquisite pleasure, but the one outraged suffers pain and tears at first, though the pain relents somewhat with time and you will, men say, cause him no further discomfort, but of pleasure he has none at all." Which, if taken as a universal statement, is a bold-faced lie, as we know from other sources. An earlier dialogue by Plutarch presents similar arguments against homosexuality and could not have been influenced by Christianity; nor, of course, could passages in Plato and other B.C. authors. So I think that it's dangerous to read Paul outside of the context of classical thinking of the time. It's like those people who read Ephesians 5 and say, "Paul hated women!" – totally ignoring the fact that everyone in classical times thought that the husband should be the active partner in the marriage. Few classical writers, though, went on to conclude, as Paul did, that this gave the husband certain duties toward the wife. One reason I'm interested in seeing the early Christian writings on homosexuality is that it remains unclear to me what exactly Paul knew about homosexuality and why exactly he was opposing it. I don't really find enough in the Epistles to tell me that. Hopefully, the Church Fathers have more to say on the subject. Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page] Romans 1:18-32: Paul, the Goddess Religions and Homosexuality