PAUL AND THE WRATH OF GOD The Dark Side of the Gospel Part IIb
Romans 1:18-32
Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe in the concept of sin. What counts as sinful behavior? Here is the percentage of Americans who view certain activities as sinful:
81% Adultery Racism Use of hard drugs Abortion Homosexual activity Underreporting income Gambling Telling a “little white lie”
Court overturns ban on same-sex marriage
Introduction We continue our attention to the Romans’ passage dealing with homosexuality “just because it is there” and we are studying Romans. For Paul, homosexual behavior as he knows it is part of the moral perversion that is a consequence of God’s wrath against human idolatry, the preference of the creature over the Creator—“God gave them over” (1:24, 26, 28). Note the ascending order of moral seriousness, from “sensuality” (vv 24-25) to “sexual perversion” (vv 26-27) to “antisocial living” (vv 28-32): “The perversion of all human relationships follows on the original perversion of man’s relationship to God” “Just because it is there” and the fact that “homosexuality is a defining issue of our time and is tearing apart churches and society” motivate our attempt to see at a minimum to how Romans 1:26-27 is interpreted by those who sanction same-sex committed relationships in the life and ministry of the Christian church. We do this for informative reasons and not necessarily to solve the homosexuality issue, which, the more I read the literature, is complex at best. Yet, as we do this and close with how William Greathouse and George Lyons deal with our passage in their commentary on Romans, we hope to grasp some of what is involved, first, in understanding what the biblical text in its 1st century context really says, and then, perhaps a hint of what it may mean for the Christian church today. We are not able—time and space—to do much more than report at this juncture.
Last lesson we pointed out with Richard Hays that Romans 1 is “the most crucial text for Christian ethics concerning homosexuality . . . because this is the only passage in the New Testament that explains the condemnation of homosexual behavior in an explicitly theological context.” In preparation for taking a hard look at this passage we made a quick survey of how the other seven biblical passages involved in the current debate (Genesis 19:1-29; Judges 19:1-30; Leviticus 18:1-30; Leviticus 20:1-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-17; 1 Timothy 1:3-13; Jude 1-25) have at best been reduced by many to a minor role in the discussion. But what should we do with these texts, especially Leviticus 18 and 20, if “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful . . . for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16 NRSV)? How are they to function as the authoritative word of God in our day? The same question applies to Romans 1.
So now once again, we are ready to look at how Romans 1:26-27 is interpreted by those who do not see it as relevant to the issue of same-sex committed relationships on the current scene. We repeat the introductory statement of Jack Rogers as an indication of the direction we need to head:
The conflict over the meaning of biblical texts becomes acute when we look at Romans 1. Some conservative scholars who dismiss the relevance of the seven previously discussed texts to the issue of homosexuality argue that Romans 1 is a theological statement that has direct application for our time. I believe, however, that a close and careful look at the text, using the best methods of biblical interpretation, will reveal that Paul is making a statement about idolatry, not sexuality per se, and that Paul’s writings also reflect many of the cultural assumptions of his time.
So now to the object of the second of the three series of “God gave them over” of which Robert Jewett has commented, “taken as a whole, this effort in vv. 26-27 to provide a theological appraisal to the issue of homoerotoicism is unique in the ancient world.”
II. Sexual Perversion (vv 26-27)
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error (NIV),
1. PAUL AND THE WRATH OF GOD The Dark Side of the Gospel Part IIa: May 4, 2008
2a.
We have already noted that there is no one word in Greek or Hebrew for homosexuals, an observation that is often stressed. The term homosexual is said to have been invented in the 19th century. So some ask, “How can you condemn something which you do not have a word for?” Yet as Hays observes in agreement with New Testament scholars generally, “in the absence of Greek words for ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual,’” the opposition between “natural” and “unnatural” in verses 26-27 is very frequently used in Greek literature “as a way of distinguishing between heterosexual and homosexual behavior.” For this and other reasons Lewis B. Smedes rightly concludes that “the bible does not tell us about a condition called homosexuality,” just what moderns call homosexual behavior.
So the first and most significant interpretation of Romans 1:26-27 by those who see it as irrelevant to the contemporary issue of same-sex egalitarian committed relationships is that it is simply referring to something else. Walter Wink summarizes this position clearly:
Paul really thought that those whose behavior he condemned were “straight,” and that they were behaving in ways that were unnatural to them. Paul . . . had no concept of homosexual orientation. The idea was not available in his world. There are people who are genuinely homosexual by nature (the exact cause no one really knows and it is irrelevant). For such a person it would be acting contrary to nature to have sexual relations with a person of the opposite sex. Likewise, the relationships Paul describes are heavy with lust; they are not relationships between consenting adults who are committed to each other as faithfully and with as much integrity as any heterosexual couple.
In his effort to understand Romans 1:26-27 in its 1st century context, Jack Rogers stresses the role of “Male Gender Dominance.” He writes that in both Greek and Hebrew patriarchal cultures “men were, and intended to remain, dominate over women,”—“a man and a woman each had a designated place and role in society, which could not be exchanged.” For Rogers, our Romans’ text “does not say that women had sex with other women” for what was unnatural may have been “women taking the man’s active role in sex.” Or they could have been condemned “for engaging in nonprocreative sexual acts with male partners. The issue is gender dominance.”
Rogers describes the errors he sees in interpreting Romans 1 of those who do not agree with his full acceptance of Christian gay and lesbian behavior as follows:
(1) they lose sight of the fact that this passage is primarily about idolatry, (2) they overlook Paul’s point that we are all sinners, (3) they miss the cultural subtext, and (4) they apply Paul’s condemnation of immoral sexual activity to faithful and gay and lesbian Christians who are not idolaters, who love God, and who seek to live in faithful obedience to God. Implied in #4 is the argument from experience, that is, from the presence among us of those who live in faithful and loving homosexual relationships and claim to experience the grace of God and seek to live in obedience to him. This is a common appeal and appears for many to be the most compelling argument: “Could God be doing a new thing in our time?” is a serious and relevant question. The most crucial question for the present study is the question, “What was the behavior that Paul was condemning in his day?” The interpretation that appears to be most often repeated in the contemporary discussion of homosexuality in the church is “that Paul’s derogation of homosexual behavior in Romans 1 applies only to homosexual acts committed by ‘heterosexual’ persons.” But was not such a distinction between heterosexual and homosexual persons not foreign to Paul’s thought? John Boswell who contends for the above position for Paul admits that “it is in fact unlikely that many Jews in his [Paul’s] day recognized such a distinction?” As we have noted, the conception of “sexual orientation” would be an anachronism as applied to Romans 1. But this fact can cut two ways—no distinction, so Paul’s strictures cover all forms of homosexual practice known today—or no distinction, so Paul’s strictures cannot possibly extend beyond the forms known in his day. But what is obvious is that the homosexual practices of Paul’s day were for him one illustration of the consequences of the revelation of God’s wrath on the idolatry of human kind. The unanswered question is, “What would Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, write if he were alive today?” Adult males making sexual use of younger males, or pederasty, was of course an accepted practice in Greek culture as was intercourse between masters and their male slaves in accordance with the standards of a male-dominated society. The Roman, Seneca the Elder, wrote that “sexual servicing is a crime for the freeborn, a necessity for a slave, and a duty for the freeman.” For the freeborn sexual relations with persons of lower standing “were clearly an expression of sexual domination.” It was these practices that Paul is said to be exclusively against in Romans 1, not what is known today as same-sex committed relationships. To this contemporary expression of the “homosexual condition” Paul’s words simply do not apply, or if we do seek to extend them, Paul is simply wrong, as was his refusal to explicitly condemn slavery. In addition to the earlier noted appeal to experience is the ultimate appeal to the model of Jesus, what can be called the hermeneutic of love: “faith expressing itself through love” (Gal. 5:6). Centering on Jesus’ Great Commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. . . . Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these (Mark 12:30-31), the attempt is to enter the mind of Jesus. The conclusion made is that as we do “we can scarcely conclude otherwise than that he would have sided with the humanity and dignity of those whose sexual-orientation was same-sexed.” Thus the ultimate question becomes then, is “Who is Jesus?” and our judgment of how he would have thought about this issue. 2b It remains to us now to see how William M. Greathouse, the theologian, and George Lyons, New Testament scholar, deal with Romans 1:26-27 in their new commentary on Romans. Lyons, especially, knows most of the pertinent exegetical studies concerning the interpretation of these verses, so we let them speak for themselves. Paul cites as examples of such enslaving and perverse passions same-sex intercourse—the unnatural [para physin, against nature] practices of both lesbianism and homosexuality. Although the former was universally deplored, the latter was almost universally accepted in the Greco-Roman world of Paul's day. Consistent “with all other known branches of ancient Judaism and early Christianity” Paul presumed that “heterosexuality was part of the divinely created order for humankind (Jewett 2007, 177). Homosexual Behavior
The violation of the created order in human sexuality is, as Paul understood it, an outgrowth of the violation of the created order, a violation whose roots lie in self-deception and idolatry. For Paul, the kind of life he describes—women [thēleiai, females] exchanged [metēllaxan; see 1:23, 25] natural relations for unnatural, . . . men [arsenes, males] committed indecent acts with other men (vv 26-27)—cannot be understood as an alternate life-style, somehow also acceptable to God.
Homosexual behavior is, as Paul understands it, just one of the forms God's wrath takes when he allows sinful humanity free reign to abuse creation and one another. Such conduct may not be celebrated as another expression of God's grace. It is clearly portrayed here as a sign of God's wrath (Achtemeier 1985, 41). Despite the claims of some recent advocacy scholarship, Paul rejects all homosexual conduct, not just pederasty and homosexual rape. Furthermore, he would find wholly inconceivable "the modern concept of individual sexual orientation based on biological differences" (Jewett 2007, 176, 177 and n. 140).
Paul nowhere suggests that the sin of lesbian or homosexual practice is somehow more perverse than any other sin. In fact, many of the sins he mentions in his lurid exposé of humanity's downward spiral into depravity are often ignored by the same Christians who most loudly denounce homosexuality (see v 29).
Richard B. Hays' exposition of Paul's treatment of homosexuality in this passage is biblically faithful but restrained:
God's wrath takes the form of letting human idolatry run its own self-destructive course. Homosexual activity, then, is not a provocation of 'the wrath of God' (Rom. 1:18); rather, it is a consequence of God's decision to "give up" rebellious creatures to their own futile thinking and desires. The unrighteous behavior catalogued in Romans 1:26-31 is a list of symptoms: the underlying sickness of humanity as a whole, Jews and Greeks alike, is that they have turned away from God and fallen under the power of sin (see 3:9). . . .
Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention because he regards it as providing a particularly graphic image of the way in which human fallenness distorts God's created order [Gen. 1:27; 2:24]. God the Creator made man and woman for each other, to cleave together, to be fruitful and multiply. When human beings "exchange" these created roles for homosexual intercourse, they embody the spiritual condition of those who 'exchange the truth about God for a lie.’ . . .
Homosexual activity will not incur God's punishment: it is its own punishment, an "antireward." Paul here simply echoes a traditional Jewish idea. The Wisdom of Solomon, an intertestamental writing that has surely informed Paul's thinking in Romans 1, puts it like this: "Therefore those who lived unrighteously, in a life of folly, [God] tormented through their own abominations" (Wisdom of Solomon 12:23). . . .
Repeated again and again in recent debate is the claim that Paul condemns only homosexual acts committed promiscuously by heterosexual persons—because they "exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural." Paul's negative judgment, so the argument goes, does not apply to persons who are "naturally" of homosexual orientation. This interpretation, however, is untenable. The "exchange" is not a matter of individual life decisions; rather, it is Paul's characterization of the fallen condition of the pagan world. In any case, neither Paul nor anyone else in antiquity had a concept of "sexual orientation." To introduce this concept into this passage (by suggesting that Paul disapproves only those who act contrary to their individual sexual orientations) is to lapse into anachronism. The fact is that Paul treats all homosexual activity as prima facie evidence of humanity's tragic confusion and alienation from God the Creator (1996, 388-89).
Conclusion
In this lesson I have attempted to work through some of the more significant literature dealing with the interpretation of the Pauline text. I have not examined the literature and studies dealing with the genetic/environment/choice issues regarding the homosexual condition, so I have left those issues out of consideration. My concern at present is only the biblical witness. So, recognizing that in Romans 1:18-32 “Paul’s point is that the key to the human malaise is idolatry” whose consequences in terms of the divine wrath are illustrated in his three examples in vv 24-32, our tentative conclusions as to the biblical evidence, focused in vv. 26-27 but including the other references we have examined, are the following:
One: Paul condemns homosexual activity as he knew it in his world.
Two: The biblical texts examined do not explicitly or in any fully unambiguous way condemn committed same-sex unions.
Three: Scripture does not explicitly or in any unambiguous way approve committed same-sex unions.
Four: Any acceptance of or strictures against such relationships from the standpoint of Christian ethics has to go beyond any appeal to specific biblical texts that appear to mention homosexuality. Such appraisals must make their ethical judgments in the light of the individual and corporate Christian conscience as informed by the witness of the whole of Scripture, climaxed and focused in Jesus the Christ, crucified and risen. William M. Greathouse: Outline I. Letter Prescript (1:1-15) II. The Gospel of God's Righteousness (1:16—15:13) The Thesis of the Letter (1:16-17) A. God's Righteousness Needed (1:18—3:20) 1. The Human Predicament (1:18-32) a. Introduction: The Wrath of God (1:18) b. Humanity's Original Sin (1:19-23) c. Humanity's Moral Depravity (1:24-32) (1) Sensuality (1:24-25) (2) Sexual Perversion (1:26-27) (3) Antisocial Living (1:28-32) 2. God's Righteous Judgment (2:1-16) B. God's Righteousness Provided (3:21—8:39) C. God's Righteousness in History (9:1—11:36) D. God's Righteousness in Practice (12:1—15:13) III. Conclusion: Romans 15:14—16:27 “Americans on Sin,” Christian Century (April 22, 2008), 9. Healine in San Diego Union-Tribune (May 16, 2008), A1. Subheadline: “Both sides gear up for what’s seen as big November fight.” Emil Brunner, The Letter to the Romans, tran. H. A. Kennedy (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959), 18. The observation that is given to justifies his extensive treatment of the issue by Jack Rodgers, Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 15. Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 383. Some such as Walter Wink, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” in Walter Wink, ed., Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 47, while admitting that the Bible clearly condemns homosexual behavior, writes that “the issue is precisely whether the biblical judgment is correct.” He mentions the Bible’s lack of condemnation of slavery as a case in point. Rogers, Homosexuality, 76. Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, ed. Eldon Jay Epp (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 180. Hays, Moral Vision, 387. Maria Harris and Gabriel Moran, “Homosexuality: A Word Not Written,” in Wink, Homosexuality, 73. Richard B. Hays, “Relations Natural and Unnatural: This essay is a response to John Boswell’s Exegesis of Romans 1,” Journal of Religious Ethics 14/1 (1986), 192. The book in question is John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Both Hays, 192-193, and Jewett, Romans, 175, give examples of this usage from ancient literature. Lewis B. Smedes, “Exploring the Morality of Homosexuality,” in Wink, Homosexuality, 78. Wink, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 36. Rogers, Homosexuality, 78. Ibid. Considering ancient Greek parallels Jewett, Romans, 176, notes that “it is clear that Paul had in mind female homoeroticism in this verse, rather than women’s engaging in oral or anal intercourse with males or heterosexual women committing homoerotic acts.” A source he cites often is Bernadette Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (University of Chicago Press, 1996). Rogers, Homosexuality, 78. Ibid., 79. Hays, “Relations Natural and Unnatural.” 209. See Rogers, Homosexuality, 79, and most of the chapters in Wink, Homosexuality. Our understanding here may furnish the lens through which we look at 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. Hays, “Relations Natural and Unnatural,” 199. Ibid., 201, where Boswell, Christianity, 109, is quoted. Ibid., 200. Hays quotes Victor Paul Furnish, The Moral Teaching of the New Testament (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979), 200, who after surveying the literature comments that “the ancient writers were operating without the vaguest conception of what we have learned to call ‘sexual orientation.’” Jewett, Romans, 180. Ibid. That is, abhorrent between freeborn males on a mutually consenting egalitarian basis. Ibid., 181. Jewett suggests “that Paul’s rhetoric may prove entrée into the similarly unhappy experience of Christian slaves and former slaves who had experienced and resented sexual exploitation, both for themselves and for their children, in a culture marked by aggressive bisexuality.” This is the view for example of Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homsexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 123-129, as reported by Hays, “Relations Natural and Unnatural,” 210. See Wink, “Homosexuality and the Bible, 47. Interestingly, Sehested, “Biblical Fidelity,” 56, suggests that Paul’s description “is set within a larger context of idolatry,” writing against “pagan temple cult prostitution, using adult men and woman as well as young boys.” Wink, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 133. Here we must remember the warning of James F. Kay, Preaching and Theology (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2007), 108, that when from the cultural-linguistic stance of postliberalism we reconstruct the historical Jesus from Christianity’s literary remains we often narrate more about ourselves than we do about Jesus. Greathouse, Romans, 77. Ibid., 77-78. The footnotes indicate the sources I have attempted to assimilate, some directly, and others by reference. Paul Achtemeier, Romans, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 39. Hays, “Relations Natural and Unnatural.” 211, makes the following concluding judgment: “Arguments in favor of acceptance of homosexual relations find their strongest warrants in empirical investigations and in contemporary experience. Those who defend the morality of homosexual relationships within the church may do so only by conferring upon these warrants an authority greater than the direct authority of Scripture and tradition, as least with respect to this question.”
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