Note: This is Part One of my two-part series on homosexuality and the Church. The first part examines supposed references to homosexuality in the letters of Paul; Part Two, which I will post tomorrow, will outline five primary ways to introduce this information to a church congregation.
For the
Evangelical Christian who leans even modestly leftward, it is not a difficult
task to hermeneutically bypass Hebrew scripture that appears to condemn
homosexual activity. The admonition found in Leviticus 20:13 that anyone found
to be engaged in same-sex intercourse should be put to death can be cast in
doubt simply by engaging in the process of questioning: In our current cultural
context of modern and postmodern American Christianity, who should be deemed
worthy by the public to carry out the sentencing of such a crime? Should it be
our officers of the law who are to put all homosexuals to death? The absurdity
of the question exposes the cultural and contextual gap between ancient Hebrew
Yahwism and twenty-first century American globalism, and is often left
unconsidered by many who vehemently defend what they call “traditional
marriage.” The New Testament Gospels contain virtually no references to homosexuality
at all (with the exception of a few queer theological interpretations of
extracanonical Gospels),
so little can be argued from the authoritative words of Jesus of Nazareth. On
this particular issue, he remains peculiarly silent. But what of the letters of
Paul? How do we confront the theology of a man whose writings make up more than
a quarter of the New Testament with our rapidly shifting knowledge of gender
identity and human sexuality? Such is the aim of this study.
In Part One I will
address two primary pericopae from the writings of the Apostle Paul, 1
Corinthians 6:9-10 and Romans 1:24-27, and their literary, historical, and
social context. In Part Two of this post, I will help to outline a method in which the
material of Part One might be disseminated within a congregational or
ministerial setting.
PART ONE: Textual Analysis
1 Corinthians 6:9-10
Paul’s first letter
to the Church in Corinth deals with several important issues with which the
early Christians in that city struggled, particularly unity, holiness, love,
the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and sexual morality. It is the latter with
which this section is concerned. Paul was undertaking no small task to preach
to the Corinthians about sexual ethic. Of the cultural setting of Corinth,
David L. Tiede writes, “Corinth was a town with a reputation for cosmopolitan airs,
for bawdy sex in the marketplace, for crafty dealings among the traders at the
port…The human meat markets of every age have looked about the same, and every
generation has had its high priests of sexual freedom and pornography.”
With this context in mind, two words in
particular should be given special attention from 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:
arsenokoitai (arsenokoitai)
and
malakoi (malakoi).
The
fluidity of language has a long history of birthing numerous interpretations of
the Biblical text, both in ancient times and throughout recent history. Dale B.
Martin, in his excellent study of human sexuality and the Church,
Sex and
the Single Savior, notes that both of these
mysterious terms included in Paul’s Corinthian vice list held, until the 19th
or 20th century, a distinctly male connotation, with no respect to
our modern concept of sexual orientation. The term arsenokoitai, for example, took on new
meaning when the Greek noun—which refers solely to men—was translated in the
early twentieth century with the generic label of “homosexual,” thereby feeding
the growing misconception that both the male and female gay identity stemmed
from what was commonly considered to be a mental disorder.
Furthermore,
Martin suggests that
arsenokoitai
(
arsenokoiteV) has a much more
specific meaning than any generic homosexual activity. This specific meaning
might be lost to us, but contextual hints may be found in the
Sibylline
Oracles (2nd - 5th cent., CE)
, an ancient Greek text which
utilizes the word in a vice list very similar to (yet totally independent of)
Paul’s reference in 1 Corinthians. However, arsenokoiteV here takes on a distinctly economic meaning,
sandwiched between such admonitions as “Do not steal seeds. Whoever takes for
himself is accursed,” and “Give one who has labored his wage. Do not oppress
the poor man.”
In addition,
two other early Christian texts,
The Acts of John (2nd cent.) and Theophilus of Antioch’s To
Autolychus, also include arsenokoiteV among economic vice lists.
It is possible that by including
aresenokoitai
among such sexual sinners as adulterers (
moicoi)
and fornicators (
pornoi), Paul is
attempting to single out those who are motivated by their own greed toward
sexual exploitation. In any case, it should be pointed out that the exact
definition of this term has been and will most likely remain a mystery, and
that due to this ambiguity, translations will continue to be influenced by the
particular ideological milieu or bias of the translator.
Unlike
arsenokoiteV, however, the word
malakoV (plural:
malakoi) does have a well-documented meaning. Long before
Arnold Schwarzenegger referred to his political opponents as “girly-men,” the
ancients used the term
malakoV to
refer to any man with a less-than-masculine demeanor, a physically feminine
build, distaste for hard work, or an otherwise milquetoast disposition.
Josephus and Plutarch both use the term in their writings to refer to the
cowardly.
The Greek word is actually the etymological ancestor of the English word
malleable, and means, literally, soft. Often translated together with arsenokoitai as “sexual perverts” or
“homosexuals,” a much closer understanding of the word might be its original
King James English translation,
effeminate,
which inadvertently takes into consideration the inherent sexism of Paul’s culture.
Men were chiseled and virile, but women were weak, both in will and in physical
stature. The ancient understanding of the feminine was very much influenced by
the coital act—men were aggressive penetrators, while women were to passively
allow themselves to be penetrated. Any man who was seen to be “soft” followed the natural order of distinction
bestowed specifically upon women,
and was therefore weak and cowardly. As Martin concludes, the difficulty with
Paul’s use of the term malakoV
is not the inherently sinful nature of homosexuality, but instead the “rank
misogyny” implied by the term.
This concept will be explored further in Part II of this study, which will be posted tomorrow.
Romans 1:24-27
In this
text-segment, as in the Corinthian correspondence, context becomes one of the
key issues to interpreting the passage. It should first be noted that the
overarching theme of the Romans letter involves the complicated interplay of
salvation for the Jews and salvation for the Gentiles, and it is through this
lens that Romans 1:24-27 must be viewed. Specifically, when Paul speaks of what
many today consider to be a theological re-hashing of the Fall of Humanity, he
is actually referring to the idolatry of the pre-Christian Gentiles, as is
revealed by the preceding paragraphs.
It should not be
overlooked or ignored that the primary sin that Paul is speaking against here
is not some modern concept of sexual orientation, but the sin of idolatry.
The
“exchanging of natural
intercourse [Greek:
cresin, or
use] for unnatural” among men and women is not the sin
being committed, but is instead punishment meted out by God for the sin of worshiping false gods! Furthermore,
David L. Balch observes that “Paul is not evaluating
homosexual ‘relationships,’ a modern value, but judges the psychological state
of the person experiencing addictive desire…Paul's terms desire, passion, inflame, appetite, and error suggest
that he is critiquing unbridled eros,
sexual passion.” Paul,
like many other ancient moralists, viewed homosexual activity as “the most
extreme expression of heterosexual lust.”
This interpretation of the pericope holds that Paul was instead noting the
consequences of idolatry; that is, the total abandonment of will to appetite.
Indeed, the link between sexual promiscuity and gluttony has been well-explored
by recent scholars:
Sexual
desire and hunger for food were thought to be analogous. The pleasure or use of sex is to be limited by satisfaction, as a full stomach
limits eating. The Greco-Roman question of sexual use does not ask about the gender of the subject or the
object, does not ask whether the activity is homo- or heterosexual.
Women
being inflamed with passion for women and men being inflamed with passion for
men is not, then, the result of any innate, natural, sexual orientation that
causes one to be attracted to a person of the same sex, but is instead the
carrying out of a natural sexual drive to its depraved ultimate conclusion.
Finally,
it is a tragic irony that those who utilize this very passage as fuel for the fires
of judgment against the LGBTQ community apparently (and most unfortunately)
read no further than the end of the first chapter of Romans. The very next
portion of the letter contains the following admonition:
Therefore you have no
excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on
another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same
things. You say, ‘We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in
accordance with truth.’ Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge
those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment
of God?
The same Paul who proclaims that the New Age of Christ has arrived, urging Gentiles and
Jews alike to embrace one another as brothers and sisters, also writes to the
Church in
Galatia that “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no
longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” This understanding of God
as no respecter of persons bears a remarkable resemblance to Peter’s epiphany in
Acts 10,
as he preaches to Cornelius following his own vision regarding the acceptance of the
profane: “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a
Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” As long
as proof-texting is utilized by those perceived to be in power as a tool for marginalization
and rejection of our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender brothers and sisters, the church
will never be seen by the oppressed as the catalyst for the New Age of Christ that Paul
envisioned it to be.
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