The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality pt. 4

But that is not what we are talking about. Gay people have a natural, permanent orientation toward those of the same sex; it’s not something that they choose, and it’s not something that they can change. They aren’t abandoning or rejecting heterosexuality—that’s never an option for them to begin with. 

And if applied to gay people, Paul’s argument here should actually work in the other direction: If the point of this passage is to rebuke those who have spurned their true nature, be it religious when it comes to idolatry or sexual, then just as those who are naturally heterosexual should not be with those of the same sex, so, too, those who have a natural orientation toward the same sex should not be with those of the opposite sex. 

For them, that would be exchanging “the natural for the unnatural” in just the same way. We have different natures when it comes to sexual orientation.

But is this just a clever argument that has no grounding in the historical context of Paul’s world and therefore yields an interpretation that could not be what he originally intended? After all, the concept of sexual orientation is very recent; it was only developed within the past century, and has only come to be widely understood within the past few decades. 

So how we can we take our modern categories and understandings and use them to interpret a text that is so far removed from them? But that level of removal is precisely the point. In the ancient world, homosexuality was widely considered, not to be a different sexual orientation or something inherent in a small minority of people, but to be an excess of lust or passion that anyone could be prone to if they let themselves go too much. Just a couple of quotes to illustrate this. 

A well-known first-century Greek philosopher named Dio Chrysostom wrote the following:

“The man whose appetite is insatiate in such things [referring to heterosexual relations] …will have contempt for the easy conquest and scorn for a woman’s love, as a thing too readily given…and will turn his assault against the male quarters…believing that in them he will find a kind of pleasure difficult and hard to procure.”

A fourth-century Christian writer said of same-sex behavior: “You will see that all such desire stems from a greed which will not remain within its usual bounds.” The abandonment of heterosexual relations for same-sex lust was frequently compared to gluttony in eating or drinking. Sexuality was seen as a spectrum, with opposite-sex relations being the product of a “moderate” level of desire and same-sex relations the product of an excessive amount of desire. Personal orientation had nothing to do with it. 

But within this framework, as I said, same-sex relations were associated with the height of excess and lust, and that is why Paul invokes them in Romans 1. His purpose is to show that the idolaters were given over to unbridled passion, and to depict a scene of sexual chaos and excess that illustrates that. And that is completely consistent with how same-sex relations were most commonly described at the time. 

But the only reason that a reference to same-sex behavior helps Paul illustrate general sexual chaos is because the people he is describing first began with opposite-sex relations and then, in a burst of lust, abandoned them, exchanged them for something else.

And surely it is significant that Paul here speaks only of lustful, casual behavior. He says nothing about the people in question falling in love, making a lifelong commitment to one another, starting a family together. We would never dream of reading a passage in Scripture about heterosexual lust and promiscuity and then, from that, condemning all of the marriage relationships of straight Christians. 

There is an enormous difference between lust and love when it comes to our sexuality, between casual and committed relationships, between promiscuity and monogamy. That difference has always been held to be central to Christian teaching on sexual ethics for straight Christians. Why should that difference not be held to be as central for gay Christians? How can we take a passage about same-sex lust and promiscuity and then condemn any loving relationships that gay people might come to form? 

That is a very different standard than the one that we apply to straight people.

And again, the primary argument that is advanced in support of this kind of a different standard is that Paul doesn’t merely condemn same-sex lust, he also calls same-sex desires “shameful” and labels same-sex unions “unnatural.” I’ve already explained why Paul’s use of the term “unnatural” requires the idolaters’ willful spurning of their natural heterosexual desires. 

And that’s how this term functions within the passage as a whole, mirroring the idolaters’ exchange of God for idols. But before we leave this passage, we also need to consider how Paul himself uses these terms in his other letters and how the terms “natural” and “unnatural” were commonly applied to sexual behavior in his day.

-Matthew Vines

to be continued

J-Bo