"Of course it's unnatural. How can you argue with Paul?"

I have a friend who is a New Testament scholar. I mentioned to him that a gay acquaintance had once said of his orientation, "No one would choose it. It's like having a disease." What the man meant was that gays are often subject to ridicule, rejection, and the violation of human rights (and, in many nations, jail, life terms, and death). They are treated as if something is very wrong with them. Why would anyone choose to live a life in which one had to endure such bigotry?

 

But my friend took the remark somewhat differently. He responded, "Of course it's unnatural. Men messing around with men (he may not have put it quite that way)? Who can argue with Paul?" While his response may have been more visceral than exegetical, it does reflect the position of Christians who feel that the Bible, and therefore their faith, does not allow them to accept being gay as normal or lacking in moral issues.

 

This brings us to the heart of the problem of understanding the New Testament position on homosexuality. We have seen that much of the legal material of the Old Testament comes to a grinding halt in the New; i.e., while underlying principles carry on, specific external requirements and behaviours with respect to living out one's faith are dropped. But in the view of many, St. Paul does seem to carry the Levitical condemnation of homosexuality straight into his letter to the Roman Christians in chapter 1:18-32:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse....Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the
Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 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....Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

If we take St. Paul's words here as my scholar-friend does, we appear to have Leviticus Redux. But singling out attitudes and behaviours, rather than specific behaviours, is very much Paul's style. Therefore, if St. Paul is zeroing in on a specific, objective behaviour here in Romans 1, it would be virtually unique in the apostle's writings.

More on this next post.