I had a friend at a church I once attended who was himself soft-spoken and tender-hearted, who championed the vulnerable, and always tried to smooth over difficulties--all lovely characteristics, of course. He couldn't stand Paul. Proponents of that most hard-nosed, mechanistic of theologies, Calvinism, find their inspiration in his writings. Many find him arrogant. The poor fellow can't catch a break.
Paul is also lauded in some quarters--and vilified in others--as being the champion of the anti-gay crowd, as we read in a recent post. His words in Romans chapter 1 are seen as the clear and decisive re-statement of Leviticus 18; i.e., that homosexuality is an abomination.
But as with his views on women, I believe that Paul's teaching on gay issues is completely misunderstood. Here's why.
[I am grateful for the outstanding scholarship of James V. Brownson for the discussion that follows. His book Bible. Gender. Sexuality: Reframing the Church's Debate on Same-Sex Relationships, Eerdmans, 2013 is must reading for anyone interested in an exegetical and theological study of the Bible and homosexuality.]
We have already seen in the New Testament the abrupt change in views of certain Levitical and Deuteronomical teachings having to do with kosher foods.
1. The Apostle Peter in Acts 10:9ff - Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven....Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection.
2. The Apostle Paul in Romans 14:14 - I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean.
These two Christian leaders had clearly understood that with the dawning of the age of the Messiah, that all the old bets were off. A radical reevaluation of what it meant to live a life worthy of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit involved a whole new reorientation of the relationship between principles, values, and behaviour.
No longer was the focus on a scrupulous avoidance of those things in one's environment that could make one ritually impure--coming in contact with a leper; non-kosher food; working on the Sabbath; even a woman's "time of the month". Rather, the critical issue was one of motives.
And they didn't learn this from anybody strange.
1. Jesus on defilement from food: Mark 7:5ff - The Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”....Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”.... “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)
2. Jesus on the defilement that comes from contact with leprosy: Mark 1:40-41 - A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!”
3. Jesus on the defilement that comes from a woman's menstrual flow: Mark 5:25ff - And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.... Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
4. Jesus on working on the Sabbath: Matthew 12:1ff - At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
St. Paul really got this. Look at his definition of commendable behaviour to his Corinthian readers in 2 Cor. 5:9-12 - We make it our goal to please [Christ], whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.
What is seen, rather than what is in the heart. Sounds familiar. Look up above again at Jesus speaking in Mark 7. Paul, the self-described former Hebrew of the Hebrews, is setting aside all of the old categories of acceptable godly behaviour--that which can be seen and assessed--in favour of something that is comes from within. Another translation of 2 Cor. 5:12 captures it nicely: We are not again commending ourselves to you but are giving you an occasion to be proud of us, so that you will have an answer for those who take pride in appearance and not in heart.
In Matthew 23:27 Jesus words are particularly condemnatory: You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. This statement dramatically turns Levitical teaching on its head. To touch a tomb made a person ritually defiled, and unable to participate in religious rites. But the Pharisees defiled others by their inner lives.
Paul pounded this new view--that defilement comes from within--home in his first letter to the Corinthians. Concerning the outside defilement that comes from non-kosher food, Paul said this:
I Cor. 10:23-33: I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.
Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”
If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience. I am referring to the other person’s conscience, not yours. For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience? If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.
This is a truly remarkable passage. It uses the Jewish view of defilement from non-kosher food as a case study for what should determine behaviour. Paul starts off by saying that there is nothing that can necessarily be condemned on its own merits. Nevertheless, circumstances might dictate different responses to the same cues. How does one assess the import of circumstances? The likely impact your decision will have on the long-term well-being of the other person. For further study, look at parallel teaching earlier in the letter at chap. 8.
Or consider this equally remarkable teaching on marital relationships from 7:12-14: If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
One only has to compare this teaching with that of the great Jewish leader Ezra in the 6th century BC, whose express purpose was to rid the newly restored nation of Judah of ungodly influence. Marriage to unbelievers ranked high on his list.
Ezra chaps. 9 & 10: After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices.... They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.” When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice.
Then, at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my self-abasement, with my tunic and cloak torn, and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God and prayed:
“I am too ashamed
and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are
higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings, as it is today....
While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites—men, women and children—gathered around him. They too wept bitterly. Then Shekaniah son of Jehiel, one of the descendants of Elam, said to Ezra, “We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us. But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel. Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the Law....Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have been unfaithful; you have married foreign women, adding to Israel’s guilt. Now honor the Lord, the God of your ancestors, and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives.”
Don't be confused by the reference to foreign wives. The issue here was not race. Moses married a non-Jewish woman. Ruth was a Moabite. The issue was that as foreigners, the women would not be followers of Yahweh. These Gentile women, and any offspring, would be unholy--that is, they would not be followers of the one true God. The only cure was to remove this dangerous and defiling element immediately. Paul's position couldn't be more different. Rather than an unbelieving spouse being an unhealthy influence that must be got rid of, the believing spouse is a sanctifying influence on the non-Christian. And the kids themselves are deemed to be holy, rather than the opposite as Ezra saw it.
Paul the Liberator.
While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites—men, women and children—gathered around him. They too wept bitterly. Then Shekaniah son of Jehiel, one of the descendants of Elam, said to Ezra, “We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us. But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel. Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the Law....Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have been unfaithful; you have married foreign women, adding to Israel’s guilt. Now honor the Lord, the God of your ancestors, and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives.”
Don't be confused by the reference to foreign wives. The issue here was not race. Moses married a non-Jewish woman. Ruth was a Moabite. The issue was that as foreigners, the women would not be followers of Yahweh. These Gentile women, and any offspring, would be unholy--that is, they would not be followers of the one true God. The only cure was to remove this dangerous and defiling element immediately. Paul's position couldn't be more different. Rather than an unbelieving spouse being an unhealthy influence that must be got rid of, the believing spouse is a sanctifying influence on the non-Christian. And the kids themselves are deemed to be holy, rather than the opposite as Ezra saw it.
Paul the Liberator.
What you will find in Paul's teachings, following Jesus' lead, is a complete moving away from the avoidance of anything that might cause a person to become impure in God's eyes, to a confident engagement with the wider culture. With respect to sexual behaviour, sexual impurity is defined by an inward state of lust, or a lack of self-restraint. As with other behaviours, no longer are acts themselves to be debated, but the inner motivation of the person in question.
But what then do we make of Romans 1:18-32? Is this a singular instance where Paul focuses on specific acts themselves rather than on motives?
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