Misinterpreting Scripture: David Runcorn on Genesis 18-19

The term ‘sodomy’ for homosexuality comes from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18-19.  The use of this term by the Church indicates the consistent understanding of the text throughout the Church’s history: it is a story about, among other things, homosexuality in Canaan.  Not so, say a number of modern interpreters who wish to find some other meaning in the story or who, more likely, have an agenda to find anything in the text other than a story about disordered sexuality.  In the Pilling Report, David Runcorn follows the recent interpretation of several others as he puts forward a single interpretation that fits his agenda.  For these interpreters, the story of Sodom is a story about hospitality—not accepting the stranger.  In this way, the text is made irrelevant for the Church of England’s present confusion over the issue of homosexuality.[1]

So, have modern interpreters, followed by some western Anglicans such as Runcorn, discovered a better interpretation of Genesis 18-19 than that which interpreters through the centuries have previously held?  I have addressed the issue of this passage in greater length elsewhere with an examination of the text and its interpretation in Jewish and early Christian literature.[2]  As a narrative, the text lends itself to various applications, without limiting interpreters to a single point as is often the case in interpreting, for example, epistles.  The primary purpose of the story is to illustrate how completely wicked Sodom and Gomorrah were—a key point made earlier in Genesis (Gen. 13.13).  This makes limiting the text to a single sin unlikely.  Indeed, Jewish texts interpreting the story identified several sins with Sodom and Gomorrah, not just one.

Runcorn makes note of a single Jewish text interpreting the story: Ezekiel 16:

Ezekiel 16:49-50 (ESV) Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.  50 They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.

Oddly, he reduces this passage to the sins of pride and inhospitality.  However, Ezekiel intends to charge Sodom with a variety of sins, not just one or two.  Also, reference to Sodom’s ‘abomination’ (whether taken as a single sin, as in the ESV translation, or as a collective noun (as the NRSV or NIV) may well address or include its sexual abomination.  The term ‘abomination,’ after all, is used of homosexuality in Leviticus 18.22 and 20.13 (though the term is not limited to this application).  Also, Ezekiel intends to draw parallels between Sodom and Jerusalem, and one of the latter’s sins is repeatedly described in Ezekiel 16 as sexual immorality (Ezek. 16.15-17, 20, 22, 25-38, 41, 43, 58).  While the indictment is metaphorical for Jerusalem (her ‘whoring’ after other nations, her idolatry), it was not metaphorical for Sodom.  The meaning of ‘abomination’ in Ezekiel 16.50, therefore, surely stands for Sodom’s sexual immorality.

Another text that makes impossible any reduction of Sodom’s sin to something non-sexual is the parallel passage of Joshua 19.  As in Genesis 19, there is a background in the story of hospitality to a stranger.  Yet the story has so much more to it than this.  In both stories, there is an attempt by males in the city to have sex with another male, and this, not violence, is the primary focus of the texts (Genesis 19.5; Judges 19.22).  To be sure, violence and rape are awful sins, and these are more pronounced than the matter of inhospitality in the stories.  Yet the ‘wicked’ (Gen. 19.7; Jdg. 19.23) and ‘vile’ (Jdg. 19.24) act is a description of the men of both cities wanting to ‘know’ the male visitors.  ‘To know’ someone in such contexts means to have sex with that person. 

If in Genesis the men are angels, in Joshua the man is human—the issue is not sex with angels but sex with other males.  In Joshua, the man succeeds in avoiding homosexual abuse by sending out his concubine instead, whereas in Genesis Lot’s daughters are offered to the crowd but are not sent out.  In Joshua, the woman dies, and the man cuts her body up and sends the parts out to the tribes of Israel.  The response of Israelites is that ‘Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak’ (Judges 19.30).  It is simply impossible to read this story as a story of inhospitality or pride.  The issues are violence, gang rape, and, especially, homosexuality.  The parallel with Genesis suggests that the town of Gibeah had taken on practices associated with the Canaanites.  The reason for wiping out Sodom or Gibeah is not that they were inhospitable—even if this is a minor aspect of the stories.  God does not wipe out a population over inhospitality.  The main reason is that they sunk so low in their unrighteousness as to engage in homosexual acts.

Beyond the issues already noted, another problem with the 'inhospitality' interpretation of the story of Sodom is that it does not explain Gomorrah’s destruction.  The angels only visit Sodom, but both cities are destroyed.  Also, they came to see if there were any righteous in the city (Gen. 18.26-32), not to see if they would be received well as strangers.  Lot’s offer of his daughters in place of the strangers for sexual abuse leaves most modern readers cold: how could he do such a thing?  At such a point, the simplistic hospitality interpretation becomes morally repugnant, for it suggests that having your daughters raped is better than being inhospitable to (male) strangers.  Yet this is not the intention of the story.  Rather, the ethical point of the story is that the men of Sodom were so sinful that they would not accept sex with females over their preference for males.  The reader is intended to gain moral instruction not from Lot’s offer of his daughters but from the depth of Sodom’s moral turpitude.  The story in Judges 19 carries the same message: the men of Gibeah had sunk to an equally low morality—homosexual acts.

Finally, Christians need to consider the Biblical canon as a whole, not just individual texts examined on their own.  In the case of Genesis 18-19, we particularly need to consider Jude 7 and 2 Peter 2.6-7:

Jude 1:7 (ESV) just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

2 Peter 2:6-7 … if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;  7 and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked….

Neither text, of course, suggests that Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin was inhospitality, and both texts highlight the two cities’ sexual immorality.  The problems addressed by both Jude and 2 Peter are the false teaching and practices of persons compromising Christian orthodoxy with the alien views of an ungodly culture—as is now the case in western society and, sadly, western mainline denominations.  This can happen when false teachers simply oppose the teaching of Scripture, and it can happen when people let the influence of culture weigh so heavily on their reading of the Scriptures or hearing from the Church’s teaching that they actually begin to think that the Biblical text says something else than it does.  Runcorn's error is the latter, although the Pilling Report also expresses the voice of others quite willing to set aside Scripture entirely.  Either way, false teaching is perpetrated in the Church of England and true Christian witness to the culture will have to be found elsewhere.




[1] David Runcorn, Appendix 4: ‘Evangelicals, Scripture and Same Sex Relationships—an ‘Including Evangelical’ Perspective,’ in Report of the House of Bishops: Working Group on Human Sexuality (Nov. 2013); online https://www.churchofengland.org/media/1891063/pilling_report_gs_1929_web.pdf (accessed 24 December, 2016), pp. 176-195.
[2] S. Donald Fortson and Rollin G. Grams, Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Tradition (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2016).

Misinterpreting Scripture: David Runcorn on Leviticus 18.22 and the Need to Read Scripture in Literary Context


Possibly most misinterpretation of Scripture is simply the result of not reading a text in its own literary context.  This is the sort of thing warned against in primary school.  Take, for example, one of the arguments regarding Leviticus 18.22:

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.

David Runcorn argues in the Pilling Report of the Church of England on human sexuality that this text is not about men in homosexual relationships.[1]  His interpretation appeals to what he thinks is the cultural context for this verse, and he uses that line of reasoning to try to limit the way the text otherwise seems to read.  (After all, are not laws written for broad application unless otherwise limited?)  The suggested cultural context by Runcorn is a male dominated society in which men are being told not to behave like women in passive sexual acts (i.e., penetrated by another male).  In this way, the text is dismissed from any relevance to homosexuality: it becomes an archaic text speaking to an inferior culture to our own in that it affirms male dominance.  Amazingly, Runcorn moves from an unproven thesis to its acceptance without any argument, and he concludes:

What is at stake here is not a supposed divine plan of heterosexuality, but a supposed divine plan for male dominance.

With that, the report moves to another text for consideration.

So many things are wrong with this sort of approach to interpretation that it is difficult to focus on the main point I wish to make: read texts in their own literary contexts.  For one thing, Runcorn might have explored whether any ancient Jewish or Christian interpreter ever read Lev. 18.22 as support for male dominance.  (Had he done so, he would have found that no author ever even thought of reading the passage this way until recent decades, let alone in antiquity.)  Christians would also want to ask whether the Church has ever interpreted the text this way.  Teachers and priests in the Church have an obligation to explain and defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints—or at the very least engage what the Church has taught. It should also be noted that Runcorn references only a single secondary source for his reading of Leviticus 18 rather than engage various scholarly discussions of the text.[2]

One need not know anything about the practices of homosexuality in the Ancient Near East, however, to see that Runcorn’s view is impossible.  Consider the literary context of Lev. 18.22.  First, a variety of sexual acts are condemned in Leviticus 18 that cannot be subsumed under the simple category of dominance/submission.  In fact, none of them can.  Many of the forbidden sexual acts (uncovering the nakedness of someone) have to do with which kinship relationships are not permitted.  Also, the command in Lev. 18.21 is against child sacrifice to the god Molech, and Lev. 18.23 forbids sexual relationships with animals.  The idea of dominance/submission has been snuck into the reading of v. 22; it is not part of the immediate literary context.

Furthermore, the laws against forbidden sexual relationships in Leviticus 18 are repeated in part in chapter 20.  Texts not only need to be read in light of the surrounding verses but also in light of the surrounding chapters.  The reason for repeating laws just two chapters later is that ch. 20 includes punishments for specific sins.  Lev. 18.22 is repeated in Lev. 20.13, which reads:

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

Note that the text calls for both persons—whether active or passive—to be put to death, not just the person playing a passive role in a homosexual act.  Thus, Runcorn’s imagined reason for Lev. 18.22—that it is about men behaving like women—cannot be the intention of the text.  This is a simple example of eisegesis, reading an idea into the text.

Interestingly, Paul makes use of Lev. 20.13 when citing the 5th – 9th of the Ten Commandments in 1 Timothy 1.8-10, since he uses the passage to interpret the commandment not to commit adultery (Exodus 20.14; Deuteronomy 5.18).  We know this because Paul creates a compound word out of two words in Lev. 20.13 for what we today call ‘homosexuals’.  The two words are arsenos—male—and koitēs—bed (a euphemism for sex).  No other literature in antiquity prior to Paul uses this compound form of the word, arsenokoitai, suggesting that it is his creation.  Yet the word’s meaning is clear, and it comes from a text that has this meaning: males performing same-sex acts.  Indeed, the words are side-by-side in Lev. 20.13, and no spaces would have been used in the Greek text of the passage that Paul would have read in the first place as spaces between words were added much later in ancient Greek texts.  Paul interprets the 7th Commandment to mean sexual sin in general, not just adultery per se, and, in 1 Timothy 1.10, Paul interprets this commandment to proscribe ‘sexual immorality’ in general (pornoi) and aresenokoitai (homosexuals).  Thus, Paul uses Lev. 20.13 to interpret Ex. 20.14 and/or Deut. 5.18.  (Interpretation of the 7th Commandment more broadly and in light of Leviticus 18 and 20 was also followed by Philo, a Jewish scholar of the 1st and 2nd century AD, in his Special Laws 3).  Paul has no interest in the issue of dominance/submission.  He is not limiting the meaning of the 7th Commandment but broadening its meaning, and, like Philo a few decades later, he understands it to refer to any form of sexual immorality, including homosexuality (both active and passive participant).

Thus, reading in context can help an interpreter not make basic mistakes in interpretation.  Had Runcorn read Lev. 18.22 in its immediate literary context in the same chapter, or read it in light of the larger literary context of ch. 20, or read Leviticus in light of Paul’s use of the texts in 1 Timothy 1.10, he could never have ventured so far off the path of plausible interpretations of the text when appealing to an interpretation based on a cultural context of male domination.




[1] The Pilling Report was published as a Report of the House of Bishops: Working Group on Human Sexuality (Nov. 2013); online https://www.churchofengland.org/media/1891063/pilling_report_gs_1929_web.pdf (accessed 22 December, 2016).  David Runcorn’s comments are in Appendix 4: ‘Evangelicals, Scripture and Same Sex Relationships—an ‘Including Evangelical’ Perspective,’ pp. 176-195; see pp. 185-186.
[2] The reference given is to Gareth Moore, A Question of Truth, Continuum (2003), p. 80.

Our Great and Awesome God


Introduction

The Exodus of Israel from their subjugation in Egypt meant more than freedom.  It meant becoming a people and gaining an identity among the nations.  No longer a slave community serving the Egyptians, they were brought by God out of Egypt to their own land.  God made a covenant with them that gave them their own, unique laws among the nations.  They told their own story, beginning with the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—continuing with the judges and kings, and looking beyond their exile to God’s redemption.  Yet, more than anything else, this becoming a people meant becoming the people of God, and that meant telling their story as the story of God’s dealing with them.

Our Awesome Deliverer and King (Exodus 15)

The story of God that Israel told declared that God is great and awesome.  It is a story they learned at the very beginning of their history as a nation.  God was their awesome deliverer.  Israel would tell from generation to generation that “the LORD displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household” (Deuteronomy 6:22).  Having been liberated from slavery in Egypt and having been brought through the waters on dry ground, the Israelites sang a song about God’s wonderful works.  They began, “I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15:1).  They sang, “The LORD is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation” (v. 2).  They declared, “Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power” (v. 6).  They asked, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? (v. 11).  Their song concluded by affirming God as their king: “The LORD will reign forever and ever” (v. 18).  As Israel sang the story of their God, they confessed for themselves and declared to all the surrounding nations that God, their God, was great and awesome.

Our Awesome Covenant God (Exodus 34)

Israel would continue to see God’s awesome deeds as they were made his treasured possession.  God said, “I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the LORD; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you” (Exodus 34:10).  This passage continues as God explains that he will drive out the inhabitants of Canaan before His people, and it explains why He will do so.  These inhabitants are idolaters, and they would only be a snare for God’s people were they to remain in the land.  God declares Himself to be a jealous God, one who will share His glory with none other (v. 14).  Knowing that God was the one establishing His covenant with them, the Israelites were not to fear the enemies that rose up before them.  This covenant God told them, “Have no dread of them, for the LORD your God, who is present with you, is a great and awesome God” (Exodus 7:21).  This covenant God also holds His people to the stipulations of His covenant.  They are to worship Him alone and to abide by His laws.  So Moses says to Israel as they are about to enter the promised land,

Deuteronomy 10:12-22  So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,  13 and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.  14 Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the LORD your God, the earth with all that is in it,  15 yet the LORD set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.  16 Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer.  17 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe,  18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.  19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.  20 You shall fear the LORD your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear.  21 He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.  22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.

The blessings of living in covenant with this God also come with the warning of curses if His people fail to abide by the stipulations of the covenant.  Moses warns, “If you do not diligently observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, fearing this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God,  59 then the LORD will overwhelm both you and your offspring with severe and lasting afflictions and grievous and lasting maladies” (Deuteronomy 28:58-59).

We see, then, that the word “awesome” means not only that God does amazing things but also that He is to be feared.  The Hebrew word for “awesome” includes these various ideas.  The word for “awesome,” nora’, means to be feared, reverenced, and held in honor.  It is a word that derives from the word for “to fear”.  He is not awesome like a fireworks display, delighting the eyes and entertaining the crowds.  He is awesome like a bull elephant in his majesty, greatness, power, and might, to be feared and marveled at all at once.  To enter into a covenant relationship with such a God is both a wonderful and fearsome thing, and that is exactly what Israel experienced in the history of its relationship with Him.  He acted mightily on their side, redeeming them, blessing them, but also chastising and punishing them.

Israel testified that “the LORD, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth” (Psalm 47:2).  They knew that their experience of God was a testimony to God for His awesome works in creation itself—something all peoples of the earth could affirm:

Psalm 65:8-13  Those who live at earth's farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.  9 You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it.  10 You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth.  11 You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness.  12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy,  13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.

Our God, Awesome Before All Others (Psalms 99 and 145)

God is not awesome with others who are awesome, for He alone is God.  He is uniquely awesome, and He alone deserves praise.  The right response to our great and awesome God is praise and worship.  The psalmist says,

Psalm 99:1-5  The LORD is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!  2 The LORD is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.  3 Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he!  4 Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.  5 Extol the LORD our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!

Words to extol God’s awesomeness declare who He is and what He has done.  Psalm 145 expresses God’s greatness and awesomeness:

Psalm 145:1-13  I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.  2 Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.  3 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.  4 One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.  5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.  6 The might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed, and I will declare your greatness.  7 They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness, and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.  8 The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  9 The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.  10 All your works shall give thanks to you, O LORD, and all your faithful shall bless you.  11 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom, and tell of your power,  12 to make known to all people your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.  13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. The LORD is faithful in all his words, and gracious in all his deeds.

This psalm understands the response to God’s greatness and awesomeness to be meditation, praise, and witness.  Meditation requires remembering what God has done and not forgetting it.  Praise involves verbalizing God’s awesome deeds and worshiping God.  Witness involves intentionally telling others who God is and what He has done.  Thus, God’s people are to pass on from generation to generation the truths of God’s awesome deeds, His goodness, righteousness, mercy, love, compassion, faithfulness, and grace.  It also involves the challenge to all to recognize that He is indeed God and King, to be blessed forever and ever by all peoples.

Our God is Awesome in Forgiveness (Daniel 9)

Finally, God is great and awesome, to be honoured and feared, not only because of who He is and what He has done to establish a people for Himself.  He is also great and awesome because He forgives the sinner.  The king with unrivalled power is awesome in His greatness, but greater still is the king who, with such power, also forgives.

So we find a further lesson for Israel about God’s awesomeness in His forgiveness.  Sent into exile by God because of their sins, they still find hope.  God is a God of compassion and faithfulness, even to sinful and faithless Israel.  Daniel prays a prayer of repentance to God, appealing to God’s awesome forgiveness and mercy.  He confessed and prayed,

Daniel 9:4-16  Ah, Lord, great and awesome God, keeping covenant and steadfast love with those who love you and keep your commandments,  5 we have sinned and done wrong, acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and ordinances.  6 We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land.  7 "Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame, as at this day, falls on us, the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you.  8 Open shame, O LORD, falls on us, our kings, our officials, and our ancestors, because we have sinned against you.  9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him,  10 and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God by following his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.  11 "All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. So the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against you.  12 He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers, by bringing upon us a calamity so great that what has been done against Jerusalem has never before been done under the whole heaven.  13 Just as it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us. We did not entreat the favor of the LORD our God, turning from our iniquities and reflecting on his fidelity.  14 So the LORD kept watch over this calamity until he brought it upon us. Indeed, the LORD our God is right in all that he has done; for we have disobeyed his voice.  15 "And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and made your name renowned even to this day-- we have sinned, we have done wickedly.  16 O Lord, in view of all your righteous acts, let your anger and wrath, we pray, turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain; because of our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors, Jerusalem and your people have become a disgrace among all our neighbors.

Conclusion

We proclaim the awesomeness of God.  He is awesome as deliverer, awesome in making a good covenant with His people, awesome beyond all others, and awesome in His forgiveness.  It is one thing to be delivered from subjugation, quite another to be made God’s own people.  It is one thing to be called to relate to an awesome God who is distinct from all others, quite another to receive His forgiveness.  God reveals Himself in the story of Israel as an awesome God, and His people’s mission is to proclaim His awesomeness among the peoples of the earth. 

Those who need deliverance from evil and oppression can find Him to be their awesome deliverer.  Those who are adrift amidst the confusions of life and religions can come to know Him in His commandments and faithful covenant with His people.  Those for whom there is little awe left in life, for whom sickness and sin and corruption and suffering obscure the joy of living, can come to know the One who reveals His awesomeness in creation.  Those who need a new start, forgiveness for sins past and empowerment to live righteously in the future, will find that God is awesome in His forgiveness.  Celebrate the awesomeness of God.

What the Old Testament lessons of God’s awesomeness show is delivered in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the deliverer and redeemer sent by God.  He is the one who establishes a new people for he is our source of life, our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption.  He is the one who reveals the Father, the one in whom all the fullness of deity dwells.  And he is the one through whom God forgives us all our sins.  We serve an awesome God.

In Memorium

Eugene Edgar Grams (1930-2016): A Son’s Tribute 


Eugene Edgar Grams was born in Rosendale, Wisconsin on 19 September, 1930.  He married Evelyn Phyllis Louton in Potgietersrus, Transvaal, South Africa on 20 March, 1952.  He died peacefully, though after a time of failing health, in Springfield, Missouri on 9 December, 2016.  He is survived by his three sons and six grandchildren.

Our hearts are sad to say goodbye, but we rejoice in the sure hope that Dad’s absence from the body means that he is present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8).  Though we cannot fully comprehend these things on this side of the curtain of death, we believe that Dad is now with his beloved Phyllis, with their daughter, Faith Hope Grams, with his parents, William and Martha, and other family and friends, including Dad's beloved sister, Arlene, who died as a young girl.  We, as Christians, believe that to depart from this life and be with Christ is far better than what we now experience in a fallen world (Philippians 1:23).  And we wait with a sure hope for the resurrection of all those who have died in Christ.  As John wrote, ‘Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we will be like him, because we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3.2, ESV).  Dad has fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7). 

Dad’s life is the testimony of a faithful steward of God's grace.  Through God's empowerment and by His grace, he accomplished so much as a missionary to South Africa in the years from 1952-2008 in evangelism, by planting about 35 churches, and through establishing Cape College of Theology (now Global School of Theology) in the Western Cape.  He also served in pastoral ministry in the area of Flint, Michigan at Riverside Tabernacle, Trinity Assembly of God, and New Life Christian Fellowship.  His ministry touched many lives.  We are assured that, by God’s grace and through his faith in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2.8), he will receive the ‘crown of righteousness’ (2 Timothy 4.8).  May we all have such faith in Jesus, live in such hope, and serve him all our days. 

The following chapter is an excerpt from Stewards of Grace: A Reflective, Mission Biography of Eugene and Phyllis Grams in South Africa, 1951-1962 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).   It testifies to the power of God to transform lives.  Dad's ministry as a steward of this grace over many years was the most formative experience for my own life and ministry and provided me with a powerful testimony of the power of God to transform lives.  Thanks, Dad.


Chapter Nineteen: God's Gold

Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, in accordance with his great mercy, has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, into an incorruptible inheritance, both undefiled and unfading, kept in the heavenlies for you, who are being kept by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the final time (1 Peter 1.3–5).

[Some material is omitted from the chapter in this excerpt.]

Gene’s friend, the Sharpeville, Transvaal–based evangelist, Rev. Philip F. Molefe, had said to him, “Let me do the evangelizing and you do the teaching.”  Gene agreed, and the two men, almost the same age, began plans for what would be known as the Meloding Revival. Gene’s close friend and former colleague in ministry in the northern Transvaal, Johannes Mukwevho, also joined them in the Free State at this time.
When Gene wrote in October, 1960 in the Pentecostal Evangel about the wonderful ministry of God in Meloding earlier that year, he spoke of it as a “revival.”[1]  The revival lasted most of the year.

          [Some material is omitted from the chapter in this excerpt.]


There were already a handful of believers in the Assemblies of God church in Meloding before the revival was planned. They formed a house fellowship with the pastor, Rev. Tsotetse. The tent campaign was, however, an effort by others on behalf of this little church that did not even have a building. Rev. Philip Molefe came from Sharpeville for the initial meetings in March and April of 1960, and then again in August of the same year. Johannes Mukwevho also came down from Louis Trichardt in the northern Transvaal when he heard that a translator was needed for these meetings. He and Philip Molefe had worked together before in Sharpeville, just as he and Gene had also worked so well together.  The Assemblies of God work in Sharpeville began about five years earlier than that in Meloding. The initial converts in the revival campaign led by Molefe totalled 325. They were baptized in the river and then marched through the township singing, “I will follow Jesus.”[2]
The plan was that Molefe would be the primary evangelist, and Gene would be the primary teacher during the revival. Gene would also raise funds, engage the various government officials in securing sites for church buildings, and interact with the police. Rev. Bethuel Mofokeng, also from Sharpeville, came to speak in the meetings, as did several others. One of these was Rev. John Tlotlalemajoe, who organized counselors, that is, people who could talk with those wishing to give their lives to Christ after a service and pray with them. He eventually became the pastor of the church in Thabong, Welkom.[3]  Choirs from established churches came on various nights by bus to sing. Christian films and testimonies also conveyed the Gospel, and Gene later held six weeks of Bible doctrine classes for the new believers. There were speakers who addressed women and children as well. Phyllis Grams had oversight for this work, although, again, a number of persons were involved.
Announcements of the intended meetings began with the help of someone from Mission Aviation. This missionary suggested that pamphlets be drawn up and dropped over Meloding from the air. Gene was not too certain about this approach, but as the man wanted to play a part, he found himself dropping leaflets announcing the meetings from several hundred feet above the township. Later on, Gene was somewhat discouraged when he discovered that the leaflets were being used for toilet paper, but, one way or another, news of the tent meetings did get around.
The handful of believers in the Meloding church used to meet in an unfinished, rented house, and a larger place was needed for the campaign. The local government gave its permission to erect a tent in Meloding from the 5th of March to the 5th of April, 1960. But the revival required extending this period several times so that the tent campaign lasted, as they had in other regions, about three months. The tent itself had to be extended to accommodate the large crowds, which, at times, could even reach 2,000 people. As the numbers swelled, many in attendance had to stand or sit outside, but they were still able to hear everything over the public address system. The combined attendance over the first weeks of meetings was over 40,000, if one adds up the attendance for each of the nights. Many people returned night after night, but people not only came from Meloding. Others came from all over the Orange Free State, parts of Basutoland, and even the southern Transvaal. By the time that the campaign ended, the tent was in ruins, in part because of the high winds that blew across the area.
On the first night of the tent campaign, Mr. Phera, a member of the Location Advisory Board for Meloding, became a Christian. That day, he had had a quarrel with his wife and had beaten her severely. By evening, he was intoxicated and stumbled to a seat in the tent. During the service, he sobered up and responded to the Holy Spirit’s speaking to his heart. His life was forever changed that night. His wife saw the difference in her husband over the next few days and also became a Christian. To have such a testimony from a man of such standing in the local government “stirred all of Virginia,” wrote Eugene Grams in a newsletter. Many who came to the tent meetings from the area came because they had heard what had happened to Mr. Phera. Some said, “If God can change a wicked drunkard like Mr. Phera, He can also change me.”
Early in the campaign, three or four gang members became Christians. They would sit, night after night, in the front row seats. Alongside the nightly message explaining salvation in Jesus Christ, the campaign had a theme: God can do anything. There is nothing too difficult for God. He can make the vilest sinner clean, can transform lives, deliver people from demon possession, heal the sick, and restore broken relationships: God can do anything. Mr. Phera had discovered this the first night of the campaign, and these former gang members could testify to the change in their lives as well.
But one night, about two weeks into the campaign, Gene noticed that the former gang members were not present. He feared the worst: were they, like the seed that fell among the rocks in Jesus’ parable of the sewer, going to wither and die after a short, encouraging growth spurt? Gene could hardly preach as he turned this thought over and over in his mind.
All of a sudden everyone in the tent heard the worst noise imaginable. All eyes turned to the back of the tent and saw the tent flaps being pulled back. The former gang members walked in, dragging a man who was entirely naked and shrieking. The men delivered him to the front of the meeting, tied up with ropes and belts. He struggled to free himself but was securely bound. Gene looked at the former gang members for some sort of explanation. One young man said, “Moruti Grams, you have been telling us that God can do anything. What about this?”  Gene looked back at the man, a wild man completely out of his mind, as close to an animal as a human can become. And yet he was even worse off than that, for Gene could see that the man was possessed by demons. His eyes were clouded, as though in a trance, and he did not seem in control of his own person or able to interact with others at all. He had descended into an internal world of torment. A woman came up and covered his nakedness with her Basotho blanket.
The man was well known in the area. He lived mostly in the cemetery but was also known to wander aimlessly far and wide, through fields and along the roadsides. Once he wandered as far away as Vereeniging, nearly 150 miles away, and back.
As when the paralytic man was lowered through the roof by his friends in the middle of Jesus’ teaching in a packed house, this meeting came to a standstill. It is one thing to speak of God’s Kingdom, that God was powerfully present, but it is quite another to have to stand up to a challenge to this message. The entire campaign could be discredited: if the God who can do anything could not help this madman, the speakers would be false witnesses, people’s hopes would be dashed, and the church in Meloding would be demoralized and perhaps even disband.
Gene and Phyllis, together with some other believers in the meeting, began to pray for the man. They prayed for about two hours while people watched: could God help the wild man of Meloding? Then, suddenly, the man’s eyes became clear and he looked around as though to say, “Where am I?”  The trance–like state that he had been in for years broke. He identified himself as Thomas Khajwane.
Thomas Khajwane was reborn that evening. He was transferred from demonic possession to the freedom of a child of God. In the following days, Gene and other ministers visited his home and met his parents. Gene’s Sesotho was still not strong enough to engage the conversation that he needed to have with Khajwane, and Khajwane did not know any English. So an interpreter was also present. His parents were also present. They showed Gene the paraphernalia purchased at great expense from witchdoctors to ward off evil spirits. Some pieces of red, electrical wire, bought from the witchdoctor at an exorbitant price of 60 pounds, were placed at the entrance to the home and in the ceiling—a graphic symbol of power, pointed defiantly towards any invading spirit. But they were powerless to keep away the evil spirits.
The transformation of Thomas Khajwane, needless to say, brought others to the tent campaign. His parents became Christians, as did many others, including a young woman who would become Thomas’s wife. The two would not long hence have a baby girl, whom they named Eugenia.
Soon after his conversion, Thomas explained through an interpreter, “Moruti Grams, I have never been to school a day in my life. How can I ever grow in the Lord unless I am able to read His Word?”  God proved His power once again in this life. Only six weeks later Thomas Khajwane demonstrated to Gene Grams that he could read both Sesotho and English perfectly. He soon became a member of the church choir and later on was made an esteemed member of the town council.




[1] Eugene E. Grams, “Revival in Orange Free State,” Pentecostal Evangel (16 Oct., 1960), pp. 14–15.
[2] Vernon Pettenger, “Before the Sharpeville Massacre,” Pentecostal Evangel (June 5, 1960), p. 15.
[3] Rev. Tlotlalemajoe has remained the pastor in Thabong all these years. At the time of writing, he is in his mid–eighties.

Brief Thoughts on Women’s Ordination, Homosexuality, and Slavery


I teach Biblical ethics.  Each year I do so, I wonder whether I should put on the list of topics to consider ‘women in ministry’.  We always discuss sexual ethics—particularly homosexuality, given challenges to orthopraxy in the West in our day on this topic.  But does a discussion of women in ministry belong in a course on ethics in the same way that a topic like homosexuality does?  Is it not more a matter of 'polity'?

The answer is in part what we understand by ‘ethics’.  Too often, we think of ethics as ‘quandary ethics’—what should we do when faced with challenging circumstances?  This approach to ethics is all about major challenges and struggles: abortion when a mother’s life is in danger, going to war when faced with a major, evil force like the Nazis or Isis, or homosexuality—a challenge in a different way given that some clergy and scholars are challenging the long-standing teaching of the Church in our day.  

Yet ethics is more than quandary ethics.  It is also, and much more, about how we should live, day by day.  It is about the character we should work to develop, not just the responses we should give when faced with crises and tragedy.  And so, this raises the question, ‘what is the role and status of men, women, children, pastors, missionaries, etc. in the home and/or the church?’  That is a more day-to-day sort of question, a ‘How shall we live?’ question rather than a ‘How shall we respond?’ question.

Ethics, moreover, could be seen in terms of what we should not do because we are God’s people.  It could be seen as ‘the sin list’ of things someone does not do if one is going to enter the Kingdom of God.  Scripture clearly teaches that certain acts and behaviours will exclude someone from the Kingdom of God—homosexuality being one of them.  But being an ordained woman for ministry (parish or bishop) or missions is not something that will exclude someone from the Kingdom of God!  The person doing the ordaining will not be excluded, and the person being ordained and serving in such a ministry is not excluded.  Ethics understood in this way would cover the issue of homosexuality, but it would not cover the issue of women’s ordination.

It would, however, cover the issue of slavery.  Paul extends the 8th Commandment, ‘You shall not steal’, to cover the slave trade in 1 Timothy 1.10.  Stealing people and enslaving them is an ethical matter--one that, like homosexuality, will exclude one from the Kingdom of God.  That is rather serious!--nothing like having a woman priest!  Similarly, Revelation 18.13 speaks of the things to be destroyed in the wicked economy of the Roman Empire, and the list concludes with ‘slaves, that is, human souls’.  A simple word with profound significance.  Up to 1/3 of the Roman Empire may have consisted of slaves—a system of ‘stealing’ people’s lives, a system that contributed largely to the engine of the Roman economy.  (Mind you, this was different from the economic model of the Old South in the USA during the days of slavery as slavery in the Roman Empire was not largely an agrarian workforce.)

Women’s ministry may, however, be a subject related to ethical issues if not an ethical issue in itself.  It may, for instance, be a pragmatic issue with ethical implications.  Take away the car, the grocery store down the road, the 1.5 child family planning, the equal education of females and males, and so forth of Western society and get back into the warp and woof of ancient society, and you will have to start thinking differently about roles and family.  Paul’s warnings in the Pastoral Epistles include concerns about women easily duped by false teaching: this was a day when girls were not educated.  His suggestion that women (including young widows) marry rather than follow the false teachers’ teaching not to marry was pragmatic: don’t set yourself up for sexual immorality by staying unmarried if you do not have the gift of celibacy.  His recommendation that women focus on childbearing and rearing is a call to familial rather than ecclesial ministry (though elderly widows may have an ecclesial ministry of care and prayer).  Think about it: a family with five children needs a mother, not an absent mother running around in ministry leaving the children to a maid.  Sure, this has implications for absent fathers in ministry, too, but the point is that a push for pastoral roles for women in the 1st century may have been neither here nor there ethically in itself, but it could have ethical implications, like the proper care of children in the family.

Finally, the role and status of women in ministry can raise questions of role differentiation in ethics.  The egalitarian movement in the West since the sexual revolution in the 1960s in particular came, by the 1990s, to raise questions about role differentiation more generally.  Not just equal work opportunities and pay, not just ordination, but now, perhaps especially, gender fluidity itself.  Surprise, surprise, this is not a new issue.  It was an issue in the 1st century as well.  Just here, the issue of women’s dress and ordination becomes an issue of ethics, not just style and ecclesiastical polity.  1 Corinthians 11.2-16 is not some relic of antiquity about the dress of women in that era.  It is a passage about an ethical concern over gender confusion.  Paul responds by insisting that the two genders (there are only two, by the way) God created must not be confused.  The same concern is present in 1 Timothy 2.9-15.  Women are to dress like women—modest women, at that.  Men are to wear their hair as men do, not as homosexuals with long hair (that is the issue about long hair—not simply a matter of hairstyles).  The differentiation of roles must be maintained, even if different societies and ethnic groups distinguish genders differently.

Thus—speaking strictly on the matter of gender differentiation—it may be perfectly fine in Uganda, for example, for women to be ordained to ministry.  The culture there is not experiencing the gender confusion of the West.  Ordaining women in this context may not cause people to think that women are acting like or being treated like men.  In our day in the West, men might have long hair and people will not think that they are transgender or homosexual, but if your male priest showed up to worship with high heels and a purse, you’d think otherwise.  'Nature itself teaches us' that this is wrong (1 Cor. 11.14; not the particular way a person is dressed but what it signifies about gender differentiation in that culture).  Surprisingly, then, in the egalitarian West, women’s ordination may be an ethical problem, but in Uganda it might not be.  In the West, the issue of gender confusion has created an ethical quandary: is women’s ordination not like affirming homosexuality in that both are examples of gender confusion, a failure to differentiate roles?  If the matter is an ethical issue in Uganda, it might be more an issue of family ethics: who is properly raising the children?  Pentecostals, incidentally, may think of ordination as an empowering by God for a call from God to a task only God can accomplish.  Ordination is not an office or status but a role that nobody in their own strength will be able to accomplish without the power of God at work in and through the minister.  On such an understanding, gender issues are somewhat irrelevant: all ministers are unqualified to the task, and God’s use of such persons only shows that, when we are weak, we are strong because of His power at work in us.


So, yes, women’s ordination will be on the syllabus next time around for the ethics course.  But it won’t be there because ordained women or those ordaining them are immoral.  This is a very different issue from homosexuality or the slave trade.  Learning to distinguish these issues is a good exercise for students on the course—and for all of us, for that matter.  When, in the West, people think that the issues of slavery, women’s status and ordination, and homosexuality are related in that social ethics are thought to be all about the increasing advance of freedom, they simply do not understand the differences between the issues and the different approach to ethics in Scripture.  Instead, they are thinking like Westerners in the 21st century.

'Nature' and ‘Against Nature’ in Romans 1:26-27: A Study in the Primary Sources

Introduction

In Romans 1:26-27, Paul distinguishes ‘unnatural’ from ‘natural’, saying that homosexual acts among both women and men are ‘unnatural’. 

Romans 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse [physikēn chrēsin, natural use] for unnatural [para physin, against nature],  27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse [physikēn chrēsin, natural use] with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

This understanding, however, has been questioned, and the debate centres around what Paul means by ‘natural’ (physikon and kata physin) and ‘unnatural’ (para physin).  Those questioning this understanding in recent years (it was not questioned in the history of the church until now)[1] focus on the notion of ‘natural’ rather than the Greek phrases, but both are pertinent to the discussion, as we shall see.

Three scholars—two theologians and a New Testament scholar—may suffice to illustrate the alternative reading by revisionists.  Quite recently, a prominent theologian at Yale University, Nicholas Wolterstorff, gave a lecture in which he stated that no Biblical text is relevant to the present discussion of homosexuality in the Christian Church.[2]  The lecture was strikingly bereft of actual argument, not least Wolterstorff’s claims regarding Romans 1.24-28.  Without the slightest attempt at interpreting texts in their context, he claimed, first, that Paul could not have meant homosexuals when speaking of what is ‘against nature’ because same-sex relationships are natural for them.  

Second, he argued that Paul means what was considered common when he used the word ‘natural,’ given 1 Corinthians 11.14.  One suspects he is here dependent on Dan Via, discussed below—and it is rather amazing how scholars are willing to pass along academic ‘hearsay’ instead of doing actual research.  Wolterstorff concluded that the persons about whom Paul is speaking in Romans 1.24-28 are ‘an appallingly wicked group of idolaters’.  He appears to have relied upon some cursory reading of a few contemporary scholars who support his convictions to reach these conclusions.  He engages with no scholar arguing a contrary view.  And—to the point of this essay—he certainly shows no evidence of actually reading Biblical texts in the context of other ancient literature.  How a scholar can argue against the teaching of the Church through 2,000 years of history about the meaning of Biblical texts with little to no serious research is simply an amazing feature of this sensitive issue for the West in our current time.

Dan Via suggests that 1 Corinthians 11:14 shows that ‘nature’ can mean “conventional”:[2] 

1 Corinthians 11:14 Does not nature [physis] itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him…. (NRSV and throughout, unless otherwise noted)

Surely, the argument goes, a man’s short hair is not natural but a matter of cultural convention.  Indeed, men in several cultures even in Paul’s day wore their hair long (male Germans, Scythians, Persians, etc.).  We shall return to this passage at the end of the essay, but the reader should note first that this argument appears regularly today (as in Wolterstorff’s lecture) and that scholars stand behind it.  By the end of the essay, however, the reader will realise not only that the argument has no merit but that scholars making the argument are guilty of not putting out the slightest effort to research their claim.

Jack Rogers, another theologian, also wrote on the subject of the Bible and homosexuality without doing his own primary source research.  His arguments—produced in a short book—do not demonstrate even basic research necessary to speak to the meaning of texts.  They are rather dependent largely upon cobbling together arguments from other recent authors and offering his own thoughts on the English text of Scripture.  This is not academic scholarship.  Regarding Romans 1.26-27, Rogers, following Martti Nissinen, suggested that ‘contrary to nature’ meant an event or practice that is not ordinary.[3]  If ‘against nature’ means ‘out of the ordinary’, the argument continues, then Paul may have meant in Romans 1:26-27 that heterosexual women and men should not engage in out-of-the-ordinary, homosexual sex.  In this way, he thought to exempt the passage from a reference to persons with a homosexual orientation.  For his proof, he appeals Romans 11.24:

Romans 11:24: For if you have been cut from what is by nature [kata physin] a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature [para physin], into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural [kata physin] branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.

As can be seen, the relevant Greek phrases are present in Romans 11.24 and 1.26-27, but it is the normal use of the phrases in both passages: Paul is certainly speaking of how things work in nature, not what is merely ordinary.  Reading Romans 1:26-27 in this way, moreover, simply makes no sense in context—why on earth would Paul be making this sort of argument at this point in Romans?

At this point, note several things about how these arguments are regularly conducted:
  •       Correctly, persons pay special attention to how the same author (Paul) used the word.
  •     Yet a thorough word study is not conducted to see if ‘natural’ ever means ‘conventional’ or ‘ordinary’: this suggestion is based on a single text (whether Romans 11.24 or 1 Corinthians 11.14) that is, frankly, misinterpreted.
  •      The argument does not include a phrase study, which is relevant in this case.  The phrases ‘para physin’ and ‘kata physin’ are common in the literature.  This will turn out to be a fatal flaw for these arguments.
  •      The lack of careful attention to the literary context also misses the fact that ancient philosophies gave considerable attention to ideas about ‘nature’.
  •      The discussions omit research that we should expect from scholars. Churchmen should not be duped by scholars who do not engage primary sources in their work when making claims about antiquity or the interpretation of ancient texts.
  •     Some scholars speak to issues without any research that comprises quality scholarship; they rather cite other scholars and give the appearance to popular audiences of academic research and integrity.

The present study will give attention to how the word ‘physis’ and the phrase ‘para physin’ are used in Paul’s literary context.  Because the evidence is immense in antiquity, we are in a position to draw firm conclusions.  We are in a position to be clear on what Paul meant in Romans 1.24-28.

The Opposite of What is ‘Natural’ May Be Due to Convention, Conditions, Habits, Compulsion, and a Lack of Intelligence or Understanding

Ancient sources offer several contrasts to what is ‘natural’.  The opposite of natural may, first, be conventional, for which the Greek word ‘nomos’ (usually translated ‘law’) is used.  Plutarch (Whether Beasts are Rational 7), e.g., says,
Not even Nature [physis], with Law [nomos] for her ally, can keep within bounds the unchastened vice of your hearts ; but as though swept by the current of their lusts beyond the barrier at many points, men do such deeds as wantonly outrage Nature, upset her order, and confuse her distinctions.[4]
In Gorgias, Plato speaks of how the stronger person’s rule over the weaker is natural.  Then he refers to the opposite, as when a slave revolts and becomes master, which is ‘contrary to nature’ (483e-484a).  (This would be like Charles Darwin finding an island on which the weaker survived instead of the fittest—it goes against what we know of nature.)  Were slaves to revolt and rule masters, this would be a convention contrary to nature.

Second, the opposite of ‘natural’ may be what is the result of conditions.  Diogenes Laertius (Lives of the Philosophers 9.82) argues that different people may have conditions that account for their differences: people who are healthy or ill, awake or asleep, hateful or loving, and so forth.  In such ways, he argues, we can account for different behaviours or perspectives.  A madman, then, is not acting ‘against nature’ but is simply looking at the world differently due to his different condition.  This discussion demonstrates a distinction between the conditions of people from what is natural to human beings.  The example retains the idea of what is natural to human beings, and its entertaining the notion of personal alternatives requires discussion of ‘conditions,’ not simply the use of ‘nature’ terminology.  (Assuming such conditions in Romans 1.26-27 presses interpretation to a level of incredulity that all the other evidence offered here cannot endure, to say nothing of the progression of Paul’s argument since Romans 1.18.)

Third, the opposite of ‘natural’ may be what is formed by habituation.  Plato discusses altering natural proclivities through habituation (Laws 7943-795a).  For example, he suggests that we are born ambidextrous but come to be left or right-handed through habit.  Thus, treatment of one hand as weaker is not a matter of what is natural but of acting ‘against nature’.  This is essentially the same argument Paul has in Romans 1.24, 26, 27: by habituation, women or men using their genitals in homosexual relationships have come to view their sexual proclivities as natural; but such use is ‘against nature’.  Unlike left or right-handedness, the natural use of genitals is in heterosexual relations; i.e., we are not bi-sexual by nature.  In a passage reflecting the same point that Paul makes in Romans 1.16-17, Epictetus speaks of the natural use of sexual organs in heterosexual relations and their proper use in accordance with the Creator’s intent:

Epictetus, Discourses 1.6.9-10 And the male and the female, and the passion of each for intercourse with the other, and the faculty which makes use of the organs which have been constructed for this purpose, do these things not reveal their artificer either?[5]

The description ‘courage against nature’ (Plutarch, Sulla 18.6) also indicates that there is a distinction to be made between what is natural to human beings and a person’s character.  In this case, Plutarch is referring to people whose courage is so great that it is unnatural.  Character is something formed through habits as well as given by nature, and so unnatural courage may derive from habits rather than nature.

Fourth, ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ were discussed in terms of actions.  In his Magna Moralia, Aristotle discusses what counts as compulsion.  He says that an external force causing someone to do something is considered a compulsion and therefore is not censorious: one can hardly be blamed for acting under compulsion.  However, when something is done out of pleasure, an internal force over which someone exercises a degree of control, one is culpable (I.XIV). 

Aristotle further considers actions done without intelligence or understanding (I.XVI).  In such cases, one is not held culpable.  Note that Paul states that lesbians and homosexuals who perform same-sex acts are given over to a depraved mind (Romans 1.28): they believe their actions are natural even though they are para physin.  Yet Paul does not exonerate homosexuals any more than he does idolaters: both are culpable:

Romans 1:18-19 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.  19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

Both act in obvious opposition to creation.  Their actions, then, are sinful and not excusable.

The Phrase ‘Para Physin’ (Against or Contrary to Nature)

In Greek, the phrase ‘para physin’ means ‘against nature, unnatural’.  What is natural and unnatural is discussed in a variety of contexts, and this gives us a strong sense that ‘nature’ really means ‘nature’—not convention.  A few examples are helpful in making this point. 

First, natural and unnatural are discussed in terms of the universe and physics.  Aristotle’s On the Heavens discusses the movement of bodies ‘according to nature’ and ‘against nature’.  In this brief work, there are 47 passages using the phrase para physin.  Similarly, his Physics contrasts kata physin (according to nature) and para physin (against nature) in discussing the world, and the latter phrase is found 38 times.

Second, natural and unnatural are discussed in terms of biology and medicine.  Aristotle discusses biology in terms of what is natural and what is para physin (On the Generation of Animals 745b.11, 13).  The ‘against nature mating of a horse and an ass result in an infertile mule (748b.16-18).  He discusses an animal that is born with both male and female sexual organs and says that, in such cases, one is operative and the other—which he calls para physin—is inoperative (772b.13). 
Aristotle’s pupil, Theophrastus, regularly (23 times) uses the terminology in On the Causes of Plants.  Similarly, Paul, for that matter, says

Romans 11:24 For if you have been cut from what is by nature [kata physin] a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature [para physin], into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural [kata physin] branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.
In On the Generation of Animals, Philo, no doubt following Aristotle, explains the mixture of a horse with an ass to produce a mule as something Moses opposed on account of the fact that a mule is ‘contrary to nature’ (Special Laws 3.47).  Notably, for our purposes, he then applies this point to sexual ethics, arguing that bestiality is sinful (3.49). Philo says that birds, given their wings, fly—and it is ‘contrary to nature’ for them not to do so (Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit 1.237).

Third, natural and unnatural are discussed with reference to diseases. The 2nd century physician, Galen, frequently uses the phrase para physin in reference to diseases of the body: anthrax, gangrene, phagedinic ulcers, herpes, elephantiasis, erysipelas, oedema, cancer, and phlegmon.[6]

Fourth, natural and unnatural are discussed with reference to birth normalities and abnormalities and character differences from one’s parents in Plato’s Cratylus.  Socrates asks Hermogenes whether a child ‘born contrary to nature’ should not be deigned a different class from his parents, as when an impious son is born to a good and pious father (Cratylus 394d).  He also says that it is natural for a horse to give birth to its own kind, but ‘contrary to nature’ were it to produce a calf (Cratylus 393c).  Elsewhere, the question is asked, ‘“Can the one have come into being contrary to its own nature, or is that impossible?” “It is impossible” (Plato, Parmenides 152b).[7]

Fifth, the distinction between natural and unnatural is used of character.  Plutarch speaks of a haughty person acting ‘contrary to his nature’ (Marcius Coriolanus 18.2).

Sixth, what is ‘natural’ for life after death is that the body does not accompany the soul to heaven (Plutarch, Romulus 28.10).  Rather, their souls naturally ascend to heaven without their bodies. 
Seventh (and closer to the concern of this essay), the distinction is used in ethics: one should live according to nature, not against it (e.g., Plato, Philebus 22b).  Aristotle says, ‘Nothing contrary to nature [para physin] is noble’ (Politics 7.1325b).  Epictetus, a Stoic affirming the teaching of Chrysippus, says, ‘… convince me of this that you acted naturally, and I will convince you that everything which takes place according to nature takes place rightly’ (Discourses 1.11).  Living ‘conformably to nature’ is a fundamental principle of Stoicism.  Also, the Jewish philosopher, Philo, mentions a society that did not practice slavery on the grounds that possession of other people was thought to be ‘contrary to nature’ (On the Contemplative Life 1:70). 

Nature, Gender, and Astrology: Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos

In his Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy explores the causal relationship of the movement of heavenly bodies with human orientations and behaviours—astrology.  Fundamental to this is his conviction that there are two primary kinds of nature, male and female (Tetrabiblos I.6.16-17).  He says,

Again, in the same way they assigned six of the signs to the masculine and diurnal nature and an equal number to the feminine and nocturnal. An alternating order was assigned to them because day is always yoked to night and close to it, and female to male (I.12).[8]

The arrangement of certain planets when someone is born, avers the astrologer, will account for his or her characteristics, including character, diseases, personality, and sexual orientation.  In discussing this, Ptolemy is exploring the causes and characteristics of orientation.  Astrology is but one of a number of arguments in antiquity to speak of sexual orientation.  Several passages in Ptolemy are worth quoting in regard to sexual orientation.  The reader will note—and this is of prime significance—that, even though homosexual orientation is discussed as the fate of persons born under certain cosmic circumstances, the condition is still referred to as ‘against nature’ (para physin) over against a heterosexual orientation, ‘according to nature’ (kata physin).  A homosexual is someone for whom ‘against nature’ is ‘natural’.

·    However, because of the occidental aspect of Jupiter and Mars, and furthermore because the first parts of the aforesaid triangle are masculine and the latter parts feminine, they are without passion for women and look down upon the pleasures of love, but are better satisfied with and more desirous of association with men. And they do not regard the act as a disgrace to the paramour, nor indeed do they actually become effeminate and soft thereby, because their disposition is not perverted, but they retain in their souls manliness, helpfulness, good faith, love of kinsmen, and benevolence (II.61-73).

·    As in what precedes we have presented the theory of universal events, because this comes first and for the most part has power to control the predictions which concern the special nature of any individual, the prognostic part of which we call the genethlialogical art, we must believe that the two divisions have one and the same power both practically and theoretically. For the cause both of universal and of particular events is the motion of the planets, sun, and moon; and the prognostic art is the scientific observation of precisely the change in the subject natures which corresponds to parallel movements of the heavenly bodies through the surrounding heavens, except that universal conditions are greater and independent, and particular ones not similarly so (III. Introduction).

·  Allied with Venus in honourable positions Saturn makes his subjects haters of women, lovers of antiquity, solitary, unpleasant to meet, unambitious, hating the beautiful, envious, stern in social relations, not companionable, of fixed opinions, prophetic, given to the practice of religious rites, lovers of mysteries and initiations, performers of sacrificial rites, mystics, religious addicts, but dignified and reverent, modest, philosophical, faithful in marriage, self-controlled, calculating, cautious, quick to take offence, and easily led by jealousy to be suspicious of their wives. In positions of the opposite kind he makes them loose, lascivious, doers of base acts, undiscriminating and unclean in sexual relations, impure, deceivers of women and particularly their own kin, unsound, censorious, depraved, hating the beautiful, fault-finders, evil-speakers, drunken, servile, adulterators, lawless in sexual relations, both active and passive, both natural [kata physin] and unnatural [para physin], and willing to seek them with those barred by age, station, or law, or with animals, impious, contemptuous of the gods, deriding mysteries and sacred rites, entirely faithless, slanderous, poisoners, rogues who will stop at nothing (III.159-160).

·   Jupiter, allied with Venus, in honourable positions makes his subjects…. In the opposite positions he renders them luxurious, soft-livers, effeminate, fond of the dance, womanly in spirit, lavish in expenditure, evil in relations with women, erotic, lascivious, lecherous, slanderous, adulterous, lovers of ornament, rather soft, lazy, profligate, given to fault-finding, passionate, adorners of their persons, womanly minded… (III.162-163).

·    If Venus alone takes the domination of the soul, in an honourable position she makes her subjects … In the opposite position she makes them careless, erotic, effeminate, womanish, timid, indifferent, depraved, censorious, insignificant, meriting reproach (III.165-166).

·    But if likewise Mars or Venus as well, either one or both of them, is made masculine, the males become addicted to natural sexual intercourse, and are adulterous, insatiate, and ready on every occasion for base and lawless acts of sexual passion, while the females are lustful for unnatural congresses, cast inviting glances of the eye, and are what we call tribades; for they deal with females and perform the functions of males. If Venus alone is constituted in a masculine manner, they do these things secretly and not openly. But if Mars likewise is so constituted, without reserve, so that sometimes they even designate the women with whom they are on such terms as their lawful “wives”.

·    But on the other hand, when the luminaries in the aforesaid configuration are unattended in feminine signs, the females exceed in the natural [kata physin], and the males in unnatural practice [tou para physin], with the result that their souls become soft and effeminate. If Venus too is made feminine, the women become depraved, adulterous, and lustful, with the result that they may be dealt with in the natural manner [kata physin] on any occasion and by any one soever, and so that they refuse absolutely no sexual act, though it be base or unlawful. The men, on the contrary, become effeminate [malakoi, ‘soft men’ (cf. 1 Cor. 6.9] and unsound with respect to unnatural congresses [pros tas para physin] and the functions of women, and are dealt with as pathics, though privately and secretly. But if Mars also is constituted in a feminine manner, their shamelessness is outright and frank and they perform the aforesaid acts of either kind, assuming the guise of common bawds who submit to general abuse and to every baseness until they are stamped with the reproach and insult that attend such usages (III.171-172).

·   But if both [Jupiter and Saturn] are evening stars, they will be inclined toward the females alone, and if the signs of the zodiac are feminine, they themselves will be pathics. If both are morning stars, they will be infected only with love of boys, and if the signs of the zodiac are masculine, with males of any age. If Venus is further to the west, they will have to do with women of low degree, slaves, or foreigners; if Mars is further west, with superiors, or married women, or ladies of high station (IV.188).

·   … but if the planets [Venus and Mars] are made masculine they are so depraved as actively to have commerce with women (IV.189).

‘Against Nature’ Is Used to Mean ‘Not Heterosexual’ = ‘Homosexual’

As noted, Ptolemy’s discussion of sexual orientation and other characteristics due to the location of the planets included use of the terms ‘according to nature’ and ‘against nature’ (cf. Tetrabiblos III.171-172).  Five centuries earlier, Plato had several things to say about nature and ‘against nature,’ using the same terminology.  The language was in place long before and after Paul.

In Laws (1.636c), Plato says,

And whether one makes the observation in earnest or in jest, one certainly should not fail to observe that when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature [kata physin], but contrary to nature [para physin] when male mates with male or female with female, and that those first guilty of such enormities were impelled by their slavery to pleasure.[9]

In Phaedrus (251a), Plato speaks of pederasty as ‘contrary to nature’.  Yet. in this passage, he defends such an act if it entails the older man’s appreciation of the universal or ideal of Beauty manifest in the particular teenager (an application of his metaphysics of universals and particulars).  He further describes this in terms of romantic attraction (shuddering, becoming hot, throbbing soul, feverish, etc.).  Thus, the language ‘against nature’ does not necessarily imply a negative assessment for Plato, but it is standard language for non-heterosexual, socially permissible, sexuality.

Aeschines (4th century BC) contrasts adultery with homosexuality.  Both are accepted as wrong (we might say ‘sin’), but there is a difference.  The former is natural, whereas the latter is contrary to nature:

Aeschines, Speeches, “Against Timarchus” 1.185: Or what man will not be regarded as lacking intelligence who is angry with her who errs by an impulse of nature [kata physin, in reference here to adultery], while he treats as adviser the man who in despite of nature [para physin] has sinned against his own body [homosexuality]?[10]

The phrase ‘contrary to nature’ is often used specifically in regard to sex that is against the natural intercourse between a male and a female because it is sex between two persons of the same sex.  Paul’s younger contemporary, the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus in Rome, for example, says,

Musonius Rufus, Fragment 2 But of all sexual relations those involving adultery are most unlawful, and no more tolerable are those of men with men, because it is a monstrous thing and contrary to nature.[11]

Plutarch (1st/2nd century) compares two different cultures’ approaches to the question of when a female might be considered of marriageable age.  He describes the practice of marrying girls who are too young as ‘para physin’, against nature, and he describes the opposite as when brides are ‘fully ripe and eager’ for intercourse (Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa 4.1).  This use of ‘against nature’ demonstrates the use of the phrase with respect to sexuality.  He also describes homosexual unions as para physin and, of great interest to our purposes in understanding ‘malakoi’ in 1 Corinthians 6.9, he does so with reference to ‘soft men’:

Plutarch, Dialogue on Love 751C-E If union contrary to nature [para physin] with males does not destroy or curtail a lover’s tenderness, it stands to reason that the love between men and women, being natural will be conducive to friendship developing in due course from favor.... But the union with males, either unwillingly with force and plunder, or willingly with, weakness [or softness, malakia] and effeminacy [thēlytēs], surrendering themselves, as Plato says, “to be mounted in the custom of four-footed animals and to be sowed with seed contrary to nature”—this is an entirely ill-favored favor, shameful and contrary to Aphrodite [goddess of love].[12]

The first century, Jewish historian, Josephus, discusses same-sex relations among certain Greek tribes using ‘para physin’:

Josephus, Against Apion 2:273-275 And why do not the Lacedemonians think of abolishing that form of their government which suffers them not to associate with any others, as well as their contempt of matrimony? And why do not the Eleans and Thebans abolish that unnatural [para physin] and impudent lust, which makes them lie with males?  274 For they will not show a sufficient sign of their repentance of what they of old thought to be very excellent, and very advantageous in their practices, unless they entirely avoid all such actions for the time to come:  275 nay, such things are inserted into the body of their laws, and had once such a power among the Greeks, that they ascribed these sodomitical practices [tas tōn arrenōn mixeis, the mixing of men] to the gods themselves, as a part of their good character; and, indeed, it was according to the same manner that the gods married their own sisters [adelphōn, better translated ‘brothers’ in this context]. This the Greeks contrived as an apology for their own absurd and unnatural [para physin] pleasures.[13]

Similarly, the first century, Jewish philosopher, Philo, used the same language of homosexuality (pederasty being one form of what is against nature):
  •      Philo, Special Laws 3:39 And let the man who is devoted to the love of boys submit to the same punishment, since he pursues that pleasure which is contrary to nature, and since, as far as depends upon him, he would make the cities desolate, and void, and empty of all inhabitants, wasting his power of propagating his species, and moreover, being a guide and teacher of those greatest of all evils, unmanliness and effeminate lust, stripping young men of the flower of their beauty, and wasting their prime of life in effeminacy, which he ought rather on the other hand to train to vigor and acts of courage; and last of all, because, like a worthless husbandman, he allows fertile and productive lands to lie fallow, contriving that they shall continue barren, and labors night and day at cultivating that soil from which he never expects any produce at all.[14]

Jews saw homosexual sin as unnatural.  For example:[15]

    2 Enoch A 10:4 “Woe, woe, how very terrible is this place,” and those men said to me: This place, O Enoch, is prepared for those who dishonour God, who on earth practice sin against nature, which is child-corruption after the sodomitic fashion, magic-making, enchantments and devilish witch-crafts, and who boast of their wicked deeds, lies, calumnies, envy, rancour, fornication, murder….[16]
  •    Philo, Special Laws 1.325 He previously excludes all who are unworthy from the sacred assembly, beginning in the first instance with those who are afflicted with the disease of effeminacy [thēleian noson], men-women [androgynōn], who, having adulterated the coinage of nature [physeōs], are willingly driven into the appearance and treatment of licentious women. He also banishes all those who have suffered any injury or mutilation in their most important members, and those who, seeking to preserve the flower of their beauty so that it may not speedily wither away, have altered the impression of their natural manly appearance into the resemblance of a woman [thēlymorphon].

The language of ‘against nature’ is, therefore, perfectly clear.  The evidence is overwhelming, in fact.  The terminology was, in general, used to refer to whatever was not natural and, specifically, to homosexual relations.  It was not used to refer to acting against one’s own inclinations or orientation.  To the point, Paul was not speaking about heterosexual persons acting against their heterosexual orientation in homosexual acts in Romans 1.26-27.  The union of a male and a female was said to be in accordance with nature; that between two of the same biological gender was said to be against nature.

The Laws of Nature

Some further evidence along the same lines, though lacking the phrase ‘against nature’, is worth citing as the point is driven home.  Pseudo-Lucian speaks of homosexuality as a transgression of the ‘laws of nature’:

Pseudo-Lucian Amores 20 [Aphrodite, the goddess of love] linked them [males and females] to each other, ordaining as a sacred law of necessity that each should retain its own nature and that neither should the female grow unnaturally masculine nor the male be unbecomingly soft…. (19) But gradually the passing years degenerated from such nobility to the lowest depths of hedonism and cut out strange and extraordinary paths to enjoyment. Then luxury, daring all, transgressed the laws of nature herself. And who ever was the first to look at the male as though at a female after using violence like a tyrant or else shameless persuasion? The same sex entered the same bed. Though they saw themselves embracing each other, they were ashamed neither at what they did nor at what they had done to them, and, sowing their seed, to quote the proverb, on barren rocks they bought a little pleasure at the cost of great disgrace.[17]

Pseudo-Lucian, Amores 22: If each man abided by the ordinances prescribed for us by Providence, we should be satisfied with intercourse with women and life would be uncorrupted by anything shameful. Certainly, among animals incapable of debasing anything through depravity of disposition the laws of nature are preserved undefiled. Lions have no passion for lions but love in due season evokes in them desire for the females of their kind. The bull, monarch of the herd, mounts cows, and the ram fills the whole flock with seed from the male. Furthermore do not boars seek to lie with sows? Do not wolves mate with she-wolves? And, to speak in general terms, neither the birds whose wings whir on high, nor the creatures whose lot is a wet one beneath the water nor yet any creatures upon land strive for intercourse with fellow males, but the decisions of Providence remain unchanged. But you who are wrongly praised for wisdom, you beasts truly contemptible, you humans, by what strange infection have you been brought to lawlessness and incited to outrage each other? With what blind insensibility have you engulfed your souls that you have missed the mark in both directions, avoiding what you ought to pursue, and pursuing what you ought to avoid? If each and every man should choose to emulate such conduct, the human race will come to a complete end.[18]
Jewish authors also speak of the laws of nature and homosexuality:

    Pseudo-Phocylides, Sentences 190-192 Do not transgress with unlawful sex the limits set by nature. For even animals are not pleased by intercourse of male with male. And let women not imitate the sexual role of men.[19]

    Naphtali 3:4 But you will not be so, my children: you have recognized in the vault of heaven, in the earth, and in the sea, and in all created things, the Lord who made them all, so that you should not become like Sodom which changed the order of its nature.[20]

    Philo, On Abraham 1:134, 135-136 [Regarding Sodom] 134 And the cause of its excessive and immoderate intemperance was the unlimited abundance of supplies of all kinds which its inhabitants enjoyed…. And he was a wise man and spoke truly who said-- "The greatest cause of all iniquity is found in overmuch prosperity." 135 As men, being unable to bear discreetly a satiety of these things, get restive like cattle, and become stiff-necked, and discard the laws of nature, pursuing a great and intemperate indulgence of gluttony, and drinking, and unlawful connections; for not only did they go mad after women, and defile the marriage bed of others, but also those who were men lusted after one another, doing unseemly things, and not regarding or respecting their common nature, and though eager for children, they were convicted by having only an abortive offspring; but the conviction produced no advantage, since they were overcome by violent desire; 136 and so, by degrees, the men became accustomed to be treated like women, and in this way engendered among themselves the disease of females, an intolerable evil; for they not only, as to effeminacy and delicacy, became like women in their persons, but they made also their souls most ignoble, corrupting in this way the whole race of man, as far as depended on them. At all events, if the Greeks and barbarians were to have agreed together, and to have adopted the commerce of the citizens of this city, their cities one after another would have become desolate, as if they had been emptied by a pestilence.

    Philo, On Abraham 1:137 XXVII But God, having taken pity on mankind, as being a Savior and full of love for mankind, increased, as far as possible, the natural desire of men and women for a connection together, for the sake of producing children, and detesting the unnatural and unlawful commerce of the people of Sodom, he extinguished it, and destroyed those who were inclined to these things, and that not by any ordinary chastisement, but he inflicted on them an astonishing novelty, and unheard of rarity of vengeance.

    Philo, On Flight and Finding 1:144 Nor did the inhabitants of Sodom, blind in their minds, who were insanely eager to defile the holy and unpolluted reasonings, "find the road which led to this” [Genesis 29.11] object; but, as the sacred scriptures tell us, they were wearied with their exertions to find the door, although they ran in a circle all round the house, and left no stone unturned for the accomplishment of their unnatural and impious desires [tēs ekphylou kai asebous epithymias].

Philo could speak of desires in accordance with nature, as opposed to excessive desire, such as gluttony or being oversexed, even in marriage.
  • Philo, Special Laws 3:9 Therefore, even that pleasure which is in accordance with nature is often open to blame, when any one indulges in it immoderately and insatiably, as men who are unappeasably voracious in respect of eating, even if they take no kind of forbidden or unwholesome food; and as men who are madly devoted to association with women, and who commit themselves to an immoderate degree not with other men's wives, but with their own.
  • Philo, On the Posterity of Cain 53 gives a sin list that ends with ‘immoderate indulgence in pleasure, and innumerable appetites in despite of nature.’
  • Philo, Abraham 1:46 When such numbers then of such mighty evils had burst forth which that time poured out - for all the portions of the world, except the heaven itself, were moved in an unnatural manner - as if they were stricken with a terrible and deadly disease.  [This reference has to do with the time of the flood in Noah’s day.]



‘Nature’ in 1 Corinthians 11:14

Having reviewed all this evidence, we must conclude what might have been thought obvious were it not for recent scholars who have sought a way to make Romans 1.26-27 mean something other than what the Church has always thought it to mean: that female and male homosexual acts are unnatural, contrary to God’s purposes in creation, and sinful.  It yet remains to explain Paul’s use of ‘nature’ in 1 Corinthians 11.14. 

First Corinthians 11.14 reads,

Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him.

Paul really does mean ‘nature’ in this passage and is not using the term in reference to ‘custom’.  Note the contrasting language of ‘nature’ [physis] and ‘custom’ [nomos] in Aristotle: had Paul meant to say ‘custom’ instead of ‘nature’, he would have had other language to say so:

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics I.3.3 The subjects studied by political science are Moral Nobility and Justice; but these conceptions involve much difference of opinion and uncertainty, so that they are sometimes believed to be mere conventions [dokein nomō(i) monon] and to have no real existence in the nature of things [physei de mē].[21]

Paul is not saying that it is customary for men to wear their hair short and that it is uncustomary for them to wear their hair long.  So, why does Paul use the term ‘nature’ in 1 Cor. 11.14?  It is because he has in mind what long hair symbolizes in his culture: an effeminate man, a ‘man-woman’, a ‘soft man’—or other such descriptions of a man acting against his natural (biological) gender.

This might be compared to our saying that it is ‘unnatural’ for a man to dress up in women’s clothing and walk with a sway to his hips in high heels carrying a hand bag.  None of us would dispute the use of the word ‘unnatural’ on the basis that the description is a cultural definition of womanly dress as we would understand it.  Such cultural dress points to a man behaving like a woman, which is unnatural for a man.

This very point is equally made by Epictetus—even with reference to the length of hair.
Epictetus, Discourses 3.1 You are a human being; that is, a mortal animal, capable of a rational use of things as they appear. And what is this rational use? A perfect conformity to Nature. What have you, then, particularly excellent? Is it the animal part? No. The mortal? No. That which is capable of the mere use of these things? No. The excellence lies in the rational part. Adorn and beautify this; but leave your hair to him who formed it as he thought good.[22]
Well, what other appellations have you? Are you a man or a woman? A man. Then adorn yourself as a man, not as a woman. A woman is naturally smooth and delicate, and if hairy, is a monster, and shown among the monsters at Rome. It is the same thing in a man not to be hairy; and if he is by nature not so, he is a monster. But if he depilates himself, what shall we do with him? Where shall we show him, and how shall we advertise him? "A man to be seen, who would rather be a woman." What a scandalous show! Who would not wonder at such an advertisement? I believe, indeed, that these very persons themselves would; not apprehending that it is the very thing of which they are guilty.
Of what have you to accuse your nature, sir, that it has made you a man? Why, were all to be born women, then? In that case what would have been the use of your finery? For whom would you have made yourself fine, if all were women? But the whole affair displeases you. Go to work upon the whole, then. Remove your manhood itself and make yourself a woman entirely, that we may be no longer deceived, nor you be half man, half woman. To whom would you be agreeable, to the women? Be agreeable to them as a man.

Conclusion

This study is offered in response to the notion that Paul does not mean ‘natural’ but ‘normal,’ ‘conventional,’ ‘customary,’ or ‘ordinary’ in Romans 1:26-27—that he is saying that heterosexual persons should not act abnormally and have homosexual sex.  This neither fits the purpose of Paul’s argument in Romans nor the meaning of ‘natural’.  The essay has scoured a number of primary texts, and the following conclusions are justified:

  • The Greek notion and word for ‘natural’ are as we use them in English.
  • ‘Natural’ never means ‘customary’ or ‘normal’.  It has to do with nature and God’s purposes in creation.
  • 1 Corinthians 11.14, Paul’s comment that short hair on a man is ‘natural,’ is not an example of his using the term to mean ‘normal’.  He has in view the implication of long hair on a man in his culture: that the person is homosexual or transsexual.  This, not long hair per se, is what is deemed unnatural.
  • The phrase ‘para physin’, ‘against nature’, fits a standard use from centuries before Paul to well after Paul.  One of its very common uses is for homosexuality, which is against nature.
A final point needs to be made, even if it is difficult to do so.  The willingness of some scholars to make unsubstantiated claims while foregoing the sort of study offered here is very troubling.  They lend their voices to a sexual, revolutionary movement and to revisionist readings of Scripture as scholars, and therefore they might be expected to speak on the basis of serious research.  Instead, however, they speak without any serious academic work at all.  Yet they are not ashamed to affirm a radical revision of 2,000 years of Church teaching as though they have conducted serious study.  They speak out of their perceived authority as scholars rather than on the basis of their actual scholarship.  In an effort to challenge this irresponsible scholarship sooner than later, I have offered some important research here in the primary sources. One can only hope that Christians, pastors, or bishops hoping to learn from scholars will no longer be misled by their chicanery but actually spend time with the primary source material—something these politically correct scholars have been unwilling to do.  The data is, in my view, incontrovertible: Romans 1.24-28 is speaking of the sex of female and male homosexuals using their body parts in sinful, unnatural ways, in ways God did not intend in creation.[23]

This is but the beginning of Romans. Paul's message in the rest of the letter from 3.21ff is really one of hope: although all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23), we can find redemption in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, reconciled us to God, and has made it possible to live transformed lives in the power of the Holy Spirit.  While we find in our day a pastoral obligation to correct false teachers who say homosexuality is no sin, the Christian message is good news; it is a message of forgiveness and transformation for all who repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.




[1] Cf. S. Donald Fortson and Rollin G. Grams, Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Tradition (Nashville: B&H Press, 2016).
[2] Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘Biblical Justice: The Missing Component in the Same-Sex Marriage Discussion,’ online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiD_Lfy2beo (accessed May 19, 2020).
[3] Dan O. Via and Robert A. J. Gagnon, Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress, 2003), 15.
[4] Jack Rogers, Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 76–78.  See Martti Missinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historicaal Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1998), p. 105.
[5] Plutarch, Moralia, trans. Harold Cherniss and William C. Hembold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957).
[6] Arrian’s Discourses of Epictetus in Four Books, trans. W. A. Oldfather (Loeb Classical Library 131; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925).
[7] I have counted 753 passages where the term ‘para physin’ is found in Galen.  See a discussion in Elsa Garcia Novo, Galen on the Anomalous Dyskrasia (De Inaequali Intemperie) (Madrid: Donoso Cortés, 2010), pp. 177-178.
[8] Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925).
[9] Manetho Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, trans. W. G. Waddell and F. E. Robbins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940).
[10] Plato in Twelve Volumes, trans. Harold N. Fowler (Loeb Classical Library 9; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925).
[11] The Speeches of Aeschines, trans. C. D. Adams (Loeb Classical Library 6; Cambridge: Harvard University Press).  One might note with interest that Paul sees all fornication as a sin ‘against one’s own body’: ‘Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself (1 Corinthians 6.19).
[12] Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Fragments, trans. Cora Lutz, Yale Classical Studies (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1947).
[13]Plutarch: Moralia, vol. IX, ed.G. P. Goold, trans. E. L. Minar, F. H. Sandbach, W. C. Helmbold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961).
[14] William Whiston The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus (Bridgeport, CT: M. Sherman, 1828).
[15] All translations of Philo are taken from The Works of Philo Judaeus, the Contemporary of Josephus, trans. C. D. Yonge, 4 vols. (London, England: Henry G. Bohn, 1854–55).
[16] See further, Fortson and Grams, Unchanging Witness, chs. 9, 10, and 12.
[17] 2 Enoch, or the Book of the Secrets of Enoch,” trans. Nevill Forbes and R. H. Charles,
in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2, ed. R. H. Charles (New York: Clarendon, 1913).
[18] Lucian, Vol. 8, Amores, trans. A. M. Harmon (Loeb Classical Library; (Harvard: Harvard Press, 1967).
[19] Pseudo-Lucian, Affairs of the Heart, trans. A. M. Harmon (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925).
[20] P. W. van der Horst, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1978), 101.
[21], The Apocryphal Old Testament, ed. H. Sparks, trans. M. DeJonge (New York: Clarendon, 1984),
[22] Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (Loeb Classical Library 73; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926).
[23] The Works of Epictetus: His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments, trans. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1890).
[24] Further discussion of the primary texts is offered in Fortson and Grams, Unchanging Witness.

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