In the apostle Paul's day, one of the great philosophical discussions had to do with the role of nature and nurture in ethics. Did people do what they do because of the way that they were by nature or because of how they were nurtured? Relatedly, one could ask why people sometimes live 'against nature.' In the culture of the first century, Jews, Christians, Cynics, and Stoics could all agree that one should live according to nature, which, for religious people, was also the way God made the world. A related question in antiquity--one that requires too large an answer for this post--is, 'Are desires innate or developed in human beings?' This question, too, occupied philosophers of old.
The questions are still asked, sometimes in different ways with words like 'orientation' and 'identity' featuring. Western culture has been at a peculiar cross-road of Modernity and Postmodernity over the past half century, and this has meant that older arguments based in science have given way to newer arguments based in choice. However, individuals and groups easily slip back and forth between the two, opposed ways of thinking. One person argues that someone has desires of a certain kind because of how they are put together: identity is innate. Another argues that desire is a matter of choice. In the postmodern world, which argument one chooses to bring forward is really not all that important, only what one concludes is.
The Postmodern world puts Christians--and all realists--at a considerable disadvantage. Just when the Christian thinks that the argument for some settled reality is firm, his Postmodern interlocutor switches arguments to insisting that people have the right to choose their identity and lifestyle. In antiquity, Jews and Christians could find common ground with certain Greek and Roman philosophers who affirmed a natural order, whether they were religious or not. The Postmodern world is decidedly anti-natural on many fronts, even if natural arguments are entertained as long as they reach the right, politically correct conclusions.
These points come to a head in a discussion of a passage such as Romans 1.26-28. Paul is arguing that non-Jews or Gentiles have rejected the Creator and therefore gone against the right order of Creation. As a consequence, God has given them up to their bad choices and to a depraved mind such that they can no longer reason from the way the world is to the way it should be. Instead, their thinking is turned upside down. As to their relationship with God, they have given up worship of the Creator and started worshiping things that they themselves have made, which is idolatry. As to their relationship with one another, they have given up natural sexual relations between a man and a woman and turned to lesbianism and male homosexuality. Just as humans created their own gods, they created their own sexuality--both in opposition to nature. That move away from God's world to the world of their own making--illustrated so well by the examples of idolatry and homosexuality--has led to every manner of opposition to Divine Law, and though at some level people still know that such things are wrong, they not only do them but approve of others who do as well (Romans 1.32). Paul's argument sums up not only the way he found the world but the way we do as well.
Paul's argument is thoroughly Biblical. That is, it was in line with what Jews and Christians said and believed not only in his day but for centuries before and afterwards. Yet he would have found common ground with a 1st century, Stoic philosopher like Epictetus. A passage in Epictetus' first dialogue shows important points of contact with Paul's argument in Romans 1.26-28. In it, Epictetus describes a human being as a combination of animal (with natural instincts) and the gods (with reason and intelligence). He says, 'these two things are mingled in the generation of man, body in common with the animals, and reason and intelligence in common with the gods….’ (Discourses 1). This explains why humans do some things by instinct and other things by their own choices based on their own reasoning. Humans, therefore, are capable of living against their nature. Stoics, of course, taught that one should live according to nature.
Epictetus further speaks of living according to Providence (the way things are—nature) and being grateful/thankful about that, rather than living against nature. He says, 'From everything which is or happens in the world, it is easy to praise Providence, if a man possesses these two qualities, the faculty of seeing what belongs and happens to all persons and things, and a grateful disposition’ (Discourses 1). That is, one should not begrudge the way he or she has been made but be grateful.
Of further interest for a comparison with Paul is that Epictetus next applies this point to gender. As Paul in Rom. 1.18-28 and vv. 26-27 in
particular, Epictetus notes how desire is related to the construction of
biological parts for male and female and that this declares God’s purpose by
which we should live. He says, 'And the existence of male and female, and the desire of
each for conjunction, and the power of using the parts which are constructed,
do not even these declare the workman?’ (Disourses 1). Animals relate their constitution to its use,
but humans also have the faculty of understanding—understanding related to the
mind and use related to the way things work in the natural world. And they need to exercise their understanding
along with putting their physical constitution to its proper use. Humans need to live, therefore, conformably to nature (Discourses 1).
Note that Epictetus speaks of a natural use of parts. This is precisely what Paul says in Romans 1.26-27, although some English translations obscure Paul's language. The English Standard Version, for example, translated Romans 1.26-27 this way:
For
this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women
exchanged natural relations [chrēsin] for those that are
contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations [chrēsin] with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men
committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty
for their error.
The translation does capture Paul's argument, like that of the Stoics, about nature. This is the way God created people, male and female. Nature has nothing to do with someone's chosen orientation. In fact, orientation in the case of lesbians and male homosexuals is against nature. Paul's words are, in fact, about 'natural use,' since the Greek word chrēsis means this. Like Epictetus, Paul is speaking of natural and unnatural use of male and female genitalia in intercourse. Paul and Epictetus could have been speaking at the same conference. To repeat Epictetus, 'the power of using the parts which are constructed, do not even these declare the workman?'
Paul concludes his argument in v. 28: 'And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.' This, too, is in part Epictetus' argument. Humans are more complicated than beasts, who do what they do by natural instinct and not higher, human reasoning. Humans use their reasoning capacity to justify their actions even when they go against nature. For Epictetus, this is where all sorts of human problems arise, and the solution is to live according to nature. For Paul, humans cannot do this because they are no longer able to figure out what is natural and what is unnatural. The mind has been debased or corrupted in its thinking. Paul will later explain this in more detail in regard to sin in Romans 7.7-25. Only God can restore humanity, and, in fact, Paul concludes his lengthy argument by saying in Romans 12.2, '... be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.' God's redemption of humanity from their sinful state involves a restoration of discernment, a renewed ability to use the transformed mind to know God's moral will for humanity. That will is good, acceptable, and perfect. Thus, Christians are able to understand the purposes of the Creator and see them as God's will for His creation. Paul is more skeptical than Epictetus in believing that humanity has lost the ability to discern God's purposes in creation because of sin. Yet he is more hopeful than Epictetus in believing that those in Christ and led by the Holy Spirit are able, by the power of God, to know and do the will of God.
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