Skip to main content

Plato and Paul on How Same-Sex Acts and Orientations are ‘Against Nature’--Part One

 

Romans 1.26-27 makes the point that God gave humans ‘up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves’ (1.24, ESV) such that they engaged in lesbian and gay acts.  It reads:

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations 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 (ESV).

What has been rather obvious to interpreters of this verse for nineteen centuries has recently been challenged by revisionist interpreters who wish to make a place for homosexuality in the Church.  Don Fortson and I have explored the issue in Scripture and the Church’s history in detail.[1]  We have shown that the right interpretation of Romans, consistent with the rest of Scripture and held throughout Church history, is that Paul was saying that homosexual activity and orientation are against nature.

Recently, however revisionists have thrown up various, alternative interpretations (not consistent with one another) of these verses.  One of these plays with the meaning of ‘natural’: perhaps Paul was speaking about what is natural to an individual, one’s orientation.  On this view, Paul was not speaking about some Law of Nature by which people should live.  Instead, he was really just saying that those with a heterosexual orientation (their own ‘nature’) should not engage in homosexual acts.  This clever exegetical slight of hand does not work for Paul’s first example: idolatry is not wrong because you worship a god different from your nation's god but because you do not worship the true God. 

Another revisionist suggestion that has often been cited suggests that Paul only had in mind pederasty, the love relationship between an adult male and a male youth—a common enough arrangement in ancient Greek society (not Roman).  Of course, Paul first mentions lesbianism, and he could have mentioned pederasty had this been his meaning.  His examples, therefore, are of female and male same-sex relationships, not pederasty.  Of the various playful and inventive suggestions by revisionists, the one that most catches the attention of those unfamiliar with classical literature is the suggestion that ‘natural’ is not a dictate of Nature but of one’s orientation.

The purpose of this exegetical comment is to draw people’s attention to a passage in Plato’s Laws that parallels what Paul is saying.  The parallel undermines the revisionist diversion in the meaning of ‘nature’.  One familiar with the philosophical literature of antiquity will know that Plato's understanding of 'nature' is not unique.  In fact, it is a major and common understanding.  The comparisons between Plato and Paul are placed in the following table.

Romans 1.26-27 (ESV)

Plato, Laws 1.636[2]

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions [pathē]. For their women [thēleiai] exchanged natural[]physikēn]  relations for those that are contrary to nature [para physin]; 27 and the men [arsenes] likewise gave up natural [physikēn] relations with women and were consumed with passion [oreksei] for one another, men [arsenes] committing shameless acts with men [arsesin]  and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

and, moreover, this institution [the gymnasium], when of old standing, is thought to have corrupted the pleasures of love which are natural [kata physin] not to men [anthrōpōn] only but also natural to beasts.... And whether one makes the observation in earnest or in jest, one certainly should not fail to observe that when male [arrenwn] unites with female [thēleia(i)] 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 (1.636). 

Note that Paul uses the same language of ‘against nature’ (para physin) and ‘natural’ as Plato.  They have in mind a Law of Nature—what God intended in Creation.  Yet the argument is not that Paul had this passage from Plato in mind.  Philosophers often spoke of what was ‘against nature’ (para physin) and ‘according to nature’ (kata physin).  Stoics, in particular, advocated living according to Nature.  Classical writers, moreover, at times gave homosexuality, whether acts or the orientation, as an example of living ‘against nature’ (Epictetus, e.g.).  This is the point of the quotation from Plato. 

Homosexuality was said to be against nature for two reasons.  First, it was not as Nature intends; that is, the male uniting with the female rather than either in same-sex relations.  The Law of Nature is that the natural use of sexual organs is between a male and a female because heterosexual unions can serve procreation.  (Whether or not the two genders procreate, heterosexual sex involves the natural use of sexual organs.)  

Second, homosexual desire was an unnatural, internal disorder of the soul, where the passions and appetites rule reason rather than the other way around.  On this latter point, the view was that heterosexual unions are what reason dictates (sex is between sexes that can procreate), but a person not living according to reason and living by their passions or appetites will give themselves over to various distortions of sexuality that cannot procreate, including homosexuality and bestiality.  On this point, not only the acts but also the distorted desires are against nature.  This is why Paul understands passions and desires of the flesh to be sin, not just acts as sin (cf. Galatians 5.24).  Paul recognises the sexual desire as natural and discusses its appropriate place in marriage in 1 Corinthians 7.  Romans 1.27 has in view the passions of the flesh turned toward the wrong object, a person of the same sex.  This is an example, like idolatry, of a depraved 'mind' (nous), a mind unable to direct the natural passions.

Plato understood the soul to consist of reason, passions, and appetites, each of which can move the person one way or another.  The rightly ordered soul, one living according to Nature, is one led by reason and not moved first by the passions or appetites.  Internally disordered people, for Plato and for Paul, were ruled by their own desires and passions of the flesh.  When the soul is led only by passion, the objects of passion will often not be oriented to the right object of passion.  

Also note in the comparisons between Plato and Paul that both use the Greek terms for gender, ‘male’ and ‘female’.  Paul may have had the Greek of Genesis 1.27 in mind, for it, too, uses arsen and thēlu.  Yet Plato also has gender in view, and all three texts understand gender according to Nature as biological sex.

Plato and Paul agree that the sexes should live according to Nature—or Creation.  The person given over to passions, enslaved to pleasure, does not live according to reason and engages in sexual disorders such as the antinatural uses of sexual organs by lesbians and gay men, consumed by a slavery to pleasure or passion.  (This is clearer in the Greek of Romans 1.26-27, where what the ESV translation ‘natural relations’ in both verses would better be translated ‘natural uses’.  The natural use versus unnatural or misuse of genitalia is in view.)  Neither writer has the improper use of youths in pederasty in view, although any same-sex activity would fit the arguments of Plato and Paul.  Both use the language of ‘male’ and ‘female’—although this is obscured where the ESV translates ‘women’ instead of ‘females’ and ‘men’ instead of ‘males’.  Both express same-sex relations as a corruption of what Nature or God intended.

Thus, revisionist suggestions that Paul does not have homosexuality in both acts and orientations (passions) in view in Romans 1.26-27 are clearly wrong.  Plato, writing hundreds of years before Paul, presents the same argument of Paul in several respects.  They especially understood a Law in Nature that gender is biological sex and sexuality according to Nature is that between a male and a female.

-------------------

For Part Two, go to: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2026/07/plato-and-paul-on-how-same-sex-acts-and.html

Further on Plato, Paul, and other primary texts, see: ''Nature' and ‘Against Nature’ in Romans 1:26-27: A Study in the Primary Sources'; https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2016/12/nature-and-against-nature-in-romans-126.html. 


[1] S. Donald Fortson and Rollin G. Grams, Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Tradition (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2016).

[2] Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11, trans. R.G. Bury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1967 & 1968).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel...
Post a Comment
Read more

Was Jesus’ Criticism of the Pharisees’ Ethic Its Legalism or Lawlessness?

The popular understanding of the Pharisees is that they were legalists.  This is not, however, Jesus’ criticism of their ethics, even though the charge of Pharisaic legalism comes from a (mis)reading of the Gospels.  The Pharisees are cast in popular imagination as the quintessential example of legalists, overly focussed on rules and promoting works in order to attain righteousness apart from God’s grace.  The latter view, that Judaism overall and the Pharisees in particular advocated works righteousness, has been loudly criticised in light of numerous texts in second temple Judaism, celebrating God’s grace in choosing the Jews, not self-righteous works. [1]   Be that as it may, the Pharisees have remained the foil to Christian ethics precisely over their purported legalism—a focus on unloving, unforgiving rules and regulations that also places norms above, purportedly, higher moral principles.  Jesus’ ethic is contrasted as an ethic of forgiveness, mercy, love...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Virtues of a Failing Culture

  An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell.   We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it.   The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts.   They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants.   It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us.   We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines. Its power lies in its claims of virtuosity, distorted goodness.   If presented as the vices that they are, they would be rejected.   These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits and painted on banners or made into flags.   They are established in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries.   They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable.   They are virtues, but disordered, or they are the excess or deficiency of...
Post a Comment
Read more