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.
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 is
against nature.
Recently, however revisionists have thrown up various alternative
interpretations 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: one does not
get to worship one’s own god.) Another revisionist suggestion that has often
been cited suggests that Paul only had in mind paedophilia, 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 paedophilia
had this been his meaning. 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. It undermines the revisionist diversion in the meaning of ‘nature’. The comparisons 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, 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. Indeed, what Plato says is a rather common view in the philosophical literature. 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’. 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, 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).
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. Paul concludes his
illustration of the descent of humanity (God giving sinful humans over to their
desires)—from knowing God to having disorders of relation to God (idolatry) and
to humanity (homosexuality)—by saying that God gave them over to a depraved
mind or reason (nous). They were ruled by their own desires and passions
of the flesh. Third, 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 of genitalia is in view.) Neither has the improper use of youths in paedophilia
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
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.
[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).
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