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  • From: MillerJimE AT aol.com
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Paul and homosexuality?
  • Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 00:26:54 EDT



<< Jim, thanks for your response to Loren Rosson.
I take it your publication you refer to is the 1995 NovT article. I wonder
if you (or others who reach your conclusions) have responded at all anywhere
to two subsequent pieces (both 1996 I think) relating to your claims as to
the concern in 1.26 & 27 - (a) Brooten whose lengthy study 'Love Between
Women' I think argues strongly against the heterosexual anal intercourse
reading for women's unnatural sex and in favour of homosexual conduct and
(b) Mark D. Smith's AAR piece on 'Ancient Bisexuality and the Interpretation
of Rmns 1.26-27' which I thought does a fairly good critique of the
Scroggs/pederasty reading. Would be interested to know of engagement with
these pieces from the sort of interepretation you advocate.
Perhaps we need to change the subject on this one if it is going to run to
something like 'Paul & homosexuality' ? All the best, Andrew. >>

I responded to Mark Smith in JAAR 65:861-866. The most telling bit from
Bernadette Brooten is her 1985 Studia Patristica article where she expressed
amazement that Augustine could quote from Romans 1:26 and not see sex between
women. It was this article that started me to investigate patristic
understandings of the standard "clobber texts" used by fundies against gays
and lesbians. Clement and Augustine alike opposed sex between women, but did
not find Romans 1:26 to attack sex between women. They were members of the
ancient Greco-Roman culture. We are not. Likewise with Athenagoras who
specified pederasty for Romans 1:27. So, I give their interpretations more
weight than that of modern experts, including myself.
In the end, this study led me to something else that kept cropping up in
the patristic texts. They are VERY sex-negative. They thought that sexual
pleasure was the product of evil. And since sexual pleasure was a necessary
evil, it should be restricted to necessity only -- reproduction. This theme,
from Athenagoras to Aquinas, has some interesting twists and turns, and seems
to be derived primarily from Greek philosophy. Somehow it bypassed the New
Testament completely.

Paul throught sex was merely a distraction, something you practice
through marriage when it is even more distracting to be celibate. Somehow he
and everyone else in the New Testament forgot to tell anyone that it was for
procreation.
Jim Miller




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