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corpus-paul - Re: Paul and homosexuality?

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  • From: Perry L Stepp <plstepp AT juno.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Paul and homosexuality?
  • Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 22:37:23 -0500


> A negative view of sex is also
> present in the NT. Asceticism, and reasons for it,
> were very important to Paul, who can be called a
> "model ascetic" (Roetzel), as we see in Romans:
>
> 6:6 ... so that the sinful body might be destroyed
> 6:12 [don't] obey its passions
> 7:5 our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were
> at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
> 7:8 sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought
> in me all kinds of covetousness.
> [Probably it is the commandment to "be fruitful"
> that accidentally (?) stimulated sinful sexual desire,
> hence the repeated mention of how it was "through
> the commandment" (7:13) that sin, like a Trojan horse,
> penetrated our defenses and seduced us into sinning]

Rather Freudian, this. How silly of me not to realize that when Paul
refers to the commandment against coveting that he's really thinking of
sex ! !

Seriously: I don't think that sex, compulsion/aversion, etc., was at the
root of what Paul was writing nor of what his audience would have heard.
It would have been one aspect of their understanding of "flesh,"
"passions," etc.--but only one of several. Paul's "vice lists" certainly
aren't limited to sexual sin.

PLStepp, Ph.D. candidate, Baylor University
http://www.tapercities.com/PhilZone/plstepp/

"For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social
part. The real part was the spiritual part." --Jerry Garcia,
*Rolling Stone* 30 Nov 1989


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