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  • From: MillerJimE AT aol.com
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Paul and sexuality
  • Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 01:18:23 EDT


Replies to Loren Rosson:
<<Jim proposes that Rom 1:26 points to alternative
heterosexual activity rather than lesbianism. The
problem is that Rom 1:27 speaks of men being consumed
with passion for other men **in the same way** that
women abandon their own "natural intercourse",
implying that women are consumed with passion for
other women. If the text wasn't clear to Augustine, it
is clear to me.>>

Maybe Clement of Alexandria and Augustine were able to read the text
also. And maybe homoios referred to something other than the gender issue.
After all, the gender issue is brought up only in verse 27, but both verses
attack the practices. If homoios referred to the practices of these two
verses, then verses 26 and 27 are like each other in what happens in the
bedroom. But there is little in common between what two women can do and
what two males can do -- different equipment. Should a heterosexual couple
decide to do something other than vaginal intercourse their options are those
of two males (from the patriarchal perspective). This is the homoios
referent of the two verses to the ancient readers of the text.

<<And I'm not inclined to use Augustine
as a measuring stick for textual clarity on this
point. Remember that he didn't have the highest
opinion of womankind . . . . I suspect Augustine may have been frustrated
that Rom 1:26 wasn't more explicit in its condemnation of lesbianism.>>

Remember that Augustine did attack female homosexual activity. He just
didn't find any in Romans 1:26 which he used to attack other practices he
despised. It is Brooten who was frustrated that Augustine didn't find female
homosexuality in Romans 1:26.

<< It has even been
claimed that Rom 1:26-27 condemns only heterosexual
people who engage in homosexual activity (and so, by
implication, homosexual people who engage in
heterosexual activity), which is rather desperate
eisegesis . . .>>

Actually, this reading is a product of literalism. Romans 1:27 speaks of
those (males) who turn from the natural use of women. Homosexuals on the far
end of the Kinsey scale never turned away from the natural use of women.
They are incapable of this "natural use", and their natures would have to
turn away from men to have relations with women. It is heterosexual males
who turn from women to fellow males -- boys in this case.
Incidently, I am not one of these literalists.

<>

No offence, but I think you are stuck in the modern period where the
all-encompassing category of "homosexual" has been operative for a century
and a half. If you move your mind to another period where same-sex
activities were placed in three or four separate categories you might see
these texts differently.

<< If Paul had a nuanced position on
homosexuality -- if he really meant to single out only
pederasts and prostitutes, or if he believed in
different shades of "bad homosexual practices" . . . >>

Paul's society already "nuanced" the modern category of homosexuality.
We are the lumpers that put them all in one box.
Jim Miller




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