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  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Paul and sexuality
  • Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 12:11:06 -0700 (PDT)


Jim, Ayla, Bob, Perry --

Thanks to everyone for their insights.

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. 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 -- he couldn't even understand
why God bothered to create the female sex: "If it was
good company and conversation that Adam needed, then
it would have been better arranged to have two men
together as friends, not a man and a woman." (Literal
Meaning of Genesis, IX, V, 9). (Perhaps Augustine
believed in Adam-and-Steve after all.) I suspect
Augustine may have been frustrated that Rom 1:26
wasn't more explicit in its condemnation of
lesbianism.

The argument for Rom 1:27 is that Paul attacks either
pederasty or homosexual temple prostitution. (But Paul
would have condemned all forms of temple prostitution
as idolatrous, not just homosexual.) 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; Paul didn't distinguish sexual orientation
from sexual activity.

I appreciate Jim Miller's arguments and his laying out
the various views of the patristic writers. Certainly
pederasty and temple prostitution were common and
visible forms of homosexual practice in Paul's world.
But there were also men and women involved in intimate
and committed same-sex relationships (as Perry Stepp,
for instance, indicated with the Plato and Philo
texts). 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" -- then
I would expect (somewhere) more lengthy and careful
explanations like those found in I Cor 7 (for sex and
marriage), I Cor 8-10 (for food and idols), and I Cor
11 (for women in the church). It was the bane of his
existence that he too frequently needed to clarify
himself and steer people back on course ("About these
matters which you wrote...") that he could have left
this matter so open-ended. Can we really restrict
Paul's usage on this point?

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com

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