The Bible and Homosexual Practice by Robert A. J. Gagnon

Author:Robert A. J. Gagnon [Gagnon, Robert A. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Published: 2010-10-01T03:00:00+00:00

Did Paul Think That Homoerotic Behavior Was "Dirty" But Not Sinful?

A plain reading of Rom 1:26-27 makes clear that Paul regarded same-sex intercourse and unrestrained passion for such practices as sin. However, there are some who argue that Paul treated same-sex intercourse either as not sinful or as sin only in a very diminished and vitually inconsequential sense. L. William Countryman is the most vigorous proponent of the view that Paul did not consider homosexuality to be sin.36 According to Countryman, Paul merely regarded homosexuality as an "unpleasingly dirty aspect of Gentile culture . . . visited upon the Gentiles as recompense for sins, chiefly the sin of idolatry but also those of social disruption." "The argument is simply this: 'We all know Gentiles have sinned. Only look at the dirtiness into which God plunged them as a consequence. But what of the Jew who criticizes them? Are you claiming to be sinless?' "37

Countryman's analysis ignores obvious signals in 1:18-32 and the larger context of Romans and other Pauline letters. With regard to the language of 1:18-32, there is a clear parallel between the statements that "God handed them over in the desires of their hearts to the uncleanness of dishonoring their bodies among themselves" (1:24) and "God handed them over to dishonorable (homoerotic) passions" (1:26) on the one hand and "God handed them over to an undiscerning mind, to do what is not proper, having been filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, malice . . . , (things) worthy of death" (1:28-32) on the other hand. The implication is clear: same-sex intercourse, like the vices enumerated in 1:29-31, was sinful conduct deserving of death.

Countryman stretches credulity when he contends that, in Paul's mind, God handed gentiles over to homosexual behavior only after they "were already filled" with the sinful vices in 1:29-31. Paul clearly viewed these vices as a concomitant sinful consequence, along with the same-sex intercourse of 1:26-27, of being handed over by God to sinful passions after they had "exchanged" the true God for false gods (cf. 1:28: "and just as they did not discern the correctness of acknowledging God . . ."). Same-sex intercourse is simply singled out at the start as a particularly egregious example, among many examples, of the gentiles' sinful violation of God's truth available in nature. Countryman's attempt to discern a sequence from sinful vices (1:29-31) to "dirty" (but not "sinful") same-sex intercourse (1:26-27) has no warrant in the text—to say nothing of the fact that the discussion of same-sex intercourse precedes the enumeration of vices. The fact that Paul normally began vice lists with a list of sexual sins,38 yet lists no specifically sexual vices in Rom 1:29-31, suggests that Paul intended the treatment of same-sex intercourse in 1:26-27 as an initial listing of sinful vices.39

Countryman also unconvincingly attempts to distinguish "what is not proper" (ta mē kathēkonta) in 1:28 from the category of "what is sinful" and then connect the former phrase only with homosexual behavior. Yet the phrase "what is not proper" clearly belongs with the sinful vices that follow (".

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