Further reading
It has been said that the Bible explicitly rejects same-sex relationships, and because that is so, the church cannot accept homosexual persons, either as church leaders or as pastors. I wish to suggest for those who love the Bible, and retain a conviction that the Bible continues to have a central place in the life of the church and its evolving theology, that at no place in the scriptural record are same-sex relationships explicitly called into question. I propose a brief but close look at the seven texts that have been used to deny the full inclusion of homosexual persons in the church’s life.
Genesis 19
This narrative is the origin of the English word “sodomy,” a euphemism for homosexuality between males, more explicitly anal intercourse, usually referring to sex between males, though on occasion bestiality may be a possible reference. This connection of “sodomy” to the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah is very unfortunate.
The attempted mob rape of the messengers of YHWH who have found safety in the house of Lot clearly does not refer to homosexual sex. Here is a translation of Genesis 19:4: “Before they (the messengers, sometimes translated “angels”) lay down, the people of the city, the people of Sodom, surrounded the house, from young to old, every last one of them.”
The word I have translated “people” is Hebrew ‘enosh. This word simply never means “male” in Hebrew but refers regularly to the generic “human.” Thus, it is clear that the scene around the house of Lot is peopled with ALL the persons of Sodom, men, women and children. It is plainly an instance of mob assault, not a portrait of homosexual rape. When Lot tries to protect his guests by offering up his virginal daughters for the mob’s pleasure (a horrible enough act!), the mob would be satisfied by these women just as much as they would have gladly assaulted the men.
It should further be noted that at only one other place in the Bible’s references to this story does the “sin” of Sodom have anything to do with sex of any kind, save the odd statement of Jude. The central problem of the people of Sodom is either their blatant act of inhospitality, an unforgivable failing in the ancient Middle East (see Luke 10:10-12 and Matthew 10:14-15), their love of wealth and neglect of the poor (see Isaiah 1:9-31 and Ezekiel 16:49-50), or even a generalized immorality (see Jeremiah 23:14).
Only the very odd reference in the New Testament letter of Jude 5-7 connects Sodom to “sexual immorality,” but not to homosexual sex. It refers to the strange passage, Genesis 6:1-4, and speaks to the “immorality” of the sexual relations between humans and angels in Genesis 6:4.
Thus Sodom is not destroyed by a furious YHWH due to homosexual behavior despite what many have surmised from many spurious interpretations.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
Here are translations of these two verses:
“You will not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both have committed an abomination. They will certainly die, their blood is upon them.”
These prohibitions are a clear example of what the Levitical code deems a crossing of lines of categorical distinction. That is, there are “normal” behaviors, and all behaviors that go beyond that perceived normalcy are judged ritually and culturally unclean. For example, in Leviticus 11, it is made plain that the eating of shellfish, that is, “all in the seas and brooks that have no fins or scales, of all the swarming creatures of the water and of all living things that are in the water, they are an abomination for you” (Leviticus 11:10). Shrimp, crabs, lobsters, octopus, any water creature that “have no fins or gills” are simply not to be consumed.
We must ask, “Why?” Mary Douglas, the famous cultural anthropologist, offers the suggestion that “the dietary prohibitions provide a general commitment of the Israelite mindset to clear and distinct categories.” It was determined at some time or other that what was normal among water creatures was those with fins and gills, and others not possessing these features were somehow “abnormal.”
In the same way, if a male lies with a male, “as with a woman,” he (they) has gone beyond what is termed “normal,” and hence is judged abomination. The reference is, it appears, to anal intercourse, an activity that wastes the semen “normally” used to produce life between a man and a woman. It should be noted that there is here no prohibition against lebianism since no semen is produced.
Because the phrase “as with a woman” is used in both verses, it might be said that one central issue is male dominance. If one male reduces another to the role of woman, that is to the submissive partner in the relationship, then that must be termed an abomination, something unnatural. Thus, male dominance and the necessity of employing semen “naturally,” that is for the purposes of procreation, lie behind this ritual prohibition.
To pluck these verses out of their Levitical context is the most extreme example of proof-texting, unless those who would use these texts as rejections of homosexual behaviors are willing and ready to follow all other demands of the Levitical priests, including the refusal to eat shellfish, or certain sorts of land animals, or certain sorts of insects, as a careful analysis of Leviticus 11 will reveal. Rabbis who studied these texts with intricate care throughout the centuries have tried to apply the various commands to changing cultural and ritual demands.
To employ these two verses as prohibitions against all homosexual behaviors is to misuse and denigrate these vast labors of rabbis who attempted to understand as carefully as they could the detailed demands of their God. And as Matthew 22:36-40 makes plain, the challenge of any age is not to maintain a culture of conditional laws, presented at one time and place 2,500 years ago, but to “love God and neighbor,” as Jesus is remembered as having said to the Pharisees of his day, those then attempting to follow the laws of their God. Those today who are equally concerned to follow the ways of their God would do well to remember that ancient admonition.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10
The NRSV translation reads 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 as follows: “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”
In typical Pauline fashion, the apostle makes a list of things he claims can have no part in the kingdom that Jesus Christ has inaugurated in his death and resurrection. The Corinthians have heard Paul say that in Christ they are free, and have imagined that all and every human activity is now made possible for them. In Corinth, a wild port city of the Greeks, while every human activity can easily be witnessed, some hardly are seemly! Paul now explains that not all human behavior is acceptable if one wishes to be part of what Christ has created in the world.
Unfortunately, one of the words Paul employs in his list of dangerous behaviors is most peculiar and has been translated in ways that fly well beyond what the word may in fact mean. That Greek word is arsenokoites, and apparently, it is a word that Paul has created; it is found in only one other New Testament text (1 Timothy 1:10), a post-Pauline text, and in several later post-Pauline writers (refer to the text Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich, 4th edition, 1952, page 109). This new word is a compound one, made up of the word for “male” and the word for “bed.” Hence, literally it is “male bed.” To determine that the word should be translated “sodomite,” as in the NRSV, or even “male homosexual” or “pederast,” as the Lexicon claims, is to go well beyond what the word itself appears to imply.
Perhaps an English word exemplifies the problem. The English “understanding” means “comprehension” or “discernment,” or many other words that connote the ability to grasp something intellectually. Yet, the two words that form “understanding,” namely “under” and “standing,” bear no relationship to the meaning of the word “understanding.” Might this also be a problem with the Greek arsenokoites? Why should a word be translated “sodomite” that just as well might mean something like a male who employs a bed for sexual exploitation with a woman? Who uses his sexuality as a way to make money? Why not imagine that what Paul has in mind is a means of economic exploitation, perhaps by sexual means like rape or prostitution or pimping?
The choice of “sodomite” arises, I would suggest, by those who have already determined that homosexual acts are to be listed among those other acts Paul claims that deny one the realm of God through Jesus Christ, like adulterers, robbers, idolaters and drunkards. To translate this peculiar word “sodomite” is to make concrete a pre-determined prejudice against homosexual persons.
In addition, note what earlier translations of this verse did with these Greek words. Martin Luther, in his 1534 German translation of the New Testament, read the word arsenokoites as “Knabenschander,” a “man lying with young boys.” Luther thought the word meant pederasty, a common enough practice among the elite during Paul’s time.
The 1611 King James Version reads “nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.” That quite ambiguous reading of arsenokoites leaves us unclear exactly what the 17th century translators had in mind! In 1946, the Revised Standard Version translates 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 as, “Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, …” The translators added a footnote to their reading “homosexuals” that says, “two Greek words are rendered by this expression.”
In addition to the odd word arsenokoites, Paul also uses the word malakos, whose basic meaning in Greek is “soft”. The word may describe a soft garment, that is clothes worn by especially fastidious people (see Luke 7:25, where Jesus compares those finely dressed with malakoi clothes with the appearance of a prophet such as he is). In 1 Corinthians 6:9, persons called malakoi (soft ones) are classed by the apostle as those who cannot inherit God’s realm. NRSV reads the word “male prostitutes.”
There is of course little doubt that Paul knew of male prostitutes, because in the great temple found on a hill above the main square of Corinth stood the Acrocorinth, wherein both male and female prostitutes were to be found. However, to translate this word “male prostitute” may be to extend the meaning of “soft” beyond its obvious meanings. “Soft” apparently in this translation has been extended to mean “effeminate,” and it is true that there are references to such a use in various extra-biblical writings (see above New Testament Lexicon, page 489, for examples). Still, I would suggest the “translation” as “male prostitutes” may go beyond the strict possibility of meaning.
Or one might say that even if the word is read as “male prostitute,” that does not limit the person’s sexual acts to homosexual ones. Indeed, those who worked in the temple on the Acrocorinth hardly limited their sexual behaviors to one sex. The central point of their sexual activity was to ensure the continued fecundity of the fields as well as the continued success of the fabled city; such beliefs and practices are deeply rooted in Middle Eastern antiquity. Sexual partners were important but which sex the partners may have been was less important than the continuous activity of the sexual acts themselves.
This reading of the words malakos and arsenokoites is arbitrary and has proven wildly dangerous. The Greek text assumes that the two words are in fact quite distinct; one does not modify the other in any way. No clear evidence can be provided that the word arsenokoites can mean “homosexual,” a word that has existed in modern languages only since about 1850. This RSV translation is nothing less than tragically misleading. The NRSV provides no footnote for its translations of these difficult words.
1 Timothy 1:8-11
It is generally assumed that the apostle Paul is not the author of the Timothy correspondence. Nevertheless, that peculiar word invented by Paul, arsenokoites, appears in another list in 1 Timothy, this time a list designated by the author as laws or commands that are offered for the “lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane” (1 Timothy 1:9). This list begins especially harshly, “for those who kill their father or mother,” and then echoes in part the Pauline list of 1 Corinthians 6: “fornicators, ‘sodomites,’ (the word arsenokoites again; see my discussion above), slave traders (a fascinating addition), liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which God entrusted to me” (1 Timothy 1:9-11). The troubling word used both here and in 1 Corinthians finds its way into a complex list of actions and behaviors, all of which are contrary to the teaching of the gospel as Timothy understands it.
I find Timothy’s earlier warning to teachers concerning the content of their teaching important advice to any who would dare teach the gospel in his and in our own day. “But the aim of such instruction is love (agape), arising from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Some people have deviated from these and turned to meaningless talk, wanting to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying, or the things about which they make assertions” (1 Timothy 1:5-7).
I suggest that any of us who hope to become faithful teachers of the law, i.e. the Torah, or instruction, of God, should be centrally focused on the goal of love, lest we deviate from that into “meaningless chatter,” unaware that our full understanding is absent, and the assertions we draw from this flawed understanding are deeply in error. Those who persist in claiming that LGBTQ+ persons are precluded by words of the Scriptures from full participation in the life of the church are thus deluded into a false understanding, substituting half-truths for the goal of love for all God’s people.
Romans 1:18-32
Paul’s ultimate letter, written to a Roman church that he did not found, nor had he seen, is primarily concerned with the universality of sin and grace, one of the important themes of all of the apostle’s correspondence. This particular opening section of the letter is focused on the question of idolatry and what Paul believes necessarily follows from it.
Thus, Paul announces the problem that he sees in humanity in verses 22-23: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles” (NRSV). This is Paul’s statement about the fact of idolatry, which appears in multiple forms, all of which imply a rejection of God and an embrace of something less than God, but which in human foolishness is made to be god-like.
Paul then continues his argument in verses 26-27, the crux of his discussion: “For this reason (that is the human turn to idolatry) God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way, men giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.”
The crucial words here are “natural” and “unnatural.” In Greek, the word “nature” is physis. Paraphysis is “unnatural,” or “against nature.” Paul himself later in the letter provides a wonderful example of how God also works paraphysis in order to graft the Gentiles into the tree of God’s people (Romans 11:24). Paul there argues that God’s “unnatural actions” have allowed Gentiles to become part of the realm of God, along with his Jewish brothers and sisters. God hardly sins by so acting, but must move beyond what appears natural, namely the exclusive community of Jews, in order to create a new community of Jews and Gentiles. This reality, of course, was what got Paul into so much trouble with his Jewish community, his strong conviction that his ministry was to the Gentiles.
The “natural” is what was expected in the first century. Those “natural” realities included male dominance. Men and women in the first century had designated places and roles that were not to be exchanged, hence Paul’s sharp rejection of persons who had become confused about their “proper roles.” For Paul, women taking an active role in the sexual act is “unnatural.” In addition, due to idolatry, these people also experience a loss of control, an excess of passion. This challenge to what Paul knows to be “natural” sexual relations, leads him to conclude that these persons’ sexual activity is “unnatural” or paraphysis.
This leads us to have a look at natural law. Natural law theories suggest that there are judgments we cannot help making, or that are in our nature. In this case, since male and female sexual organs fit together, Paul and other first century people thought that all of nature was by nature heterosexual. Of course, we now know that this is in fact a false conclusion. In nature, there are over 450 species that demonstrate homosexual behaviors, not only in copulation, but also in courtship and parenting. And in the New Testament itself, at Matthew 19:12, Jesus is recorded as saying plainly that some persons are from birth what he calls “eunuchs,” hence not “normal,” according to natural law.
The bottom line is this: Paul could have no knowledge of Christians who engage in same-sex relationships, but we now know many faithful Christians who are LGTBQ+. Of course, fortunately, it is not impossible for Christians to experience a change in perceptions; we have the powerful example of Acts 15 where Peter changes his notion that Gentiles are not welcome in the new community of Jesus through his God-given dream of all foods being acceptable for eating, and by witnessing the Spirit-led lives of Gentiles.
We United Methodists employ in our theological work the Bible, Christian tradition, human reason and Christian experience. We now know vast ideas about human sexuality that Paul had no access to; it is past time to use this information to reevaluate our perceptions of sexuality. Paul’s first century ideas about this subject cannot be used as a universal claim concerning human sexuality, given Paul’s necessarily limited understanding of this complex reality. Paul’s other claim that “women should be silent in the church” must not be allowed to silence women for all time. Neither must his ideas concerning human sexuality force us to agree with his time-bound and limited perspective.
Jude 5-7
The final text that has, on occasion, been employed as an attack on same-sex behavior is this odd passage from the tiny letter of Jude. It is the one place in all of the Scripture where the actions of the people of Sodom are judged to have something to do with sexual immorality. However, the letter refers primarily to the strange passage in Genesis 6:1-4 that refers to sexual relations between angels and human beings, the result of which is the birth of the heroes of old, or literally “people of renown.”
Jude says that after the Lord had “saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe” (Jude 5, NRSV). Then, in Jude 7, he says, “Likewise Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and went after other flesh (or “pursued unnatural lust”), serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire” (NRSV). The footnote in the NRSV is the translation I included above; the NRSV translators read “pursued unnatural lust” for the literal “went after other flesh,” but whichever translation one uses, the reference appears to be to the bizarre tale of the sexual relations between angels and humans in Genesis 6:1-4. How this could be used to attack same-sex relationships is a very long stretch indeed.
Further reading
Ed.by Robert L. Brawley, Biblical Ethics and Homosexuality (Wesminster/John Knox, 1996)
Dale B. Martin, Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation (Westminster/John Knox, 2006)
Jack Rogers, Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality (Westminster/John Knox) 2006 (2nd edition, 2009)
The Rev. John C. Holbert, PhD. Lois Craddock Perkins Professor Emeritus of Homiletics, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.
This paper was composed on September 18, 2023.
This content was published on October 1, 2023. The contact is Joe Iovino.
