Christian Ethics and Homosexuality: The Teachings of Paul

The majority of Christians who believe that the Church should approve of homosexual behavior acknowledge that the apostle Paul teaches the homosexual behavior is wrong; they argue that, for other biblical and theological reasons, the Church should now approve of homosexual behavior in spite of this.^[1]See, for example “Homosexuality and the Bible” by William Loader, in Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), pages 17-48; Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and … Continue reading  However, a minority of Christians arguing for a revision of the Church’s traditional position on homosexuality argue that the apostle Paul does not teach that consensual, monogamous homosexual relationships are wrong.  It is therefore important to carefully examine what the writings of the apostle Paul have to say about this issue.

Paul’s Condemnation of Arsenokoitai

There are two passages in which Paul briefly mentions homosexual behavior.  In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the Kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men [Greek: arsenokoitai and malakoi] nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God” (6:9-10).  In 1 Timothy, Paul writes, “We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality [Greek: arsenokoitai], for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine” (1:9-10).  

The apostle Paul thus clearly teaches that arsenokoitai and malakoi are people engaging in serious sin who will therefore not inherit the Kingdom of God.  But what do these Greek terms mean?  Malakos literally means “soft” (used to describe clothes in Luke 7:25 and Matt 11); when applied to men, it means “effeminate.”  The term can refer to men who are passive participants in homosexual sex, but it could also refer to men who are “unmanly”/unvirtuous in a variety of other ways.  While it is quite possible that Paul is using the term malakoi to refer to homosexual behavior in 1 Corinthians, we cannot be certain that is his meaning.

Arsenokoites is a compound word formed from the Greek words for “male” (arsen) and “bed/sexual intercourse” (koite).  It’s meaning is “men who bed/have sex with men” (the construction is parallel to the ancient Greek word metrokoites, which we know means, “a man who beds/has sex with his mother”). We have no evidence that this Greek word existed prior to Paul; apparently, Paul himself coined it.  The two Greek words, arsen and koite, appear together in the ancient Greek translation of both of the Old Testament passages that forbid homosexual behavior (Lev 18:22, 20:13).  It is thus very likely that Paul’s term arsenokoitai is derived from these Old Testament passages, which unambiguously forbid all homosexual sex.  Outside of the New Testament, the term is rare in ancient Greek. It appears in some second century vice lists (Sibylline Oracles 2.73; Acts of John 36), which do little to clarify its meaning. However, the second century Christian writer Hippolytus uses the term in a narrative context. Describing a Gnostic myth, he writes that the serpent had sexual relations with Eve and then Adam, then writes, “From that time on, adultery and arsenokoitia have come into being” (Haer,5,26,22-23). That the term refers to homosexual sex here is very clear. From the third century onward, the word appears in numerous other Greek texts in which the context makes clear that the meaning is “a man who beds/has sex with men.” This confirms that this is most likely the meaning that Paul had in mind as well. 

Some interpreters have argued that it is possible that arsenokoitai has a more narrow meaning, only referring to pederasty, sexual domination of slaves, or sex with male prostitutes.  In 1 Timothy 1:9, arsenokoitai is immediately followed by “slave traders,” which may suggest, some argue, that the term only refers to sexual exploitation of male slaves.  

It is highly dubious, however, to argue that the meaning of a term in a vice list is narrowly determined by the word that happens to follow it in the list. Vice lists are not necessarily organized by categories of sins, and sometimes list sins next to each other which are of very different categories. For example, consider the vice list of 1 Corinthians 6, which goes from a sexual sin (“sexually immoral”) to a religious sin (“idolaters”) to a sexual sin (“adulterers”) to a sin that is possibly a sexual sin but possibly not (malakoi) to a sexual sin (arsenokoitai). Even if, for argument’s sake, we assume that the order the vices are listed in 1 Timothy 1 shines light on the meaning of arsenokoitai in the passage, it would make more sense to link it to the “sexually immoral” that precedes it than the “slave traders” that follows it. And if Paul were referring specifically to pederasty, he could have used the common Greek term paederastia. Instead, he used (or coined) an uncommon (or new) word with a more general meaning. 

Some interpreters have tried to argue that the surrounding context of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 should lead us to interpret arsenokoitai in a more narrow sense of homosexual acts involving economic injustice. They point to 6:1-8, which is about Christians suing each other in courts run by unbelievers, and argue that verses 9-10 are about the unjust behaviors of these unbelieving judges. They also point to 6:16, which refers to prostitution, sexual behavior involving economic exploitation.

However, looking at the broader context of chapters 5-7, this interpretation is highly unlikely. The topics of chapter 5 (incest) and chapter 7 (marriage, divorce, and celibacy) are about matters of sexual morality that have nothing to do with economic injustice. While Paul does mention prostitution in 6:16, this is just an example he brings up while condemning sexual immorality in general. Paul does not seem at all concerned in this passage about the economic aspect of prostitution, instead arguing that sexual immorality is forbidden for Christians because it is a sin against their own bodies, and their bodies members of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit (6:15-20). It is highly unlikely that Paul is criticizing the behaviors of pagan judges in 6:9-10, since he has just said that Christians should not judge people outside the Church, only those inside the Church (5:12-13). His concern is not with the character of pagan judges, but with Christians doing wrong by suing each other. This is the context of Paul reminding the Corinthians that people who live lives of sin–sexual immorality, economic immorality, idolatry, etc.–will not inherit God’s Kingdom. Overall, the broader context of 1 Cor 6:9-10 is much more focused on sexual immorality as intrinsically immoral and unholy than it is on economic justice. There is thus nothing about this context that should lead us to interpret arsenokoitai in a more narrow sense of homosexual behavior involving economic injustice.

Now, it is possible that arsenokoitai in these passages refers to something more narrow than homosexual sex in general.  However, given that the Old Testament forbids all homosexual sex, given that Paul’s coining of this term very likely is directly derived from this Old Testament prohibition, and given that common Jewish attitudes of the time were that all homosexual sex is immoral^[2]See Loader, 24-30, the most natural reading of what Paul says in these passages is that he is referring to homosexual sex in general. It is impossible to be 100% certain from just these two passages that Paul condemned homosexual behavior in general, but we can be reasonably certain that is his meaning.

Romans 1

In Romans 1, Paul addresses the issue of homosexuality in a clearer and lengthier fashion.  Paul writes that, because people abandoned the worship of the true God, “God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error” (vv. 26-27).  Here, at least, Paul clearly teaches that consensual homosexual sex is wrong, since he says that they “were inflamed with lust for one another.”  Incidentally, this is also the only passage in Scripture that explicitly condemns homosexual behavior between women (although this could be understood to be implied in other passages).  

Paul’s focus Romans 1:18-28 is not on sexual ethics per se.  Rather, his focus is on criticizing Gentile sinfulness in general, so that in chapter 2 he can turn the tables and argue that Jews are just as guilty as these Gentiles.  Some interpreters have tried to argue that in this passage Paul is actually quoting an imaginary interlocutor, whom he then contradicts, which makes this passage irrelevant for determining Christian ethical beliefs. However, this is a blatant misreading of the book of Romans. Nowhere in the book of Romans does Paul contradict anything he has said in 1:18-28. Nowhere does Paul suggest that Gentiles are not really that bad or that any of the sins condemned in 1:18-28 are not actually sinful. Instead, Paul’s argument in the following chapters is that Jews commit the same sins and so are just as bad, that “Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin” (3:9), and so Jews and Gentiles alike are in need of being saved by Jesus Christ. In chapters 2 and following, Paul is not at all repudiating anything he has said in 1:18-28. Rather, in order for the logic of his argument to work, his claims in chapter 1 about what is sinful must be true. Therefore, we should see what Paul says in chapter 1 about homosexuality as being instructive for Christian sexual ethics.

Some interpreters have tried to argue that Paul does not actually condemn homosexual behavior as immoral in this passage. Pointing out that Paul only says homosexual acts are “sexually impure” (v. 24) and “shameful” (not wicked), they argue that Paul is only saying that, from a Jewish perspective, homosexual acts are ritually impure or unclean, not that they are immoral. Pointing out that, elsewhere, Paul uses the phrase “contrary to nature” (para physin) in a positive context (Rom 11:24), they argue that “unnatural” in this passage just means “atypical,” rather than perverted or morally wrong.

This revisionist interpretation, however, fails. As we have seen, the Torah did not forbid homosexual behavior as something causing ceremonial uncleanliness, but as an immoral sexual perversion. While Paul does not explicitly refer to homosexual behavior as wicked in verses 26-27, he begins the passage by talking about the wickedness of people (v. 18), and when he talks about homosexual behavior in verses 24-27, he obviously is discussing it as an example of that wickedness. To say that a behavior is “shameful” does not necessarily mean that it is not wicked; rather, many behaviors are shameful because they are wicked. Paul refers to homosexual behavior as “sexually impure” (akatharsia), which is the same term he frequently uses to refer to various kinds of sexual immorality that are forbidden for Christians (Rom 6:19; 2 Cor 12:21, 1 Thess 4:7; Gal 5:19-21; Col 3:5-6; Eph 4:17-24, 5:3-5). So, it is simply not true that Paul does not clearly refer to homosexual behavior as immoral in this passage. 

As for the fact that Paul elsewhere uses “contrary to nature” in a positive sense (the grafting of Gentiles into God’s covenant people), the same word can have positive or negative meaning depending on the context. For example, in the Gospel of John, John states that God loves the world (John 3:16), but in 1 John, John tells Christians not to love the world (1 John 2:15). Obviously, John is using the word “world” (kosmos) in two different ways in these two passages. When Paul says that Gentiles are grafted into God’s covenant people “contrary to nature,” from the context we know that he obviously intends this to be understood as something positive. When Paul says that homosexual behavior is shameful, wicked, and sexually impure because it is “contrary to nature,” from the context we know that he obviously intends this to be understood in a negative sense. From the context of Rom 1:18-28 as a whole, it is clear that Paul is not just saying that homosexual behavior is “atypical”; he is saying that it is “unnatural” in the sense of contrary to God’s created order. This terminology of “contrary to nature” (para physin) is the same terminology that a number other Jewish writers of the same period used when discussing the immorality of homosexual behavior,^[3]Robert A.J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001) 159-183. which further confirms that Paul intended this phrase to be understood in a negative sense.

Some interpreters have argued that ancient people like Paul were unaware of the idea that a person could have a homosexual orientation.  Paul condemns homosexual behavior as “unnatural,” but this, they argue, only applies to people who naturally have a heterosexual orientation engaging in homosexual behavior.  For people with a homosexual orientation, then, homosexual behavior is “natural,” and thus does not come under this passage’s condemnation.

However, it is not really true that ancient people were unaware of the idea that a person could have a homosexual orientation. While ancient people may not have operated with the exact same concept of sexual orientation that modern Westerners do, there are a number of ancient Greek and Roman texts that talk about some individuals being predisposed towards same-sex attraction. For example, centuries before Paul, the ancient philosopher Plato mentioned the idea of some individuals being innately same-sex attracted in one of his writings, and the first century Jewish author Philo cited this passage of Plato in a discussion of homosexuality.^[4]Plato’s Symposium, 189-93; Philo Contempl. 57-63.  Besides, since sexual orientation actually exists on a spectrum, and since a person’s sexual orientation can change over time, it makes no sense to say that homosexual behavior is a serious sin if it is contrary to one’s “natural” sexual orientation, but is perfectly fine if it is in line with one’s “natural” orientation.

In any case, the idea that what is “natural” is “whatever feelings and desires I happen to have inside me” is totally incompatible with a biblical worldview.  Because of the Fall and original sin, all human beings have feelings and desires pointing them towards sin which are not natural, that is, not part of God’s intention for His creation.  Romans 1:18-28 has strong connections with the Genesis story of Creation and Fall.  “Creation” (v. 20), “Creator” (v. 25), “images” and the various types of animals mentioned in verse 23 recall the creation story of Genesis 1, while “lie” (v. 25), “shame” (v. 27), and the decree of “death” (v. 32) evoke the story of the Fall in Genesis 3.  It is clear that Paul here is talking of the sin of humanity in cosmic terms; because human beings have turned away from God, they commit all of these sins which are violations of God’s created order.  Thus, for Paul, regardless of whether one has a homosexual orientation or not, homosexual behavior is “unnatural” because it is a violation of God’s created order.

Some interpreters have argued that the background of this passage is not Genesis 1-3, but the apocryphal Jewish writing the Wisdom of Solomon 13-14, and so Paul is not really alluding to creation and God’s created order in this passage. There are some striking similarities between Romans 1 and parts of Wisdom of Solomon 13-14, which speak of Gentile immorality as a result of idolatry. It is probable that Paul had this passage in mind when he wrote Romans 1. However, there is no reason he could not have had both Genesis and the Wisdom of Solomon in mind. Paul alludes to the Genesis story of Creation and Fall, and supplements this with a critique of the consequences of Gentile idolatry inspired by Wisdom of Solomon 13-14 in order to give an account of the godless state of the Gentile world. In any case, whether Paul had in mind Genesis, Wisdom of Solomon, or both when writing Romans 1, the basic point remains the same: Paul is speaking in big-picture, cosmic terms about the consequences of humanity’s rebellion against God, and he speaks of homosexuality as being fundamentally “unnatural” in terms of God’s intentions for how human beings should express their sexuality. He is not speaking narrowly about very specific expressions of homosexual behavior he witnessed in his specific historical context of the first century Roman Empire, perhaps leaving room for other, legitimate expressions of homosexual behavior. Rather, he is clearly speaking a general condemnation of homosexual behavior that is universally applicable.

Some interpreters, pointing to Paul’s references to idolatry in this passage (vv. 23, 25), have argued that Paul is only condemning homosexual behavior in pagan cultic contexts, not homosexual behavior in general.  However, Paul gives no indication anywhere that any of the sins he condemns in this passage are restricted to pagan cultic contexts.  While Paul does see a connection between idolatry and immorality, it is clear that the sins he mentions here are wrong because they are contrary to God’s created order, regardless of whether they take place in a pagan cultic context or not.  It is hardly the case that “envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice” (v. 29) and so on are perfectly fine as long as they do not occur within a pagan cultic context.  It would make no sense for Paul to focus in on homosexual sin in this passage and then turn around in the next chapter to tell Jews that they “do the same things” (2:1) if he were only talking about homosexual behavior within a pagan cultic context, something which no Jew would have ever participated in.  

Some interpreters have argued that Paul’s condemnation of homosexual behavior in this passage only applies to promiscuous homosexual behavior.  Since same-sex marriage did not exist in the first century, Paul could not have addressed whether homosexual behavior within a lifelong same-sex marriage was moral, and we should assume that he would have approved of it if it had existed at that time.  However, it is simply not true that there were no long-term, loving, committed homosexual relationships in the ancient Greco-Roman world. There are a number of references to such relationships in ancient Greek and Roman texts. Yet Paul does not condemn homosexual promiscuity, but homosexual behavior in general. There is no evidence that Paul condemns homosexual behavior in this passage on the grounds of it being promiscuous.  Rather, he condemns homosexual behavior because it is contrary to God’s created order.  aul’s reasons for condemning homosexual behavior are not that it is excessive or promiscuous, but that it involves “exchanging” what is natural for what is unnatural. Paul uses the same Greek word, metallasso, to refer to idolaters “exchanging” the truth of God for a lie (v. 25) as he does for women “exchanging” natural sexual relations for unnatural ones (v. 26). Paul sees homosexual behavior as as embodying a lie about who human beings are as male and female that is a paradigm of the results of human beings not being in right relationship with God. God created the two sexes to complement one another in marriage (Gen 2:18-24), and one of the primary purposes of marriage and sex is procreation, which only the union of a man and a woman can achieve. Thus, sex between two men or two women is a distortion of how God intended human beings to express their sexuality. If Paul had explicitly addressed the issue of same-sex marriage, he would have considered it an impossibility, since, for Paul, homosexual behavior was inherently sinful. 

Conclusion

Though some interpreters have recently attempted to argue otherwise, it is clear that the apostle Paul does teach that consensual homosexual behavior is inherently sinful.  Since Paul’s epistles are part of Christian Scripture, which is the Authoritative word of God, Christians should take this teaching very seriously.  If the Church is going to set aside the teachings of the apostle Paul regarding this issue, it will need to have very good theological reasons for doing so.  In my next post I will analyze a number of theological arguments for why, in spite of the apostle Paul’s teaching, the Church should approve of homosexual behavior.

Series Navigation

<< Christian Ethics and Homosexuality: The Teachings of JesusChristian Ethics and Homosexuality: Theology and Church Practice >>