Rationality, Philosophy, and Deity: Criminal Homosexuality in Paul and His Contemporaries
And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you; for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.
-- Leviticus 20:23
Much has been made in recent years of the Biblical admonitions on homosexuality; conservative Christian organizations have declared war on gay marriage, while their opponents have translated and retranslated the original Greek and Hebrew texts, trying to disprove the accepted interpretations and by extension the conservative argument. Even when this is impossible, some claim that the writers of the Bible were not against homosexuality per se; they objected to the practices of temple prostitutes, male and female, on the grounds of idolatry and fornication. Groups with a history of persecution have a tendency to close ranks against the practices of the outside world, and so it would make sense that the Jewish people would define themselves in this way as "other" to the dominant culture in an effort to retain their identity, but there is a danger in this thesis: it lends itself to a simplified and polarized view of the conflicts involved. One might believe, from these arguments, that the Jews only objected to temple prostitution, and that they were the only ones to object to any homosexual activity at all, in contrast to the free and liberated Gentile world. Conversely, one might be convinced by the conservative arguments that the Jews and early Christians were the only voices of reason in a world completely given over to vice, lewdness, and perversion.
The truth, as always, is more complex. The Jews and Christians of the first century C.E. did in fact object to homosexuality as a whole, not just the practices of the temple prostitutes; the Apostle Paul writes emphatically on the subject. Greek and Roman writers of the time -- Seneca, Dio Chrysostom, and Plutarch in particular -- also objected to homosexuality, though for different reasons and only in certain ways. Both groups identified homosexual acts as belonging to a larger category of immorality: overindulgence in the pleasures of the flesh. Where the Greeks and Romans taught that immorality proceeded from ignorance and lack of self-control, however, Paul taught that failure to control immoral urges was a direct result of alienation from God, without whom no man can be righteous.
The Jewish culture never included acceptable homosexual expression in the ways that the Greeks and the Romans did. The latter could be called more tolerant, but they tolerated same-sex passions only in a limited context; the relationship of erastes to eromenos was accepted and even romanticized to a degree in earlier Athens, but it was non-penetrative and temporary, having no lasting effect on its participants. By the first century, philosophers had begun to worry about other forms of same-sex relation that were not nearly as noble, uplifting, or harmless. In general, the sexual behaviors which the Greeks and Romans found objectionable fall into two categories: submissive homosexuality and aggressive exploitation of others for purposes of sexual satisfaction.
Seneca, Stoic philosopher and tutor to the Emperor Nero, judged the latter act harshly. He speaks with horror of slaves who cannot defend themselves from their masters' whims:
Another, the one who serves the wine, is got up like a girl and engaged in a struggle with his years; he cannot get away from his boyhood, but is dragged back to it all the time; although he already has the figure of a soldier, he is kept free of hair by having it rubbed away or pulled out by the roots. His sleepless night is divided between his master's drunkenness and sexual pleasures, boy at the table, man in the bedroom.1
Seneca attributes the master's actions to a surfeit of vice, placing it in a category of abuses committed by decadent Romans who could not control their impulses -- not only sexual passion, but drunkenness, gluttony, and violence.
Compare Dio Chrysostom, writing during the reign of Domitian:
Therefore it is not for lack of this line of goods that men seek to obtain it from persons of good breeding; rather this is like another enterprise of the very dissolute, who, although there are women in abundance, through wantonness and lawlessness wish to have females produced for them from males, and so they take boys and emasculate them. And thus a far worse and more unfortunate breed is created, weaker than the female and more effeminate.2
This is not a hypothetical situation. Suetonius tells us that the Emperor Nero castrated his lover Sporus, whom he renamed Sabina and married as he would a woman.3 Dio, who also wrote on Nero,4 speaks of emasculation in the same manner as Seneca; he believes these behaviors to be part of a larger problem, which he identifies as a lack of wisdom. Wisdom, in this discourse, means the ability to recognize that material goods and pleasures are not enviable achievements. Temperance, moderation and restraint are characteristic of the "manly and high-minded";5 the opposite condition is ignorance, which leads to envy and unrestrained desire. Furthermore, lack of wisdom leads to a certain addictive personality, in which men become acclimated to immorality and must seek more perverse vices:
Is there any possibility that this lecherous class would refrain from dishonouring and corrupting the males, making their clear and sufficient limit that set by nature? Or will it not, while it satisfies its lust for women in every conceivable way, find itself grown weary of this pleasure, and then seek some other worse and lawless form of wantonness?... The man whose appetite is insatiate in such things... will turn his assault against the male quarters, eager to befoul the youth who will very soon be magistrates and judges and generals, believing that in them he will find a kind of pleasure difficult and hard to procure.6
Exploitation of slaves and young boys who cannot defend themselves is frightening even if one does not believe in the corrupting effects of passive homosexuality. While the exploited are to be pitied, those who allow themselves to become passive participants in the homosexual act are to be scorned. Plutarch, a contemporary of Dio, argues that male homosexuality is a crime against the natural order:
But to consort with males (whether without consent, in which case it involves violence and brigandage; or if with consent, there is still weakness and effeminacy on the part of those who, contrary to nature, allow themselves in Plato's words 'to be covered and mounted like cattle') -- this is a completely ill-favoured favour, indecent, an unlovely affront to Aphrodite.7
Homosexual rape is a grievous crime, but consensual sex damages those who willingly take the subordinate role. The quote from Plato implies that submissive homosexuals are almost subhuman; their weakness certainly makes them less than men. Plutarch uses the word malakia (μαλακία), having to do with softness as a physical property, to denote weakness; the obvious meaning here is of a moral and psychological debility. In essence, submissive homosexuality is a form of emasculation akin to that described by Dio and Seneca, although not so literal. Plutarch, like the others, prescribes wisdom as a cure for the weakness caused by vice -- specifically, wisdom brought by the study of philosophy.8
The general consensus among these three authors is that immorality proceeds from a lack of knowledge. Knowledge -- expressed variously as prudence, wisdom, or high-mindedness -- leads to temperance and self-control, the ability to lead a virtuous life. Those without knowledge cannot control their urges and so follow a downward path into squalor and dissolution. The importance of this worldview is its focus on human achievement over supernatural influence; to gain control over himself, a man must expend his own effort to study philosophy, a discipline created and sustained by other men. Plutarch calls homosexuality an affront to Aphrodite, but he says nothing of what consequences might arise from such an affront, or what the goddess might do to help those who have gone astray; men are responsible for themselves, and they can change their behavior without aid from Olympus.
Compare this belief system with Judeo-Christian theology; in place of an assembly of gods with human failings, who take notice of mortal life only when it suits them to do so, we have the God of Moses -- omniscient judge and divine interventionist. The Hebrew texts that comprise the Old Testament seem far removed even from the time of Dio and Plutarch, but the first Christians were Jewish; Paul was a Pharisee whose life was based on the study of the Torah. Jesus Christ himself, the son of a Jewish woman, said that he came to fulfill the Law.9 Given these considerations, it is impossible to speak of early Christianity without first treating of Judaic tradition; to understand the letters of Paul, we must understand the Books of Moses.
One of the most frequently cited and disputed Biblical sources regarding homosexuality is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. God, having knowledge of the Sodomites' sins, sent two angels to find if there were any righteous men left among them. The angels found Lot, a nephew of the patriarch Abraham, who dwelt in Sodom; he entreated them to stay in his house for the night, probably knowing what would happen if they slept in the streets:
But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:
And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came into thee this night? bring them out to us, that we may know them.10
The word "know", in Hebrew ﬠךּיּ, is as ambiguous in the original as it is in translation. It has the same connotations and possible definitions as the English word, and some have argued persuasively that the crime of Sodom is not sexual; however, "to know" is a Biblical convention, used in other passages with an undeniable sexual meaning.11 We can infer that the crime about to be committed is sexual in this case because Lot offers the men of Sodom his daughters as a distraction, but his reasons for doing so complicate matters: "[O]nly unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof."12 It is unclear, then, whether the sin is more grievous because it is homosexual or because the strangers are protected by the laws of hospitality. Obviously, Lot wants to protect his guests from harm because they are divine, but whether he objects to the homosexual aspect of the violence is impossible to tell. God is equally vague; He says that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, but He never indicates the exact nature of that sin, even when He destroys the cities in fire and brimstone. The story is not good proof of Jewish attitudes toward homosexuality, but it bears mentioning because of its impact on later writers and its prominence in contemporary Biblical scholarship on sexuality.
Unlike Genesis, which is essentially a collection of stories, Leviticus is a book of Jewish law given by God to Moses. Here we find a clear prohibition against homosexuality:
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.13
and the penalty:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.14
The law is clear on this point. A man who has sexual relations with another man has committed an abomination and must be put to death. "Abomination" is a powerful word, connoting hatred, disgust, and abhorrence. It also implies impurity, and is often used in conjunction with the words "unclean"15 and "defiled".16 The previous inhabitants of the land had committed all manner of sexual perversions and thereby defiled the land; God warns the Jews to avoid doing the same, "that the land spue not you out also when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you."17 God provides many injunctions and commandments in the Old Testament, and He speaks at length of the consequences should men not follow His laws; these matters are all very important, but He says little about the causes of sin or how His people can resist it. For that, we must turn to the New Testament.
Before his conversion on the road to Damascus, Paul was a devoted member of the Jewish faith and a Pharisee of Jerusalem. His writing displays the erudition to be expected from such a person, and his beliefs on the nature of sin are strongly influenced by Jewish law as well as by Jesus Christ's new theology. Paul makes a distinction between the condition of sin (or Sin) and the act of sin; anyone can commit a sin, whereas Sin is a condition of alienation from God, a complete separation, for which the only remedy is faith in Christ. Those who lack that faith cannot be righteous, as righteousness comes from God. Though the faithful also sin, there are abominable acts such that the only men who commit them are those who have already been cut off from God -- and homosexual intercourse is one of those acts.
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.18
As in the Old Testament, so in the New: Paul's original language is vague, and we must be sure that he is talking about homosexuality before we proceed. Fortunately, Plutarch provides us with a clue to Paul's meaning. The word malakoi (μαλακοι), translated here as "effeminate", is from the same root as malakia in the Amatorius; the general meaning, again, is "soft". However, since Plutarch uses malakia in the context of homosexual relationships, "soft" likely indicated the lack of self-control that supposedly resulted from submissive homosexuality -- "effeminate" is not so far off. "Abusers of themselves with mankind" is a rather inaccurate translation of the Greek arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται), an uncommon word combining arseno (indicating the masculine) and koitai (those who lie down). The literal translation would be "a male who lies down", but we can assume that it refers to men who lie with other males, i.e., male homosexuals (perhaps ones who take an active role, as opposed to the effeminate malakoi). Either term is vague on its own -- malakoi might have no colloquial meaning, and arsenokoitai is rare enough that the definition is elusive -- but the two together strongly suggest a homosexual context.
Homosexuals, then, are among the unrighteous who will not be admitted to heaven. What could cause this manner of unrighteousness? The Greeks blamed a lack of self-control, but for Paul, the causes are far more serious; homosexuals and other sinners are people "[w]ho changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever."19 They are idolaters20 who have committed blasphemy and forsaken God, and the consequences are dire:
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind...21
The cause-and-effect relationship here is more important than the language, which is far less vague than that in I Corinthians and needs little explication. God did not turn away from these men and women because they committed homosexual sins; rather, they turned away from Him by worshiping idols. Seeing this, God gave up on them and abandoned them to "vile affections" -- fornication, covetousness, deceit, and homosexual lust.22 While members of God's church still fall into sin, Paul asserts that God will not allow His faithful to be tempted beyond their ability to resist.23 Those who have rejected God are granted none of His mercy, and so they burn in lust, unable to resist the constant temptation to wickedness that makes their lives so miserable. For Plutarch, self-control comes from knowledge of philosophy; in Paul's theology, the ability to resist temptation cannot really be called self-control, because it comes wholly from God. The self is incapable of resisting temptation without God, so those who reject Him become mired in a life of dissolution and malice.
Dio, Seneca, and Plutarch all object to homosexual activity on some level as a manifestation of general immorality arising from ignorance and the consequent lack of self-control. The philosophers feared that Rome was becoming decadent; its citizens, indulging their every vice, were becoming steadily weaker and more ignorant. Paul, on the other hand, had much more on his mind than the fall of Rome; for him, homosexuality was also a symptom of a larger problem, but one that had repercussions both in this life and in the next. Rather than speaking of ignorance of philosophy and its consequences in the human world, Paul decried man's rejection of God and warned of its consequences after death: condemnation to Hell and eternal separation from God's righteousness.
WORKS CITED: Dio Chrysostom. The Seventy-Seventh/Eighth Discourse: On Envy.
Dio Chrysostom. The Euboean Discourse.
Dio Chrysostom. On Beauty.
Plutarch. Amatorius.
Plutarch. Quomodo Quis Suos In Virtute Sentiat Profectibus.
Seneca. Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, XLVII.
Suetonius. De Vita Caesarum.
The Holy Bible, Old and New Testaments in the King James Version.
NOTES:
1. Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium,XLVII.
2. Dio, On Envy, 36.
3. Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, 6.28.
4. Dio, On Beauty, 6.
5. Dio, On Envy, 37.
6. Dio, Euboean Discourse,149-152.
7. Plutarch, Amatorius, 751 D-E.
8. Plutarch, Quomodo Quis Suos In Virtute Sentiat Profectus, 75-76.
9. KJV Matt 5:17.
10. KJV Gen. 19:4-5.
11. KJV Gen. 4:1, 4:25, Judges 19:22-25 (similar in some ways to the Sodom narrative); in Gen. 19:8, Lot describes his daughters as having "not known man".
12. KJV Gen. 19:8.
13. KJV Lev. 18:22.
14. KJV Lev. 20:13.
15. KJV Lev. 7:21.
16. KJV Lev. 18:30.
17. KJV Lev. 18:28.
18. KJV I Cor. 6:9-10.
19. KJV Rom. 1:25.
20. KJV Rom. 1:23.
21. KJV Rom. 1:26-28.
22. KJV Rom. 1:29.
23. KJV I Cor. 10:13.