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PART 2 - Page 8 of 34
New Testament Teachings Regarding Same-Sex Sexual Activity
Confusing Long-term Homosexual Monogamy with the Sexual
Exploitation of Kids, Adult Male Prostitution & Male on Male Rape
Could Paul Have Been Mistaken?
1 Timothy 1:9-10
Could The Biblical Eunuch Include Today's Homosexual?
Romans 1:18-32
The following passage from Romans 1:18-32 is undoubtedly the most
important statement of homosexuality in the entire Bible. It occurs in
the Christian New Testament, so unlike Leviticus, no one can dismiss it
as part of the "Old" Testament. And it is long and detailed, so unlike
the other two references in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10
and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 (see below), no one can claim it is a mere
passing comment.
But precisely because this passage is long, it
provides a lot of material for analysis, and more and more surely as the
evidence mounts, this analysis shows that this text has been
misunderstood and misused.
Here is the text of Romans 1-18-32. Only verses 26 and 27 are clear
references to homogenital acts; female homogenital acts in verse 26,
and male homogenital acts in verse 27.
Romans 1:18-32 - 18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their
wickedness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is
plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20Ever since the
creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible
though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he
has made. So they are without excuse; 21for though they knew God,
they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became
futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.
22Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23and they exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being
or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.
24Therefore
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26For
since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up
to a base mind and to things that should not be done. 29They were
filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of
envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30slanderers,
God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious
toward parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32They know
God's decree, that those who do such things deserve to die - yet they
not only do them but even applaud those who practice them. (NRSV)
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I also argue that Paul was mistaken about same-sex sexual relations
because it was based on his belief in the literal return of Jesus during
his lifetime or the lifetime of his contemporaries. In Mark 9:1 (New
Living Translation): Jesus went on to say, "I assure you that some of
you standing here right now will not die before you see the Kingdom of
God arrive in great power!" And Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-19
(New Living Translation) 13And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want
you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you
will not grieve like people who have no hope. 14For since we believe
that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when
Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have
died. 15We tell you this directly from the Lord: We who are still living
when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died.
16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of
God. First, the Christians who have died will rise from their graves.
17Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on
the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
Then we will be with the Lord forever. 18 So encourage each other
with these words.
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just be wrong, and that both the Bible and the God who inspires
it may be more gracious, just, and inclusive than they can
presently afford to be.
The biblical writers never contemplated a form of homosexuality
in which loving, monogamous, and faithful persons sought to live
out the implications of the gospel with as much fidelity to it as
any heterosexual believer. All they knew of homosexuality was
prostitution, pederasty, lasciviousness, and exploitation.
These vices, as we know, are not unknown among heterosexuals,
and to define contemporary homosexuals only in these terms is a
cultural slander of the highest order, reflecting not so much
prejudice, which it surely does, but what the Roman Catholic
Church calls "invincible ignorance," which all of the Christian piety
and charity in the world can do little to conceal. The "problem,"
of course, is not the Bible, it is the Christians who read it. (5)
Sacred Biblical Scripture Was Found Not to Apply in Paul and
Peter's Day - Acts 10
A good winding up of all this is found in L. R. Holben's, What Christians
Think about Homosexuality - Six Representative Viewpoints, where he
writes:
"If . . [the above] bald-faced assertion(s) [That Paul was in fact
mistaken in his blanket condemnation of all homosexual acts]
seems heretical to more conservative sensibilities, we would remind
their fellow Christians of Peter's rooftop vision relating to the
conversion of the centurion Cornelius and his family (Acts 10). The
"conservative" view among faithful Jews of the time, buttressed by
strong biblical evidence and consistent tradition, was that Jews
could have no intimate dealings with Gentiles. But God's purpose
was greater even than Scripture or the traditions of the
household of faith.
In imagery that can only have seemed
extraordinarily shocking to Peter (just as shocking as it would be to
many conservative Christians today to consider, for example,
affirming the moral legitimacy of a loving, committed, monogamous
gay union), God showed Peter a sheet writhing with non-kosher
animals and instructed him to "kill and eat." When Peter protested
that he had never in his entire life eaten anything unclean (as, it is
important to note, the Scriptures themselves had defined
"unclean"), God's shattering answer was: 'What God has made
clean, you must not call profane.' Every Gentile Christian today is
welcomed into the fellowship of the church only because Peter's
response was to reach beyond biblical literalism to a new and wider
inclusivity. In so doing, he was implicitly judging the divinely
mandated traditions of his people, expressed through their sacred
Scriptures, as insufficient for the all-embracing purpose of God's
love. We can do no less, it is argued, for God's beloved gay and
lesbian people." (6)
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1 Timothy 1:9-10
1 Timothy 1:9-10 - pornoi, arsenokoitai, and andrapodistai (9)
For the law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for
people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who
consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or
mother or commit other murders. (10) The law is for people who are
sexually
immoral
(pornoi),
or
who
practice
homosexuality
(arsenokoitai), or are slave traders (andrapodistai), liars, promise
breakers, or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome
teaching (New Living Translation)
Gary Lynn's Analysis: Now that we've dealt with the meaning of
arsenokoitai (click Here to go to my review of this word), the meaning
of the other 2 Greek words falls fairly well into place.
According to
Robin Scroggs in The New Testament and Homosexuality on page 120121, pornoi, arsenokoitai, and andrapodistai should be translated
to mean male prostitutes [primarily adolescent boys], males who lie
(with them) and slave-dealers (who procure them). . . . I thus draw the
conclusion that the 3 item vice list in 1 Timothy is not condemnatory of
homosexuality in general, not even pederasty in general, but that
specific form of pederasty which consisted of the enslaving of boys or
youths for sexual purposes, and the use of these boys by adult
males.
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3Let
not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
"The Lord will surely separate me from his people"; and let not
the eunuch say, "Behold, I am a dry tree." 4For thus says the
Lord: "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the
things that please me and hold fast my covenant, 5I will give
in my house and within my walls a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters; I will give them an
everlasting name which shall not be cut off. . . . . 7these I will
bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house
of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be
accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of
prayer for all peoples. 8Thus says the Lord God, who gathers
the outcasts of Israel, I will gather yet others to him besides
those already gathered." (RSV 1957)
The application of this prophecy to the homosexual can be
defended, because the term "eunuch" in the New Testament is
used not only in its literal sense - i.e., those who have been
physically castrated - but also in a symbolic sense for all those
who for various reasons do not marry and bear children. For
example, in Matthew 19:12, Jesus, discussing marriage and
divorce, says to his apostles: "There are eunuchs who have been
so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made
eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made
themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven."
(RSV 1957) (7) . . . In [the above verse] Jesus makes it quite
clear that the term eunuch applies to all those who are sexually
different and who, for whatever reason, do not procreate. (8)
The first category in [Matthew 19:12] - those eunuchs who have
been so from birth - is the closest description we have in the
Bible of what we understand today as a homosexual. It should
come as no surprise, then, that the first group of outcasts of
Israel that the Holy Spirit includes within the new covenant
community is symbolized by the Ethiopian eunuch. It is the
Spirit who takes the initiative by leading Philip to the encounter
with the Ethiopian eunuch of the Court of Candace. The eunuch
believes in Christ as the Messiah and receives baptism and the
Spirit and rides on into history "full of joy." The symbolism of
the passage is quite obvious. The Holy Spirit takes the initiative
in leading the New Christian community to include among its
members those who were excluded for sexual reasons from the
Old Testament community. (6) [The prophecy in Isaiah 56:3-8]
is being fulfilled today within the gay Christian movement. (8)
For more information on Eunuchs from Birth or Born Eunuchs click
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Here.
Moving right along, there are, no doubt, many modern people who
engage in lustful and abusive homosexual sex. As has been indicated in
the above scriptures, someone who began with a clear heterosexual
orientation, but rejected God and began experimenting with gay or
lesbian sex simply as a way of experiencing a new set of pleasures,
then those Biblical passages would apply to those people (News
reports and anecdotal stories show that most men who molest/rape
boys fall into this category-yes they are heterosexuals not
homosexuals). But this is not the experience of the vast majority of
gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
Consider Tyler's story:
From the time Tyler was a very young man his main desire was to
do God's will. He was raised by missionary parents, and at the
age of five he acknowledged his need for God and prayed for
Jesus to come into his heart. He didn't understand exactly what
that meant, but he always tried to live a life that glorified God.
In high school, his friends thought of him as different because his
faith in God and in the teachings of his church did not allow him
to drink and dance. When a girl asked him to the high school
prom, he went, but he made sure they started the date by
praying together. Unlike the people condemned in Romans 1:1832, Tyler acknowledged, glorified, and worshipped God. For him,
spiritual pursuits were much more important than earthly
pleasures.
However, by the time Tyler decided to go to a Christian college,
he was already having feelings of attraction toward men and
knew he was not attracted to women. He believed at the time
that these feelings were wrong, so he suppressed his natural
attractions and told himself he must be asexual or celibate. And,
when he finally acknowledged his attraction to men during his
fourth year of college, it was not during a search for unbounded
sexual pleasure or in the context of pagan worship rituals. It was
during a night of intense prayer when he was questioning
whether he should try to pursue a relationship with a female
friend which might be very unfair to her. During that time of
prayer, Tyler was strongly impressed that he needed, instead, to
deal with his innate attraction to men.
For Tyler, a Christian child of missionaries, his first reaction was
to seek spiritual advice. He immediately went to a trusted
professor and soon began therapy with one of the counselors at
his Christian school. For the next several years, he continued to
remain celibate as he wrestled with Scripture and with his
church's teachings, trying to find out how he should live as a gay
man. He tried always to live a life free of covetousness, malice,
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envy, strife, and pride. And, even when Tyler came to the
conclusion that Scripture affirmed him as an innately gay
individual, his respect for the teaching of his parents and his love
of God convinced him to remain a virgin until meeting his spouse
and partner for life, Robert. (9)
Thousands of other gay people could tell similar stories of struggling
with their same-sex attractions while diligently serving God. These are
not idolaters, people who hated God and pursued their own desire for
new and greater sexual thrills. These are lovers of God who,
nevertheless, have been attracted to people of the same sex from early
in life. They are innate or natural homosexuals.
Click Here for What Parents of Gay and Lesbian Teens need to Know about
Suicide - What Are The Warning Signs?
................
Footnotes:
(1) Holben, L. R. What Christians Think about Homosexuality - Six Representative
Viewpoints, North Richland Hills, Texas, BIBAL Press, 1999, pages 167 -168.
(2) Ibid., pages 168-169.
(3) Gomes, Peter J., The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, San
Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 1998, page 158.
Footnotes from page 55 and 56, Patterson, Linda J., "Hate Thy Neighbor-How the
Bible is Misused to Condemn Homosexuality", Pennsylvania, Infinity
Publishing.com, 2009
(3a) I Corinthians 7:1 (Patterson's Footnote 121)
(3b) Victor Paul Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selected Issues, Second Edition,
Revised (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985), 33. (Patterson's Footnote 122)
(3c) I Corinthians 7:3-7 (Patterson's Footnote 123)
(3d) I Corinthians 7:8-9, I Corinthians 7:26-38 Again, Paul's views appear to have been
based in large part upon his belief that Jesus would return imminently to raise his
followers to heaven and judge nonbelievers. In this regard, Paul claims that "the
appointed time has grown short," and that "the present form of this world is passing
away." (See Patterson's Footnote 124)
(3e) I Corinthians 7:29, 31. (Patterson's Footnote 125)
(3f) According to most Jews in Paul's day, [a]ny union formed in the knowledge that no
procreation could result. . . . . constitutes sexual passion for its own sake, little more
than unbridled lust void of societal responsibility. No longer contributing to populating
the earth, such passion demonstrates disregard for the preservation of the human race.
Moreover, passion of this sort, exercised beyond nature's and society's control, could
only have destructive effects. Concern for the sanctity of male 'seed' was also at
issue. Philo, and others, reasoned that since sexual stimulation of the male results in
ejaculated semen, and since too this seed must have been given by God for a purpose,
sexual stimulation must have as its divine purpose the release of seeds for procreation.
Moreover, since only fertile women could provide 'the deep-soiled and fruitful fields'
capable of sustaining the growth of the seed, all unions that did not have procreation in
view were forbidden. (Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 164.) Unlike other
Jews of his day, Paul shows little interest in procreation in sexual coupling. This may
have been due to his belief that the coming of the kingdom of God was imminent, and
that populating the earth was no longer important. . . . . . . . see page 141 and 142 for
more details of this long footnote (Patterson's Footnote 126 - Patterson, Linda J., "Hate
Thy Neighbor-How the Bible is Misused to Condemn Homosexuality", Pennsylvania, Infinity
Publishing.com, 2009)
(3g) In addition to the "degrading passions," mentioned by Paul in Romans 1:26, and the
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by Grant Bentley
Church is so confusing for Zack. His new pastor preaches
nothing but hate and condemnation of gays and lesbians, but no
matter how carefully he reads his Bible, he cant find where it
says God hates him. Will things change when Zach's boyfriend
Billy suggests that they all go to his church instead? Click Here
or on the icon to read the story.
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