Weighing Romans 1 in the Broader Witness of Scripture

This is the sixth post in my blog series on same-gender marriage. For an outline with links to the whole series, click here. The views expressed in this series are my own and do not represent those of my denomination, conference, or local church.

In this blog series, I have made a Biblical argument in support of same-gender marriage. Of course, I am not the first person to do this. On the contrary, there are many Christians who have argued for same-gender marriage, and they have done so by appealing to a wide variety of Biblical principles. However, what sets my approach apart from the rest is that I do not argue that Christians need to be more liberal or inclusive in regards to what sexual behaviors we endorse. Instead, I make my case for gay marriage based on the gender trajectory of the Bible, which points to the ideal in which “there is no male and female…in Christ.” I argue that the Bible has a revolutionary vision of gender, one that celebrates our gender difference but rejects the notion that our gender should regulate our behavior. This goes beyond treating males and females as “equals.” It challenges the gender binary itself and the rules that we have set for how “the two genders” should relate to each other, including the “rule” that two people of the same gender cannot marry each other. Indeed, I argue that this rule must be removed, for it clings to an arrangement of society based on gender norms rather than allowing the Spirit to re-arrange society according to the kingdom of God.

That is my argument for same-gender marriage in a nutshell. But if this blog series is to have any integrity, then I must also engage the Biblical argument against same-gender marriage. I’d like to start by observing that the Bible neither approves nor rejects same-gender marriage directly, because gay marriage had not even been imagined as a possibility in the first century. [E1] Consequently, both progressives and conservatives must draw from Biblical principles to make conclusions about whether or not gay marriage should be allowed. While I make my argument for same-gender marriage on the basis of the gender trajectory of the Bible, conservatives argue against gay marriage on the basis of the prohibitions against same-gender sex. So let us turn our attention to those passages now.

There are quite a few references to same-gender sex in the Bible, but only five passages offer a direct moral commentary about it: Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. [E2] Out of these five, Romans 1:26-27 stands out as the most important Scripture for the conservative argument. As I have already explained, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are overturned by the New Testament teaching about gender, [E3] and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 only make passing references to homosexual behaviors, which are too brief and ambiguous to form the basis for an argument against same-gender marriage in and of themselves. [E4] However, Romans 1:26-27 offers a direct theological criticism of same-gender sex from a New Testament perspective. Consequently, it deserves to be taken seriously.

Let’s start by explaining the context. In the second half of Romans 1, Paul is describing “the Fall” of the human race from God’s favor, which prompted the need for salvation. However, rather than focusing on the individual acts of Adam and Eve, Paul describes the Fall from the perspective of humanity as a whole. In this re-telling, Paul identifies three successive steps that humanity took that separated us further and further from God. First, we rejected proper worship and exchanged it for improper worship (of idols); second, we rejected proper desire and exchanged it for improper desire; and third, we rejected proper thinking and exchanged it for a debased mind, which opened us up to all kinds of sin. It is in the second step of moving away from proper desire where our passage appears:

“For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with other men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

As you can see, Paul depicts same-gender sex as a deviation from God's will. He argues against it not because it is associated with rape or prostitution, but because it allegedly moves away from God's "natural" design for men and women to be in heterosexual relationships with each other. This fits with the larger themes of the section, and it makes an argument against same-gender sex in and of itself.

            Now, there has been a lot of vigorous scholarly debate around this passage, and progressives have come up with several different arguments to qualify, mitigate, or invalidate Paul’s criticism of same-gender sex. However, for the sake of intellectual integrity, I am compelled to acknowledge that I don't find any of these arguments to be convincing. [E5] I believe that Paul really believed that same-gender sex was wrong. He likely would have taken the conservative position in the debate over same-gender sex today. Moreover, his argument not only prohibits same-gender sex, but it speaks against the larger gender trajectory that I described in my third post. I argued that gender norms were a result of the fall, but in this passage, Paul claims that gender norms are a part of creation, and humanity’s deviation from them is a result of the fall. [E6] Clearly, this poses a challenge to my argument for same-gender marriage.

It’s costly for me to admit this. I wish I could say that the Biblical testimony about same-gender marriage is unanimously favorable, but it is not. Consequently, I understand why many of my conservative friends in the Mennonite and Free Methodist churches oppose it. However, I hope that my Mennonite and Free Methodist friends will match my gesture by acknowledging that they have the exact same problem with Paul when it comes to women in ministry. After all, the Pauline writings prohibit women from serving as leaders in 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15. These passages do not prohibit women from leading on the basis of historical circumstances, but on the same appeal to gender norms in nature. In 1 Timothy, Paul rejects the idea that patriarchy is a part of the Fall, but instead claims that it was built into creation. He draws this from the idea that God created Adam first, and then Eve. [E7] In 1 Corinthians, Paul argues that “nature itself” teaches that women ought to cover their heads when they pray, as a sign of their submission, and therefore makes a universal rule that women should never be teachers. [E8] Is it a coincidence that two out of the three New Testament condemnations of homosexuality occur in the exact same books that speak against women in leadership? I don’t think so. These arguments draw on the same “complementarian” reasoning that Romans 1 uses, the logic of gender norms. 

So what does this mean? Did we misread the gender trajectory of the Bible? Must we all subscribe to rigid gender roles? Let’s not rush to that conclusion quite yet. Yes, Paul believed that God ordained gender norms, but many other Biblical writers, including Isaiah, Matthew, Luke, and John, believed that God wants to free us from them. In fact, Paul himself gives us some of the most important passages to support the gender trajectory, including Galatians 3:28 [E9]. So, rather than immediately rejecting the gender trajectory on the basis of a few verses, let us acknowledge that there is some tension within the testimony of Scripture on this subject. The question is, how are we supposed to discern God’s will in the midst of this tension?

This is where the “objective tool” of Biblical scholarship ceases to be useful, and we must turn collectively to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As God’s people, we are uniquely equipped to interpret the Scriptures. Following the model of the early church, we ought to begin our interpretation by asking which of these two passages – Romans 1:26-27 or Galatians 3:28 – is closer to the heart of the gospel.
Now, I realize that some of us are very uncomfortable with this way of speaking, which seems to pit one Scripture against another. It almost seems like a rejection of the authority or trustworthiness of the Bible. [E10] But I would argue that this is, in fact, a very Biblical way to discern God’s will. For the Bible itself teaches us that some Scriptures are closer to the heart of the gospel than others. For example, when a lawyer asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest?” Jesus didn’t reply, “What do you mean, ‘Which is the greatest?’ God’s word is infallible, so you just keep all of his commandments and stop worrying about which one is ‘the greatest.’” Instead, Jesus picked out two verses from the Bible (i.e. the Older Testament) and identified them as the most important: Deuteronomy 6:5 (“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might”) and Leviticus 19:18 (“…and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”) By giving this answer, Jesus engaged in a kind of practicing of weighing different Biblical teachings in light of the Bible’s overriding message. He concluded that Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 were more important than the other commandments.

And this is not the only place where this type of weighing occurs. Paul does the same thing in the book of Galatians. In this case, he is evaluating the Biblical texts that require God’s people to receive circumcision. He analyzes them based on the categories of law and promise, noting that there are some Scriptures that give us guidance in the mode of law – they seek to regulate our behavior us “because of transgressions” – while there are other Scriptures that give us guidance in the mode of promise – based on God’s ultimate vision for humanity. Paul argues that “the law… does not nullify a promise.” In other words, any passages that try to restrict our behavior in order to preserve some kind of order are overcome by passages that re-direct our behavior according to the new patterns of the kingdom of God. [E11]

When we evaluate the tension between Romans 1 and Galatians 3 over gender in the terms that Paul himself presents, we can see Romans 1 looks back to an old order and seeks to regulate behavior in the mode of law, while Galatians 3 looks forward to a new order and seeks to free us to live in the mode of promise. As a matter of fact, Galatians 3:28 is given to us in this very context! For this reason, I believe that the passages that point toward gender liberation are more central to the gospel than those which hold onto gender norms. In other words, despite the dissenting voice of the Pauline tradition, I believe that the Bible points toward gender liberation.

Now, this still leaves us with the question… what do we do with Romans 1? Do we ignore it? Describe it as sinful? Cut it out of our Bibles? No, none of this will do. Romans 1 is an important part of the written Word of God. Instead, we should consider the possibility that God may want us to understand this text in a way that extends beyond Paul’s intended meaning. Ok, I need to pause, because I am sure that this is setting off conservative alarm bells. Conservatives have a great and understandable concern that if we draw meaning out of these texts other than what their human authors had in mind, then Scripture ceases to have any meaningful authority in our lives. But this is not true. The ancient church (and indeed the Bible itself) frequently used Scriptures in ways that extended beyond their original intent. However, there were limits to their interpretations. They were bound by the ancient principle of “letting Scripture interpret Scripture.” The idea here is that Christians can only “reject” the intended meaning of one passage if it can be justified by a higher commitment to another Scripture, one that is closer to the heart of the gospel. Admittedly, this gives us some freedom from the authority of every single Biblical command, but it keeps us bound to the authority of Scripture as a whole.

So how might we read Romans 1 in light of the broader testimony of Scripture? The progressive church has produced a very powerful interpretation of Romans 1:26-27, even if it does not pass the objective tests of Biblical criticism. [E12] According to this interpretation, humans deviated from God’s will when they exchanged their natural, God-given desires for unnatural ones. Remember, the text says, “Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.” Surely we can all acknowledge that human desires can spin out of control, and that some sexual behaviors do not reflect God’s will but an excessive indulgence in passion. For heterosexual people, this may mean that they indulge in sexuality that excites them because it goes beyond their natural desires – such as when heterosexual men watch lesbian pornography. But for homosexual people, it is natural for them is to seek relationships with people of the same gender, and so it would not deviate from God’s plan for them to have a sexual relationship in the context of a same-gender marriage.

Admittedly, this is an interpretation that goes beyond Paul’s meaning, but I believe it is one that is in keeping with the testimony of the Bible. Having said that, I also think it’s important to recognize that Paul himself believed in gender norms and to honor his voice as a dissenting opinion to the gender trajectory of Scripture. However, at the end of the day, we can’t debate about this forever. The church must discern the testimony of the Bible as a whole, and I have proposed a way to do that. All of this comes from my conviction that it is not ultimately Paul but the Holy Spirit who determines the meaning of the Word of God.

End Notes

[E1] I am aware that there are a few scholars such as Bernadette Brooten who claim that same-gender marriages did exist in the time of Paul, and I know that there are a few examples from ancient history in which we see pairs of men or sometimes women acting as though they are in a marriage, such as Emperor Elagabalus and his male lover, Hierocles, whom he called a husband. However, although I find Brooten’s argument to be informative, I am remain unconvinced that same-gender marriage was practiced in the Roman world, due to the centrality of patriarchy as a fundamental structure in ancient Rome. Indeed, Elagabalus is a case in point, for if anyone should have had the power to defy social norms and enter a same-gender marriage, it would have been an emperor. However, despite his passion for Hierocles, Elagabalus married and divorced five different women.

[E2] For those who are interested, below is a summary of the other passages that discuss same-gender sex in the Bible, including those passages which use ambiguous language and may or may not be referring to same-gender sex. But in every case, the type of same-gender sexual act that is described is one that both progressive and conservative Christians would condemn. They are…

a. Some interpreters believe that Ham’s transgression against Noah in Genesis 9:18-27 may have been some kind of homosexual violation of his father. They argue that Ham was cursed because of this sexual transgression. First of all, it is not clear what the phrase, “Ham uncovered the nakedness of his father” means, and so this argument is on shaky ground. Second, even if it was a sexual transgression, progressives would insist that the Bible rightfully condemned Ham’s behavior because of its violent and incestuous nature, not because Ham and Noah had the same gender.

b. In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1-29), the men of those cities demand that the (male) angels who were visiting Lot should come out so that they could rape them. This is rightly portrayed as an egregious act of sin in Genesis, and it becomes a symbol or paradigm for utter corruption in the rest of the Bible. A similar story is told in Judges 19:1-30, which is clearly modeled after Genesis 19, and comparisons to Sodom and Gomorrah are frequently made in the Older and New Testaments to make a point about corruption. However, once again, progressives argue that the Bible rightfully condemns the Sodomites not because Lots visitors were males, but because they intended to commit gang rape.

c. There seem to be several brief references to male prostitutes in the Older Testament in passages such as 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12, and 2 Kings 23:7, but there is not enough context for scholars to be sure what people or behaviors are being referenced. However, even if it can be shown definitely that they refer to male prostitutes who serviced other males, progressives would agree that this should have been banned because it involved prostitution, not because the prostitutes were men.

Whenever same-gender sex does appear in the above cases, it is depicted negatively and is associated with sexually deviant behaviors, such as incest, rape, and prostitution. Some conservatives argue that this association shows that the Bible views same-gender sex as a deviant behavior that ought to be condemned alongside of these other three. But some progressives take the same evidence and make the opposite argument: the fact that the Bible always associates homosexuality with these negative sexual behaviors explains why it is condemned. The Biblical authors did not conceive of covenantal same-gender sexual relationships. If they had, they would likely have supported them.

Neither of these arguments is very strong on its own, so I personally don’t think that these examples contribute positively or negatively to our discernment about same-gender marriage. The only passages that are relevant to that discussion are ones that condemn same-gender sex as such, not in connection with other sexual behaviors that we ought to condemn. That is how I get the “five” I mentioned above: Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10, and Romans 1:26-27. And actually, when we look more closely at 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10, it’s likely that these are also closely associated with deviant sexual behaviors and are not directly relevant to our discussion, which only leaves the two from Leviticus and the one from Romans. However, although the remaining three are few in number, they do have great importance, which is why I discuss the Levitical passages in detail in post 2 and Romans 1 in this post.

[E3] Some progressive Christians argue that anything in Leviticus is automatically rejected in the New Testament. I don’t follow that line of reasoning myself. However, I am also deeply suspicious of the various tools that different Christian groups to try to discern which passages from Leviticus should be kept and which should be overturned, whether they are based on a distinction between ceremonial law and moral law or based on ritual purity versus natural protection, etc. Instead, I argue that both Leviticus passages are specifically derived from gender norms, and that gender norms are one of the specific principles that the New Testament overturns in Galatians 3:28.

[E4] Alright, let’s briefly consider 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. They can be considered together because they have a very similar structure, to such a degree that many have concluded that 1 Timothy 1 was modeled after 1 Corinthians 6. They both offer a vice list of sinful behaviors that exclude people from the kingdom of God, and some of same-gender sexual behaviors come up on the list. Here are the key words as they are translated by the NRSV in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

“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.”

When you read this passage in English, it is pretty clear what behaviors Paul is condemning. However, the Greek words are fairly difficult to understand, which is why almost every translation of the Bible offers a different rendering of these words.” The Greek words behind “male prostitutes” and “sodomites” are malakoi and arsenokoitai, and scholars have proposed several different definitions for them. They may be referring to the passive and active partners in a same-gender sexual encounter, or they may be referring to a specific type of same-gender sexual encounter such as prostitution or pederasty, or (less likely) they may not even be referring to same-gender sex at all. The Biblical debate on this topic has been extensive, and I’m not going to try to review it in an end note. But I think most scholars would agree on the following points: Whatever precise meaning these words have, they seem to refer to behavior that is (1) decadent and (2) involves same-gender sexual intimacy. Because (1) and (2) are conflated in the vice lists, these texts do not offer a clear testimony about people of the same gender who have sex only in covenantal relationships.

[E5] I don’t feel compelled to outline and refute the progressive arguments that I don’t agree with, but Harold Miller does a good job of this here. http://www.interactingwithjesus.org/gaymatter/Rom1.18-32-HNMiller.pdf

[E6] This is clear not only from Paul’s use of the words “natural” and “unnatural” but because he uses a very specific word for “men” and “women” in Romans 1:26-27, which I think should be interpreted as male and female. This is the same language that Genesis 1 uses, and so he seems to be interpreting Genesis 1 in such a way as to make gender norms part of creation. There are only two other passages that use this same language in the New Testament: one comes from Jesus in Mark 10/Matthew 19 in his direct quotation of Genesis 1, and the other comes from Galatians 3:28, which argues that the gender norm reading of Genesis 1 has been over come. So, in a deeper way than most people realize, Romans 1:26-27 and Galatians 3:28 are at odds with each other.

[E7] This is in 1 Timothy 2:13. This is a new interpretation of Paul’s that does not reflect the witness of Genesis or the rest of the Bible.

[E8] From 1 Corinthians 11:14, 11:7-9, and 14:33-34

[E9] Most scholars believe that Galatians 3;28 was originally a saying in the early church that Paul quotes, not a saying that Paul himself invented. He quotes it in order to provide support for an argument he is making about Gentile equality. In the larger argument in Galatians, Paul argues that Gentiles should not be forced to regulate their behavior on the basis of their ethnicity. And so he cites the “abolishment saying” in order to make his point, a saying which indicates that Christian behavior should not be determined by our ethnicity, social status, or gender. But in making this point about ethnicity, he does us the service of putting the whole saying in the Biblical record. Like Balaam of Peor, he utters the truth of God against his will.

[E10] Much of this stems from the fact that we have come to associate Biblical authority with concepts such as inerrancy or infallibility. But this is a very modern way of reading the Bible. It reduces the Bible to a set of propositional and/or normative statements and claims that honoring the authority of Scripture means accepting that each and every one of them is true.

But this misses the deeper way in which Scripture is authoritative: it is the story, the narrative, that shapes the way we view God, the world, ourselves, sin, salvation, good and evil. This kind of authority does not stand outside of us as a rule that all of our beliefs must be measured again; it comes from within us, giving substance and structure to our beliefs. We can “disagree” with a particular passage in Scripture while still being shaped by its overriding narrative, and that is what I believe it means to submit to Scriptural authority.

[E11] All too often, we try to read Paul's comments about the law versus the promise in a simplistic way, as though Paul is talking about the Older Testament and its relationship to the New Testament. But Paul is not focused on testaments, but rather on types of teachings in the Bible. After all, both the law and the promise that he references come from the Older Testament, and the New Testament hadn't been compiled yet.

In any case, I believe that law and promise refer to types of Scripture, each of which can be found in both the Older and New Testaments. Paul didn't want Christians to be bound by any kind of legalism, even if it was found in his own writings.

[E12] This is an interpretation that has its roots in Robin Scroggs but has been re-worked and improved by Biblical scholars, such as James Brownson, and Christian teachers, such as Matthew Vines.