Paul and homosexuality - Essay Example

Romans I in the new Testament has been the of much discussion and debate in the present times regarding Paul's stand on homosexuality. In thearticles under consideration, " Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation" by Dale B. Martin and "Relations Natural and Unnatural: A Response to John Boswell's Exegesis of Romans I" by Richard B. Hays, the two scholars argue around this moot point. While Hays' approach is more direct under which he establishes whether or not the Bible is speaking against homosexual behavior in Romans I and its significance in the modern context, Martin is more concerned with the question of whether the scholars dealing with this particular aspect are as objective as they claim, or are in fact looking at it from a firmly heterosexist perspective. In order to fulfill his object, Martin has chosen to analyze the above-mentioned article by Hays. For the purposes of our comparison between the articles therefore, we would note the stated issues that Martin finds with Hays' article. We would then scrutinize how effectively Martin is able to present his counter-arguments to determine whether he has the more convincing interpretation of Romans, or whether Hays' interpretation is better argued and supported by evidence. The issues which Martin lays out against Hays' article are : "1) the claim that the etiology of homosexuality, according to Paul, lies in the corruption of universal human nature that occurred in the fall; 2) the assumption that Paul is differentiating homosexual desire from heterosexual desire in Romans I ascribing the former to the fall and the latter to pristine creation; and 3) the importation of a modern concept of acts "contrary to nature" when explaining Paul's term para physin". 1) a. Etiology of Homosexuality: Hays Dealing with the first point of the etiology of homosexuality, we scrutinize the argument presented by each scholar. Hays asserts that "depravities follow from the radical rebellion of the creature against the creator", that is, all of humankind has fallen in God's eyes by refusing to recognize Him as the Creator and thus arousing His wrath. Hays also contends that God's wrath "takes the ironic form of allowing them the freedom to have their own way", and that "idolatry debases both the worshiper and the idol". Thus, Hays says that homosexuality is the symptom of mankind's fall, their refusal to accept God as their true creator and that " Paul's choice of homosexuality as an illustration of human depravity is not merely random: it serves his rhetorical purposes by providing a vivid image of humanity's primal rejection of the sovereignty of God the creator". To support his claim, Hays brings in the references of Genesis, where "the complementarity of male and female is given theological grounding in God's creative activity". The Gen 2:18-24 is quoted, where man and woman are intended to "become one flesh". 1)b. Etiology of Homosexuality: Martin Martin interprets the origins of homosexuality in much more specific terms, and takes the references of homosexuality in the Jewish tradition of Paul's time, and relates homosexuality to the origin of idolatry and polytheism "at some point after the time of Adam: rabbinic sources variously ascribe the invention of idolatry to Kenan, Enosh(son of Seth) or the people of Enosh's generation", especially amongst the Gentiles and he supports his interpretation by using the example of the book of Jubilees. He contends that : "the scenario Paul sketches in Romans I has to do with the invention of idolatry and its consequences, and not with the fall of Adam. In Romans I, Paul refers not to Adam or "he", a single person, but to "they"." Both scholars recognize that Paul has, through the clever use of rhetoric in 2:1, chastised both the Jews and the Gentiles where they are "equally condemned under the judgment of a righteous God"(Hays). In the same spirit, Martin says, "He condemns first the Gentiles, and then turns his attention to Jews". But Martin and Hays use this argument to different ends, Hays arguing that this means that all of mankind is the audience, whereas Martin affirms that the audience is primarily Jewish, being warned with the example of Gentile behavior. Martin is the more convincing of the two because though both scholars have established idolatry as one of the causes of God's righteous anger, Martin is able to establish a clear, specific context amongst the Jews and Gentiles and demonstrate that Paul's logic in his time would have been more in line with a mythological structure where homosexuality followed idolatry and polytheism, and not the fall of Adam. 2)a. Homosexual and Heterosexual Desire:Hays Hays is very clear on where he stands on the interpretation of homosexuality: "human beings, created for heterosexual companionship as the Genesis story bears witness, have distorted even so basic a truth as their sexual identity by rejecting the male and female roles which are "naturally" theirs in God's created order". Since we have already agreed with Martin with the interpretation that the story of Genesis is not relevant to this section of Romans I, this statement is not convincing. For Hays, homosexual and heterosexual desire are two opposite things. But also remarkable is the fact that he admits that "the usual supposition of the writers during the Hellenistic period was that homosexual behavior was the result of insatiable lust seeking novel and more challenging forms of self-gratification." 2)b. Homosexual and Heterosexual Desire: Martin Martin takes up the line of Hays' admission above about the Hellenistic concept of homosexuality, and places Paul as a product of a Greco-Roman culture similar to that described by Philo where "same-sex intercourse ... may spring from an excess of desire, and allowing desire to exceed its bounds leads to actions 'beyond nature'". Using examples from Thessalonians 4:5 and Corinthians 7, Martin demonstrates that "Paul never had a positive word to say about sexual passion or desire". So, he is able to justifiably conclude that "For Paul, homosexuality was simply a further extreme of the corruption inherent in sexual passion itself. It did not spring from a different kind of desire, but simply from desire itself". 3)a. "Contrary to nature" and para physin: Hays In order to understand the concept of the term "contrary to nature" and what it means we need to examine how Hays has interpreted the term "nature": "Though he offers no explicit reflection on the concept of "nature", it is clear that in this passage Paul identifies "nature" with the created order." He arrives at this interpretation through the study of various Hellenistic Jewish writers, Josephus for instance, who "deplores "intercourse with males" as para physin". Hays is able to establish the context of para physin for Paul as "contrary to nature", by various examples and also by citing Paul in 11:24 where the meaning of para physin as "contrary to nature" is established. Homosexuality is thus shown to be "not natural" in the eyes of Paul. 3)b. " Beyond nature" and para physin: Martin For Martin, the essential meaning of nature is "gender hierarchy", where the male is supposed to be on top of the female in the sexual arena as in all other areas, and in support, he interprets Plato who says of homosexual men that they allow themselves to be "covered and mounted like cattle". According to Martin, Plato's argument against homosexuality being "contrary to nature" could be because "homosexual penetration affronts nature due to its disruption of the male-female cosmic hierarchy", and para physin was indeed used sometimes in this sense. But, for the definition of para physin, Martin concludes with the aid of various examples that the term more correctly means "beyond nature" or "in excess of what is natural" in the Greco-Roman tradition, and not "unnatural". For him, understanding homosexuality as "unnatural" is not a characteristic of the Pauline context but a modern one: "certain behaviors were "contrary to nature" because they went beyond the proper limits of nature.....That is why the ancients had no notion of "homosexual orientation" or "homosexuals"; it was not a question of "disoriented desires" but of legitimate desires allowed illegitimate freedoms." This is a more convincing interpretation than that of Hays, who is any case has also admitted in his article that, " The expression "contrary to nature" probably did not carry for Paul and his readers the vehement connotation of "monstrous abomination" which it subsequently acquired in the Western thought about homosexuality". Comparing and contrasting the arguments and interpretations put forth by the two scholars, Martin and Hays, we can conclude that Martin has the more established arguments. Though he does not attempt to establish the contemporary contexts for the interpretations regarding homosexuality like Hays, his interpretations can be the basis for further explorations into the meaning of Romans I, and the context in which it should be studied. The instructions are to read the two (2) articles that I am forwarding and decide who has the more convincing interpretation of Romans 1:18-32 [I am forwarding that passage to you as well] and why The paper should be written in light of biblical studies and should reflect an opinion on which author makes the strongest claim; not necessarily what we FEEL (I figured that out today). The paper should include 3-4 points from the articles that explain why that author makes the strongest claim and/or why the other's claim is weak [quoting from the articles on ocassion]. The class is on the New Testament and are expecting good arguments versus a book report that simply recycles what has been read. | Read More