Supplement

to

Marriage, Scripture, and the Church:

Theological Discernment on the Question of
Same-Sex Union

Darrin W. Snyder Belousek

© 2021 by Darrin W. Snyder Belousek

 Contents

Appendix A.
Sexuality: Terminology and Theology 3
Appendix B.
East of Eden: Marriage after Paradise 14
Appendix C.
Non-Procreation: Chastity, Casuistry, and Contraception 57
Appendix D.
Same-Sex Love in Greco-Roman Culture 69
Appendix E.
Paul on Same-Sex Intercourse: Romans 1 79
Appendix F.
Paul on Vice: 1 Corinthians 113
Appendix G.
The Holiness Code on Same-Sex Intercourse 141
Appendix H.
The Jerusalem Council and the Apostolic Decree 146
Appendix I.
Porneia in the New Testament 159
Appendix J.
Love in Truth and Action: Counsel and Challenge to Congregations 172

Bibliography of Supplement 188

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 Appendix A

Sexuality:
Terminology and Theology

Writing a book on marriage theology and sexual ethics requires the author to
make conscious choices in language use. In the arena of sexuality, terminological
decisions require theological discernment. While I do not necessarily shun using
contemporary sexuality categories—“heterosexual(ity),” “homosexual(ity),” “straight,”
“gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “asexual,” and “queer”—I do not take contemporary
sexuality categories as basic terms in which to frame questions for biblical interpretation,
theological reflection, and ethical judgment. This appendix explains, briefly, why I have
made that choice—and articulates, briefly, a Christian-critical perspective on sexuality
terminology. By no means do I suppose that this discussion exhausts the discernment
necessary in this matter.

Troubled terms
The terms “homosexual” and “homosexuality” have several uses and thus are
ambiguous. They could refer to a category of persons (“homosexuals”), an orientation of
sexual attraction (“homosexuality”), or a pattern of sexual conduct (“homosexual
lifestyle”). Because of this semantic ambiguity within common usage, using these terms
can confuse conversation in the church by clouding the question for discernment.
Consider Jack Rogers’ recounting of the discernment among Presbyterian
denominations from the 1970s to the 1990s. Rogers’ description of the matter under
discussion shifts, over a few pages, from whether “self-affirming, practicing
homosexuals” could be ordained (the official question for discernment) to “whether
homosexual behavior is sinful” to whether “homosexual ordination” should be allowed to

3
whether “homosexuality is sin” to whether “ordination of people who are homosexual”
should be allowed and then to simply “the debate over homosexuality.” 1 Rogers shifts
between phrasings as if the term “homosexual(ity)” has a constant reference across these
several uses. Yet the term “homosexual(ity)” takes three different references—category,
orientation, and conduct—between these phrases. This clouding of the matter culminates
when Rogers states that the Presbyterian Church “tightened its prohibition on ordaining
gay and lesbian people to church office by putting it into its Book of Order”—and then
cites the relevant section of the Book of Order: “the requirement to live either in fidelity
within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman…or chastity in
singleness.”2 Where the Book of Order states the matter plainly as concerning pattern of
conduct (“live either in fidelity…or chastity”), Rogers presents the matter as concerning a
category of persons (“gay and lesbian people”). The ambiguities in Roger’s descriptions
may be unintentional on his part and may reflect ambiguities in the discussions he
recounts—and may even reflect his own lack of clarity on the matter. Yet such ambiguity
clouds the matter for the church and thereby confuses its discernment.
The term “homosexual(ity)” also has a complex, troubled history of use. This
history includes medical and psychoanalytical usage with connotations of pathology.
Speaking of “homosexuals” has sometimes suggested a group of persons each of whom
has a pathological condition or diseased state: “homosexuality” is a phenomenon
exhibited by “the homosexual.”
While I will occasionally use “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” I tend to use the
terms “opposite-sex” (or “male-female”) and “same-sex” (or “male-male” and “female-
female”) and specify their reference (attraction, orientation, intercourse, or union) in
context.

Present terms
I do not take contemporary sexuality categories as basic terms in which to frame
the church’s discernment for three sets of reasons concerning biblical interpretation,
theological reflection, and ethical judgment.

1
Rogers, Jesus, Bible, and Homosexuality, 9–13.
2
Rogers, Jesus, Bible, and Homosexuality, 13.

4
 Concerning biblical interpretation, biblical texts typically refer to human persons
as sexuate beings and sexual actors in terms of bodily sex (“male” and “female,” “man”
and “woman”), marital status (“beloved” and “betrothed,” “husband” and “wife,”
“virgin” and “widow”), family relationship (“father” and “mother,” “daughter” and
“sister,” etc.), or illicit activity (“prostitute,” “fornicator,” “adulterer”). The biblical
writers did not use terms that might be analogous to contemporary categories of sexual
orientation or sexual identity.3 Framing questions for reading Scripture in terms of
contemporary sexuality categories, then, might distort our interpretation and thus
disorient our discernment.
Ancient writers neither spoke nor thought in terms of our categories of sexual
orientation and identity because these concepts did not exist as such in the ancient world.
Greco-Roman culture did have its own ideas about innate sexual attraction and categories
of sexual identity, but those do not map squarely onto our ideas and categories. 4 Our
categories of sexual orientation—“heterosexual(ity)” and “homosexual(ity)”—are the
modern products of European culture, medical pathology, psychiatric theory, and
bureaucratic mentality. And what have become the common labels for sexual identity—
“straight,” “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “asexual,” “queer,” and so on—are also the
recent constructs of Western society. Even the very notion of “sexuality,” as denoting an
individual characteristic distinguishable from one’s bodily sex, is a modern invention. 5
Contemporary sexuality categories, and the scripts by which contemporary culture
interprets sexual experience and narrates sexual identity, are a product of the present age.
The point here, to be clear, is not to deny that some persons really do experience
same-sex attraction as an involuntary “given” of their personal existence. Rather, the
point is to recognize the distinction between personal experience of sexual attraction and
a conceptual framework by which sexuality (orientation) and identity (e.g., “gay” or

3
At 1 Corinthians 6, Paul did make a one-time use of a term (malakoi) that could have referred to a sexual
role or gender role within Greco-Roman culture, but this was not his typical terminology.
4
See Brooten, Love between Women. I consider the relevance of these ancient ideas and categories when
interpreting Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 in Appendices D, E, and F.
5
See Greenberg, Construction of Homosexuality, 397–433, 482f; Katz, Invention of Heterosexuality;
Vasey, Strangers and Friends, 23–27, 71–112; Paris, End of Sexual Identity, 37–76; and Butterfield,
Openness Unhindered.

5
“lesbian”) are socially construed.6 The conceptual categories of sexual orientation and
sexual identity through which Western society interprets sexual experience and narrates
sexual meaning are cultural constructs; the felt experiences of sexual attraction by
individual persons are not. Recognizing this distinction is important: while felt
experience of sexual attraction is involuntary, we can and should nonetheless exercise
discretion regarding not only which actions to choose in responding to attraction but also
which concepts to use in thinking about sexuality.

Human terms
Concerning theological reflection, we should beware how taking contemporary
sexuality categories as naming basic truths about being human would distort a biblical
understanding of human beings. We can see this from both creational and Christological
perspectives. Nate Collins, Evangelical theologian and gay believer, argues that were we
to take sexual orientation or sexual identity as a fundamental feature of human beings, we
would place sexuality at the core of human personhood, such that the
heterosexual/homosexual distinction would effectively categorize human beings into
different sexual kinds—“straight” and “gay.” A sexuality categorization of human beings,
however, would miss the mark by biblical-theological standards.
Human sexuality, how one regards oneself and relates to others in sexual ways, is
not fundamental to being human but is predicated on the sexuate character of
humankind’s embodiment as God’s creatures. According to the Genesis account, God
creating humankind as sexuate beings (male and female, man and woman) is prior to
humans relating sexually to one another (husband and wife). “Human sexuality is made
possible by embodiment and its sexuate character.” 7 That human beings are sexuate is
primary, that human beings are sexual is secondary. Treating sexuality categories
(orientation and identity) as fundamental features of human beings, therefore, would
displace sexuate correspondence (male and female, man and woman) from the core of
being human as God’s creatures.

6
On the distinctions between attraction, orientation, and identity, see Yarhouse, Homosexuality and the
Christian, 41–42.
7
Collins, All but Invisible, 146. Collins introduces the term ‘sexuate’ to express the fact of biblical
anthropology that “sex difference” is “a central characteristic of humanity.”

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 This concern that Christians be theologically discerning about contemporary
constructions of human identity applies not only in reference to how the world defines
people as sexual beings but also in reference to every category by which the world might
define us or by which we might define ourselves in relation to the world—political,
professional, national, and so on. No such identity should be allowed to supersede or
subordinate our identity as “new creatures” in Christ. Whom God has made and is
remaking us to be in Christ is the reality in reference to which all Christians are called to
relate and interpret every human identity. We must thus ask whether the ways in which
we hold and live our various identities are true to whom God-in-Christ has made and is
redeeming us to be.8
Accordingly, all Christians should adopt a critical approach to contemporary
sexuality categories, lest any culturally-scripted identity—whether “masculine” or
“feminine,” “straight” or “gay”—take priority over the believer’s God-given baptismal
identity “in Christ.”9 Wesley Hill, biblical scholar and gay believer, writes with relevance
to all Christians: “Gay Christians must query their felt identities and experiences
precisely because all Christians must [do so], in light of the gospel’s relativization of any
identity other than “Christ”.” 10 Nate Collins puts the point positively: “The job of a
Christian…is to put his or her Christian identity in the driver seat so that it can be in
charge of how the individual’s other identities are used” for the sake of God’s kingdom. 11

Good terms
Concerning ethical judgment, we should beware how the conceptual framework
of our discourse might misshape the moral content of our discernment.12 Christians can,
of course, make good use of cultural constructions for the worship and mission of the
church (e.g., artistic styles, architectural forms, and communication techniques). Yet it is
imperative that Christian thinking not become conformed to schemes of thought that

8
See Banner et al., “St. Andrew’s Day Statement,” and subsequent discussion: O’Donovan,
“Homosexuality in the Church;” Stuart, “Dancing in the Spirit;” Colwell, “Christ, Creation, and Human
Sexuality;” and Vibert, “Divine Order and Sexual Conduct.” All in Bradshaw, The Way Forward?
9
See Yarhouse, Homosexuality and the Christian, 37–55, Hannon, “Against Heterosexuality,” and Hill,
“Christ, Scripture, and Spiritual Friendship,” 142–44.
10
Hill, “Christ, Scripture, and Spiritual Friendship,” 144n50.
11
Collins, All but Invisible, 311 (original emphasis).
12
Here I adapt Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum, “the medium is the message.”

7
would distort our discernment of “what is good and acceptable and perfect” according to
God’s will. For what we are discerning is how to dispose our bodies, regarding every
arena of conduct, in a habit of right reverence and service toward God and neighbor, so
that we might “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God”
(Rom. 12:1–2). Accordingly, we must be discerning in our appropriation of cultural
constructions for Christian uses. We must thus beware the temptation to cede the moral
deliberation of the church to the conventional norms and cultural trends of the
surrounding society.13 In a fallen world, we must guard against Christian thinking,
concerning norms in every arena of conduct, becoming colonized by a human mindset
that is distortive of faithful discernment of God’s will. 14
Contemporary sexuality categories can be used descriptively of sexual experience,
as labeling the felt attractions that individuals experience. But contemporary sexuality
categories can also be used prescriptively of sexual norms, as licensing the sexual
conduct that individuals choose. The term ‘gay’ can be used to make a phenomenological
report of one’s experience, to label one’s sexual orientation according to one’s felt
experience of sexual attraction: “I experience a strong, exclusive, recurring sexual
attraction to persons of the same sex; thus, I’m gay” (phenomenological-descriptive use).
The term ‘gay’ can be used also to assert an ontological claim about one’s essence, to
license one’s choice of sexual conduct according to one’s affirmation of sexual identity:
“I’m gay, and because I’m gay my consensual, mutual sexual activity with persons of the
same sex is right and good” (ontological-prescriptive use). Used phenomenologically-
descriptively, sexuality categories identify what is involuntarily “given” in experience;
used ontologically-prescriptively, sexuality categories justify what is voluntarily chosen
in conduct.
It is especially the ontological-prescriptive use of sexuality categories that is
problematic within Christian discourse. Prescriptive use of sexual orientation categories
or sexual identity labels, in essence, stakes out a moral ground apart from biblical
revelation and theological reflection and then draws a direct line from labeling sexuality
to licensing activity—which, in effect, circumvents and subverts the distinctive claims of

13
See Verhey, Remembering Jesus, 17–18.
14
This was a key concern of the early church—see especially Epistle to Diognetus. For a contemporary
variation on this ancient theme, see Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens.

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Christian norms concerning sexual conduct. For the church, sexual orientation and sexual
identity cannot be made into a self-justifying ground of ethical norms and sexual conduct.
Even traditionalist Christians can use sexuality categories in ways that distort
discernment. Framing the church’s discernment by an opposition of “heterosexuality”
against “homosexuality” could skew perception and judgment. The church’s debate has
largely revolved around the question, “Is homosexuality a sin?” (This question, we note,
is ambiguous: Does it refer to a category of persons or a disposition of desire or a pattern
of conduct?) Fixating on whether “homosexuality” is sin may mislead us into
downplaying or overlooking “heterosexual” sins that are far more prevalent among
Christians (e.g., pre-marital sex and pornography use).15 As a general category of human
sexuality, “heterosexuality” is compatible with varieties of promiscuity and thus is
unsuitable as an ethical standard for Christian conduct. Traditionalist Christians should
also be wary of contemporary constructions of “straight” sexuality. Certain images of
“masculinity,” reflecting the fallen condition of humankind, can distort our image of
Jesus as the truly human one and thus misdirect us in our calling to inhabit the mindset of
Christ.16 The central focus of ethical concern should not be “heterosexuality” or
“homosexuality” but holy sexuality for all Christians—male and female, married and
single, straight and gay.17

Personal terms
All that said, this also needs said: The personal use of contemporary sexuality
categories for descriptive purposes should not be simply forbidden.
Some traditional Christians who experience a consistent, recurring sexual
attraction to persons of the same sex avoid referring to themselves as “gay.” They are
concerned that saying, “I’m gay,” while potentially communicating their personal
experience of sexual attraction, would unintentionally communicate within our cultural
milieu a counter-Christian narrative about sexuality, or would effectively define
themselves by their sexuality or associate themselves with sin or remind themselves of

15
See Paris, End of Sexual Identity, 75–76.
16
See O’Brien, “A Jesus for Real Men,” and Jones, “Embodied from Creation through Redemption,” 23–
24.
17
See Yuan, Holy Sexuality, 43–52.

9
their formerly sinful conduct. Some of these traditional believers prefer to refer to
themselves as “same-sex attracted” or as “having same-sex attraction.”18
Yet other traditional Christians may find sexual orientation categories or sexual
identity labels helpful, to name the involuntary “given” in their individual experience of
sexual attraction and narrate their personal journey of relating their sexuality to their faith
and life as a Christian. Some of these traditional believers choose to identify themselves
as “gay” or “gay celibate Christians.” Gregory Coles, church leader and gay believer,
explains winsomely from his viewpoint:
I would never want any other identity to alter my identity in Christ. Being gay shouldn’t make me
into a fundamentally different kind of Christian. But being a Christian also shouldn’t mean that I
forget every other part of my experience of the world. We have Christians who are male and
female, young and old, PhDs and GEDs, Christians of different races and ethnicities and
nationalities. Identity labels don’t change who we are in Christ, but they do give us important
information about how our journeys of faith might look different…We’re more than our sexuality.
But there are times I need a word to name my sexuality, and I need a different word to name
yours. Without those words, we’re glossing over details that make our stories and challenges
unique.19
Some Christians may also find identifying as “gay” not only useful to name their
sexuality and narrate their journey but also practically necessary to explain painful
experiences of social mistreatment in terms adequate to the truth. Eve Tushnet, Christian
author and gay believer, writes:
If we can’t just bluntly say “because I’m gay,” a lot of those painful experiences become much
harder to speak about. If you can’t call yourself “gay” it’s harder to describe or explain why you’re
confused, scared, unwelcome, or stigmatized; even why you’ve been targeted for harassment,
discrimination, violence, or rejection.
As Tushnet emphasizes, creating a caring and compassionate community within our
congregations calls for making space for individuals to name personal experiences in

18
See, for example, Shaw, Same-Sex Attraction and the Church, 31–39, and Gilson, Born Again This Way,
127–40.
19
Coles, Single, Gay, Christian, 69–70. As Gregory Coles and Rachel Gilson observed in their panel
discussion during the Revoice 2020 gathering, differences of terminological preference may correlate, to
some extent, with differences of life experience: believers who have left behind same-sex activity or
relationships in becoming Christians may prefer to describe themselves as “same-sex attracted” to avoid
associating their new life in Christ with their old life of sin, while believers who were never involved in
same-sex activity or relationships before or since becoming Christians may be more comfortable with
identifying as “gay.”

10
such terms as they find helpful or necessary to “express the truth about their lives.” 20
Consider a Christian trying to relate to fellow believers his or her painful experiences of
racial injustice without being able to say simply, “I was mistreated because I’m black.”
Surely, our creation as male and female in God’s image and our baptism as believers in
Christ define us in a basic way that racial identity and sexual identity do not and could
not. Yet descriptive use of racial or sexual identity categories seems, to some Christians
in some circumstances, practically necessary to speaking truly about such experiences—
and to calling forth both solidarity in suffering from sisters and brothers and righteous
action to correct injustices.

Concluding terms
I caution the church against using cultural constructions of human sexuality in the
role of fundamental assumptions about human persons that then condition biblical
interpretation, theological reflection, and ethical judgment. 21 Christians should not
uncritically accept contemporary constructions of human sexuality, any more than
individual appraisals of sexual experience, as unquestionable truth. At the same time, I
urge the church to avoid becoming embroiled in disputes arising solely from merely
descriptive uses of sexuality terminology by individual Christians.22 Some traditionalists
are convinced that, because same-sex sexual desire involves temptation toward inherently
sinful conduct, calling oneself a “gay celibate Christian,” although explicitly a refusal of
the temptation and a commitment to chastity, implicitly defines oneself by fallen human
nature and identifies oneself with immorality. They thus accuse traditional believers who
identify as “gay” of neglecting, if not repudiating, a doctrine of original sin.23
Discerning carefully amid this dispute requires distinguishing between
descriptive and prescriptive, between phenomenological and ontological—in personal

20
Tushnet, “Beyond Sexual Identity.”
21
Jones, Faithful, 30–35, similarly, counsels Christians to take care in their use of the common distinction
in the modern West between “sex” (bodily reality) and “gender” (social meaning), lest we diminish our
ability to affirm that “maleness and femaleness”—the bodily genders of human beings—are “created
goods.”
22
We do well to remind ourselves of Paul’s counsel to early Christians: as we seek to “hold to the standard
of sound teaching” and “guard the good treasure entrusted to [us],” let us “avoid wrangling over words,
which does no good but only ruins those who are listening” (2 Tim. 1:13–14; 2:14).
23
For example, Yuan, Holy Sexuality, 38–40, 58–72, and Butterfield, Openness Unhindered.

11
terms, between telling “how I am” and defining “who I am.”24 We then need to discern
whether and how personal uses of contemporary sexuality categories and labels for
descriptive purposes, to relate how one experiences oneself and others in a sexual way,
might be compatible with Christian convictions and commitments.25 Aaron Taylor offers
the church sound counsel for wise discernment:
So can one be gay and Christian or not? Our culture presents us with two simple options. Either
we lie down and allow ourselves to be bulldozed by the agenda of militant gay activists, or we
completely reject and demonize every aspect of gay identity, culture, and experience. Christians
ought to eschew both options. Instead, we should identify which aspects of being gay contribute to
the flourishing of gay people as individuals and to the flourishing of their communities. We should
also identify without fear those aspects of contemporary gay identity and culture that are
incompatible with the Christian moral life.26
Discerning between “those aspects of contemporary gay identity and culture that are
incompatible with the Christian moral life” and those aspects that might contribute to
Christian flourishing calls for critical examination of contemporary sexual identity from
an authentically Christian theological perspective.
Discerning honestly amid this dispute requires acknowledging the semantic
ambiguity of, and the cultural baggage that goes with, all sexuality terminology. We all
must concede, whichever one’s preferred sexuality terminology (“same-sex attracted” or
“same-sex oriented” or “gay” or “queer”), that such terms are not given by Holy
Scripture or derived from Christian tradition but are adopted and adapted from
contemporary sexuality discourses. We all must thus consider, whatever one’s best
intentions, how Christian use of contemporary sexuality terminology might communicate
disparate messages to different audiences. Sexuality terminology used by one with
descriptive intent (“I experience persistent same-sex attractions—I’m gay”) might be
heard by another with ontological-prescriptive content (“I identify myself with my same-
sex attractions—gay is who I am”). Using the term “same-sex attracted” might signal one
message to those inside the church—and yet, evoking associations of “reparative
therapy,” might signal another message to those in the surrounding culture. Using the

24
Similarly, Sprinkle, People to Be Loved, 141–44, distinguishes between “strong” and “soft” senses of the
term “gay”—between naming the core identity of one’s human existence and describing an aspect of one’s
experience of the world.
25
See also Bennett, War of Loves, 209–15.
26
Taylor, “Can One Be Gay and Christian?”

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term “gay” might communicate in a certain way to Christians in North America and
Europe—and yet, carrying western cultural baggage (“gay pride”), might communicate in
a quite different way to Christians in the rest of the world.
No single choice of sexuality terminology can claim to be authentically derived
from Christian sources or perfectly suited to Christian discourse. Accordingly, this task of
discernment calls for charitable, respectful dialogue among Christians who share
common convictions about a biblical-theological understanding of marriage and sex and
yet disagree about how best to express personal experiences of sexuality while remaining
true and faithful to those common convictions.

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 Appendix B

East of Eden:
Marriage after Paradise

In Chapter 3, I set forth a traditional understanding of marriage according to the biblical

narrative as a baseline for discernment on the same-sex union question. Scripture presents
marriage from two perspectives: marriage “in the garden” and marriage “east of Eden,”
marriage as God ordained and blessed it from the beginning and marriage as humans
have lived and distorted it throughout the ages, marriage as it should be and marriage as
we find it. Interpreting Scripture discerningly concerning marriage requires
differentiating, and relating, these perspectives.
Corollary to discerning these biblical perspectives of marriage is recognizing that
biblical texts sometimes portray marriage in ways that are troubling, particularly
concerning treatment of women and wives. These texts prompt questions, including:
Does Scripture encode patriarchy—hierarchical order of men over women and unilateral
rule of husbands over wives—into the very nature of marriage? Does Scripture, by intent
or effect, endorse a view of marriage that approves abuse of wives or oppression of
women? A responsible presentation of a traditional view of marriage from a biblical
perspective must give serious attention to such pressing questions.
Additionally, innovationist advocates of sanctioning same-sex union and
progressive critics of traditional teaching have made various claims regarding Scripture,
sex, and marriage. Because the Bible exhibits a varied range of laws and customs
regarding sex and marriage, some say, the Bible contains no coherent sexual ethic. 27
Biblical texts on sex and marriage, some say, presume patriarchy and encode misogyny,
which are woven throughout the biblical narrative from cover to cover, rendering the

27
See Wink, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” for example.

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Bible problematic as a basis for sexual ethics.28 Because human beings find themselves
on this side of the fall into sin and exile from the garden, because we cannot regain a pre-
fall perfection and must live our lives east of Eden, some say, the church should not look
to the creational ideal as its moral standard for sex and marriage but instead should exhort
Christians to steward their sexuality in the most faithful way possible for fallen
creatures.29
As a matter of Christian confession, the key to addressing such questions and
claims—how to discerningly interpret the story of Scripture, how to understand God’s
will for man and woman in marriage as revealed in Scripture—is Jesus. As shown in
Chapter 4, Jesus’ ruling on the divorce question distinguished God’s intention, revealed
in the creation account, from God’s concession, reflected in the divorce law. God’s
concession to divorce, Jesus makes clear, does not indicate God’s change of mind about
marriage: “It was because you were so hardhearted that Moses allowed you to divorce
your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). While the law concedes
divorce, Jesus says, the cause of divorce begins in the human heart, not God’s will. God’s
concession to divorce responds to humankind’s change of heart toward God—and man’s
change of heart toward woman. A husband sending his wife away by issuing a
“certificate of divorce” (Deut. 24:1; Matt. 19:7) is a far cry from the man’s exclaiming in
the woman’s presence: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen.
2:23). A husband’s unilateral decision to dismiss his wife by divorce does not belong to
the created order in which God joined man and woman into “one flesh” but belongs to a
fallen order in which man lords over woman and does as he wills.
It is not possible to address these matters— how to discerningly interpret the
story of Scripture, how to understand God’s will for marriage as revealed in Scripture—
in a comprehensive manner in this appendix.30 I will address these matters together by
focusing on two issues in marriage: mutuality versus patriarchy, and monogamy versus

28
See Thatcher, Liberating Sex, for example.
29
See Gushee, Changing Our Minds, for example.
30
Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, is a comprehensive examination of sexuality in the Old Testament.
Goldingay, Israel’s Life, 325–420, discusses marriage and family in ancient Israel. Lamb, Prostitutes and
Polygamists, examines problematic practices concerning sex and marriage in biblical narrative. Trible,
Texts of Terror, analyzes select episodes of sexual violence in biblical narrative from a feminist
perspective. Miles, Redemption of Love, discusses fallen patterns of marriage and family in biblical
narrative and human history from a socioeconomic perspective.

15
polygamy. Jesus’ ruling on the divorce question shows us the way to proceed:
interpreting Scripture discerningly concerning marriage requires distinguishing God’s
intention at creation, humankind’s deviation from God’s intention, and God’s provision
in response to humankind’s deviation. Proceeding this way will show that God’s
intention for marriage is mutuality between man and woman and monogamy of husband
and wife—and that patriarchy and polygamy belong to humankind’s deviation from
God’s intention.
As we will see, the biblical canon—from the creation account in Genesis, to the
covenant law in Exodus and Leviticus, to the wisdom writings in Psalms and Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, to Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels, to Paul’s teaching in
the epistles—presents a consistent witness: the creational pattern of mutual-monogamous
man-woman union is the moral standard of sex and marriage for all nations through every
era of God’s providence. In fact, far from leaving behind the creational ideal in the
Genesis account, biblical texts across the canon—law and wisdom, Gospels and
epistles—repeatedly reference the creation account and reinforce the creational ideal as
the baseline for teaching on sex and marriage that is faithful to God’s intention for
humankind.

Genesis
When we read Genesis regarding marriage, we must be attentive to the narrative
context of marriage texts. As we address the issues of mutuality versus patriarchy and
monogamy versus polygamy, key to our interpretive task is asking where each is placed
in the biblical narrative and whether that narrative location relates to God’s intention at
creation, humankind’s deviation from God’s intention, or God’s provision in response to
humankind’s deviation.31

Mutuality versus Patriarchy

The depiction of male and female as vice-regents who co-represent God’s rule
over the rest of creation (Gen. 1:26–28) and the declaration that a husband will rule over
his wife (Gen. 3:16), we should observe, occur in the biblical narrative on opposite sides

31
The discussion of Genesis in this appendix will assume the exegesis of Genesis in Chapter 3.

16
of sin’s entry into creation. The biblical narrative thus presents a contrast between what
God intended from the beginning and what resulted from humankind’s deviation from
God’s intention.
From the beginning, God dispensed blessing upon humankind with the intention
that “male and female,” who are created equally “in the image of God,” should together
“be fruitful and multiply” and “have dominion” over other creatures. Man and woman
joined into “one flesh” were to be mutual, faithful, and fruitful partners, sharing in
humankind’s vocation to serve the garden and fill the earth (Gen. 1:26–28; 2:18–25). In
the creation account, there is no subordination of woman to man or hierarchy of husband
over wife.32
The mutuality of male and female, man and woman, is evident in both Genesis 1
and Genesis 2. In Genesis 1, God creates humankind “in the image of God” and “male
and female” (Gen. 1:27). As created in God’s image, male and female are equal and
symmetrical: both male and female are created in God’s image. God then “blessed them”
and “said to them” (Gen. 1:28, my emphasis). God blesses and commissions male and
female alike: God blesses and commissions both male and female, and God gives male
and female the same blessing and commission. Male and female are equal recipients of
God’s blessing and mutual collaborators in God’s commission: together male and female
are to “be fruitful,” and male and female are to “have dominion” together.
In Genesis 2, God creates a human being (ʾadam) and then creates a woman from
the man to be his ’ezer kenegdo (Gen. 2:18)—“a helper as his partner” (NRSV) or “a
companion who corresponds to him” (NET). This phrase does not indicate that the
woman occupies a position subordinate to the man or that the woman performs a function
subservient to the man. The term kenegdo means, literally, “like-opposite-him”—the
woman is the man’s “like” but is the man’s “opposite.” This term places the woman,
neither behind the man as his follower nor below the man as his inferior, but in front of
the man, facing the man as his equal but opposite—as, say, a correspondent in
conversation, or a partner in dance. This like-opposite correspondence between the man
and his kenegdo is elaborated poetically: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of
my flesh; this one shall be called Woman (ishshah), for out of Man (ish) this one was

32
See Goldingay, Israel’s Life, 354-57.

17
taken” (Gen. 2:23). The kenegdo is the man’s “bone and flesh” and thus “like” in kind to
the man; and the kenegdo is “woman” to his “man” and thus the sex “opposite” of the
man. The man and woman are human kin and sexuate counterparts. The term ’ezer means
“help” or “helper” but it does not imply that the woman’s role is a lowly assistant or a
servant subordinate to the man. Indeed, the primary ’ezer in Scripture is God, the One
who pledges “help” to Israel (e.g., Isa. 41:10, 13–14; 44:2), the One upon whom we may
call for deliverance when there is no “help” from human beings (e.g., Pss. 27:9; 30:10;
40:13; 46:1; 54:4; 70:1; 107:12; 118:7; 146:5). The term ’ezer thus depicts the woman as
God’s help given to the man: the woman is the man’s “divine help” as his human partner.
God makes the woman for the man and joins the man to the woman so that man and
woman, jointly, may carry out the divine commission given to humankind—to “fill the
earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28) and “to till and keep” the garden (Gen. 2:15).33
In the biblical creation account, sex—male and female—is a God-created
difference in humankind: “male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). As a created
difference, sex has several aspects. Sex is a difference that correlates: man and woman
are gendered counterparts (Gen. 2:23). Sex is a difference that unites: “they become one
flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Sex is a difference that generates: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen.
1:28). So, sex is a difference with correlative, unitive, and generative purposes in God’s
creation. But the biblical account gives no indication that the difference of sex, according
to God’s design in creation, places man over woman or makes the husband ruler of the
wife.34
The biblical depiction of creation does not in any way indicate hierarchy of man
over woman or subjection of wife to husband. Such interpretation of the Genesis account
is not a figment of the modern imagination or a reflection of contemporary culture.
Ancient Christian commentary on Genesis affirmed that God created male and female in
equality and mutuality, that God’s original ordering placed man and woman on par and
intended husband and wife to be partners. Chrysostom, in a homily on Genesis, imagines
33
See also Lamb, Prostitutes and Polygamists, 42–44, and Bartlett, Men and Women in Christ, 73–77.
34
See also Bartlett, Men and Women in Christ, 81–85. Some commentators appeal to the order of creation
as grounds for hierarchy in marriage: the man was created before the woman, which puts the man in a
superior position over the woman and indicates that the man was made to lead the woman. As Bartlett
shows, Genesis 2 can also be read in a way that reverses the implication: as humankind’s creation last as
God’s image indicates humankind’s dominion over other creatures (Genesis 1), so the woman’s creation
last as the man’s strong helper indicates the woman’s superiority over the man (Genesis 2).

18
God speaking to Eve: “In the beginning I created you equal in esteem to your husband,
and my intention was that in everything you would share with him as an equal, and just as
I entrusted control of everything to your husband, so I did to you.”35 Augustine, in his
City of God, recognized mutuality and fidelity in partnership as the original state of
marriage in the garden: “Between man and wife there was a faithful partnership based on
love and mutual respect.”36
This ancient view was preserved in the medieval church. Peter Lombard, in his
seminal Four Books of Sentences (12th Century), which remained a touchstone of
scholastic theology and was commented on for centuries to come, explained why God
formed the woman from the man’s side and not from another body part:
But although the woman was made from man for these reasons [stated previously], nevertheless
she was formed not from just any part of his body but from his side, so that it should be shown
that she was created for the partnership of love, lest, if perhaps she had been made from his head,
she should be perceived as set over man in domination; or if from his feet, as if subject to him in
servitude. Therefore, since she was made neither to dominate, nor to serve the man, but as his
partner, she had to be produced neither from his head, nor from his feet, but from his side, so that
he would know that she was to be placed beside himself whom he had learned was taken from his
side.37
According to Lombard, God’s mode of making the woman from the man’s side was
intended to instruct the man that the woman’s proper place was beside him, as his
partner, neither above him as his master nor below him as his servant. In Lombard’s
view, God intended from the beginning that man and woman in marriage are to be equal
partners.38
Now sin enters the story. The first consequence of their eating of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil is that the man and woman see—and cover—their
nakedness. Whereas God had joined the man and the woman into “one flesh,” so that “the
man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:24–25), sin separates

35
Chrysostom, Homily 17 on Genesis, quoted from Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church, 146. Ford
comments: “Indeed, at least on five occasions Chrysostom stated that there was no subjection of woman to
man in Eden—that it was only the Fall which precipitated this ordering” (Women and Men, 146).
36
Augustine, City of God 14.26, 590.
37
Peter Lombard, Sentences Book II, Distinction 18, Chapter 2, 77. See also Sentences Book IV,
Distinction 28, Chapter 4.
38
Finn, “Sex and Marriage in the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” 60, comments that Lombard understood
“marital union” to mean that “husband and wife are companions in a relationship of equals.”

19
and shames them, prompting them to hide their nakedness from each another and hide
themselves from God (Gen. 3:7–8). With the man and the woman separated and shamed
by sin, it is now possible for the man to turn against the woman as her accuser before
God (Gen. 3:9–12). Whereas in the presence of the woman the man had rejoiced, “This at
last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23), now in the presence of God
the man distances himself from her, “The woman whom you gave to be with me…”
(Gen. 3:12). He identifies her, not by her kinship to him (“my bone and flesh”) or by her
partnership with him (“my wife”), but simply by her difference of sex from him (“the
woman”). His singling out her sex in this way, not as a preface to their nuptial union but
as a premise of her legal prosecution, portends a pattern of men abusing women and
accusing “this woman” of sexual sin (cf. Susannah 36–41; John 8:3–11).39 Even before
God judges their sin, sin has altered the relationship between man and woman.
Now God responds to their sin, pronouncing consequences and imposing burdens
(Gen. 3:14–19). Whereas God had pronounced “blessing” on creation, now God
pronounces “curse” on creation: the serpent is cursed on account of his deception and the
ground is cursed on account of the man’s disobedience. Whereas God had commissioned
man and woman to “be fruitful,” “fill the earth,” and “till and keep” the garden, now God
imposes burdens on man and woman: woman’s labor bearing children will increase in
pain, and man’s labor growing food will yield thorn and thistle. For man and woman, as a
result of sin, fulfilling God’s commission will become a difficult task marked by pain and
grief, toil and sweat. Whereas God had commissioned man and woman to “have
dominion” over the earth creatures, God now pronounces that husband and wife will
struggle for dominance over each other: “You will want to control your husband, but he
will dominate you” (Gen. 3:16 NET).40 God’s judgment on sin portends a sin-begotten
competition for power between man and woman in marriage outside the garden.
Is God’s pronouncement to the woman—“your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16 NRSV)—a predictive description of how marriage
will become distorted, or a normative prescription of how marriage should be ordered,
outside the garden, now that sin has entered the story? This, of course, is a long-debated

39
I am reminded also of President William J. Clinton in 1998 disavowing having sexual relations with “that
woman.”
40
See the NET text note to Genesis 3:16.

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and much-disputed question.41 Either way, however, the creation account makes evident
that husband-over-wife hierarchy in marriage is subsequent to, and consequent of, the
fall. Even if this pronouncement were prescriptive, moreover, the biblical narrative makes
evident that a God-prescribed hierarchical ordering of marriage was only provisional—
and, as we will see, has been undone in Christ.
Reading each text in relation to its narrative context thus makes an interpretive
difference. The pattern of mutuality in husband-wife co-regency belongs to God’s blessed
creation and follows God’s ordination. The pattern of hierarchy in husband-over-wife
dominion belongs to a cursed creation and comes as sin’s consequence. Goldingay states
it simply and correctly: “Human disobedience introduces patriarchy into the world.” 42

Monogamy versus Polygamy

As did hierarchy, polygamy appears in the biblical narrative in the aftermath of
sin’s entry into creation. Whereas in the garden “a man…clings to his wife” so that “they
become one flesh” (Gen. 2:23–25), in the land east of Eden “Lamech took two wives”
(Gen. 4:19). Whereas God designs marriage to unite two into one, Lamech redefines
marriage to combine three into one. Polygamy is thus a divergence from God’s design
and a degeneration of marriage. Lamech then makes a double boast: to his wives he says,
“you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me,” and
before God he says, “If Cain is avenged [by God] sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-
sevenfold.” (Gen. 4:23–24; cf. 4:15). Lamech’s pair of boasts suggests that both
polygamous marriage and excessive vengeance are ways of transgressing limits of
created order, both are forms of human grasping beyond what God ordained for human
good.43 Lamech at once perverts God’s design of marriage, remaking marriage in his own
image, and usurps God’s prerogative of vengeance, arrogating authority to his own will.
That patriarchy and polygamy in marriage appear in the biblical narrative in close
succession after sin’s entry into creation and humankind’s expulsion from the garden

41
See Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 55–80, for careful examination of the text and discussion of several
views.
42
Goldingay, Israel’s Life, 366–67. See also Lamb, Prostitutes and Polygamists, 48–50, and Dearman,
“Marriage in the Old Testament,” 55–56.
43
See Goldingay, Genesis, 78–79. Lamb, Prostitutes and Polygamists, 71–72, suggests that Lamech’s
boast to his wives implies a threat of abuse.

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suggests a connection between these deviations from God’s design. Husband ruling over
one wife (patriarchy) gives way to husband ruling over as many wives as he can acquire
(polygamy). Patriarchy and polygamy in marriage are varieties of bitter fruit begotten of
humankind’s eating from the forbidden tree.
As humankind multiplied and filled the earth, humankind multiplied evil “in the
thoughts of their hearts” and the earth was filled with wickedness and violence: the
corruption of marriage begat the corruption of the earth, such that “all flesh had corrupted
its ways upon the earth” (Gen. 6:1–4, 11–12). Despite God’s plan to wipe evil from the
creation by destroying all life on earth, the consequences of corruption repeat in Noah’s
family (Gen. 9:20–27) and persist in Noah’s descendents through Shem, from among
whom God calls Abraham.
The biblical story of Abraham’s family suffices for evidence that these fruits of
sin ripened and multiplied as humankind married and multiplied. Patriarchy and
polygamy in Abraham’s family engendered rivalry, eventuating in violent abuse of
vulnerable members of their households. Abraham the patriarch, married to his half-
sister, Sarah, twice passed off his wife as his sister (half true), to Pharaoh and to
Abimilech, effectively “pimping” Sarah to save himself and possibly subjecting her to
royal rape in Pharaoh’s harem (Gen. 12:10–20; 20:1–18).44 Abraham, at Sarah’s
instigation, took Sarah’s slave-girl, Hagar, as a secondary wife, through whom Sarah
hoped to “obtain children.” But Hagar’s pregnancy elevated Hagar in Abraham’s
household and lowered Sarah in Hagar’s esteem; accusing Abraham of wronging her,
Sarah beat her pregnant rival back into submission as a slave to her mistress (Gen. 16:1–
6). After Isaac was born and weaned, seeing Ishmael as rival to Isaac for Abraham’s
inheritance, Sarah ordered Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael to the wilderness (Gen.
21:1–14).45
Isaac married only Rebekah, but they did not practice mutuality in their marriage.
Exploiting the innate rivalry of twin sons (Gen. 24:22–34), Isaac and Rebekah competed
for dominance in their marriage by using his or her favored son—Isaac by Esau, Rebekah
by Jacob—as proxy against the other. Rebekah succeeded at subverting Isaac’s

44
See Lamb, Prostitutes and Polygamists, 91–95.
45
See Trible, Texts of Terror, 9–29.

22
patriarchal privilege by means of deception, resulting in conflict between Esau and Jacob
(Gen. 27). While Esau took multiple wives, Jacob intended to marry only Rachel but, by
Laban’s deceit, ended up married to Leah and Rachel. Jacob’s polygamy engendered
rivalry which in turn was multiplied by polygamy: Jacob “loved Rachel more than Leah,”
so God gave Leah children while leaving Rachel childless; Rachel, envying Leah, gave
her maid, Bilhah, to Jacob as a secondary wife to bear children for her so that she might
prevail over her sister; Leah, having ceased conceiving, gave her maid, Zilpah, to Jacob
as secondary wife to bear children for her to keep ahead of her sister; Leah, resenting her
sister for having “taken away my husband,” competes with Rachel for Jacob’s affection
(Gen. 29–30). The rivalry of wives spilled over into rivalry of son against father and
brother against brother: Reuben, Leah’s firstborn and Jacob’s oldest, raped Bilhah,
rivaling his father for patriarch status (Gen. 35:22; 49:3–4); Joseph, Rachel’s firstborn
and Jacob’s favorite, is sold by his jealous brothers into slavery (Gen. 37).
Across the biblical narrative, intertwined patterns of patriarchy and polygamy in
marriage are indicators of humankind’s divergence from God’s original design of
mutuality and monogamy in marriage. These fallen patterns were embedded in cultural
practices across the ancient world, as Scripture attests.

Law
Just as properly interpreting biblical narratives in relation to marriage requires
distinguishing between before and after the fall, humankind in the garden and humankind
east of Eden, so also properly interpreting biblical laws of marriage requires drawing a
distinction: between laws that uphold moral standards and draw moral boundaries and
laws that address existing situations that fall short of the moral standards or deviate
outside the moral boundaries, between laws that stipulate what should (not) be and laws
that regulate what is, between apodictic laws and case laws. We will consider two sources
of apodictic law, the Decalogue and the Holiness Code, and several instances of case law.

Apodictic Law
In the Decalogue, the seventh commandment, “You shall not commit adultery”
(Exod. 20:14; cf. Deut. 5:18), is an absolute prohibition of adultery. While the “you” is

23
grammatically masculine, the commandment is addressed to both men and women, as are
the other commandments. Both husbands and wives are responsible for fidelity and
accountable for adultery (cf. Deut. 22:22). The seventh commandment is reinforced by
the tenth commandment: “you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Exod. 20:17; cf.
Deut. 5:21). The seventh commandment prohibits committing adultery with the body; the
tenth commandment prohibits contemplating adultery in the heart. Together these laws
uphold God’s will for complete fidelity in marriage—fidelity to one’s spouse with one’s
whole being (cf. Deut. 6:4–5)—as the moral standard for God’s people. These laws also
establish a moral boundary within the community that guards the integrity of marriages:
you are forbidden to infringe on the marriages of others; anyone married to anyone other
than yourself is off limits to you, as a partner in sex and as an object of desire.46
Although the Decalogue references Genesis only regarding the Sabbath (Exod.
20:11), the commandments concerning marriage presuppose the Genesis account of God
creating man and woman and joining them into “one flesh” as husband and wife (Gen.
2:22–24). This “one flesh” union is an exclusive-of-all-others union: the two joined into
one are restricted to sexual relations with each other and all others are excluded from
sexual relations with either of the two. The Decalogue’s prohibitions of adultery and
coveting thus align with the creational ideal of marriage as a “one flesh” union and
establish that creational ideal of marriage as a moral standard for God’s people.
In the Holiness Code (Lev. 17–26) we find apodictic laws addressed to both
Israelites and non-Israelites residing among Israelites. Among these are various laws
concerning prohibited sexual relations. One set of laws, forbidding sexual relations
among near kin, is headed by a general prohibition: “None of you shall come near anyone
of his own flesh (šĕʾēr bĕśārô ) to uncover nakedness: I am the LORD” (Lev. 18:6 JPS).
The phrase “uncover nakedness” here means “engage in sexual relations.” Subsequent
laws forbid sexual relations with one’s mother, stepmother, sister, half-sister, stepsister,
granddaughter, aunt (father’s sister or mother’s sister), daughter-in-law (son’s wife or
wife’s daughter), sister-in-law (brother’s wife or wife’s sister), and others (Lev. 18:7–18).
While not explicitly mentioned, sexual relations with one’s father, daughter, or brother
are forbidden implicitly by the general prohibition, because they also belong to one’s

46
See Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 345–47.

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“own flesh” (cf. Lev. 21:2). The common thread interlinking these laws is the notion of
the “flesh of one’s flesh” (šĕʾēr bĕśārô ), one’s kinfolk (cf. Lev. 18:12, 13, 17). This
expression echoes the Genesis account of God’s joining the man and woman in marriage:
“Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become
one flesh (lĕ bāśār ʾeḥād )” (Gen. 2:24 JPS). This verbal echo between Leviticus and
Genesis suggests that the holiness laws concerning sexual relations reflect the creation
account of marriage: Israel’s laws forbidding sexual relations with the “flesh of one’s
flesh” derive from God’s institution of marriage as a “one flesh” union. God’s forming
woman from man and joining man and woman in marriage creates the one-flesh of
husband–wife, a new thing in the creation. Husband and wife, by their marriage and
through their offspring, generate a kinship nexus of parents, children, grandchildren,
aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, and so on. Echoing the creation account, then, the
Holiness Code assumes the goodness of man-woman marriage, the holiness of sexual
relations between husband and wife, and the blessing of procreation. The holiness laws
concerning sexual relations acknowledge the sanctity and guard the integrity of the
husband–wife one-flesh union. They also serve to preserve the solidarity of the kinship
nexus generated by their marriage and through their offspring from sexual violation—and
to shield vulnerable members of the family (especially women) from sexual predation by
other members of the family (especially men), a violent reality of a fallen creation
evident in the stories of Jacob’s family (Gen. 35:22; 49:3–4) and David’s family (2 Sam.
13:1–22).47
The Holiness Code includes two further sexual prohibitions relevant to our
discussion. Same-sex sexual relations and human-animal sexual relations are strictly
forbidden. These prohibitions also reflect the creation account. God created male and
female and blessed them (Gen. 1:27–28); God formed man from the ground and woman
from the man and joined man and woman into “one flesh” (Gen. 2:21–25). The evident
pattern of marriage in the creation account, and thus the God-sanctioned form of sexual
relations, is male and female, man and woman. Accordingly, the Holiness Code,

47
See Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 434–443, and Goldingay, Israel’s Life, 414–17. The law forbidding a
man to have sexual relations with his wife during her menstruation (Lev. 18:19) may also serve to shield
women from unwanted sexual advances and thus preserve their well-being from violation (cf. Ezek. 18:6;
22:10–11)—see Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 332–33. On Tamar’s rape by Amnon, in 2 Samuel 13, see
Trible, Texts of Terror, 37–63.

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assuming the sanctity of male-female sexual relations, forbids male-male sexual relations
as an “abomination” (Lev. 18:22).48 God created humankind alone “in the image of God,”
distinguishing humankind from all other creatures, and God blessed each creature kind to
be fruitful and multiply with its own kind (Gen. 1:20–28); God formed the woman from
and for the man, because no suitable partner was found among all the other creatures God
formed from the ground (Gen. 2:18–23). The evident pattern of sexual relations in the
creation account, and thus the God-sanctioned form of sexual relations, is human with
human. Accordingly, the Holiness Code, assuming the sanctity of human-human sexual
relations, forbids human-animal sexual relations as a “perversion” (Lev. 18:23).
By these laws, the Holiness Code assumes the creation account, affirms God’s
institution and sanction of marriage, and upholds the creational pattern of sexual relations
as the moral standard—for both Israelites and non-Israelites, for God’s people and all
nations.49

Case Law
Biblical case laws concerning marriage regulated various situations that arose
occasionally in Israel’s life but that fell short of the creational ideal of man-woman
monogamy or went beyond the bounds set by apodictic laws. Unlike apodictic laws that
are formulated absolutely and apply universally (“You shall not…”), case laws are
premised on conditions and apply circumstantially (“If such and such is the case, then do
such and such”). Case laws concerning marriage assume an existing situation but do not
thereby sanction the situation assumed; in fact, some case laws imply divine disapproval
of the situations they regulate. These laws aim to constrain human deviations from God’s
intention and to limit harmful consequences of irregular situations.50
Biblical case laws concerning marriage address such situations as:
• secondary wives (Exod. 21:7–11; Deut. 21:15–17)—“If he takes another wife to
himself, he shall not…”

48
On the interpretation of this law, see Appendix G.
49
Hence why these laws served as the basis for the Apostolic Decree concerning gentile believers in the
early church—see Appendix H.
50
See Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 186–89, 191–93, 389–405, 461–76, and Lamb, Prostitutes and
Polygamists, 61–62, 146–48.

26
 • divorce (Deut. 24:1–4)—“Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman,
but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her,
and so he writes her a certificate of divorce…”
• widows (Deut. 25:5–10)—“When brothers reside together, and one of them dies
and has no son, the wife of the deceased…”
Such case laws do not supersede apodictic laws. Case laws cannot be used to circumvent
apodictic laws and justify deliberately doing what apodictic laws absolutely forbid. That
is the legal upshot of Jesus’ divorce ruling: “whoever divorces his wife, except for
unchastity, and marries another commits adultery”—that is, you cannot use the case law
regulating divorce to circumvent the commandment forbidding adultery by divorcing
one’s spouse and marrying one’s lover (Matt. 19:3–10). So, case laws that regulate
secondary wives, or divorce, or levirate marriage, and so on, do not undo the moral
standard upheld by apodictic laws, much less endorse choosing to create marital
situations that deviate from the creational ideal.
Biblical case laws acknowledge that actual marital situations can and sometimes
do fall short of the creational ideal of marriage. By regulating rather than simply
condemning such situations, biblical law demonstrates God’s providence in dealing with
humankind’s hardheartedness and waywardness for the sake of God’s purpose and God’s
compassion in protecting the vulnerable among God’s people. Case laws can be adapted
to changing circumstances to better meet basic needs (cf. Exod. 21:2–11; Deut. 15:12–
18). Yet biblical case laws neither alter the creational ideal of marriage nor qualify
apodictic laws regarding marriage. Creation and commandment continue to testify that
God’s will for marriage remains man-woman monogamy.

Wisdom
Despite humankind’s divergences from God’s intention in creation, even despite
Israel’s deviations from God’s will, God does not abandon God’s original design for
marriage. Although biblical case laws regulate existing situations that deviate from or fall
short of the creational ideal, God does not simply concede human sinfulness and
substitute a lesser standard for human conduct. The wisdom writings of the biblical

27
canon, which reflect on God’s way manifest to humankind through creation, reinforce the
creational ideal of marriage as God’s blessed way for humankind.

Psalms
Two wisdom psalms, Psalm 127 and Psalm 128, address marriage and family.
Together they reflect the creational picture of fidelity and fecundity in marriage. They
assume God’s blessing of marriage and affirm that offspring by marriage are blessings
from God: the fruit of the womb is a gift of God, and the blessed one will live to see the
birth of grandchildren (Pss. 127:3–5; 128:3–6; cf. Gen. 1:28). They also imply that
monogamy accords with God’s will for marriage: the “happy” and “blessed” man who
“fears the LORD” and “walks in his ways,” and thus for whom “it shall go well,” has a
“wife”—singular (Ps. 128:1–4; cf. Gen. 2:24). Implicitly, these psalms presuppose the
creational pattern of man and woman as the premise of fidelity and fecundity in marriage.

Proverbs
The book of Proverbs expressly approves the positive picture of marriage in
Genesis: marriage is a “good thing,” a means by which we receive God’s “favor” (Prov.
18:22). It also affirms, by implication, mutuality and monogamy in marriage.
Mutuality between husbands and wives in marriage is affirmed implicitly in the
basic premise of Proverbs: the “fear of the LORD” is “the beginning of knowledge.” We
learn first to fear God from our parents: “Hear, my child, your father’s instruction, and do
not reject your mother’s teaching.” The wise teaching of parents, when taken to heart, is a
“fair garland” to crown one’s head with beauty and a map to guide one’s feet into right
paths (Prov. 1:7–9; 6:20-22). Notice that a child should listen to both “father’s
instruction” and “mother’s teaching.” Proverbs implies that both fathers and mothers
have authority and responsibility to teach God’s ways to children and that children are to
be respectful and mindful of both fathers and mothers. That husband and wife share
authority and responsibility in the household to teach the ways of God is implied by
God’s basic commandment to Israel: “Hear, O Israel: The L ORD is our God, the LORD
alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.

28
Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home…write them on
the doorposts of our house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:4–9). This commandment to keep
God’s law in one’s heart, to teach God’s law to one’s children, and to inscribe God’s law
on one’s house is given to all “Israel”—and thus, implicitly, to women as well as men, to
wives as well as husbands, to mothers as well as fathers, to daughters as well as sons.
Proverbs reflects this commandment and thus reaffirms the mutual teaching authority of
husbands and wives in the household.
Monogamy of husband and wife in marriage is also affirmed implicitly at several
places in Proverbs. Proverbs affirms the God-blessed goodness of marriage in this way:
“He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the L ORD” (Prov. 18:22).
The man who finds “a good thing” and thereby “obtains favor” from God is the man who
finds “a wife”—singular. Likewise, when praising the worth and virtues of the “capable
wife” (NRSV) or “wife of noble character” (NET), Proverbs puts it this way: “Who can
find a wife of noble character?” “A wife”—singular. This ode to the virtuous wife speaks
throughout in the singular: “she” and “her” (Prov. 31:10–31). Proverbs also reinforces
monogamy in marriage by its exhortation to marital fidelity. Addressed to men who
might be tempted to stray from the straight path, this exhortation warns them to keep
away from the “strange” (KJV) or “loose” (NRSV) or “adulterous” (NET) woman,
involvement with whom will lead down the road to ruin and death (Prov. 5:1–14, 20–23).
Instead of searching for love in too many faces and all the wrong places, return home to
your wife: “Drink water from your own cistern…rejoice in the wife of your youth…may
you be intoxicated always by her love” (Prov. 5:15–19). Notice again: take joy and be
satisfied in “the wife”—singular—that you married. The way of God that will truly
satisfy and lead to life is the path of fidelity to one wife. The biblical wisdom that
monogamous marriage accords with God’s blessing thus presupposes and reaffirms the
creational pattern.51

Ecclesiastes
This wisdom book considers the “vanity” (KJV/NRSV) or “futility” (NET) or
“meaninglessness” (NIV) of mortal life “under the sun” (Eccl. 1:2–3). Among the adages

51
In fact, the plural “wives” never appears in Proverbs.

29
by which the author advises us how to live well in God’s world, we find this: “Enjoy life
with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the
sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun”
(Eccl. 9:9).
This adage implies several things about marriage. First, in speaking of marriage as
one’s “portion in life” for “all the days” that “are given you,” the author connects
marriage to God’s providence: the enjoyment of marriage—like the enjoyments of food
and drink, work and wealth (cf. Eccl. 2:24–5; 3:9–13; 5:18–20; 9:7–8)—is a good gift of
the Creator. Second, God’s gift of marriage provides husband and wife the goods of
partnership and pleasure amid the “toil” of this life “under the sun.” This implies that
marriage remains a good of God’s providence even amid a fallen world where we must
labor in pain, and sometimes in vain, for daily bread (cf. Gen. 3:17–19). Third, the
marriage that God has given us to enjoy is monogamous and permanent. The author
commends enjoying life with “the wife”—singular—“whom you love.” And this
enjoyment is intended by God “all the days” of one’s life that God has given one to live.
The picture of marriage in this adage is “one wife for life.” Ecclesiastes thus confirms the
creational pattern of marriage and affirms the God-given good of marriage east of Eden.52

Song of Songs
Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) paints a poetic picture of marriage according
to God’s original design. It “reclaims the garden in a world of thorns” 53 and even
represents marriage’s “return to Eden” from humankind’s sojourn in exile east of Eden.54
First, Song of Songs assumes throughout the God-created goodness of marriage
and sex. The nuptial pairing of lover and beloved reflects the marriage pattern of the
creation account: male and female, man and woman (Gen. 1:28; 2:23–24). The sensual
delight that lover and beloved take in each other’s bodily beauty, and the sexual desire
that draws lover and beloved toward one another, are portrayed positively in images of
fruit, flower, and fragrance. The lover’s and beloved’s expressions of delight and desire
recall the man’s ecstatic exclamation in the garden when first beholding the woman:

52
See also Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 177–78.
53
See Miles, Redemption of Love, 137–65.
54
See Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 545–632.

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“This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 3:23). The frankness of
lover and beloved in speaking their yearning for one another, and the vulnerability of
lover and beloved in revealing themselves to one another, reflect the innocence and
intimacy of the original pair: “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not
ashamed” (Gen. 3:25).
Second, Song of Songs depicts the relation between lover and beloved as
exclusive and mutual. Twice she declares that each belongs to the other and, by
implication, to no one else:
“My beloved is mine and I am his” (Song 2:16);
“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song 6:3).
Notice the symmetry of these verses: he is hers and she is his; she is his and he is hers.
This poetic symmetry indicates a relational mutuality: he belongs to her in the same way
she belongs to him; she belongs to him in the same way he belongs to her. The mutual
relation between the pair is reflected in the poetic dynamic of the Song: the back and
forth of speech and action, lover and beloved each speaking to and seeking for the other,
reflects a mutuality between man and woman. The Song thus depicts marriage as an
exclusive, mutual belonging of husband and wife, according to the creational pattern.
This mutual belonging of lover and beloved even suggests a reversal of the curse
of Genesis 3. A third time she declares her belonging to her beloved, but with a variation:
“I am my beloved’s, and his desire (teshuqâh) is for me” (Song 7:10). This verse echoes
Genesis: “To the woman [God] said, ‘…your desire (teshuqâh) shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.’” (Gen. 3:16). Her declaration effectively reverses God’s
pronouncement: the man’s desire for his wife replaces the woman’s desire for her
husband; their mutual belonging replaces the husband ruling over his wife. Indeed, far
from presenting a hierarchy of man/husband over woman/wife, the Song emphasizes her
role in relation to him: she takes initiative toward him from the beginning, she makes the
declarations of mutual belonging, she speaks most of the lines. The Song’s three-fold
declaration of marital love in mutual belonging of husband and wife, culminating in a
reversal of the curse that husband would rule over wife, signifies a redemption of
marriage from the fall—a return of the man and woman to the garden that reverses their
exile from the garden (cf. Song 4:16–5:1; 6:2–3). As we will see, this reversal of curse

31
and redemption of marriage, figured by the lover and beloved of the Song of Songs, is
fulfilled by Christ and the church.
Third, Song of Songs portrays marriage as the enduring fidelity of undying
commitment. In lines that could be spoken by either lover or beloved, the poet voices a
vow that venerates love: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for
love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging
flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for
love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned” (Song 8:6–7). These verses,
often read at weddings, bespeak a testament inscribed in flesh that cannot be erased, a
bond of two that cannot be broken, a commitment that remains permanent through all
things, a fidelity that cannot be bought at any price, a promise that cannot be exchanged
for the promise of another. This vow of fidelity expresses the enduring, indivisible union
of a husband clinging steadfastly to his wife and a wife to her husband as “one flesh”
(Gen. 2:24).
The poetic pair—lover and beloved—evince the creational-covenantal form of
marriage: unitive of the sexes, mutual between spouses, exclusive of all others, enduring
through all life. Song of Songs affirms and celebrates the God-ordained pattern of man-
woman mutual-monogamous marriage.55
Read as a whole, the wisdom writings of the biblical canon paint a beautiful
picture of marriage according to its true form and good purpose as created and ordered by
God. God has ordained marriage to be the monogamous union of man and woman. God
has blessed marriage for the purposes of partnership of husband and wife, pleasure
between husband and wife, and procreation of children. God has intended marriage of
husband and wife for mutual partnership within the household and faithful partnership
throughout life. The wisdom writings affirm marriage as God’s good gift in creation on
which God’s blessing continues even during humankind’s sojourn in exile east of Eden.
Biblical wisdom thus upholds the creational ideal of marriage as a moral standard for
humankind, even after the fall and outside the garden.

55
Some commentators claim that Song of Songs, because it refers throughout to lover and beloved rather
than husband and wife, affirms and celebrates sexual union outside marriage. Yet the Song repeatedly
affirms the virtue of patience in love’s waiting for the right time (Song 2:7; 3:5)—and follows those
affirmations of patience with the celebration of a wedding (Song 3:6–11), after which he calls her “my
bride” (Song 4:10–12).

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Jesus
With his ruling on divorce, Jesus upheld the creation account as revealing God’s
will for marriage and establishing the moral standard of marriage (Matt. 19:3–9; Mark
10:2–12).56 Jesus’ citation and application of Genesis to the question of divorce carries
several implications for our understanding of marriage.
First, Jesus read Genesis 1–2 as a unified story evincing the fundamental form of
marriage that is ordained by God and grounded in the order of creation: “the two” of
“male and female” joined by God into “one flesh” (Matt. 19:4–6; Mark 10:6–8; cf. Gen.
1:27; 2:24). Second, Jesus’ reading of Genesis and ruling on divorce implies that God’s
creational ordering of marriage establishes a moral standard for marriage, a standard
instituted by God’s word from the beginning that God’s will upholds in effect through all
eras of salvation history: a standard that endures even beyond God’s exile of humankind
from the garden and destruction of life by flood, beyond God’s call of and promise to
Abraham and Sarah, beyond Israel’s enslavement in Egypt and God’s liberation of Israel,
beyond Israel’s exile in Babylon and God’s redemption of Israel—and, with the apostles’
remembrance of Jesus’ teaching in the early church, beyond the incarnation, resurrection,
and ascension of Jesus and the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. Third, Jesus’ citation of
the creation account to preface his ruling on divorce, and his injunction against divorce-
remarriage as a violation of the commandment against adultery, evidences how Jesus
interpreted the Torah: Jesus distinguished the creation account of marriage, which he
interpreted as revealing God’s will for marriage, from the case law on divorce, which he
interpreted as a concession on account of human hardheartedness; Jesus subordinated the
case law conceding divorce to the apodictic law forbidding adultery; Jesus recognized the
creation account as the ultimate precedent for interpreting and applying marriage laws,
giving authority to was so “from the beginning of creation” over “from the beginning it
was not so.”
Jesus’ divorce ruling carries implications for the two marriage matters—mutuality
and monogamy—that we have been tracking across the biblical canon. First, according to

56
The discussion of Jesus’ teachings on marriage in this appendix assumes the examination of Jesus’
teachings on marriage in Chapter 4.

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Mark, Jesus’ ruling is symmetrical—the same for husband as for wife: “Whoever
divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces
her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11–12). Husband and
wife are equally accountable and have reciprocal responsibility under the commandment
against adultery. This symmetry regarding divorce and adultery implies a mutuality in
marriage: marriage requires mutual commitment of husband and wife to fidelity. Second,
Jesus’ divorce ruling implicitly ruled out a particular form of polygamy: having multiple
spouses by having them in succession, by means of marriage–divorce–remarriage,
violates the commandment; serial monogamy is adultery. Jesus’ ruling thus implies that
marital union is to be mutual and monogamous.
By his “astonishing other teaching on marriage,” as James Ware describes it,
Jesus also confirmed the integral connection of marriage to God’s prolific purpose in
creation (Matt. 22:23–33; Mark 12:18–27; Luke 20:27–40). Although Jesus does not
explicitly cite God’s commission, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen.
1:28), his response to the question concerning marriage and the resurrection implicitly
assumes the procreational purpose of marriage. Indeed, the procreational purpose of
marriage is the (theo-)logical premise of Jesus’ argument in Luke’s Gospel. Ware,
correctly, comments:
But in Jesus’ response to the Sadducees in Luke’s Gospel, the procreative purpose of matrimony is
not merely implicit, it is the unmistakable foundation of his argument. Apart from this premise,
the logic of Jesus’ argument would break down. According to the Lord’s line of reasoning,
marriage exists for a reproductive purpose, and since, following the resurrection, reproduction will
cease, marriage will also cease. The procreative purpose of marriage is therefore a clear aspect of
Jesus’ teaching in this passage.57
As Ware observes, Jesus’ teaching on marriage in this text not only confirms the
procreative function of marriage ordained by God in creation, but also assumes the
creational ideal that marriage is a male-female union and that sexual union is for marriage
only.
When teaching on marriage, Jesus explicitly cited the creation account and
implicitly upheld the creational ideal concerning the form and function of marriage. This
should not surprise us. Jesus said that he came “not to abolish but to fulfill” the law and

57
Ware, “Whose Wife Shall She Be?”, 41.

34
the prophets: to complete, not render obsolete, God’s creational purposes; to fulfill, not
annul, God’s covenantal promises. Thus, Jesus said, “not one letter…will pass from the
law until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:17–18). According to Jesus, until all is
accomplished—until God’s purposes in creation and promises of covenant are completed
in Christ, until God’s kingdom comes “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:9–10)—the
pattern and purpose of marriage ordained by God from the beginning of creation—“the
two” of “male and female” joined by God into “one flesh,” blessed by God for the sake of
filling the earth with the image of God and ordering the earth according to the wisdom of
God—remains the moral standard for God’s people.

Paul
Paul’s teachings on marriage have often been used, by conservatives, to buttress a
hierarchical view of marriage—and have often been accused, by progressives, of
entrenching patriarchy in the church’s view of marriage. It can be well-argued, however,
that both conservatives and progressives have often misunderstood Paul’s views of
gender and marriage. As we will see, Paul viewed marriage in relation to both God’s
good design in creation and Christ’s work of redemption. Consequently, Paul’s teachings
on marriage cut sharply against the cultural grain concerning gender relations, marital
fidelity, and domestic order.
We should begin by noting Paul’s theological view of marriage. Assuming that
Paul is the primary source of the apostolic instruction in 1 Timothy, we see there that
Paul affirmed that marriage is a God-given good to be received with thanksgiving and
sanctified by prayer. Addressing the “profane chatter and contradictions” of the
proponents of “what is falsely called knowledge (gnōsis)” by which “some have missed
the mark as regards faith” (1 Tim. 6:20–21), Paul wrote: “They forbid marriage and
demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by
those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and
nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by
God’s word and by prayer” (1 Tim. 4:3–5). Paul’s affirmations that “God created”
marriage and that “everything created by God is good,” against the gnostic-like views of
some early Christians, implies that Paul—as had biblical law and wisdom, as had Jesus—

35
viewed marriage according to the creation account of Genesis and thus believed that
marriage is a God-blessed good. It implies also that Paul maintained, consistent with the
biblical witness we have reviewed, that God’s word, which ordained and blessed
marriage in the garden, continues to sanction marriage as holy even east of Eden.
Paul also addressed practical matters concerning husbands and wives in the
personal circumstances and social structures in which they continued living after
becoming believers and getting baptized. Paul’s instructions on marriage, however, do
not simply reinforce the cultural patterns of the Greco-Roman household. We will
carefully examine Paul’s teachings on marriage, with particular attention to monogamy
and mutuality, in two texts, 1 Corinthians 7 and Ephesians 5.

Monogamy and Mutuality in 1 Corinthians 7

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul, while affirming the ascetic practice of sexual abstinence
for the sake of spiritual devotion (1 Cor. 7:1, 7), also affirmed marriage as a means of
maintaining chastity: “because of cases of sexual immorality (porneias), each man should
have his own wife and each woman her own husband” (1 Cor. 7:2). Paul’s instruction
implies, from the start, that marriage is a good and that monogamy is the norm of
marriage.
First, by exhorting believers to marry as a moral alternative to sexual immorality
(cf. 1 Cor. 7:8–9), Paul upheld the goodness and holiness of marriage. Contrary to certain
views within western Christianity (e.g., Augustine), Paul here does not merely concede
sex in marriage as a lesser good than celibacy or a lesser evil than fornication. In Paul’s
view, husband and wife, by their sexual intercourse in the fidelity of marriage, relate
rightly to one another and stand holy before God: they honor their bodies as belonging to
Christ by baptism, respect their bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit, and “glorify God”
in their bodies (1 Cor. 6:12–20). Second, Paul’s matched pair of phrases—“each man his
own wife” and “each woman her own husband” (1 Cor. 7:2)—indicate that in his mind
conjugal fidelity is restricted to the one-and-one of man-and-woman. Paul’s injunction
against porneia and exhortation to conjugal fidelity, by joint implication, thus constitute a
prohibition of polygamy. Paul’s affirmation that marriage is a good and that monogamy
is the norm of marriage accords with the biblical account of creation.

36
 Paul instruction affirmed, further, that husband and wife have mutual authority in
marital relations and reciprocal responsibility for marital fidelity. The wife should honor
her obligation to her husband and the husband should honor his obligation to his wife; the
husband has authority over (exousiadzei) his wife’s body and the wife has authority over
(exousiadzei) her husband’s body (1 Cor. 7:3–4). If either husband or wife wishes to
abstain from conjugal relations for sake of spiritual devotion, this should not be done by
unilateral decision but only by mutual agreement, so not to defraud one’s spouse of what
is owed in marriage (1 Cor. 7:5).
Again, Paul’s emphasis on mutuality and reciprocity between husband and wife
reflects God’s intention in the created order. Indeed, Paul’s rule for marriage—
monogamy of husband and wife, mutual authority over spousal bodies, reciprocal regard
for spousal needs, making decisions by mutual agreement—seems an elaboration of the
biblical image of marriage as “one flesh” union in Genesis and a reflection on the
poetical depiction of lover and beloved in Song of Songs.58 Paul’s rule of marriage—that
each man should have his own wife and each woman should have her own husband; that
the husband should give his wife her conjugal rights and the wife should give her
husband his conjugal rights; that the husband has authority over his wife’s body and the
wife has authority over her husband’s body (1 Cor. 7:2–4)—expresses the ethical
entailments of husband and wife joined as “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24) and mirrors the poetic
symmetry of mutual belonging of lover and beloved (Song 2:16; 6:3). Despite a cultural
environment in which sexual immorality was socially accepted and even expected, Paul
upholds the creational ideal of man-woman mutual-monogamous marriage as the moral
norm for Christians.
Concerning both conjugal relations and devotional practices, Paul rejects
hierarchical authority of husband over wives and unilateral power by husbands apart from
wives. Instead, Paul depicts husbands and wives relating in terms of reciprocal
rights/duties, equal authority, and mutual agreement in both sexual and spiritual spheres
of marriage. This pattern continues throughout 1 Corinthians 7, Paul’s most extended
treatment of marriage. Across this chapter, Paul repeatedly addresses husbands and
wives, men and women in symmetrical terms. In every matter Paul discusses—

58
See Ruden, Paul among the People, 107–8, and Westfall, Paul and Gender, 195–96.

37
concerning monogamy, conjugal rights/duties, marital authority, widows and widowers,
divorcing believers, believers married to unbelievers, betrothed believers, whether to
marry or not marry—he gives command or counsel the same to husbands as to wives,
elaborates rights and responsibilities the same for women as for men (cf. 1 Cor. 7:2–4, 8,
10–11, 12–16, 25–28, 32–34).59 Anthony Bartlett summarizes the cumulative effect of
Paul’s teaching: “With twelve blows, the hammer of 1 Corinthians 7 breaks into pieces
the rock of marital hierarchy.”60
Paul’s depiction of marriage was echoed by early church teaching. In the late
second or early third century, Tertullian, writing to his wife, described Christian marriage
in these terms:
What words can describe the happiness of that marriage which the church unites, the offering
strengthens, the blessing seals, the angels proclaim, and the Father declares valid?...What a bond is
this: two believers who share one hope, one desire, one discipline, the same service! The two are
brother and sister, fellow servants. There is no distinction of spirit or flesh, but truly they are two
in one flesh (Gen. 2:24; Mark 10:8). Where there is one flesh, there is also one spirit. Together
they pray, together they prostrate themselves, together they fast, teaching each other, exhorting
each other, supporting each other.61
Like Paul, Tertullian emphasizes reciprocity, equality, and mutuality in both sexual and
spiritual spheres of marriage.
Paul’s emphasis on reciprocity, equality, and mutuality between husband and
wife, however, upended the Greco-Roman cultural norms of marriage and sexuality.
Sarah Ruden writes: “The language of equality here in I Corinthians…rebels against the
unmitigated chauvinistic attitudes Paul would have found in Greco-Roman
households…This kind of evenhandedness could result only from a huge wrench away
from the past.”62 Roman custom and law afforded the husband greater liberty in sexuality
and thus demanded of him lesser responsibility for fidelity than the wife. A Roman
husband had sexual access to slaves (male and female) inside the household and

59
See Bartlett, Men and Women in Christ, 22–26. This symmetry in Paul’s treatment of marriage mirrors
the symmetry of Jesus’ ruling on divorce (cf. Mark 10:11–12).
60
Bartlett, Men and Women in Christ, 28.
61
Tertullian, To His Wife 8, cited from Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, 38.
62
Ruden, Paul among the People, 97–98. See also Westfall, Paul and Gender, 202–3.

38
prostitutes (male and female) outside the household.63 This cultural norm is implied in
Augustine’s anecdote about his mother, Monica, who was raised in a Christian family but
was married to a non-Christian husband, whom she sought to convert by her virtue: “She
bore with his infidelities and never had any quarrel with her husband on this account. For
she looked forward to your mercy coming upon him, in hope that, as he came to believe
in you, he might become chaste.”64 In Roman society, the husband’s sexual liberty with
female slaves or prostitutes was not considered adultery because, although infidelity to
his wife, it did not deprive another free man of his conjugal rights with his wife or defy
another man’s patriarchal authority over his wife. Nor was it considered dishonorable
conduct (stuprum) because, under Roman law, prostitutes and slaves did not possess a
public honor that could be violated.
Paul, by contrast, repudiated the husband’s sexual liberty outside marriage
because it deprives his wife of her conjugal rights and defies his wife’s authority over his
body. By his sexual relations outside marriage—whether with the wife of another man, or
a mistress in another city, or a slave in the household, or a prostitute at the brothel—a
husband commits adultery against his own wife. Moreover, by asserting his sexual liberty
with prostitutes (or slaves or mistresses, we might add), the husband violates the body of
Christ of which he is a member and pollutes his own body as a temple of the Holy Spirit
(1 Cor. 6:12–20). Indeed, Paul censured all extra-marital sexual relations, by either
spouse, as “immorality” (porneia; 1 Cor. 7:2). In contrast to the double standard of
Greco-Roman society, Paul explicitly and effectively held the husband to the same
standard—mutual fidelity, complete chastity—as the wife.65 Ruden registers the Greco-
Roman reaction: “The demand for faithfulness now applied equally to both men and
women—a real shocker.”66

63
On the sexual liberty of free males and the double standard of sexual morality in the Roman era, see
Harper, From Shame to Sin, 37–70, and Fox, Pagans and Christians, 340–47.
64
Augustine, Confessions 9.19.
65
To gauge the originality of Paul’s contribution to Christian ethics, consider that the first century Didache,
while prohibiting adultery, pederasty, and porneia for all believers (cf. 2.2; 5.1), did not explicitly address,
much less directly challenge, the double standard. See Milavec, Didache, 129–31, 135–37.
66
Ruden, Paul among the People, 105. As we will see in Appendix I, Paul’s revolutionary rejection of the
double standard correlates with his sweeping definition of porneia as encompassing all sexual relations
outside man-woman monogamy.

39
 The far-reaching implications of Paul’s teaching, which ran counter to cultural
custom and imperial law, were not completely lost on later generations of Christians. The
marriage laws of classical Rome had permitted divorce by mutual consent without need
for justifying cause. In republican Rome, the marriage laws required some justification
for divorce to be honorable. After Christianity was tolerated and then privileged by
imperial Rome, “Christian” emperors reformed the Roman law while retaining the double
standard. In the fourth century, Constantine reformed the Roman law of divorce,
restricting divorce to just causes and penalizing spouses for unjustified divorce. Yet
Constantine’s reform of the divorce law preserved the double standard of Roman society:
the man could divorce his wife, but a woman could not divorce her husband, for cause of
adultery. A century later, the Eastern emperor Theodosius II further reformed the divorce
law, narrowing the inequality between men and women yet preserving a double standard:
a man could divorce his wife for any act of infidelity; a wife could divorce her husband,
not for any act of infidelity, but only for adultery. This double standard in the divorce law
reflected the double standard of sexual liberty: for a Roman wife, every infidelity is
adultery; for a Roman husband, only infidelity with a married woman is adultery.67
Christian theologians of the fourth century, in both West and East, rejected the
double standard of sexual chastity, distinguishing the law of God from the law of Rome,
appealing to both Jesus and Paul. In the Christian West, “The Latin Fathers, for the most
part, categorically rejected this double standard.”68 Lactantius, in the early fourth century,
repudiated the double standard of adultery in his apologetic work, Divine Institutes,
addressed to a non-Christian audience. Appealing implicitly to Jesus’ citation of Genesis
in his ruling on divorce, Lactantius argued that the divine law of marriage overrules the
double standard of adultery despite the human law of divorce:
…contrary to what is maintained in secular law, it is not true that only the wife who has another
man is an adulteress, while the husband is not guilty of adultery even if he has several other

67
See Brundage, Law, Sex, and Society, 29–32, and Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church, 46–54.
Roman law defined adultery differently with respect to the wife and the husband: a married woman
commits adultery by having sexual relations with any man not her husband; a man, married or unmarried,
commits adultery by having sexual relations with a married woman not his wife. Under Roman law, a man,
married or unmarried, who has sexual relations with an unmarried woman commits not adultery but
fornication (stuprum), unless the woman is a slave or prostitute (with whom a free man, married or
unmarried, may have sexual relations).
68
Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church, 122.

40
 women. Rather, the divine law joins two people in marriage—joins them, that is, in one body—in
such a way that whichever partner divides the union of one body is counted as an adulterer. 69
Jerome, in the later fourth century, likewise differentiated “the laws of Caesar” from “the
laws of Christ”—and, appealing to the laws of Christ as transmitted through the teaching
of Paul, argued that, for the church, a single standard of sexual chastity applies equally to
both spouses: “Whatever commandment has been given to men must apply also to
men…Among us, what is forbidden to women is equally forbidden to men, and each is
under the same obligation to the other.” 70
Augustine, in the late fourth and early fifth century, repeatedly protested the
double standard in his sermons. Preaching on the ten commandments, Augustine chided
husbands for their inconsistency in chastity, implying that the prohibition of adultery
applies to husband as much as to wife: “You are told, You shall not commit adultery (Ex
20:14), that is, do not go to any other woman except your wife. But what you do is
demand this duty from your wife, while declining to pay this duty to your wife. And
while you ought to lead your wife in virtue (chastity is a virtue, you know), you collapse
under one assault of lust. You want your wife to conquer; you yourself lie there,
conquered.”71 Augustine went on to explicitly reject the double standard of Roman
culture as an unjust law borne of human error: “It is not divine truth that makes the man
seem more innocent in what is equally sinful, but human wrongheadedness.” He then
imagined a wife reminding her husband of the Christian standard of chastity in marriage:
“We are Christians. Give me the same as you require of me. I owe you fidelity, you owe
me fidelity, we both owe Christ fidelity.” 72 Augustine’s emphasis on mutual fidelity of
husband and wife parallels Paul at 1 Corinthians 7.
In a Lenten sermon on sexual ethics, Augustine addressed catechumens and
baptized, spouses, singles, and celibates. He advised married men to hold themselves to
the same expectation of chastity which they demand of their wives: “Those of you who
are married, keep yourselves faithful to your wives. Pay them what you require of them.
Husband, you require your wife to be chaste; give her an example how to be so, not just a
lecture…you yourself should travel the road on which you want her to follow.” He then
69
Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6.23, cited from Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church, 123.
70
Jerome, Epistle 77 3, cited from Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church, 124
71
Augustine, Sermon 9.3, in Essential Sermons, 28.
72
Augustine, Sermon 9.4, in Essential Sermons, 29.

41
advised single men that have been baptized and commune at the Lord’s table to maintain
chastity before marriage: “if you intend to marry wives, keep yourselves for your wives.
As you want them to come to you, so they in turn should be able to find you…You are
looking for an undefiled wife, be undefiled yourself. You want her to be pure, don’t be
impure yourself.”73 Augustine’s advice implicitly rejected the double standard for all
men, married or single.
In an Easter octave sermon, citing Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 6 against
baptized believers uniting sexually with prostitutes, Augustine chastised married men
with mistresses, emphatically repudiating the double standard: “If you have a wife and
another woman sleeps with you, whoever that one is, she’s a whore. But perhaps she’s
faithful to you, and knows no other man but you alone…So while she is chaste, why are
you fornicating? If she does with one, why must you have two? You’re not allowed to,
not allowed to, not allowed to.” 74 Augustine thus contrasted the adultery of this unfaithful
husband with the relative fidelity of his mistress: with respect to the moral law she plays
the part of a prostitute, but in their relationship she’s the chaste one and he’s the
fornicator; while she is loyal to him, he is disloyal to both her and his wife.
In a sermon to the newly baptized, Augustine articulated a single standard of
chastity for all Christians, for men and women, single and married: “keep yourselves
chaste, whether in marriage, or in total continence. Each one of you, pay what you have
vowed. If you haven’t got wives, it is permissible for you to marry, but only women who
haven’t got husbands still alive. Women who haven’t got husbands are permitted to
marry, but only men who haven’t got wives still alive. If you have got wives, don’t do
anything bad apart from your wives. Give them what you demand from them. They owe
faithfulness to you, you owe faithfulness to them. The husband ought to be faithful to his
wife, the wife to her husband, both of them to God.” 75
In the Christian East, Greek theologians also rejected the double standard of
Roman law. Gregory of Nazianzus, in the later fourth century, used a homily on Matthew
19 as an occasion to chastise his male hearers for upholding an unfair law of marriage

73
Augustine, Sermon 132.2, in Essential Sermons, 204.
74
Augustine, Sermon 224.3, in Essential Sermons, 282.
75
Augustine, Sermon 260, in Essential Sermons, 314.

42
and double standard of chastity that treated husbands and wives unequally. 76 John
Chrysostom, a generation later, frequently cited Paul’s teaching at 1 Corinthians 7 in
order to emphasize, over against cultural custom and secular law, the equal roles and
responsibilities of husband and wife for avoiding immorality and maintaining chastity in
Christian marriage. In a sermon on marriage, Chrysostom, citing divine law against
human law, explicitly repudiated the double standard:
I realize that many people think it is adultery only when one corrupts a married woman. But I say
that if a married man treats wickedly and wantonly an unmarried woman, even a prostitute or a
servant girl, this act is adultery. The charge of adultery is determined not only by the status of the
person wronged but also by that of the wrongdoer.
Do not tell me about the laws of the unbelievers, which drag the woman caught in
adultery into court and exact a penalty, but do not demand a penalty from the married men who
have corrupted servant girls. I will read to you the law of God, which is equally severe with the
woman and the man and which calls the deed adultery.77
Chrysostom, quoting 1 Corinthians 7, emphasized the “great measure of equality”
between husband and wife concerning conjugal fidelity: “where chastity and holiness are
at stake, the husband has no greater privilege than the wife.”78 In a homily on 1
Corinthians 7, Chrysostom reiterated the equality of husband and wife in conjugal
fidelity: “Husband and wife are equally responsible for the honor of their marriage bed.”
He even extended mutuality and reciprocity in marriage to matters of money and
property: “Listen carefully, all married men and women: if you cannot call your body
your own, then you certainly cannot call your money your own.” 79 Drawing from Paul’s
teaching, Chrysostom’s preaching pushed against the cultural customs and legal norms on
sex and marriage of his time.80

76
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 37.6–7, in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. 2, Vol. 7, 339–
40.
77
Chrysostom, Sermon on Marriage, in On Marriage and Family Life, 86.
78
Chrysostom, Sermon on Marriage, in On Marriage and Family Life, 87–88.
79
Chrysostom, Homily 19 on 1 Corinthians, in On Marriage and Family Life, 26. Ford, Women and Men,
174, elaborates: “For Chrysostom, husbands and wives are to be mutually subject to each other in three
specific realms: in spiritual instruction and exhortation [to virtue], in their sexual relations, and their
attitudes towards their possessions.”
80
See also Chrysostom, Homily 5 on 1 Thessalonians, in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. 1,
Vol. 13, 344–47. On Chrysostom’s attempt to reform the double standard, see Harper, Shame to Sin, 161–
67. Stark, Rise of Christianity, 103–15, cites rejection of the double standard and of female infanticide, and
emphasis on spousal equality and marital fidelity, as factors that made Christianity attractive to women in
the early centuries of the church.

43
 Head and Body in Ephesians 5
In Ephesians, Paul used the Greco-Roman cultural form of the household code to
instruct members of Christian households (Eph. 5:21–33).81 Paul’s household code
exhibits emphases that align with God’s creational design and cut across the cultural
grain, but it sets the whole household in the context of Christ. Paul again reaffirmed the
creational order, citing Genesis, that marriage is monogamous man-woman union: “the
two will become one flesh” (Eph. 5:31). The “one flesh” of husband and wife, Paul
elaborated, is a “mystery” that figures the union of Christ and the church (Eph. 5:32).
Now, the Greco-Roman household was a hierarchical order. This domestic
ordering placed the adult free male—the husband/father/master—at the head of the
household, to whom the wife, children, and slaves were subject and owed obedience. The
household was ordered under the rights of the paterfamilias, who ruled with authority
over wife, children, and slaves. This is the social arrangement that readers and hearers of
Paul’s letter would have known as normal—and in which most early believers would
have continued living after being baptized.
Paul addressed his readers and hearers in the familiar terms of the household
code: husbands and wives, fathers and children, masters and slaves. Paul ranked the
husband/father/master as “head” and placed wife, children, and slaves in the position of
“subject.” In speaking of husband and wife, Paul even affirmed husband as “head” and
wife as “subject” in analogy to Christ and the church: as Christ is “head” of the church,
so the husband is “head” of the wife; as the church is “subject” to Christ, so the wife is
“subject” to the husband (Eph. 5:22–24). It thus appears that Paul has appealed to Christ
to solidify the hierarchical household of Greco-Roman culture.
These initial observations prompt an important question: Does Paul, by using the
Greco-Roman cultural form of the household code to elaborate a domestic order for
Christian households, effectively encode hierarchy and subjection as the norms of
Christian marriage—and thus implicitly cast the nuptial figure of Christ and the church in
the mold of patriarchy?

81
For examination of and reflection on Paul’s “household code” in Ephesians, see Bartlett, Men and
Women in Christ, 31–68; Bristow, What Paul Really Said about Women, 31–47; Keener, Paul, Women, and
Wives, 133–224; Miles, Redemption of Love, 83–112; Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 224–47; Yoder
Neufeld, Ephesians, 253–89; Westfall, Paul and Gender, 55–59, 92–95, 100–2, 162–66.

44
 Despite appearances, Paul does not simply reinforce the ranks, roles, and rules of
the hierarchical household in the name of Christ. Indeed, several features of Paul’s code
show signs of intentional modification of the Greco-Roman moral tradition.82 Paul
addresses first the household members that, socially speaking, occupy inferior
positions—wives before husbands, children before parents, slaves before masters; this
implies a reversal of the conventional ordering of superior/inferior in domestic
relationships.83 Paul addresses women, children, and slaves as moral agents capable of
exercising self-command; this implies that they are not mere subjects of the
husband/father/master, acting only according to his command. Paul assigns reciprocal
obligations to wives/husbands, children/fathers, and masters/slaves; this implies that the
household is not simply ruled by right of the husband/father/master, for he is called to
recognize the rights of his wife, children, and slaves. Paul devotes much more space to
exhorting husbands to love and serve their wives (vv. 25–33) than he does to instructing
wives to submit to and respect their husbands (vv. 22–24, 33); this implies a stronger
emphasis on a husband’s responsibility to his wife than a wife’s responsibility to her
husband. Paul even assigns husbands domestic duties of serving bodily needs that would
customarily have been performed by wives or slaves: as Christ has bathed and clothed the
church in baptism, so the husband should do for his wife in marriage; as the husband
feeds and tends his own body, so the husband should do for his wife, who is his own
body, just as Christ cares for the church, which is his body (vv. 25–28). Paul exhorts
everyone in the household regardless of rank or role—wives and husbands, children and
parents, slaves and masters—to practice mutual subordination as members of Christ’s
body (v. 21); this implies that the household head is to subordinate himself to everyone
else the same as they are to subordinate themselves to him, all in reverence of Christ as
Lord. Paul, in effect, turns the Greco-Roman household hierarchy on its “head.”
Observing that Paul’s code does not conform to the Greco-Roman pattern
prompts us to reexamine the key terms at the beginning of Paul’s code: “…subordinating
yourselves to (hypotassomenoi) one another in reverence for Christ, wives to their own

82
See Keener, Paul, Women & Wives, 166–70; Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 230–34; Westfall, Paul
and Gender, 56–58, 162–66; Yoder Neufeld, Killing Enmity, 103–6.
83
Such reversal of order occurs also in other household codes in the New Testament (Col. 3:12–4:1; 1 Pet.
2:13–3:12), which indicates that it was not peculiar to Paul but reflected apostolic authority.

45
husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is head (kephalē) of the wife even as Christ
is head (kephalē) of the church…but as the church subordinates itself (hypotassetai) to
Christ, so also wives to husbands in all things” (Eph. 5:21–24, my translation). We’ll
examine in turn the two key terms—“subordinate” and “head.”
First, “subordinate.” The verb hypotassō means to rank under, to place one thing
under another within an order of things—that is, to subordinate. Paul’s participial phrases
“subordinating yourselves” and “subordinating itself” use this verb with the middle
voice.84 The middle voice of a verb implies a willing act in which the verb’s subject
makes itself the object of the action: I act upon myself. Here is an example: “I give
myself to my wife in marriage,” which implies a willing act of giving myself to my wife,
an act that gives my wife right to my fidelity and authority over my body in our marriage
(cf. 1 Cor. 7:3–4). To subordinate oneself to another, therefore, implies a willing act of
placing/ranking oneself under another in an order of things (cf. Rom. 13:1; 1 Cor. 14:32;
16:15–16).
So, Paul exhorts all believers to willingly subordinate themselves to—place/rank
themselves under—one another within the body of Christ in reverence for Christ (Eph.
5:21). This mutual subordination of believers in Christ assumes a common confession of
Christ as Lord of all and implies a mutual authority and accountability of believers to one
another under Christ as Lord of all. Paul then exhorts wives to willingly subordinate
themselves to—place/rank themselves under—their husbands in the same way that they
are to willingly subordinate themselves to Christ as Lord (Eph. 5:22, 24). This
subordination of wife to husband, likewise, implies the husband’s authority over the wife
and the wife’s accountability to the husband. However, the subordination of wife to
husband (Eph. 5:22–24) cannot be separated from either the mutual subordination of
believers (Eph. 5:21) or the reciprocal rights and authority of husband and wife (1 Cor.
7:3–4). Accordingly, the husband’s authority over the wife implied by the wife’s
subordination to the husband does not imply a unilateral authority within a hierarchical
order.85

84
See Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 243–44.
85
See also Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 255–56, and Bartlett, Men and Women in Christ, 34–38, 60–62.

46
 Second, “head.” Paul uses “head” metaphorically to speak of the husband in
relation to his wife. And Paul does so by analogy: “the husband is head (kephalē) of the
wife even as Christ is head (kephalē) of the church” (Eph. 5:23, my translation). Our
interpretation of what Paul meant by the wife as “subordinate” to the husband as “head”
must not be based on prior assumptions about domestic order and preconceived notions
of gender relations but rather on careful examination of Paul’s text. 86 Due to Paul’s
analogy, to properly understand what Paul meant by the husband as “head” of the wife,
we must first consider what Paul meant by Christ as “head” of the church. The most
relevant context for judging what Paul meant here in the household code is how Paul
elsewhere in Ephesians used the head-body metaphor to depict Christ and the church.
Three times across Ephesians Paul refers to Christ as “head” of the church his
“body.” (a) In Ephesians 1: God “raised him from the dead and seated him at his right in
the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above
every name that is named, not only in this age but also in age to come. And [God] has put
all things under his feet and has made him the head (kephalēn) over all things for the
church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:20–23). God
has elevated the risen Christ to Lord over all creation for all eternity (cf. Phil. 2:9–11) and
established the risen Christ as “head over all things for the church, which is his body.”
Paul’s depiction of Christ as Lord over creation thus indicates what Paul meant by Christ
as “head” of the church his “body”: Christ is Lord over the church. Christ’s lordship over
the church, Paul later states, is connected to the unity of the church as his body: “one
body and one Spirit…one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all…”
(Eph. 4:4–6). (b) In Ephesians 4: “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in
every way into him who is the head (kephalē), into Christ, from the whole body, joined
and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working
properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in him” (Eph. 4:15–16). Here
Paul fleshes out the head-body metaphor by applying the ancient view of head and
body—the body grows from the head and the head nourishes the body’s growth, enabling
the body’s parts to function together as an integrated whole—to Christ and the church:
the church as body receives its growth into spiritual maturity from Christ its head, who

86
See Westfall, Paul and Gender, 79–102.

47
knits together the body parts of the church into a functional unity (cf. Col. 1:17–18).
Paul’s depiction again indicates what Paul meant by Christ as “head” of the church his
“body”: Christ is source and sustainer of the church. (c) Now to Ephesians 5: “…the
husband is head (kephalē) of the wife even as Christ is head (kephalē) of the church—he
himself is savior of the body” (Eph. 5:23, my translation). Here Paul connects Christ
being the “head” of the church to Christ being the savior of the church: this could mean
that Christ is the body’s head because he is the body’s savior; or it could mean that as the
body’s head, Christ acts for the body’s salvation; or it could mean both. Either way, Paul
explicitly indicates what he meant here by Christ as “head” of the church his “body”:
Christ is the savior of the church. Paul depicts Christ as “head” of the church his “body”
in three ways: as Lord (Eph. 1:20–23), as source and sustainer (Eph. 4:15–16), and as
savior (Eph. 5:23). Further, Christ as “head” gives unity to the church as his “body.” Paul
thus uses the head-body metaphor to emphasize Christ and the church as a head-body
unity.
So, Paul puts the husband’s role as “head” of the wife in analogy, not to Christ’s
status as Lord over the church, but to Christ’s activity as savior of the church (Eph. 5:23).
Paul then fleshes out this analogy by specifying the saving activity of Christ that is
relevant to the “head” role of the husband: “Christ loved the church and gave himself for
her, in order to make her holy and by cleansing her with the washing of water by the
word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle…”
(Eph. 5:25–27). Here Paul uses the nuptial motif of God and Israel drawn from Scripture
(cf. Ezek. 16:1–14; Rev. 21:2) to depict Christ as the bridegroom lovingly preparing his
bride for their marriage: Christ the bridegroom sacrifices his body through the cross for
the church his bride and sanctifies her body through baptism so that she may be joined to
him in holy, covenanted union. “In the same way,” Paul goes on, “husbands should love
their wives as they do their own bodies.” The husband as “head” should love his wife as
his own body, in a sacrificial and sanctifying way, just as Christ the bridegroom has
loved the church as his bride. Paul then says that a husband who loves his wife
“nourishes and tenderly cares” for her as his own body, “just as Christ does for the
church” (Eph. 5:28–30). Here Paul’s analogy takes up Christ’s activity as sustainer of the
church, the “head” that nurtures the body’s growth and promotes its health (Eph. 4:15–

48
16). The husband as “head” of his wife is to act in ways that nurture her growth and
promote her health, just as Christ as “head” of the church acts to sustain the growth and
health of the church. Careful examination of Paul’s terms and text, therefore, shows that
Paul used the head-body metaphor, not to cast marriage of husband and wife in the mold
of a hierarchy of lord over subject, but to depict marriage of husband and wife as a head-
body unity—“the two will become one flesh” (Eph. 5:31)—in which the husband as
“head” of the wife his “body” is to imitate, in relation to his wife, Christ’s activity as
savior and sustainer of the church.87
With these observations about “subordination” and “head” in mind, let’s
reconsider Paul’s code of domestic order. Notice that just before saying that the wives
should “subordinate” themselves to husbands as the church “subordinates” itself to
Christ, Paul affirmed that all believers should “subordinate themselves to one another in
reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21). Paul’s exhortation to “subordinate yourselves” applies
to everyone in the household addressed in these instructions, including the
husband/father/master. Paul’s instruction that the wife is placed/ranked under her
husband in their household is prefaced by his affirmation that husband and wife are to
place/rank themselves under each other—“subordinating yourselves to one another”—as
fellow servants of God’s household in respect for Christ as Lord (cf. Eph. 2:19). Mutual
subordination of husband and wife in Christ is the presupposition of wife as
“subordinate” to husband in marriage: the wife’s place in marriage is under her husband,
whose place in Christ is under his wife. What Paul meant for the Christian household by
the wife being “subordinate” to the husband, therefore, is not to be found in the cultural
pattern of patriarchy, according to which the wife submits to the husband as a subject to a
lord.88 Rather, “subordination” in Christian marriage is made visible through husband and
wife being mutually subordinate under Christ the Lord—and thus through their mutual
service of one another in marriage. In this, Paul cut against the cultural grain of the

87
See Miles, Redemption of Love, 93–97, and Bartlett, Men and Women in Christ, 50–58.
88
This cultural norm is evident in Augustine’s matter-of-fact comment concerning his mother, Monica:
“When she reached a marriageable age, she was given to a man and served him as her lord” (Confessions
9.19).

49
hierarchical order of the household code. And he did so in a way that works toward
undoing in Christ the fallen pattern of woman’s subservience to man in marriage. 89
Notice also that just after saying that the husband is “head” of the wife as Christ is
“head” of the church, moreover, Paul affirmed that Christ’s sacrificial love for the church
is the model for the husband’s marital relation toward his wife (Eph. 5:25–30; cf. 5:1–2).
Here again, Paul used an analogy: the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the
church; just as Christ as “head” gave himself wholly for the sake of the church, which is
his “body,” the husband as “head” is to give himself wholly for the sake of his wife, who
is his “body” (the “two” having become “one flesh,” 5:31). Christ as “head” of both
husband and wife in the church is the precedent for husband as “head” of wife in
marriage: the husband’s role and responsibility as his wife’s “head” is to put himself at
his wife’s feet, as it were, and serve her in life-giving, self-sacrificing love—just as Jesus
put himself in a servant’s role at his disciples’ feet (John 13:1–20), just as “Christ loved
us and gave himself up for us” (Eph. 5:2). What Paul meant for the Christian household
by the husband being “head” of the wife, therefore, is not to be found in the cultural
pattern of patriarchy, according to which the husband rules over the wife who serves
under the husband. Rather, “headship” in Christian marriage is made visible through the
husband loving his wife according to the cruciform pattern of Christ’s saving activity: the
husband’s service as “head” of the wife is to look like Christ’s sacrifice for the church—
like Christ’s self-emptying descent from position and self-humbling divestment of
privilege, in obedience to God, even as far as death, for our salvation (Phil. 2:6–8). In
this, Paul went beyond the Greco-Roman cultural norm by an appeal to the gospel. And
he did so in a way that reorders marriage according to God’s plan of redemption.
Paul prefaced and framed his domestic instruction to husbands and wives by a
two-fold summons to submit to the lordship of Christ and to imitate the sacrifice of
Christ. In effect, Paul redefines and reorients the domestic terms “subordinate” and
“head” in relation to Christ: the wife is “subordinate” to the husband only as the husband
subordinates himself to the wife in reverence for Christ as Lord of all; the husband is
“head” of the wife only as the husband serves the wife in imitation of Christ the savior

89
Paulinus of Nola, poet and bishop of the late fourth and early fifth centuries, interpreted Paul’s
instruction in Ephesians 5 as bringing an end to the subservience of woman to man in marriage due to the
Fall. See his Carmen 25 (lines 145–49), in Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, 135.

50
and sustainer of the church. As Barrett comments, Paul’s household code redefines “what
it means for a believer to be a husband.”
He designates the husband as ‘head’, explaining and expounding this term not in the sense of an
authoritative leader of the wife but as the one who lovingly sacrifices himself for her good. The
meaning which Paul ascribes to ‘head’ in Ephesians 5 does not establish husbands’ unilateral
authority over their wives. Rightly understood in context, it contradicts it….Paul redefines the
husband’s responsibility in terms of saviourhood; this is his guide to the conduct of
husbands…Paul does not instruct husbands, either here or anywhere else in his writings, to be lord
over their wives or to exercise unilateral authority over them. In Ephesians 5 he does not expound
‘head’ as ‘lord’.90
Only then, we should observe, does Paul disclose that the “one flesh” of man-
woman marriage is a “mystery” of “Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31–32). This
significance of Paul’s sequencing—disclosing the mystery of marriage after instructing
husbands to subordinate themselves to, and to be imitators of, Christ—must not be
overlooked or underestimated. Paul’s redefining and reorienting of domestic relations
carries a substantive implication for theological reflection on marriage. Paul indicates that
we are to see the “mystery” of marriage, not in the image of patriarchy, but in the image
of Christ. In a fallen creation, in which marriage has been subject to distortion by sin,
only as marriage is transfigured in the image of Christ the bridegroom, only as the
husband role is transformed by imitation of Christ’s sacrifice for and sanctification of the
church his bride, does the “one flesh” of husband and wife become an image of Christ
and the church and thus a figure of salvation. It follows, I would say, that patriarchal
order—husband exercising unilateral authority in ruling over wife—not only is not
integral but is inimical to Paul’s use of the nuptial figure.
By this analogy—husband to wife as Christ to the church—Paul used the cultural
code of domestic order to induce a Christocentric reordering of domestic relationships in
God’s household. Paul not only adopted the form of the Greco-Roman household code
for Christian use. He also transformed it by the cruciform pattern of Christ—and, in
doing so, he pointed Christian households in a Christ-oriented, counter-cultural direction.

90
Barrett, Men and Women in Christ, 59. Whereas here we see how Paul at Ephesians 5 effectively
redefined the husband as “head” of the Christian household by recasting that role in the image of Christ, in
Appendix E we will see how Paul at Romans 1 radically redrew the natural/unnatural distinction in sexual
ethics by grounding that distinction in the creational categories of “male and female.”

51
 So, even if God’s post-fall pronouncement to the woman in Genesis, that her
husband would rule over her (Gen. 3:16), were prescriptive of how marriage should be,
rather than only descriptive of how marriage would become, in a fallen creation, Paul’s
domestic code makes evident that we should no longer view marriage that way in Christ.
Whereas we once viewed Christ and one another in a fleshly image (kata sarka), Paul
says, after the resurrection we no longer view Christ that way and thus should no longer
view one another that way because anyone baptized into the risen Christ is “new creation
(kainē ktisis)” (2 Cor. 5:16–17). Those baptized into the risen Christ are to “put on the
new human (kainon anthropon) who has been created (ktisthenta) in God’s image (kata
theon)” (Eph. 4:23–24 NET). For believers baptized in Christ, marriage ordered under
Christ is marriage created anew in Christ.
Now, Paul did not simply repudiate the patriarchal-hierarchical order of the
ancient household. For sure, early Christians were in no position to mount a domestic
revolution within the Roman Empire. Paul’s instruction aimed at ordering life within the
church, not reforming the laws of Rome. And Paul’s motivation was missional—to
silence critics of Christianity, avoid discrediting the gospel, to make the gospel attractive
to outsiders (cf. Titus 2:1–15).91 Christian tradition, unfortunately, has too often misread
Paul’s code of domestic order as preserving the ranks, roles, and rules of the hierarchical
household in Greco-Roman culture—and thus as compatible with maintaining patriarchy.
Taking cues from Paul’s household code, Chrysostom not only assumed the conventional
gender roles of the Greco-Roman household—the husband attends to civic affairs and the
marketplace, the wife manages domestic affairs and rears children—but also asserted that
God assigned these roles in ordering society through marriage. 92
Nonetheless, Paul did summon every household member to acknowledge his or
her place under the lordship of Christ (Eph. 5:22; 6:1, 4, 7, 9). And he did premise each
domestic relationship on mutual subordination in reverence for and imitation of Christ
(Eph. 5:1–2, 21). The Greco-Roman philosopher typically appealed to “nature” or
“custom” as the rationale for the ranks, roles, and rules of the household.93 Paul, by

91
See Westfall, Paul and Gender, 160–63.
92
See Chrysostom, How to Choose a Wife, in On Marriage and Family Life, 96–97. See also Ford, Women
and Men, 184-99, and Hartney, John Chrysostom and the Transformation of the City.
93
See Aristotle, Politics I.3–13, in Basic Works, 1130–46.

52
contrast, repeatedly pointed to Christ—the one Lord under whom everyone is subject, the
one Savior by whose love everyone may be saved—as the justification and pattern for
domestic life: “live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us;” “be
subject…out of reverence for Christ…as to the Lord;” “love…as Christ loved;”
“obey…in the Lord…as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:1–2; 21–22; 25; 6:1, 7). Every relationship
in the Christian household is to be based on the lordship of Christ and love for one
another in the body of Christ. This difference in basis and emphasis reorients the
Christian household in a direction different from that of Greco-Roman culture. And that
different orientation had potential practical implications for wives and slaves in Christian
households.
Appealing to God’s design in creation, Paul affirmed the God-given good of the
“one flesh” of man-woman monogamous marriage. Pointing to God’s redemption in
Christ, Paul reoriented Christian marriage within Greco-Roman society in ways that
countered and transcended the cultural patterns of the Greco-Roman household.
Submitting to the lordship of Christ and living by “the mind of Christ,” husband and wife
are to relate to one another in the patterns of mutuality and reciprocity that are to
characterize all relationships within the body of Christ (Phil. 2:1–8; Col 3:12–15). It may
be that in the marriage-and-ministry partners Priscilla and Aquila we see exemplified the
husband-and-wife reciprocity and mutuality that Paul affirmed.94
As with patriarchal marriage, Paul did not simply repudiate the Greco-Roman
practice of slavery or issue a general proclamation for emancipating slaves. In the early
church, some households headed by Christians still retained slaves. Yet Paul’s
Christocentric reorientation of domestic order also had a counter-cultural implication for
masters and slaves in Christian households. Paul instructed the master to not rule his
slaves with threats of abuse, as Roman law allowed and custom expected. Instead, the
master should regard himself and his slave as fellow slaves of “the same Master,” with
whom “there is no partiality” in judgment (Eph. 6:9)—and thus whom both master and
slave are to “reverence” or “fear” (Eph. 5:21). Further, Paul gave master and slave
reciprocal obligations: as the slave is to “render service…as to the Lord,” so the master is
to “do the same to them” (Eph. 6:7–9). Paul thus instructed the master to place himself on

94
See Keller, Priscilla and Aquila.

53
a level plane with his slave under the lordship of Christ. This implied equality of master
and slave “in the Lord” effectively reordered the relationship between master and slave in
the household.
Here again, Paul cut against the cultural grain, and he did so in a way that
manifests gospel freedom. Reordering relationships in the Christian household had
practical implications in the realm of sexual relations. Paul’s instructions entailed among
Christians the end of an abuse common among Romans: the slave’s bondage to the
master’s desire. Roman masters held free reign over their slaves’ lives, including sexual
access to their slaves’ bodies. A master could subject any slave in his household—child
or adult, male or female—to sexual use and abuse. Sex with slaves (and prostitutes, many
of whom were slaves) was a culturally acceptable means for free males, married or
unmarried, to satisfy sexual desires. Paul’s reminder to masters and slaves that they are
equals under a common Master cut both ways: it denied the master the sexual liberty with
his slaves to which the law had entitled him and to which the culture had accustomed
him; and it freed the slave from submission to sexual predation by his or her master that
the culture accepted as commonplace.95
It may be that in Paul’s exhortation to Philemon we see the working out of Paul’s
domestic instruction. Onesimus, a believer from Colossae (cf. Col. 4:9), was a slave who
had run away from his master, Philemon, and found his way into Paul’s company and
service during Paul’s imprisonment, probably in Ephesus. Seeking to put the situation
right, Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon, writing a letter to Philemon and his fellow
believers at Colossae. Now, to see the significance of what Paul asks of Philemon, we
must recognize that Onesimus’ slave status denied him not only Roman citizenship but
also familial relationship: a slave was son to no one, could claim no one as father (even if
his master fathered him by his slave mother), and thus could not be recognized as
anyone’s brother.96 Paul asks Philemon to receive back Onesimus “no longer as a slave
but more than a slave, a beloved brother…both in the flesh and in the Lord” (Phlm. 16).
For Philemon to treat Onesimus as a “brother in the flesh” would be to treat him as an
equal member of his family and thus a free member of the household; to treat him as a

95
Regarding the sexual predation of slaves by masters in the Roman era, see Harper, From Shame to Sin,
26–28, and Fox, Pagans and Christians, 342–43.
96
See Ruden, Paul among the People, 16–-65.

54
“brother in the Lord” would be to treat him as an equal member of the family of believers
that meets in Philemon’s house (Phlm. 2). In this way, Paul has turned the Roman
household on its side, leveling the ranks by appeal to Christ: the slave becomes a brother
in his master’s family. Paul goes even further: “welcome him as you would welcome me”
(Phlm. 17). He follows this with a last request of Philemon’s kindness: “One more
thing—prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored
to you” (Phlm. 22). Paul, implicitly, asks Philemon to receive Onesimus on his return
with the same hospitality that he would extend to Paul on his hoped-for visit. At this
point, Paul has turned the Roman household on its head: the runaway slave who,
according to the culture, deserves punishment by his master’s hand is, according to the
gospel, to be received on his return as an honored guest in his master’s household! 97

Conclusion
We can draw several inferences from our review of the biblical witness to
marriage.
Genesis presents God’s word ordering marriage from the beginning of creation:
man and woman, mutual and monogamous, faithful and fruitful.
The biblical narrative shows how, after God’s expulsion of humankind from the
garden, humankind has deviated from God’s intention for marriage. Humankind, in its
hardheartedness and waywardness, has propagated varieties of distortions of marriage—
including patriarchy and polygamy— down the generations. Biblical narrative and law
also detail how God’s providence has responded to humankind’s deviations from God’s
intention for marriage.
From Jesus we learn a lesson that is key to interpreting Scripture: we should
neither confuse humankind’s deviations outside the garden or God’s dealing with
humankind’s deviations with God’s intention from the beginning, nor conclude that
concessions through case laws override commandments in apodictic laws or supersede
the marriage pattern in the creation account.

97
The implicit parallels with Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son are worth pondering. McKnight, Philemon,
96, comments: “The “no longer” of Phlm. 16 reverses the prodigal son’s confession: “I am no longer
worthy to be called your son (Luke 15:21)…”

55
 According to Jesus, God’s word ordering marriage from the beginning of creation
remains God’s word concerning marriage for God’s people, a word that establishes a
moral standard of marriage that continues in effect through every era of salvation history,
a standard that God upholds and to which God holds us accountable, our hardened hearts
and wayward wills notwithstanding.
Jesus’ citation of Genesis as declaring God’s will for marriage and establishing
the moral standard of marriage is consistent with the way the biblical canon references
the creation account when addressing marriage. Apodictic laws on marriage, in the
Decalogue and the Holiness Code, presuppose and reinforce the creational pattern.
Wisdom writings on marriage, when read as a whole, present a beautiful picture of
marriage that is reflective, even celebrative, of the creational picture.
Paul’s teaching on marriage, likewise, reaffirms the biblical affirmation that
marriage is a God-created, God-blessed, God-given good and reflects the creational
pattern of man-woman marriage as mutual and monogamous. Paul’s teaching deliberately
cut against fallen patterns of marriage common to his culture: alluding to creation and
wisdom, Paul rejected the double standard of gender relations, insisting on mutual fidelity
and reciprocal obligation between husband and wife in Christian marriage; appealing to
the gospel, Paul critiqued the hierarchical pattern of domestic order, reordering the
Christian household under the Lordship of Christ and reimagining marriage according to
the pattern of Christ’s love for the church.
Scripture, therefore, presents a coherent normative picture of marriage that
belongs to God’s creation—and distinguishes that normative picture from distortive
patterns of marriage that belong to the fallen condition. This coherent picture of marriage
is interwoven canonically by intertextual references to and reflections on the Genesis
creation account by subsequent biblical texts. In every genre of writing, across every era
of salvation history, Scripture repeatedly retrieves and reclaims the creational picture as
God’s will for marriage. Interpreted discerningly, Scripture neither promotes patriarchy
in marriage nor endorses oppression of women. Scripture thus evidences a consistent
view: The God-ordained pattern of marriage in creation is the God-sanctioned form of
marriage for Israel and all nations, is the God-blessed way of marriage for all
humankind—in the garden and east of Eden, from the beginning until the end.

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 Appendix C

Non-Procreation:
Contraception, Chastity, and Casuistry

As discussed in Chapter 6, addressing the question of same-sex union in relation

to the procreative purpose of marriage leads to the question of non-procreative marriage
among male-female couples. The question of non-procreation, in turn, draws our
attention to the practice of contraception, which is the most common modern method of
rendering sexual union non-procreative. Some Christians, on either side of the marriage
debate, have argued that accepting any use of contraception in marriage inevitably leads
to sanctioning same-sex union. We will analyze and assess that argument in this
appendix.

Contraception and chastity

On the traditionalist side, Elizabeth Anscombe, the late Catholic philosopher,
famously defended the official Catholic teaching of absolute prohibition of artificial
contraception. Contraceptive sex, she argued, changes the couple’s intention in their
sexual union and thus alters the character of their sexual intercourse into a non-marital act
akin to fornication by closing off their sexual intercourse from its proper end of
procreation. Accepting any use of contraception, even in exceptional circumstance, she
argued further, undercuts every objection to same-sex union:
Accepting contraceptive intercourse leaves no reasonable ground for rejecting perversion. If
contraceptive intercourse is permissible, then what objection could there be after all to mutual
masturbation [or oral sex or anal sex] when normal copulation is impossible or inadvisable…? But
if such things are all right, it becomes perfectly impossible to see anything wrong with
homosexual intercourse, for example.98

98
Anscombe, Contraception and Chastity, Kindle location 319–26.

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On the innovationist side, Rowan Williams, the former Anglican archbishop, has
famously advocated openness of the church to same-sex union. He claims that any
acceptance of contraception use renders indefensible the unconditional disapproval of
same-sex union:
In a church that accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex
relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of
very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory about natural
complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to
psychological structures.99
Once the church has conceded contraception, he argues, any stance against same-sex
union must resort to either biblical fundamentalism or biological naturalism.
Anscombe and Williams each argue, in effect, that only two positions are
reasonably defensible: either “no” to both contraception and same-sex union, or “yes” to
both contraception and same-sex union. Although presented from opposite sides of the
debate, their respective arguments follow a similar logic. First, their arguments each
correspond, in converse ways, to Augustine’s view that procreation is a necessary good in
marriage because aiming at procreation morally excuses lust-tainted sexual intercourse.
Anscombe’s argument aligns with Augustine’s view: because only the intent to procreate
morally separates sex from sin even in marriage, and because using contraception
counteracts the intent to procreate, using contraception renders marital sex morally equal
to fornication; excusing one variety of sinful sex (contraceptive sex in marriage)
implicitly excuses every variety of sinful sex (including same-sex intercourse), which the
church may not do. Williams’ argument cuts across Augustine’s view: because only
procreative function morally separates marriage from same-sex union, and because
accepting contraception use separates marriage from procreative function, accepting
contraception use renders marriage morally equal to same-sex union; justifying one
variety of non-procreative sex (contraceptive sex in marriage) allows justifying other
varieties of non-procreative sex (including same-sex union), which the church may do.100

99
Williams, “Body’s Grace,” 320.
100
I would challenge Williams’ implicit assumption that sex-unitive marriage is distinguished from same-
sex union only by procreative function, a view stated explicitly by Robert Song, Covenant and Calling, 48–
49. See Chapter 6, 143–57.

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Anscombe and Williams, although arguing to opposing conclusions, take Augustine’s
view of sex, procreation, and marriage as a common point of reference.
Second, Anscombe and Williams each assumes implicitly that all uses of
contraception are morally alike. From an Augustinian perspective, all uses of
contraception look alike in the only respect that is morally relevant: all contraceptive sex
is non-procreative sex. Their arguments thus agree that accepting any use of
contraception in marriage licenses every use of contraception in marriage, such that a
single verdict applies to all uses of contraception: “yes” (permission) or “no”
(prohibition). Their arguments then proceed along parallel lines from contraception to
same-sex union: justifying any use of contraception in marriage justifies every use of
contraception in marriage; justifying one variety of non-procreative sex in marriage
justifies every variety of non-procreative sex in marriage; therefore, accepting
contraceptive sex (one variety of non-procreative sex) leads ineluctably to sanctioning
same-sex intercourse (another variety of non-procreative sex).
Were the logic common to their arguments correct, Christians could accept
contraception use only by accepting same-sex union. Conversely, Christians could reject
same-sex union only by rejecting all contraception use. Christians could not, consistently,
allow contraception use and oppose same-sex union: any justification for using
contraception would give ground to sanctioning same-sex union.101 I think that this all-or-
nothing argument is not compelling, however.
First, Christian tradition is not limited to Augustine’s view. Chrysostom’s view,
for instance, regards sexual intercourse within marriage as a positive good not needing
moral justification by procreative intention and places chastity before children in the
purpose of marriage (see Chapter 5). Chrysostom certainly affirmed the procreative
purpose of marriage and did not approve of deliberately severing marriage from
procreation; he even preached against Christian use of contraception. 102 Yet if each act of
sexual intercourse within marriage need not be morally justified by procreative intent,
and if at Christ’s coming chastity takes priority over children in marriage, then some
contraception use could be judged morally compatible with the procreative function of

101
Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality, 119–21, 125, follows the same logic.
102
See Trenham, Marriage and Virginity, 204–23.

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marriage. A non-Augustinian view of the procreative function of marriage and moral
status of sex within marriage might thus open the possibility for judicious use of
contraception without severing marriage from children.

Contraception and casuistry

Second, the assumption that all contraception uses are morally alike is dubious.
Were that true, we could not draw any moral distinctions among contraception uses, such
that we could not vary moral judgment according to intention and circumstance in
specific cases. Yet the Christian tradition of moral reflection for pastoral discipline has
long recognized that considering intention and circumstance is appropriate to drawing
distinctions among cases.
Basil, a fourth-century bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, drew such distinctions
in sorting cases for church discipline. In his letters to Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium,
Basil wrote: “a wide distinction must be drawn between cases where there is and where
there is not intent.”103 He assessed cases of bloodshed according to this criterion: the man
who throws a hatchet at another in a rage and causes death is guilty of murder, but the
man who throws a stone to scare away an animal and hits a person is not (though he
might be guilty of negligence depending on circumstance); a man who wields a heavy
weapon against an opponent and strikes a fatal blow is guilty of murder, but a man who
fends off an attacker with his hands resulting in death is not. These cases differ by the
agents’ intentions. Basil assessed cases of child abandonment, likewise, according to such
criteria:
The woman who has given birth to a child and abandoned it in the road, if she was able to save it
and neglected it, or thought by this means to hide her sin, or was moved by some brutal and
inhuman motive, is to judged as in a case of murder. If, on the other hand, she was unable to
provide for it, and the child perish from exposure and want of the necessities of life, the mother is
to be pardoned.104

103
Basil, Letter 188 To Amphilochius, Canon VIII, in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. 2, Vol.
8, 226. Basil’s letters to Amphilochius have the status of canon law in the Orthodox tradition.
104
Basil, Letter 217 To Amphilochius, Canon LII, in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. 2, Vol.
8, 256. Exposing infants was a routine form of “birth control” in the Roman age that was consistently
condemned, along with abortion, by early Christians—see Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church.

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These cases differ by the agents’ intentions and circumstances. 105 I would thus argue: if
we can draw moral distinctions among cases of bloodshed and child abandonment
according to intention and circumstance, then we can draw moral distinctions among
contraception uses according to intention and circumstance.
In order to apply criteria of intention and circumstance to cases of contraception,
we must first distinguish categories of non-procreation. And that requires drawing a
distinction between two categories of cases: (1) couples who avoid conceiving children
due to external circumstances, and (2) couples who avoid conceiving children by
intentional choice. Category (1) includes cases of couples who desire children but decide
not to conceive children because of, say, chronic or debilitating health conditions,
physical or mental, that would make childbearing dangerous to the woman or child, or
childrearing onerous to the couple. In such cases, a couple whose options are constrained
by conditions external to their control deems conceiving children inadvisable in their
circumstance. Category (2) includes cases of two classes: (a) couples who have no desire
for children or desire to avoid parental responsibility; (b) couples who might have some
desire for children but forego children in preference to a goal to which they give greater
value and from which in their estimation children would be a detraction or distraction. In
cases of either class in category (2), a couple whose options are not constrained by
circumstance deems conceiving children inhibitive of their happiness or impediment to
their goal.
These categories of non-procreation—circumstantial and intentional—are
separated by a “wide distinction” of intention. Circumstantially non-procreative couples
do not intend a childless marriage; constrained by circumstance, they avoid children
unwillingly. Such couples, whether using contraception or abstaining during fertile times,
neither act to thwart the procreative potential of their sexual union, nor choose to set
aside the good of procreation in marriage. Childlessness is an unsought result, reluctantly
accepted to safeguard health and life. Intentionally non-procreative couples, by contrast,
do intend a childless marriage; unconstrained by circumstance, they avoid children
willingly. Class (a) couples, by using contraception, thwart the procreative potential of

105
Basil’s casuistry has biblical precedent (cf. Exod. 21; Num. 35; Deut. 19) and Western counterpart (cf.
Aquinas, Summa Theologicae II-II Quest. 64, Arts. 7–8, in On Law, Morality, and Politics, 225–28).

61
their sexual union, avoiding procreation from lack of desire for children; having refused
the good of children, they will childlessness as an end. Class (b) couples, by using
contraception, set aside the procreative potential of their sexual union, avoiding
procreation to pursue another project; having substituted a goal of their choosing for the
good of children, they will childlessness as a means.
Distinguishing cases and varying judgment according to intention and
circumstance, we can accept provisional use of contraception in exceptional
circumstances without thereby approving severing marriage from children. Accepting
provisional contraception in exceptional cases of circumstantial non-procreation would
not lead ineluctably to sanction of same-sex union. Because same-sex couples are not
comparable to circumstantially non-procreative male-female couples, such cases would
provide no analogy from contraception use to same-sex union. Accepting provisional use
of contraception in exceptional circumstances for category (1) cases, therefore, would not
give ground to sanctioning same-sex union.
To summarize the argument to this point: Christians can, consistently, allow
contraception use and oppose same-sex union; for not every justification of contraception
use in marriage gives ground to sanctioning same-sex union. Accepting provisional or
exceptional use of contraception need not approve severing marriage from procreation
and thus does not lead ineluctably to affirming same-sex union.106 Christians cannot,
consistently, affirm childless-by-choice marriage and then oppose same-sex union on the
ground that God designed marriage for the sake of procreation. Accepting habitual use of
contraception, to the point of intentionally rendering sexual union non-procreative for
preferential reasons, approves severing marriage from procreation and thus points toward
affirming same-sex union. Because intentionally non-procreative male-female couples
are procreative counterparts of same-sex couples, therefore, justifying childless-by-choice
marriage gives ground to sanctioning same-sex union.

106
See also Grenz, Sexual Ethics, 147–53; Meilaender, Bioethics, 17–18; Hollinger, Meaning of Sex, 161–
66; Blanchard, “Gift of Contraception,” 241–43; and Lenow, “Protestants and Procreation.”

62
Contraception and intention
Anscombe maintained that avoiding fertile times preserves the marital character
of the sexual act, and thus is permitted, while using contraception corrupts the marital
character of the sexual act, and thus is forbidden, because using contraception closes the
sexual act to its procreative end but avoiding fertile times does not.107 Her view requires
drawing a distinction of intention between permitted means (timing) and forbidden means
(contraception) of avoiding conception, even when those respective means are not
distinguished by design (both are calculated to avoid conception while keeping conjugal
relations) or by motivation (both could be used for the same circumstantial reasons), and
even when the respective couples are not distinguished by disposition (both could remain
open to a child conceived should their chosen means fail).
Now, an Anscombian might argue that a couple timing intercourse evinces greater
virtue (patience, self-control, etc.) than a couple using contraception. Even if these
respective couples are distinguished by virtue, however, they are not distinguished by the
end at which their action aims. Indeed, the couple timing intercourse to avoid conception
is, evidently, not intending that instance of intercourse to be procreative: they divert their
sexual act away from procreation and thus direct their sexual act only toward non-
procreative ends (pleasure, bonding, etc.). It thus seems to me that Anscombe has drawn
a distinction without a difference with respect to the procreative end of sex in marriage.

Contraception and tradition

The question of childless-by-choice marriage did not arise only with the invention
of modern methods of contraception. It was a topic of discussion in the early church. In
the Roman era, various contraceptive methods were known, several of which were
readily available, if not always reliable.108 When contraception failed, Roman fathers
could order fetuses aborted or infants exposed to dispose of unwanted children. Then as
now, a childless marriage was a pursuable option for Christian couples. Probably, not
many early Christian couples chose childlessness. In fact, the high fertility of Christian
women, in contrast to low fertility of Roman women, contributed significantly to the rise

107
Anscombe, Chastity and Contraception, Kindle location 334–41.
108
See Noonan, Contraception, 9–29.

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of Christianity in the Roman Empire.109 Evidently, however, couples pursued that option
often enough that pastors and teachers of the early church saw fit to address the matter.
Augustine considered the following situation, which was “often asked” whether it
“should be called a marriage.” A couple, neither partner being married to another, engage
in sexual intercourse simply for the sake of pleasure, not with a view to procreation, but
do pledge exclusivity to one another in their sexual partnership. “Perhaps it would not be
absurd to call this a marriage,” Augustine argued, provided the couple meets two
conditions: if they faithfully keep their exclusivity pledge until one partner dies; and if,
while not pursuing procreation, they do not deliberately avoid it “either by not wishing to
have children or by acting in an evil way to prevent children from being born.” Augustine
thus held that a sexual coupling in which the partners keep fidelity, but either desire to
avoid children or act “in an evil way” to prevent childbearing, does not deserve to be
called a marriage.110 Clement also addressed the option of childless-by-choice marriage.
Some may wish to avoid children for reasons of convenience, to relieve themselves the
trouble of childrearing; others may wish to avoid children for reasons of service, to
devote themselves to God’s work. Clement responded to both wishes by citing the
Apostle Paul: “remain unmarried, as I myself am” (cf. 1 Cor. 7:8, 32, 40). Clement thus
counseled those wishing to avoid children that they should avoid marriage. 111
Now, recalling Christian tradition at this point does not resolve the question of
same-sex union and procreation. After all, traditional teaching of marriage has not only
promoted procreation but also opposed contraception. Innovationists might retort that
Christian tradition has opposed not only the preferential choice for childless marriage but
also contraceptive methods to control childbearing. Indeed, the Western church down the
centuries had generally proscribed contraception use until the 20th Century.112 At its
Lambeth Conference of 1930, the Anglican Communion issued a resolution that
permitted limited contraception use: in cases where couples discern an obligation to limit
or even avoid childbearing, provided there is good reason to not observe complete

109
See Stark, Rise of Christianity, 115–28.
110
Augustine, Good of Marriage 5, in Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, 106. Augustine’s discussion
references the common practice of cohabitation (concubinage) in Roman society—and, obliquely, passes
judgment on his past cohabitation. See Augustine, Confessions 4.2, and Brown, Body and Society, 389–90.
111
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 3.10.68.
112
See Noonan, Contraception.

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abstinence, it is not done with selfish motivation or for mere convenience, and the
decision is made according to “Christian principles.” 113 The Anglican change precipitated
changes on contraception in several other Protestant denominations over the next
generation.114 Through the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, the Roman Catholic
Church, reacting to Protestant shifts and cultural changes, rearticulated the traditional
teaching on sex, marriage, and procreation and declared the absolute prohibition of
“artificial methods of birth control” an infallible dogma of the church. 115
The innovationist might thus make the accusation that appealing to tradition on
procreative marriage, while setting aside tradition on contraceptive sex, is at least
rhetorically hypocritical if not logically contradictory. If you’re willing to set aside
tradition on contraception, why not set aside tradition on procreation? If you’re willing to
allow contraceptive sex, why not allow non-procreative marriage—and thus same-sex
union? Despite the historical tendency to marry the traditional teaching of marriage with
an absolute prohibition of contraception, however, these two are not necessarily one.
We can see the difference between the traditional teaching on marriage, on the
one hand, and an absolute prohibition of contraception, on the other hand, by considering
their respective sources.116 From the second to the fourth centuries, early Christian
articulation of the orthodox view on sex and marriage—that sex is restricted to man-
woman monogamy, that marriage includes a procreative function, and that God’s
blessing of marriage and commission to procreation continues in the age of Christ—often
went hand-in-hand, especially in apologetic writings, with condemnation of
contraception. The orthodox teaching on marriage and the absolute prohibition of
contraception were articulated under similar pressures: in response to heretical views
among Christians that diverged to the right (ascetic rejection of marriage and procreation)
and to the left (antinomian embrace of sexual liberation) of the orthodox view; and in
reaction against the cultural acceptance among Romans of male promiscuity, fetal and

113
Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 15. The Lambeth Conference also affirmed that the glory of
marriage includes children, that abortion is sinful, and that sex outside marriage is a sin which the use of
contraception cannot excuse (Resolutions 14, 16, and 18). Cited from The Lambeth Conference:
Resolutions Archive from 1930, published by the Anglican Communion Office (2005).
114
On the Protestant shift, see Blanchard, “Gift of Contraception,” 233–35, 239–41. On the social-political
climate in which the Protestant shift occurred, see Griffith, Moral Combat, 1–47.
115
Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, pars. 14 and 20.
116
The following discussion relies mainly on Noonan, Contraception, 30–139.

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neonatal destruction, and sexual exploitation. Yet the orthodox teaching on marriage and
an absolute prohibition of contraception were drawn from different sources.
While the orthodox teaching on marriage could be robustly defended from
Scripture, contraception as such is not addressed directly in Scripture. The only instance
of contraception mentioned is that by Judah’s son, Onan, who used the age-old method of
coitus interruptus to avoid inseminating Tamar, his deceased brother’s widow. He was
struck down, not simply because “he spilled his semen,” but because he did so to prevent
generating “offspring to his brother,” thus failing “the duty of a brother-in-law” (Gen.
38:8–10). In doing so, moreover, Onan dishonors Tamar, using her body for his pleasure
as if she were a prostitute, an offense that Judah’s brothers had once avenged to defend
the honor of their sister, Dinah, who had been sexually violated and humiliated by
Shechem (Gen. 34).117 Insofar as this text condemns contraception, it does so indirectly:
it condemns using contraception to avoid familial obligation and sexually exploit women.
It thus does not warrant absolute prohibition of contraception. An absolute prohibition of
contraception not only is without warrant in the biblical witness, but also was without
precedent in Jewish rabbinical tradition, which affirmed a duty of procreation in marriage
but allowed contraception use in exceptional circumstances (e.g., maternal health).
Lacking support from these sources of authority, the patristic theologians who
adopted an absolute prohibition of contraception drew their reasons for that rule largely
from the Stoic philosophy of natural law, which not only restricted sex to legitimate
marriage but also limited the purpose of sex in marriage to procreation. The contraception
rule followed from the Stoic logic: sex within marriage only, for procreation only; sex
otherwise is unnatural and unlawful; thus, because contraceptive sex is non-procreative
sex, use of contraception, by any means in any circumstance for any reason, is prohibited.
While Scripture warrants restriction of sex to marriage and affirms the procreative
function of marriage, the Stoic axiom that procreation is the sole purpose of sex has no
more warrant in Scripture than an absolute prohibition of contraception. The creation
account, which affirms that God blesses sex for procreation, affirms the unitive function
of sex in making man and woman “one flesh” (Gen. 1–2). Biblical wisdom, which warns
men against adultery, exhorts husbands to remain true to their wives, and acknowledges

117
See Lamb, Prostitutes and Polygamists, 96.

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children as God’s blessing, also affirms the joy of sex between husband and wife (Prov.
5; Song). Apostolic teaching, which forbids all sex outside husband-wife fidelity, does
not expressly limit sex to procreation and allows sex between spouses for sake of chastity
(1 Cor. 5–7). Considering that the Stoic view of sex lacks warrant in Scripture, the
orthodox teaching on marriage and an absolute prohibition of contraception do not have
the same moral authority for Christian practice.
The patristic theologians that adopted the contraception rule, Clement and
Augustine, identified contraceptive sex with either hatred of procreation or indulgence of
lust, attitudes they associated with Gnostics and Manicheans, who practiced habitual
contraception. Such motivation for using contraception, in Augustine’s assessment,
converts a good act into an evil act, an act of conjugal fidelity into an act akin to adultery
or fornication.118 Neither Clement nor Augustine seems to have considered a Christian
couple who in good faith might use contraception, not to despise procreation or indulge
lust, but to moderate childbearing or protect maternal health.
Accepting such provisional or exceptional use of contraception is not tantamount
to rejecting the orthodox teaching on marriage. It became so only when patristic
theologians aligned orthodox teaching with Stoic philosophy in reaction against heresy.
Only when the Stoic rule on sex and procreation, which was useful in refuting heresy but
is not warranted by Scripture, was adopted by patristic theologians and joined to the
orthodox teaching on marriage did the two—orthodox teaching on marriage and absolute
prohibition of contraception—become one. Augustine incorporated the Stoic rule—sex
only within marriage, and only for procreation, is natural and lawful—in his treatise On
the Good of Marriage at several points but without noting its Stoic source.119 With this
treatise, around 400, the sex rule borrowed from Stoic philosophy became Christian
teaching in the Western church.120 Two centuries later, Gregory the Great simply
assumed the Christianized Stoic sex rule when teaching on marriage in his much
influential Book of Pastoral Rule.121 The union of the biblical-traditional teaching on

118
See Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.17.
119
See Augustine, On the Good of Marriage 11, 12, 18.
120
See Noonan, Contraception, 129–31.
121
See Gregory the Great, Book of Pastoral Rule 3.27.

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marriage with a stoical-natural law of sex remains the moral basis of the absolute
prohibition of artificial contraception in the Catholic Church.122
We may thus maintain that an absolute prohibition of contraception, while
adopted historically in defense of the orthodox teaching on marriage, is not necessary—
biblically, logically, or morally—to the orthodox teaching on marriage.123 The burden of
argument, then, remains with those who wish to maintain that any justification for using
contraception renders procreation incidental to marriage and thus gives ground to
sanctioning same-sex union.

122
See Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, pars. 4 and 11. Interestingly, Humanae Vitae, par. 16, permits birth control
by the “lawful” method of timing intercourse to avoid fertile periods—a method that Augustine had
repudiated as an evil practice of the Manicheans (see Noonan, Contraception, 120).
123
Eastern Orthodoxy, not without controversy, has recently permitted contraception use. The
contemporary Orthodox Church, while strongly affirming the inseparable link between marriage and
children, treats contraception use in marriage as a matter of conscientious discretion rather than canonical
definition. See Meyendorff, Marriage, 58–63, Evdokimov, Sacrament of Love, 174–79, and Ware,
Orthodox Church, 296. For a critical view of this development, see Trenham, Marriage and Virginity, 222–
34.

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 Appendix D

Same-Sex Love in Greco-Roman Culture

Before taking up Paul’s statements about same-sex intercourse in his epistles to the
Romans and the Corinthians (Appendices E and F), we must consider whether what Paul
was talking about is even relevant to our present-day debate concerning same-sex union.
If the kinds of same-sex practices that Paul was addressing do not bear any comparison to
the same-sex relationships we are now discussing, then we must acknowledge up front
that Paul’s teaching bears little relevance for our discernment.

The claim of irrelevance and argument from silence

Some have claimed that the Greco-Roman world of the Apostle Paul knew only
of hierarchical or exploitive same-sex practices (e.g., prostitution, pederasty, master-
slave) that we would condemn today and knew nothing of loving, life-long same-sex
partnerships of the kind we know today—and, thus, that Paul could not have had
consensual, mutual, stable relations between age-compatible partners in mind when he
condemned same-sex activity. Robin Scroggs famously made this claim the major
premise of his landmark book, The New Testament and Homosexuality. Scroggs held that
“the Greco-Roman culture of homosexuality…was defined by the model of pederasty,”
such that “the male homosexuality Paul knew about and opposed had to have been one or
more forms of pederasty.”124
Variations on this theme have been reprised recently by innovationists advocating
for church sanction of same-sex union. So, James Brownson: “In the ancient world, such
ongoing permanent relationships between persons of the same sex are never documented
in the extant literature of the period.” 125 Likewise, Mark Achtemeier: “To read scriptural
passages referring to same-gender activity and think they apply to modern gay

124
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, vii and 67 (original emphasis).
125
Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality, 107.

69
relationships is very much like finding references to Honda Accords in the Bible: It
imports features of our modern world into the biblical narrative that simply didn’t exist in
the biblical world.”126
Other innovationists acknowledge that non-exploitative same-sex relations may
have existed, but claim that the ancient world was unaware of and had no concept for the
exclusive attraction to same-sex partners that today would be called same-sex orientation.
Victor Paul Furnish, referring to “heterosexuality,” “homosexuality,” and “bisexuality,”
states: “There were no such concepts and no terms for them in the ancient world.” 127
Similarly, Matthew Vines: “A man’s exclusive interest in the same sex…would not have
been seen as pointing to a different sexual orientation,” because “ancient societies didn’t
think in terms of exclusive sexual orientations.” 128 And Brownson: “…in the ancient
world…the notion of sexual orientation was absent.” 129
The cumulative force of such historical claims supports an argument from silence.
Because consensual, mutual, stable same-sex partnerships and ideas about sexual
orientation were unknown in Paul’s day, goes the argument, Paul’s negative statements
about same-sex activity could not have been referring to same-sex oriented persons in
consensual, mutual, stable partnerships. The hermeneutical conclusion follows readily
from the historical claims: Scripture is silent about the kind of same-sex union for which
innovationists are advocating—in which case, biblical judgments on same-sex activity
are irrelevant to today’s debate. Scroggs lays out the case at length:
…only if the context which led to the creation of New Testament judgments against
homosexuality is similar to the context of the gay movement within Christianity today, can
biblical injunctions be relevant in contemporary denominational discussions…If the contemporary
situation is not reasonably similar, then biblical injunctions cannot become answers to
contemporary questions…The fact remains…that the basic model in today’s Christian homosexual
community is so different from the model attacked by the New Testament that the criterion of
reasonable similarity of context is not met. The conclusion I have to draw seems inevitable:
Biblical judgments against homosexuality are not relevant to today’s debate. They should no

126
Achtemeier, Bible’s Yes, 82; cf. 77, 92, 110.
127
Furnish, “Bible and Homosexuality,” 19; cf. 26.
128
Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 34, 36.
129
Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality, 170; cf. 155–56.

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 longer be used in denominational discussions about homosexuality…not because the Bible is not
authoritative, but simply because it does not address the issues involved.130
The practical implication of this hermeneutical position is likewise straightforward:
because Scripture is silent on the specific question that concerns us, the church today is
free to discern whether to sanction same-sex union while remaining faithful to Scripture.

The evidence for relevance

The historical evidence, however, confounds the claims on which this argument
from silence depends. Some ancient writers did think in terms of innate same-sex
attraction or natural inclination to same-sex activity (which might today be included
under the term “sexual orientation”). Furthermore, consensual, mutual same-sex
practices, even stable long-term partnerships, in addition to hierarchical or exploitive
same-sex practices (prostitution, pederasty, master-slave), were known in ancient
societies and are attested in extant sources. We’ll consider here only a cross-section of
the available evidence.
Let’s consider, first, classical Greece. The main same-sex practice was pederasty,
which involved man-boy pairings. Yet, Thomas Hubbard observes, man-boy pederasty
was not the only same-sex practice in classical Greece:
Greek homosexual activity, despite popular misconceptions, was not restricted to man-boy pairs.
Vase-painting shows numerous scenes where there is little or no apparent difference in age
between the young wooer and his object of courtship…as well as graphic scenes of sexual
experimentation between youths… 131
The implication of this evidence is that we cannot simply assume that all same-sex
practices in classical Greece were either hierarchical or exploitive.
Indeed, the realization that age-equal activity was not uncommon, as we have shown, profoundly
undercuts any interpretation of Greek homosexuality in terms of “victim categories.” 132
Thus, all the evidence of same-sex practices in classical Greece can not be fit into one
model of relationship. Hubbard further explores age-equal, mutual same-sex relations—

130
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 125–27 (original emphasis). See also Nelson, “Sources for
Body Theology,” 80–81; Siker, “Gentile Wheat and Homosexual Christians,” 140–43; Waetjen, “Same-Sex
Sexual Relations in Antiquity,” 107–13.
131
Hubbard, Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, 5.
132
Hubbard, Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, 11.

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both between youths and between adults, both male-male and female-female—in Greco-
Roman societies.133
Plato’s Symposium (4th C. BCE) is one source from classical Greek literature that
exhibits evidence of ancient awareness of both phenomena in question—ideas about
innate same-sex attraction and mutual, long-term same-sex partnerships. Aristophanes’
myth about human origins in three composite sexes (male-female, male-male, female-
female) to explain both opposite-sex and same-sex attraction pertaining to both men and
women indicates awareness of innate, exclusive same-sex attraction—as well as mutual,
life-long unions, both opposite-sex and same-sex, based on these innate attractions.
Aristophanes says:
…each of us is forever seeking the half that will tally with himself. The man who is a slice of the
hermaphrodite [i.e., male-female] sex…will naturally be attracted by women…and women who
run after men are of similar descent…But the woman who is a slice of the original female is
attracted by other women rather than by men…while men who are slices of the male are followers
of the male…
Concerning such males who are “slices” from the original male-male composite and thus
naturally attracted to males, Aristophanes says:
And so, when they themselves have come to manhood, their love in turn is lavished upon boys.
They have no natural inclination to marry and beget children. Indeed, they only do so in deference
to the usage of society, for they would just as soon renounce marriage altogether and spend their
lives with one another…And so, when this boy lover—or any lover, for that matter—is fortunate
enough to meet his other half, they are both so intoxicated with affection, with friendship, and
with love, that they cannot bear to let each other out of sight for a single instant. It is such reunions
as these that impel men to spend their lives together… 134
Notice, first, that Aristophanes says that these males have an innate, exclusive attraction
to males: “they have no natural inclination to marry and beget children” but do so only
for sake of social custom. Notice also Aristophanes’ phrase “boy lover—or any lover,”
which explicitly recognizes not only the “boy lover” of pederasty (i.e., the adult “lover”
who pursues the “beloved” youth) but also “any lover” who is attracted to other males
regardless of age. Aristophanes thus allows for peer relationships between age-equal
same-sex partners.

133
Hubbard, “Peer Homosexuality.”
134
Plato, Symposium 189d–192d, in Collected Dialogues, 542–45.

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 Now, we might wonder whether Aristophanes’ myth of human origins was meant
to be taken seriously as a true account or not. The historical Aristophanes was a comic
poet, after all, so perhaps Plato presented this speech in his name in order to put to
ridicule a certain view about erotic desire. Plato, further, was fond of using myths as
etiologies but without giving assent to those myths as true accounts. Nonetheless, this
myth is designed and deployed, not simply as a device in this dialogue, but as an account
of actual phenomena that were publicly acknowledged. The occasion depicted in Plato’s
Symposium was hosted by Agathon along with Pausanius, who were a living example of
same-sex partners that “spend their lives together.” Aristophanes says specifically about
their same-sex relationship: “for all I know they may be among the lucky ones, and both
be sections of the male.” Indeed, Aristophanes concludes that the way to happiness for
“the whole human race, women no less than men, is to be found in the consummation of
our love, and in the healing of our dissevered nature by finding each his proper mate.” 135
Pausanius’ own speech in Plato’s Symposium also speaks of same-sex attracted
individuals who form exclusive, long-term same-sex partnerships. Pausanius denigrates
short-term same-sex relations (typical of man-boy pairings) as “vicious” because this
love is based solely on the instability of passion (attraction to the physical beauty of the
other’s body, which changes), such that the love dissolves into infidelity (when the bloom
of the boy’s beauty begins to fade, the adult “lover” seeks another “beloved” youth). In
contrast to this deficient kind of same-sex love, Pausanius praises long-term same-sex
partnerships as “virtuous” because this love is based on the stability of virtue (attraction
to the moral beauty of the other’s soul, which is constant), such that the lover remains
“constant all his life” having “become one” with his beloved. 136 It was the latter, virtuous
arrangement of male-male pairings in faithful relationship that Pausanius enjoyed with
Agathon, who were real-life, long-term same-sex partners.137
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE) also exhibits the notion of natural
inclination to same-sex activity. Aristotle discusses states of character evident from the
enjoyment of pleasures. Some activities “are pleasant by nature,” he writes, while other

135
Plato, Symposium 193c, in Collected Dialogues, 546.
136
Plato, Symposium 183d-e, in Collected Dialogues, 537. As Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality,
46, observes, Pausanius’ speech implies that sexual relations are included within this virtuous kind of male-
male partnership.
137
Concerning the historical Pausanius and Agathon, see Hubbard, “Peer Homosexuality,” 142–43.

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activities “are not pleasant by nature” but are experienced as pleasurable because of
“injuries to the system,” or “acquired habits,” or “originally bad natures.” Aristotle,
categorizing same-sex activity as “not pleasant by nature,” then comments on the states
of character evident from the experience of pleasure in male-male sexual activity: “these
arise in some by nature and in others, as in those who have been the victims of lust since
childhood, by habit.” Aristotle implicitly distinguishes the adult “lover” and the
“beloved” youth—the “active” and “passive” partners—in the practice of pederasty.
Among males who experience same-sex activity as pleasurable, some do so because they
were forcibly accustomed to it in the “passive” role, while others do so because they are
naturally inclined to pursue the “active” role. 138 So, in the writings of Plato and Aristotle,
the two great philosophers of ancient Greece, we find the idea of innate same-sex
attraction or natural inclination to same-sex activity.
Let’s consider, next, the Roman era. Bernadette Brooten has documented the
existence of the notion of innate same-sex attraction or natural inclination to same-sex
activity in the Roman era also. She writes:
contrary to the view that the idea of sexual orientation did not develop until the nineteenth century,
the astrological sources demonstrate the existence in the Roman world of the concept of a lifelong
erotic orientation. Because of a particular configuration of the stars, a girl would be born as a
tribas, virago, fricatirx, or crissatric; the stars, then, determined a woman’s erotic inclinations for
the duration of her life. And yet, unlike the twentieth-century binary notion of homosexuality
versus heterosexuality, ancient astrologers conceived of erotic propensities in a far more complex
fashion…In other words, astrologers in the Roman world knew of what we might call sexual
orientation, but they did not limit it to two orientations, homosexual and heterosexual. 139
As Brooten demonstrates, there is also evidence from the Roman era—in both Latin and
Greek sources, in both literary texts and artistic representations—of awareness of
consensual, mutual, even life-long same-sex relationships, including between women. 140
Of particular interest is Ovid’s Metamorphoses (late 1st C. BCE or early 1st C. CE), in
which Ovid tells the “tale of two girls, Iphis and Ianthes, who loved each other and
wanted to marry.” Their desired marriage, which is contrary to Roman law, proceeds

138
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics VII.5 (1148b15-31), in Basic Works, 1045. In Aristotle’s view, the
enjoyment of same-sex activity “by nature” evidences an “originally bad” or “degenerate” nature, but still
an innate inclination.
139
Brooten, Love between Women, 140.
140
Brooten, Love between Women, 42–60.

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once “Isis intervenes and changes Iphis into a boy, making the marriage possible.” While
Ovid presents the love between Iphis and Ianthes as “against divine will, against nature,
against custom,” this text nonetheless exhibits cultural knowledge of consensual, mutual
same-sex relationships.141

The relevance of evidence

Interestingly, Scroggs does consider some of the contrary evidence discussed
above.142 He acknowledges, accordingly, the diversity of male-male sexual practices in
Greco-Roman culture—including same-sex activity between age-comparable partners,
based on mutual interest, and exhibiting long-term fidelity. Still, rather than revising his
thesis on account of this evidence, Scroggs claims that all evidence can fit one model: “if
we interpret pederasty supplely enough to include the continuation of that model into
these borderline cases, then it is certain that pederasty was the only model in existence in
the world of this time.”143 That is, given a sufficiently elastic definition of pederasty, we
can stretch the model to cover all cases and so explain all male-male sexual activity in
Greco-Roman society as a form of pederasty.
But then “pederasty” as Scroggs defines it would be nearly co-extensive with
“male-male sexual activity,” such that practically no male-male sexual activity would be
excluded by his definition of “pederasty,” in which case any evidence of male-male
sexual activity would almost necessarily be evidence of “pederasty.” Scroggs’ thesis—
that “the male homosexuality Paul knew about and opposed had to have been one or
more forms of pederasty” and, therefore, that “these [viz., New Testament] passages all
oppose one form or another of pederasty, insofar as they speak of male
homosexuality”144—would thus reduce to a tautology: Paul could not have known about,
and so the New Testament cannot have spoken against, any male-male sexual activity
other than pederasty because, by Scroggs’ broad definition of “pederasty,” almost all
male-male sexual activity in Greco-Roman society was a form of pederasty. Scroggs’

141
Brooten, Love between Women, 44.
142
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 130–38.
143
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 139 (original emphasis).
144
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 67, 101.

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attempt to force all evidence to fit into one model, in effect, renders his thesis virtually
vacuous.145
Brownson takes a different tact. He seeks to restrict the relevant evidence for
surmising what Paul might have had in mind at Romans 1 to sources “contemporaneous
with Paul.”146 Such a restriction would remove Plato’s Symposium—indeed, all sources
from prior to the first century—from relevant evidence. This restriction begs the
question: Why assume that Paul’s view of same-sex practices in Greco-Roman society
was shaped by only contemporaneous events and sources? Brownson’s assumption neatly
fits Brownson’s thesis: Paul’s description of same-sex practices at Romans 1, Brownson
contends, was aimed specifically at the notorious excesses of Emperor Caligula, such that
Paul’s condemnation concerned only excessive lust (and thus does not pertain to
consensual, mutual relations between innately same-sex attracted individuals). Whereas
Scroggs tries to fit the whole range of evidence to his thesis, Brownson tries to restrict the
range of evidence to what fits his thesis.
Even so, the New Testament contains direct evidence that Paul was familiar with
Greek poetical and philosophical sources dating back to at least the 3rd C. B.C. (quotation
from Aratus at Acts 17:28) and 4th C. B.C. (quotation from Menander at 1 Cor. 15:33)
and possibly (by intermediary sources) to the 6th C. B.C. (quotations attributed to
Epimenides at Acts 17:28 and Tit. 1:12). Moreover, Paul’s first-century contemporary,
the Jewish philosopher Philo, was familiar with Aristophanes’ view in Plato’s Symposium
and even cites and critiques it in his writings; Paul also, then, may have been aware of
this view. Given the evidence of Greek sources, it is possible that Paul could have been—
and, given Paul’s knowledge of Greek sources, it is plausible that Paul would have
been—aware of Greek ideas about innate same-sex attraction and practices of mutual
same-sex partnership. Brownson’s restriction of relevant evidence to contemporaneous
sources, therefore, conveniently filters out evidence that would confound his thesis.

145
Smith, “Ancient Bisexuality and the Interpretation of Romans 1:26–27,” 228: “[Scroggs’] treatment of
the pederastic “model” as a whole is much more sensitive and nuanced than this caricature, but on those
occasions when he presses the issue, by broadening his definition of pederasty and forcing what would
otherwise be exceptions to pederasty into his pederastic “model,” he is also, by implication, reducing his
conclusions to such an oversimplification.”
146
Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality, 155–56.

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 In any case, as we noted above, Brooten has demonstrated that there is direct
evidence from the Roman era of ideas about innate same-sex attraction and awareness of
consensual, mutual same-sex relationships, including between women. William Loader
has observed, moreover, that first-century Jewish sources (“Pseudepigrapha”) provide
direct evidence of awareness (and condemnation) of consensual, mutual same-sex
relations between adult males: “friend with friend” and “forehead to forehead.” 147 All
these sources are “contemporaneous with Paul”—and thus relevant evidence, even on
Brownson’s restrictive criterion.

Conclusion
Sources from both classical Greece and imperial Rome show clear evidence of
ideas about innate same-sex attraction and same-sex relationships of mutual consent. I
thus concur with Preston Sprinkle, on two counts. First: “it is historically inaccurate to
say: “the notion of sexual orientation was absent” [quoting Brownson] in Paul’s day and
then use this to reinterpret Paul.” Second: “We cannot assume therefore that Paul only
had nonconsensual, unhealthy, exploitive same-sex relations in view when he wrote
about same-sex relations.”148 The argument from silence—that Paul could not have
known about either ideas of innate inclination to same-sex activity or consensual, mutual
same-sex partnerships, and therefore that Paul’s ancient view does not speak to the
modern questions that concern the church today—thus fails on the evidence.149
Of these two points—that the ancient world did have ideas about innate same-sex
attraction; and that consensual, mutual same-sex partnerships were known in the ancient
world—the second, in my view, is much more significant for interpreting Paul’s
statements about same-sex activity at Romans 1. While some ancient Greco-Roman
philosophers, astrologers, and physicians evidently did think about sexual desire,
including same-sex eros, in terms that bear some comparison to what today is called
“sexual orientation,” this was not the popular understanding of homoerotic attraction and

147
2 Enoch 34:1–2 and Apocalypse of Abraham 24:8, respectively, cited in Loader, Making Sense of Sex,
132.
148
Sprinkle, People to Be Loved, 60, 64.
149
For further cogent criticism of the innovationist argument from silence, see Sprinkle, People to Be
Loved, 58–64, and DeYoung, What Does the Bible Really Teach? 79–87.

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activity. Neither Greek custom nor Roman law concerning same-sex practice was framed
in such terms.
As we will see in Appendix E, moreover, while it is possible that Paul was aware
of such ideas, Paul does not describe sexual actors or same-sex activity at Romans 1 in
any terms that might be comparable to ideas about sexual orientation, whether ancient or
modern.150 At Romans 1, Paul describes human persons as sexual actors only in terms of
bodily sex: “male” and “female.” At the same time, however, there is good reason to
conclude that Paul did not restrict his description of same-sex activity at Romans 1 to
only coercive or hierarchical practices (e.g., pederasty and prostitution), as we will see in
Appendix E. This indicates that Paul, whom Luke notes was a keen observer of Greco-
Roman practices (Acts 17:16–23), was likely aware, as were some of his Roman and
Jewish contemporaries, of consensual, mutual, stable same-sex partnerships in Greco-
Roman society.151

150
See Via, “Bible, Church, and Homosexuality,” 15–16.
151
For further discussion of what Paul may have known about Greco-Roman same-sex activity, see Smith,
“Ancient Bisexuality and the Interpretation of Romans 1:26–27.”

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 Appendix E

Paul on Same-Sex Intercourse:

Romans 1

The most important, and most disputed, biblical text that explicitly addresses the matter
of same-sex intercourse is Romans 1. It is not my intent to attempt an exhaustive
examination of Romans 1, or to review the extensive commentary literature on it, or to
rehearse every revisionist view of it, but rather to address specific aspects of this text that
are directly relevant to the arguments considered in the book.152 My discussion of
Romans 1 is limited to substantiating the view that Paul judges all forms of same-sex
activity—whether male-male or female-female, whether hierarchical or mutual, whether
coercive or consensual—as contrary to God’s will for sexual relations.
Paul writes:
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 men
and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. (Rom 1:26–27)
What did Paul have in mind here? Did Paul mean that women exchanged sex with men
for sex with other women—or only that women engaged in “unnatural” (e.g., non-
procreative) sex with men (or animals)? Did Paul mean that men engaged in sex with
other men in consensual, mutual relations—or only in hierarchical or exploitive practices
(e.g., pederasty or prostitution with boys or slaves)? What did Paul mean in judging such
sexual relations as “unnatural”?
To address these questions, we must pay close attention to Paul’s particular
terminology in the Greek text, looking carefully at three key phrases: “unnatural” or
“contrary to nature” (para physin); “in the same way” or “likewise” (homoiōs); and “for
152
For an extensive commentary on the Greek text of Romans 1, with reference to both the Old Testament
background of Paul’s thinking and the Greco-Roman context of Paul’s writing, see Brooten, Love between
Women, 195–302. For succinct critical surveys of various revisionist views of Romans 1, see Sprinkle,
People to Be Loved, 87–102, 187–92, and Swartley, Homosexuality, 55–67.

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one another” (allēlous). We’ll begin with the latter two phrases, which qualify the kinds
of sexual relations Paul had in mind.

What kinds of sexual relations did Paul have in mind?

Some commentators, supposing the rarity or obscurity of female-female sexual
relations in ancient cultures, interpret Paul’s reference to women engaging in “unnatural”
sexual intercourse as referring to some form of non-procreative sexual relations (e.g.,
anal sex with husbands, or sex with animals).153 As we observed in Appendix D, that
assumption is questionable: there is literary and artistic evidence of same-sex relations
between women in the Roman era.
In any case, such interpretations overlook the structure and language of Paul’s
text. Paul presents the sexual activities in view using a parallel structure:
Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural,
and in the same way (homoiōs) also
the men, giving up natural intercourse with women…
The phrase “in the same way” or “likewise” (homoiōs), placed between the parallel lines,
creates a comparison between the “unnatural” sexual activity of the women and that of
the men. This implies that the women were exchanging “natural” sexual activity for
“unnatural” sexual activity “in the same way” that the men were exchanging “natural”
sexual activity for “unnatural” sexual activity. This comparative parallel thus implies that
the “unnatural” sexual activity of the women was analogous to that of the men.
Bernadette Brooten comments:
The Greek word homoios, translated here as “the same way,” establishes as parallel the actions of
the women and the men, which, I argue, means that both groups engaged in homoerotic behavior.
Rhetorically, the text elicits greater suspense from the reader by delaying its explanation of the
women's “unnatural relations” until v. 27; here, the text defines “natural intercourse” as that
between a man and a woman and its opposite as male-male relations. The possible interpretation
of the women’s unnatural relations as bestiality thus produces a strained reading in light of v. 27.
Why would Paul have used “in the same way” (homoios) if the unnatural relations of the women

153
See Ruden, Paul among the People, 54.

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 were with animals, while those of the men were with other men? The reading that best takes into
account the parallel structure of v. 26b and v. 27a is that both verses refer to same-sex relations.154
So, insofar as the men were exchanging sex with women for sex with men, we should
infer that, “likewise,” the women were exchanging sex with men for sex with women.
Paul at Romans 1, then, is addressing both male-male and female-female sexual activity.
Paul uses the phrase “for one another” to characterize the sexual relations between
the men: “the men…were consumed with passion for one another (allēlous)” (Rom.
1:27). This phrase is used throughout the New Testament to characterize the mutual love
between brothers and sisters in the church (cf. John 13:34; 15:12, 17; Eph. 4:32; Phil. 2:3;
1 Thess. 5:11; 1 Peter 1:22; 4:9; 1 John 3:11, 23; 4:7, 11–12). In fact, Paul uses this
phrase several times in Romans to characterize the mutuality of relationship between
fellow believers in Christ to which he was exhorting the Christians at Rome: “love one
another (allēlous) with mutual affection; outdo one another (allēlous) in showing honor”
(Rom. 12:10); “live in harmony with one another (allēlous)” (Rom. 12:16); “Owe no one
anything, except to love one another (allēlous)” (Rom. 13:8); “Let us then pursue what
makes for peace and for mutual (allēlous) upbuilding” (Rom. 14:19); “Welcome one
another (allēlous), therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you” (Rom. 15:7); “Greet one
another (allēlous) with a holy kiss” (Rom. 16:16). Given Paul’s consistent use of allēlous
throughout Romans to depict conduct characterized by consent and mutuality, it is
reasonable to infer that Paul’s depiction at Romans 1 intends to include sexual activity of
“men…with men” occurring within relations characterized by mutual consent.
Attention to Paul’s particular terms, therefore, undercuts those claims that would
restrict the range of Paul’s concern to only specific, especially exploitative, forms of
same-sex activity. Robin Scroggs has argued that, “despite the general language” that
Paul uses at Romans 1 to depict same-sex activity, “Paul, with regard to the statement
about male homosexuality, must have had, could only have had, pederasty in mind.”155
As we showed in Appendix D, the historical evidence of the Roman era makes it possible
that Paul was aware of same-sex relationships based on mutuality. Paul’s characterization
of male-male sexual relations as “for one another” is comparable to the depictions of

154
Brooten, Love between Women, 253–54. See also Fitzmyer, Romans, 285, 287, and Scroggs, New
Testament and Homosexuality, 114.
155
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 122 (original emphasis).

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mutual same-sex relations between adult males found in contemporary Jewish literature:
“friend with friend” and “forehead to forehead.” 156 Scroggs’ claim thus founders on both
historical and exegetical grounds. William Loader summarizes the counterargument to
Scroggs’ position:
Thus, research since Scroggs has concluded that Paul would have more in mind than just
pederasty in Romans 1. In addition, Paul’s formulations, especially ‘for one another’ (1.27),
suggest mutuality rather than exploitation and so apparently envisage also adult-adult sexual
relations of mutual consent. If Paul stands under the influence of the Leviticus prohibitions, his
157
condemnation [of same-sex acts] is likely to have been comprehensive.
Paul’s own language (“for one another”), then, makes it plausible that Paul was in fact
aware of mutual relations between same-sex partners—and that he has such mutual
relations, in addition to hierarchical or exploitative practices, in view at Romans 1. 158
Likely, therefore, Paul had in mind at Romans 1 (a) both male-male and female-
female sexual intercourse, and (b) sexual relations of mutual consent in addition to
hierarchical or exploitative same-sex practices. It is thus reasonable to infer that Paul at
Romans 1 intends to include all known forms of same-sex practices in Greco-Roman
culture under his description of same-sex activity.

Same-sex intercourse as “unnatural”

Paul, then, characterized all same-sex intercourse as “unnatural” and, accordingly,
judged such conduct as being in “error.” The characterization of same-sex intercourse as
“unnatural” (para physin) was not a Pauline novelty. What did Paul mean by this? In
what terms should we try to make sense of Paul’s thinking? Some writers have sought to
make sense of Paul’s thinking in terms that are at home in our world but not in Paul’s
world. Other writers have sought to make sense of Paul’s thinking in terms that are at
home in Paul’s world but borrowed from his contemporaries. I will suggest that we
should seek to make sense of Paul’s thinking, first and foremost, in terms that are native
to and distinctive of his own text.

156
2 Enoch 34:1–2 and Apocalypse of Abraham 24:8, respectively. Cited in Loader, Making Sense of Sex,
132.
157
Loader, Sexuality in the New Testament, 23.
158
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 115, gives no attention to the phrase “for one another” in
Romans 1:27.

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 Reading Paul’s text in our terms
The late historian John Boswell sought to make sense of Paul’s thinking in terms
that are at home in our world but not in Paul’s world. Boswell contended that, when
judging same-sex intercourse as “unnatural,” Paul was referring specifically to
“heterosexual” persons (male or female) engaging in “homosexual” activity: “the persons
Paul condemns are manifestly not homosexual: what he derogates are homosexual acts
committed by apparently heterosexual persons.” 159 Boswell thus took Paul’s term
“natural” in sexual activity to refer to individual inclination: ““Nature” in Romans 1:26,
then, should be understood as the personal nature of the pagans in question.”160 As
Boswell interpreted Paul, sexual acts are “(un)natural” if done according (contrary) to
one’s individual inclination of sexual attraction. On Boswell’s reading, Paul judges
“heterosexual” persons as contravening “nature” on account of their engaging in same-
sex intercourse. Presumably, on this view, Paul would likewise judge “homosexual”
persons as contravening “nature” were they to engage in opposite-sex intercourse.
According to Boswell, then, Paul’s text entails no judgment concerning
“homosexual” persons engaging in same-sex intercourse: “It cannot be inferred from this
that Paul considered mere homoerotic attraction or practice morally reprehensible, since
the passage strongly implies that he was not discussing persons who were by inclination
gay.”161 The hermeneutic implication of Boswell’s interpretation is evident: because Paul
did not speak against same-sex oriented persons engaging in same-sex intercourse,
Romans 1 does not prevent the church today from sanctioning same-sex union between
same-sex oriented persons.
Boswell interpreted Paul’s text within the conceptual framework of sexual
orientation, such that Paul’s term “(un)natural” comes to mean, in effect, “according
(contrary) to individual sexual orientation.” Construing Paul’s meaning of “natural” in
terms of modern sexuality categories, however, yields an unnatural, anachronistic reading

159
Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 109.
160
Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 111 (original emphasis).
161
Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 112.

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of Paul’s text.162 As observed in Appendix D, some philosophers, astrologers, and
physicians in ancient Greece and Rome did have ideas about innate sexual attraction or
natural inclination to same-sex activity, ideas that can be seen as analogous to modern
notions of sexual orientation. Even so, interpreting Paul’s text in terms of sexual
orientation is problematic, for two reasons. First, Boswell’s interpretation refracts Paul’s
text through the binary prism of “heterosexual or homosexual.” As Brooten has shown,
ancient notions of innate attraction were not structured by binary categories. Thus, even if
Paul at Romans 1 were thinking about same-sex activity in terms of innate attraction, the
modern binary of sexual orientation might not fit his thinking.163 Further, and more
importantly, Paul at Romans 1 does not use any specific terminology from his cultural
context pertaining to innate attraction to designate sexual actors engaging in same-sex
activity. Rather, Paul uses only general terms of bodily gender—“male” and “female”—
to designate sexual actors. Thus, to interpret Paul’s thinking about same-sex activity in
terms of sexual orientation would introduce an extraneous element into Paul’s text.

Reading Paul’s text in his contemporaries’ terms

“UNNATURAL” AMONG PAUL’S CONTEMPORARIES
To understand Paul’s thinking in terms that belong to Paul’s world, we might look
to what Paul’s contemporaries meant when they judged same-sex activity as “unnatural.”
And to understand what they were judging as “unnatural” in same-sex activity, we need
first to make a few brief observations about same-sex practices in the ancient Greco-
Roman context.164
The main (but not the only) form of same-sex activity was pederasty, involving an
adult male partnered with a juvenile male. The practice of pederasty, while differing in
some ways between classical Greece and imperial Rome, was structured socially by
disparity of age, inequality of power, and hierarchy of status between the sexual partners.
In classical Greece, pederasty was practiced typically in man-boy pairs of free males; in
162
For critical assessment of Boswell’s view, see Hays, “Relations Natural and Unnatural,” Greenberg,
Construction of Homosexuality, 215, Brooten, Love between Women, 241–44, and Loader, Sexuality in the
New Testament, 20–21.
163
Brooten, Love between Women, 242.
164
For more extended and detailed descriptions, see Greenberg, Construction of Homosexuality, 141–60,
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 29–43, Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 57–
88, and Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 17–20, 67–77, 157.

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imperial Rome, pederasty was practiced often in master-slave pairs. The practice of
pederasty was sometimes abusive of the juvenile partner, especially of slaves. 165 Same-
sex activity in general, whether male-male or female-female, was also differentiated by
the sexual roles—“active” or “passive”—of the respective partners, who were
characterized by corresponding gender roles: the “active” (i.e., penetrative) partner
played a “masculine” role, while the “passive” (i.e., receptive) partner played a
“feminine” role. Thus, a male who voluntarily sought after, or was forcibly coerced into,
the “passive” sexual role in a male-male partnership was characterized as “playing the
woman,” while a female who adopted the “active” sexual role in a female-female
partnership was characterized as behaving “like a man.” There was specific terminology,
in both Greek and Latin, for designating the respective partners and various roles of
same-sex practices.166
With this in mind, let’s consider Greek, Roman, and Jewish writers that critiqued
same-sex practices and ask why they judged such activity as “unnatural.” Prior to Paul’s
time, the Greek philosopher Plato had judged all same-sex activity, both male-male and
female-female, as “unnatural” because, incapable of generating offspring, it perverts the
“natural function” of sexual intercourse. Plato rendered the same judgment on incest,
adultery, and concubinage, because these sexual unions would produce illegitimate
offspring. According to Plato, the law “dictated by nature’s own voice” restricts sex to
monogamous marriage between husband and wife.167
Among Paul’s contemporaries, both Roman and Jewish writers judged same-sex
activity—pederasty, in particular—as “unnatural.” Their critiques addressed various
aspects of the practice of pederasty.168 Plutarch, a first-century Roman moralist,
negatively evaluated pederasty from all three angles—power relations, sexual roles, and
gender roles—in the context of his judgment of pederasty as “contrary to nature.” Philo, a

165
Ruden, Paul among the People, 49–66, paints a vivid picture of abusive practice.
166
The Greek terminology includes: erastēs (“lover,” the adult male partner who took the “active” role in
pederasty), erōmenos (“beloved,” the youth male partner who took the “passive” role in pederasty),
paiderastēs (“lover of boys”), and kinaidos (an “effeminate” male who desires to be sexually penetrated by
other males).
167
Plato, Laws VIII (836b-841e), in Collected Dialogues, 1401–6.
168
See Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 54, 57, 60, 77–78, 88–89, 94–95; Nissinen,
Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 83–88, 93–102; Loader, Making Sense of Sex, 134; and Harper,
Shame to Sin, 95–97.

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first-century Jewish philosopher who had a working familiarity with the Greco-Roman
terminology pertaining to pederasty, emphasized sexual roles and gender roles, as well as
lack of procreative potential, in judging pederasty (among other forms of illicit sex) as
“against nature.”169 Likewise, Jewish rabbinic literature, dating from the first century
onward, emphasized improper sexual roles and gender roles, as well as lack of
procreative potential, in condemning pederasty along with incest, adultery, and bestiality
as sexual transgressions of divinely ordained boundaries.
Therefore, common to Greek and Jewish judgments of same-sex intercourse as
“unnatural” was its lack of procreative potential. And common to Roman and Jewish
judgments of pederasty as “unnatural” was the concern that male-male sexual activity
involved a change and confusion of sexual roles and gender characters: the “passive”
partner assumes, or is coerced into, a sexual role and gender character improper to his
nature, and degrading of his honor, as a man (by being sexually penetrated, he “plays the
woman”).

COMPARING PAUL TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES

What, then, about Paul? When Paul judged same-sex intercourse as “unnatural,”
was he critiquing same-sex intercourse on the same terms as were his Greek predecessors
and his Roman and Jewish contemporaries? We have shown, on historical and exegetical
evidence, that it is erroneous to assume that Paul must have in mind only pederasty when
critiquing same-sex activity. Likewise, we also cannot assume that Paul, because he used
the same Greek expression, must have had in mind the same concerns as his predecessors
or contemporaries and then read their concerns into his judgment of same-sex intercourse
as “unnatural.”170 That, too, would beg the question. Regarding Paul’s reference to
“unnatural” sexual relations involving women (Rom. 1:26), for example, Keith Dyer
asserts that “the exact nature of the unnatural relations is not certain, though the
presumption should be that it involved sexual penetration, or else the contrast with

169
Philo, Abraham 135–136; Special Laws 3:32–52.
170
Thiselton, “Can Hermeneutics Ease the Deadlock?” 175: “The fact that para physin occurs in Stoic texts
should not mislead us. Word-occurrence is not to be confused with word-use, i.e. which words are used is a
different issue from how words are used, and for what purpose.”

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‘natural relations’ loses most of its force.” 171 Dyer’s “presumption” itself presumes that
Paul’s use of “(un)natural” derives from the same understanding of “natural” sex and
exhibits the same concerns about “unnatural” sex as his contemporaries (i.e., who is
penetrating and who is being penetrated). Dyer thus presumes, rather than proves, that
Paul shares the same perspective on sex as his contemporaries.
We should avoid taking the ideas and arguments of others and placing them into
Paul’s mind and mouth. Rather, we should let Paul think with his own mind and speak in
his own voice.172 We should let Paul be Paul—and avoid converting him into Plato or
Plutarch,173 or even Philo.174 To see what Paul might have had in mind at Romans 1, we
must begin by looking to how Paul himself actually used the phrases “natural” and
“unnatural.”
To begin with, we should observe that the phrases “according to nature” (kata
physin) and “contrary to nature” (para physin) could be used in various contexts with
varying connotations. Does Paul, then, ever use “(un)natural” with a connotation that is
consonant with his contemporaries’ critique of same-sex activity? At 1 Corinthians 11,
Paul uses “(un)natural” in a way that some have argued is relevant to Romans 1. There
Paul writes concerning the proper order of public worship. The first matter he addresses
is the fitting roles for men and women in prayer and prophecy (1 Cor. 11:2–16). Both
men and women may pray and prophesy in public worship, Paul writes, but each should
do so in a way that is conducive to good order and that is fitting for and honoring to both
men and women. Appealing to “nature,” Paul argues that women should not cut their hair
short nor men grow their hair long: “nature itself” (physis autē) teaches that a man’s long
hair is degrading to him as a man; likewise, “nature” teaches that a woman’s short hair is
degrading to her as a woman (vv. 13–15). Here “nature” may refer to gender difference

171
Dyer, “Consistent Biblical Approach to ‘(Homo)sexuality’,” 19.
172
Paul used rhetorical forms used by Roman writers—e.g., the expression mē genoito (“no way”) and the
diatribe style of argument in his epistle to Rome and correspondence with Corinth. But the observation that
Paul adapted the modes of persuasion of the philosophers for his pastoral purposes is different from the
assumption that Paul adopted the moral perspective of his Roman peers. See Malherbe, Paul and the
Popular Philosophers, 25–33, 67–77.
173
See Fredrickson, “Natural and Unnatural Use in Romans 1:24–27,” and Martin, Sex and the Single
Savior, 56–60, both of whom interpret Paul’s thinking as a product of Greco-Roman culture.
174
See Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 109–17, Furnish, “Bible and Homosexuality,” 25–30,
and DeFranza, “Journeying from the Bible to Christian Ethics,” 81, each of whom pitches Paul as reprising
Philo. Blount, “Reading and Understanding the New Testament,” 34–35, presents Paul as reflecting both
Plutarch and Philo. For critique of DeFranza, see Loader, “Response to Megan K. DeFranza,” 103–4.

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based on natural distinction: were a man to pray wearing his hair like a woman, or were a
woman to pray wearing her hair like a man, it would fail to reflect the gender difference
between men and women and thus disrespect nature’s distinction between male and
female.175 Or “nature” may refer to gender roles in a social structure: were a man to pray
wearing his hair like a woman, or were a woman to pray wearing her hair like a man, he
or she would assume a role unfitting to his or her gender and thus reverse the roles of
men and women.176 On the latter reading of “nature” as referring to gender roles in a
social structure, Paul’s reasoning here might bear comparison to the logic of Paul’s
contemporaries in their criticisms of same-sex activity.
So, is this what Paul intends at Romans 1, that same-sex activity is “unnatural”
because it involves a change and confusion with respect to gender roles based on the
natural distinction between men and women? Martti Nissinen argues the position, held by
many, that Paul’s thinking at Romans 1 reflects the common view of his
contemporaries—and, thus, that Paul judges same-sex activity to be “unnatural” for the
same reasons as did first-century Roman and Jewish critics. In arguing thus, Nissinen
takes Paul’s reasoning about gender roles at 1 Corinthians 11 to be “the interpretive
background” of Paul’s thinking at Romans 1. 177 While the 1 Corinthians 11 text does
make it plausible that Paul might be thinking of “(un)natural” in terms of gender roles at
Romans 1, to simply infer from 1 Corinthians 11 that Paul is in fact thinking of
“(un)natural” in terms of gender roles at Romans 1 would beg the question. To avoid
begging the question, there needs to be evidence in the text of Romans 1 to support that
inference. What, then, is the textual evidence that this is Paul’s thinking at Romans 1?
Nissinen writes: “Evidently, “natural intercourse” implies not only gender difference and
the complementarity of sexes but also gender roles. That Paul refers to the women as
“their women” (1:26) is a clear indication of an implied gender role structure.”178 Based
on this evidence, Nissinen constructs an interpretation of Paul’s critique of same-sex-
activity along the lines of Paul’s contemporaries, emphasizing especially the
175
See Keener, Paul, Women, and Wives, 42–45.
176
Thistleton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 844–45: “Paul simply appeals to “how things are” or “how
things are ordered” in the period and context for which he is writing…Depending on the context of thought
Paul may use [hē physis] sometimes to denote the very “grain” of the created order as a whole, or at other
times (as here [viz., 1 Corinthians 11]) to denote “how things are” in more situational or societal terms.”
177
Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 108.
178
Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 107.

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“effeminacy” of the “passive” partner in the practice of pederasty.179 The hermeneutical
implication of Nissinen’s textual interpretation is clear: insofar as modern society no
longer adheres to ancient assumptions about gender roles, Paul’s judgment of same-sex
activity as “unnatural” is no longer morally instructive for the church today.180
What should we make of Nissinen’s interpretation of Paul’s thinking? Nissinen’s
argument hinges on his construal of the first phrase in the following sentence: “Their
women (ai thēleiai autōn) exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and likewise the
men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were inflamed with passion for one
another” (Rom 1:26b–27a). Nissinen, in effect, reads the possessive pronoun “their” in
“their women” as referring to the subsequent “the men” in the clause that follows: “their
women” are the women who belong to “the men” who also exchanged “natural”
intercourse for “unnatural.” The genitive case, masculine plural pronoun here—“of them”
(autōn)—need not refer to the following clause, however. It may very well refer to the
antecedent accusative case, masculine plural pronoun—“them” (autous)— in the clause
that precedes: “For this reason God gave them (autous) up to degrading passions. The
women of them (autōn)…” (1:26a, my rendering). Indeed, it would make good sense—
better sense, I think—to read the “of them” as referring back to the “them” that Paul has
been discussing up to this point: “their women” are the women belonging to the group
whom God had given over to “degrading passions,” to which group belong also “the
men” in the clause that follows. Thus, Brooten: “The text speaks of “their” women,
which points to the group nature of the transgression…Thus, “their” women connotes the
wives and daughters of the gentiles.” 181
Now, as Brooten observes, Paul speaks of “their” women but “the” (not “their”)
men. This asymmetry of reference may reflect the inferiority of women in Paul’s social
context: “The qualifying of women underscores their subordinate status within this
culture.”182 But even if we read “their women” with this double connotation (group
belonging and social status), it would not necessarily follow that Paul is thinking of
sexual activity in terms of gender roles. Paul does not use any of the specific terminology

179
Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 107–113.
180
Nissinen, Homosexuality in the Biblical World, 123–34.
181
Brooten, Love between Women, 240–41.
182
Brooten, Love between Women, 241.

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from his cultural context to identify sexual actors, whether women or men, by gender
role; and even if by “their” (in “their women”) he does identify women in same-sex
activity by gender role, by “the” (in “the men”) Paul does not identify men in same-sex
activity by gender role. Thus, the claim that Paul thinks of “(un)natural” intercourse in
terms of gender roles, on account of his reference to “their women,” would apply at most
to Paul’s critique of female-female intercourse. Yet, as observed above, Paul places
female-female intercourse in parallel with male-male intercourse (“likewise”), which
suggests that the same critique applies to both activities. Contrary to Nissinen’s claim,
therefore, Paul’s phrase “their women” does not give a “clear indication” that Paul is
thinking of “(un)natural” intercourse in terms of gender roles at Romans 1. 183 Nissinen’s
argument requires a single pronoun to prove too much.

Reading Paul’s text in its native and distinctive terms

“UNNATURAL” IN ROMANS: WHAT PAUL SAYS ELSEWHERE
To see if we might find a reference point for interpreting “(un)natural” in Romans
1, let’s consider how Paul uses the expression “(un)natural” elsewhere in Romans.
Beyond the first chapter, Paul uses the terms “nature” or “(un)natural” in three places
with different references. First, he describes the Gentiles who, despite not knowing God’s
will revealed in the Torah, nonetheless do what the Torah commands, as acting “by
nature” (physei) as “a law to themselves” (Rom. 2:14). Here, “nature” (physis) refers to
the moral compass of human conscience: to act “by nature” is to act according to a moral
orientation endowed by God in the human heart. He goes on, second, to describe the
Gentiles who are not circumcised “physically” (physeōs) yet obey the law as
“circumcised of heart” in contrast with Jews who disobey the law despite being
circumcised “in the flesh” (Rom. 2:25–29). Here, “nature” (physis) refers to the material
flesh of the human body: “natural” means what is indelibly marked on one’s physical
body. Third, Paul depicts God’s act to include Gentiles in God’s people with the image of
grafting wild shoots into an olive tree: some of the “natural” (kata physin) branches of
God’s people have been broken off due to unbelief, and God has taken shoots that are

183
Fitzmyer, Romans, 287: “In this instance [viz., 1 Corinthians 11], physis hardly refers to the natural
order of things, but to social convention…Yet what it meant there [viz., 1 Corinthians 11] has little
relevance for this context in Romans.”

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wild “by nature” (kata physin) and grafted them by faith into God’s people “contrary to
nature” (para physin) (Rom. 11:17–24). Here, “natural” refers to the expected order of
things due to God’s election of Israel as covenant people: just as grafting a branch of one
variety onto a tree of different variety is contrary to the ordinary course of things arboreal
(and thus “unnatural”), so also breaking off native (circumcised) branches due to unbelief
and grafting in wild (uncircumcised) shoots on account of faith appears contrary to the
expected order of God’s covenant (hence, “unnatural”).
Among these uses of “(un)natural” in Romans, the most relevant case, it seems to
me, is the first, “nature” as “moral orientation.” This seems so to me for two reasons.
That usage occurs in a discussion that continues the argument of Romans 1 (note the
rhetorical link at 2:1); moreover, that usage concerns human conduct, whereas the second
usage does not concern conduct and the third usage concerns divine election. Taking that
usage as a comparison for Romans 1 would suggest that Paul sees same-sex intercourse
as “unnatural” in the sense of “contrary to moral orientation”—that is, contrary to a God-
endowed moral orientation in the human heart. In this sense, we might explain what Paul
had in mind in judging same-sex intercourse as “unnatural” as follows. The human
practice of idolatry, which brought about darkened minds and disordered desires (Rom.
1:21–25), has deflected the moral compass of human nature to such a degree that the
natural moral orientation has become inverted—right and wrong have interchanged in
human judgment—with the result that human conduct has become perverted, misdirected
from right to wrong. Understood this way, men and women engaging in same-sex
intercourse would be the most telling instance of conduct “contrary to nature” that
manifests an idolatry-induced inversion of right and wrong in the human moral
orientation (Rom. 1:26–27). This explanation has the merit of cohering with the
Hellentistic-Jewish wisdom tradition that is evidently in the background of Paul’s
thinking (cf. Wisd. Sol. 14:22–31). I think that this explanation comes closer to what Paul
has in mind at Romans 1, but it does not quite capture what Paul says in the terms in
which he says it.

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 “UNNATURAL” IN ROMANS 1: WHAT PAUL DOES NOT SAY
I suggest that we seek to understand Paul’s thinking by considering the terms that
are native to and distinctive of his text at Romans 1. To do that, let’s look again at Paul’s
description of same-sex activity in Romans 1, but attending first to what Paul does not
say. Had Paul intended to aim his critique at hierarchical or exploitive same-sex
practices—between adult-youth or master-slave male-male pairs—Paul could have done
so by identifying the sexual actors using specific terminology appropriate to his cultural
context. While Paul’s vocabulary does overlap with both Roman and Jewish discussions
of same-sex activity, he does not utilize any terminology that would indicate that he
intends to depict disparity of age, or hierarchy of status, or inequality of power between
the sexual partners. Nor does Paul’s designation of the sexual actors refer to either the
different sexual roles between the partners or the gender characters associated with those
sexual roles. Again, there was specific terminology available with which Paul could have
identified the same-sex partners by sexual roles—active or passive—and ascribed to them
gender characters—masculine or feminine. In this regard, Paul stands in contrast to his
Jewish contemporary, Philo.
Philo was conversant in the Greco-Roman conception of same-sex relations and
deployed its terminology in condemning “the love of boys” (to paiderastein) as “evil.”
Making the standard distinction between “those who practice it” (active role) and “those
who suffer it” (passive role), Philo gave separate assessments of these respective roles.
Those who play the passive role are both pitied as “bearing the affliction of being treated
like women” and derided for “changing their manly character (physin) into an effeminate
one.” Playing the role of a “man-woman” (androgynon), the passive partner is “worthy of
death” because he “adulterates the precious coinage of his nature (physeōs).” The one
who actively pursues “the love of boys” (ho paiderastēs) deserves “the same
punishment” but for different reasons: because he “pursues that pleasure which is
contrary to nature (para physin)” and wastes his seed in sex with boys rather than
generating offspring through sex with his wife.184 While Philo saw active and passive
partners as each partaking in sin deserving death, he judged the “unnatural” sexual
activity of the respective partners in different terms: the passive partner does what is

184
Philo, Special Laws 3:37–39.

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“unnatural” by playing a woman’s role and perverting his manly character; the active
partner does what is “unnatural” by pursuing sexual pleasure apart from procreation. 185
Philo also used the term malakia (“softness”) to characterize those playing the
passive role in pederasty.186 Malakia, the noun form of the adjective malakos (“soft”),
was used pejoratively in Roman discourse to deride men judged as displaying an
“effeminate” character or playing a “feminine” role. By such usage, this term came to be
associated with the passive partner in male-male sexual intercourse. Paul, apparently, was
familiar with at least this terminology. At 1 Corinthians 6:9 he names malakoi along with
“fornicators” and “adulterers” among “wrongdoers” whose habitual conduct is unworthy
of God’s kingdom. Here, Paul juxtaposes malakoi with arsenokoitai. The term
arsenokoitai, which Paul uses elsewhere (1 Tim. 1:10) and likely derives from Leviticus,
refers to males engaging in sexual intercourse with males. In that context, some scholars
speculate, Paul might be using malakoi to ascribe a feminine gender character to men
playing the passive sexual role in same-sex intercourse.187
At Romans 1, contrasting with Philo, Paul depicts same-sex intercourse without
distinguishing roles as active or passive, or characterizing persons as masculine or
feminine. Paul neither ascribes masculinity (or manliness) to “active” partners in sexual
relations between women (i.e., that such women behave “like a man”), nor ascribes
femininity (or womanliness) to “passive” partners in sexual relations between men (i.e.,
that such men “play the woman”). Nor does Paul describe male-male sexual activity as
occurring between “men” and “boys.” In designating the sexual actors in same-sex
activity at Romans 1:26–27, Paul writes only that “the females” (ai thēleiai) and “the
males” (oi arsenes) each engaged in “unnatural” sexual intercourse, using generic terms
that could apply to “females” and “males” of any age combination or any social status,
playing any sexual role or displaying any gender character. He elaborates these
“shameless acts” in the same terms: “males with males” (arsenes en arsesin).188 Paul here

185
Philo evidently borrowed from Stoic ethics in order to render Jewish law intelligible to a Greek
audience—see Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 59–62.
186
Philo, Special Laws 3:39–40.
187
See Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 62–65, and Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical
World, 117–18.
188
Ruden, Paul among the People, 66–67: “But in Romans 1 he makes no distinction between active and
passive: the whole transaction is wrong. This is crucially indicated by his use of the Greek word for
“males,” arsenes, for everybody; he does not use the word for “men” [anēr], as the NRSV translation

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uses the very terms “male” and “female” that the Greek translation of Genesis uses to
characterize God’s creation of humankind as sexuate beings: “male (arsen) and female
(thēlu) [God] created them” (Gen. 1:27; 5:2 NETS).
Paul’s description of same-sex activity at Romans 1 may be compared also to that
of another Jewish contemporary, the historian Josephus. Defending Judaism to a Greek
audience, Josephus elaborated “our laws about marriage” in this way: “That law owns no
other mixture of the sexes but that which nature has appointed (kata physin), of a man
with his wife, and that this be used only for the procreation of children. But it abhors the
mixture of a male with a male (arrenas arrenōn); and if anyone does that, death is its
punishment.”189 Josephus contrasts sexual relations according to nature (kata physin) and
sexual relations against nature; and he categorizes sexual relations as according to or
against nature by the “mixture of the sexes” involved: sexual intercourse of “a man with
his wife” is according to nature; sexual intercourse of “a male with a male” is against
nature. In characterizing male-male sexual relations, Josephus uses generic terms that
would apply to any “male” with any other “male” regardless of age, status, or sexual role.
In these respects, Paul parallels Josephus: like Josephus, Paul categorizes sexual relations
as “against nature” (para physin) by the mixture of the sexes involved (female-female
and male-male are against nature); and, like Josephus, Paul characterizes same-sex
relations using generic terms for “females” and “males” that cover all possible
combinations in unnatural mixtures. Indeed, Paul’s phrase “males with males” (arsenes
en arsesin) closely parallels Josephus’ phrase “males with males” (arrenas arrenōn).
In categorizing sexual relations, however, Josephus adds a further criterion:
sexual intercourse according to nature is “only for the procreation of children.” 190 This
criterion, apparently, supplies Josephus with the rationale for judging same-sex
intercourse as against nature and thus proscribed by the law of marriage: nature has
appointed male-female intercourse for procreation, but same-sex intercourse cannot be
used for procreation. Paul, by contrast, does not appeal to the procreative purpose of
sexual intercourse as grounds for describing same-sex intercourse as against nature. In

would have us believe…Paul places on a par all the male participants in homosexual acts…” (original
emphasis).
189
Josephus, Against Apion 2.199.
190
Here, evidently, is a Stoic influence on Josephus’ interpretation of Jewish law.

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fact, Paul nowhere (explicitly) invokes procreation as a criterion of sexual relations,
whether male-female or same-sex.191

“UNNATURAL” SEX: PAUL’S DISTINCTIVE VIEW

Unlike the critiques of same-sex activity by his Roman and Jewish
contemporaries, Paul’s description of same-sex activity at Romans 1 emphasizes neither
the power relations (whether consensual or coercive) operating between the respective
partners, nor the sexual roles (whether active or passive) played by the respective
partners, nor the gender characters (whether masculine or feminine) displayed by the
respective partners. Loader comments:
Nothing, however, indicates that he is exempting some same-sex intercourse as acceptable. It is all
an abomination for Paul. The mutuality implied in his description of what is attacked “for one
another” [1:27], makes it unlikely that he is addressing only one-sided exploitive relations, as in
pederasty…Indeed, his declaration of perversion applies to both men and women and to both the
192
active and the passive partners.
The apostolic-era church was familiar with the Greco-Roman practice of pederasty and
explicitly condemned it: the Didache issued the injunction, “you shall not corrupt boys”
(ou paidophthorēseis). In the post-apostolic church, similarly, the Epistle of Barnabas
warned against the “one who corrupts boys” (paidophthoros) and repeated the injunction,
“you shall not corrupt boys” (ou paidophthorēseis).193 Had Paul intended to condemn
pederasty specifically, he could have used such specific terms to do so. Paul, then, is not
targeting only pederasty. Nor does Paul emphasize that same-sex intercourse lacks
procreative potential; he makes no reference to procreation in relation to sexual
intercourse at Romans 1. Brooten comments:
In sum, while ancient Jewish-Christian readers may have read Rom 1:26 in light of the other
Philonic possibilities for unnatural relations, namely intercourse with a menstruating or barren
woman, Paul’s failure to mention the menstrual laws and barrenness make these less plausible

191
Dyer, “Consistent Biblical Approach to ‘(Homo)sexuality’,” 19n23, is thus mistaken in stating that
Paul’s language is “very similar to that used by Philo, Josephus and other Jewish critics of Gentile
immorality.” Paul’s terms are partly similar to those of Josephus but quite different from those of Philo.
192
Loader, Making Sense of Sex, 137–38.
193
Didache 2.2 and Epistle of Barnabas 10.6; 19.4, cited from Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 252–53, 301,
321. See also Milavec, Didache, 131–34.

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 readings. In fact, Paul does not use procreation as an argument against any kind of sexual
194
behavior, including same-sex love.
Paul, then, is not simply critiquing non-procreative sex.
Instead of emphasizing power relations, sexual roles, gender characters, or
procreative potential, Paul’s description of same-sex activity at Romans 1 designates the
sexual actors only by their bodily sexes (whether male or female) and emphasizes the
combination of the sexes in sexual relations (whether male-female, or male-male, or
female-female). Paul’s emphasis on bodily sex and sex combination in critiquing same-
sex intercourse thus cut across those concerns—power relations, sexual roles, gender
characters, and procreative potential—that occupied the attention of other first-century
critics of same-sex practices.195
Classics scholar Kyle Harper argues that Paul’s analysis and assessment of same-
sex activity not only distinguished him from his Roman and Jewish contemporaries, but
also became the catalyst for the transformative impact of Christian teaching on sexual
morality in the ancient world:
In the matter of same-sex eros…Christian norms simply ate through the fabric of late-classical
morality like an acid, without the least consideration for the well-worn contours of the old
ways…Paul’s letters again provided an incomplete but, really, unambiguous template for the
blanket condemnation of same-sex love in early Christianity. Nowhere is this clearer than in the
first chapter of his letter to the Romans.196
Paul’s original contribution to sexual ethics in the ancient world, Harper argues, was his
marked emphasis on bodily sex and sex combination as the fundamental criterion of
sexual relations.
For the historian, any hermeneutic roundabout that tries to sanitize or soften Paul’s words [at
Romans 1] is liable to obscure the inflection point around which attitudes toward same-sex erotics
would be forever altered. It is precisely here. Paul’s originality lay in the violence with which his
thought shuttled between and then beyond both Greco-Roman and Jewish strictures to form an
unambiguous and all-embracing denunciation of same-sex love. Paul’s overriding sense of
gender—rather than age or status—as the prime determinant in the propriety of a sexual act was
nurtured by contemporary Jewish attitudes. The very language of “males” and “females” stood

194
Brooten, Love between Women, 282.
195
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 109, is thus mistaken in stating that Paul’s text at Romans
1:26–27 is simply “composed of commonplaces of Greek and Jewish attitudes toward homosexuality.”
196
Harper, From Shame to Sin, 12. On the sharp contrast between Christian moral norms and Greco-Roman
sexual practices more generally, see also Fox, Pagans and Christians, 336–74.

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 apart from the prevailing idiom of “men” and “boys,” “women” and “slaves.” By reducing the sex
act down to the most basic constituents of male and female, Paul was able to redescribe the sexual
culture surrounding him in transformative terms. Paul’s view of Roman sexual culture captured
patterns invisible through the lens of traditional Greco-Roman moralism. One sign of this
recategorization, staring the reader squarely in the face, is the equivalence of same-sex love
between men and between women.197
According to Harper, if we interpret Paul’s thinking at Romans 1 through the conceptual
prism of social status and sexual roles that structured the Greco-Roman practice and the
first-century critique of same-sex intercourse, we will miss the distinctive emphasis of
Paul’s thinking—namely, the bodily sexes of the sexual actors and the sex combination in
sexual activity—and so fail to appreciate the transformative impact of Paul’s argument on
Christian ethics. Harper comments further:
What is significant about early Christian moralizing, from Paul onward, is that it drew so little
from established modes of criticism…From Paul onward, Christian sexual ideology collapsed all
forms of same-sex contact, whether pederastic or companionate, into one category. 198
Paul radically reconstructed the notion of “(un)natural” in sexual relations, effectively
erasing the conceptual distinctions of the cultural discourse, leaving behind only the basic
facts of the bodily sexes.199 Contrasting with Philo, Paul analyzed sexual relations along
the single dimension of bodily sex and, accordingly, assessed all same-sex sexual
relations as “unnatural” on the same terms. Harper again comments:
Under the influence of Paul…the conception of “natural” sex is reorganized around the gender of
the partner rather than the role of the sexual actor; the traditional bifurcation of love between
males into pederasty and passivity gives way to a monolithic conception of unnatural sexual
practice.200
Brooten comes to much the same conclusion. Paul envisioned a social order in which the
ethnic difference “Jew and Gentile” was no longer a relevant difference, which allowed
Jew/Gentile intermarriage. At the same time, within this social order, Paul reinforced the

197
Harper, From Shame to Sin, 95.
198
Harper, From Shame to Sin, 99.
199
In Appendix B, we saw how Paul at Ephesians 5 effectively redefined the husband as “head” in the
Christian household by recasting that role in the image of Christ. Here we see how Paul at Romans 1
radically redrew the natural/unnatural distinction in sexual ethics by grounding that distinction in the
creational categories of “male and female.”
200
Harper, From Shame to Sin, 139.

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sex difference of “male and female” as a “natural” difference to be respected in sexual
relations, which disallowed same-sex intercourse.201
In placing marked emphasis on bodily sex, Paul’s perspective on sexual relations
not only diverges from his cultural context but also aligns with his biblical background,
both the creation account in Genesis and the Holiness Code in Leviticus. Brooten
comments on these inter-textual connections:
“Men…with men.” The Greek term for “men” is literally “males,” which includes males of all
ages. This language calls to mind both Gen 1:27 (that God created humanity “male and female”)
and Lev 18:22; 20:13 (on lying with a male as with a woman). Romans, like Leviticus, condemns
same-sex relations between males of all ages, not only pederasty…Just as Lev 20:13 categorically
places under the death penalty sexual intercourse between any two males, so too does Rom 1:27
condemn sexual acts on the basis of the partner’s gender.202
At Romans 1, therefore, Paul designates sexual actors and evaluates sexual relations
fundamentally in terms of the creational categories of bodily sex, “male” and “female.”
Paul, then, sees sexual activity in terms of bodies and their sexes, not only hearts and
their intents.203

Same-sex intercourse as “exchange”

Paul, as we have seen, neither invented the distinction between “natural” (kata
physin) and “unnatural” (para physin) nor pioneered its application to sexual relations.
Paul’s distinctive emphasis on bodily sex in describing same-sex intercourse, however, is
the textual key for understanding why Paul judged same-sex intercourse as “unnatural.”
Seeing “unnatural” in terms of bodily sex at Romans 1, moreover, explains why Paul,
unlike his first-century contemporaries, gave attention to female-female sexual relations,
addressed female-female sexual relations in parallel with male-male sexual relations, and

201
Brooten, Love between Women, 264.
202
Brooten, Love between Women, 256. I do not concur, however, with Brooten’s subsequent comment:
“Paul, like Philo and many other Greek-speaking diaspora Jews, considered male-male intercourse as a
transgression of social roles, which he would understand as dictated by nature. The passive male has
allowed himself to play the part of a woman, while the active male has taught his partner effeminacy and
participated in his become effeminate.” As we have demonstrated above, Paul’s characterization of same-
sex intercourse in terms of male/female contrasts with Philo’s characterization in terms of active/passive
and masculine/feminine. While Paul may have held that the social roles of men and women are ordered by
nature (cf. 1 Cor 11:2–16), he characterizes same-sex relations as transgressions of created order (“male
and female”) not social roles.
203
Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 108–16, overlooks this fact in his analysis of Paul’s argument at
Romans 1.

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deemed both “unnatural.” To see further what Paul had in mind in characterizing same-
sex intercourse as “unnatural,” we need to set the two verses of Romans 1 that mention
same-sex intercourse into the context of Paul’s surrounding discussion.
Paul’s description of same-sex intercourse as an “exchange” of “natural” for
“unnatural” in sexual intercourse (1:26–27) is stated in parallel with Paul’s description of
the unfolding of God’s wrath upon humanity’s ungodliness and unrighteousness (which
Paul later contrasts with the revelation of God’s righteousness for humanity’s
redemption, in Romans 3). Paul depicts the human situation as a cascading series of
human “exchange” and divine “giving up.” 204
For though they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him…they exchanged
the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed
reptiles or animals. (1:21, 23)
Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of
their bodies among themselves, (1:24)
because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature
rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (1:25)
For this reason, God gave them up to degrading passions. (1:26a)
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 men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
(1:26b-27)
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind
and to things that should not be done. (1:28)205
Paul depicts same-sex activity within the larger frame of humanity’s exchanges of God
for idols, of truth for lie and, accordingly, of true worship for false worship. Having
refused to recognize God and thereby become subject to “futile thinking” with “darkened
minds” (1:21–22), humanity then substitutes what is not-God for God, in successive
steps: in reality (putting images of creatures in place of the glory of God); in knowledge
(believing a lie about creatures in place of the truth about God); and, consequently, in
devotion (serving the creature in place of the Creator). God’s reaction of wrath to
humanity’s substitution of what is not-God for God is to hand humans over to their own
devices, allowing human beings to degrade themselves by means of their disorder—and,

204
See Brooten, Love between Women, 231.
205
I have added italics for emphasis throughout this quotation.

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in that way, to punish themselves by their erroneous conduct (Rom. 1:27b; cf. Pss. 106;
115; Wisd. Sol. 11–15).206
Paul’s description of same-sex activity follows this same pattern: the exchange of
“unnatural” for “natural” in sexual intercourse is parallel to the substitution of what is
not-God for God in reality, knowledge, and devotion.207 What, then, is exchanged, or
substituted, in same-sex intercourse that accounts for it being “unnatural”? First, Paul
designates sexual actors by only their bodily sexes as male and female. It is thus evident
that Paul’s judgment of same-sex intercourse as “unnatural” has to do with bodily sex in
sexual relations: same-sex intercourse substitutes male (female) in place of female (male)
in sexual relations. Second, Paul depicts humanity’s substitution of what is not-God for
God, and God’s handing humankind over to degradation by means of what it has put in
place of God, against the background of creation: God as Creator, creation as witness to
God, humankind’s opportunity and ability to know God by what God has created, and
thus humankind’s duty to worship the Creator rather than the creature (Rom. 1:18–20, 23,
25).208 It thus appears that Paul’s judgment of same-sex intercourse as “unnatural” has to
do also with God’s design for sexual relations in created order: same-sex intercourse
exchanges God’s ordination of male-female union for the human invention of same-sex
union.
Paul’s “exchange” parallel thus sets up an analogy between false worship and
same-sex intercourse, as Ulrich Mauser observes:
Idolatrous religion substitutes the worship of the only true God for objects unworthy of veneration,
and homosexuality substitutes the relationship established by the Creator with a relationship that
has no foundation in God’s creation. There is a precise analogy between the exchange of the

206
Fitzmyer, Romans, 269, translates Romans 1:27b: “…and being paid in turn in their own persons the
wage suited to their deviation.”
207
Concerning the textual-theological parallels within Paul’s argument at Romans 1, see Hays, “Relations
Natural and Unnatural,” and Gathercole, “Sin in God’s Economy.”
208
Paul references “creation” (ktisis) three times in this passage: “the creation (ktiseōs) of the world” (Rom
1:20); “they…worshipped and served the creature (ktisei) rather than the Creator (ktisanta)” (Rom 1:25).
That Paul depicts human transgression against the background of divine creation, and that Paul’s
vocabulary and sequencing partially overlaps with Genesis 1, suggests that Paul implicitly draws from
Genesis 1 at Romans 1. For an argument in favor of that connection, see Dunn, Theology of Paul, 91–93;
for a brief discussion of the scholarly debate, see Bouteneff, Beginnings, 38–39.

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 Creator for creatures and the exchange of the Creator’s act in ordaining the union of male and
female for the union of members of the same sex.209
God ordained in creation that the creature should reverence the Creator; but false worship
substitutes an image of the creature in place of the Creator of the creature—and thereby
exchanges God’s glory for human invention as the object of reverence. Likewise, God
ordained in creation that sexual relations should unite male and female; but same-sex
intercourse substitutes male (female) in place of female (male)—and thereby exchanges
God’s design for human invention as the pattern of sexual relations. William Loader,
likewise, observes the logic in Paul’s parallel: “There is a certain internal logic to Paul’s
argument which suggests that he sees a close link between denying God’s true nature in
idolatry and then going on to deny the true nature of human sexual relations: both are
marks of sinfulness and alienation.”210 Paul thus considers the exchange of divine design
(male-female union) for human invention (same-sex union) in sexual relations as stark
evidence of creation turned away from its Creator: it is a visible sign of humankind’s
larger “exchange” of what is not-God for God, a telling indicator of how far God has
“given up” human beings to go their own way. 211
In Paul’s view at Romans 1, therefore, same-sex intercourse is “unnatural” on
account that, by substituting male (female) in place of female (male) in sexual relations, it
exchanges God’s design in creation for a human invention contrary to creation. Loader
comments:
In Romans 1:26 and 27 Paul appeals to what is natural…But for Paul, what is natural has
theological status, because it is how God created things to be and so it is what is right…his use of
the words “female” and “male” in Romans 1:26-27 in all probability reflects and is intended to
reflect the story of the creation of humankind as “male and female” in Genesis 1:27…Paul may
have in mind that the male is created as the head of the female, as he enunciates this in 1
Corinthians 11:3, so that for men to take on the passive role traditionally associated with women
would be shaming and dishonouring. But Paul’s concern with nature is about more than that, and,
in any case, he sees the actions of both the active and the passive same-sex partners as shameful.

209
Mauser, “Creation, Sexuality, and Homosexuality,” 47. See also Mauser, “Creation and Human
Sexuality in the New Testament,” 10–12.
210
Loader, Sexuality in the New Testament, 14.
211
See Hays, Moral Vision of the New Testament, 386, Fitzmyer, Romans, 276, and Brooten, Love between
Women, 244.

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 His fundamental concern is that homosexual desire and its expression run contrary to how God
made male and female to be and to relate.212
Via similarly, and summarily, comments: “perhaps most importantly he regards same-sex
relations as contrary to nature (1:26–27), contrary to the order of the world as created by
God.”213 Because the substitution of male (female) in place of female (male) is a feature
of every variation of same-sex intercourse—whether male-male or female-female,
consensual or coercive, mutual or hierarchical, active or passive, erotic or cultic—all
same-sex intercourse exchanges God’s design for human invention in sexual relations
and, therefore, is “unnatural.”214 And because God’s design for sexual relations is
knowable through what God has created (cf. 1:19–20), same-sex intercourse not only
knowingly exchanges “natural” for “unnatural” in sexual relations but also actively
suppresses the truth about God (cf. 1:18): to substitute the sexes in sexual relations is to
deny the One who created the sexes and ordained their union. Brooten comments: “I
believe that Paul used the word “exchanged” to indicate that people knew the natural
sexual order of the universe and left it behind…I see Paul as condemning all forms of
homoeroticism as the unnatural acts of people who had turned away from God.” 215 I
concur, and thus conclude that Paul sees all same-sex intercourse as contrary to creation
and thus contrary to knowing, honoring, and worshipping the Creator as God (cf. 1:21–
23).216
In judging all same-sex intercourse as “unnatural,” Paul’s perspective at Romans
1 parallels the Holiness Code at Leviticus 18, which judges all male-male intercourse—
whether cultic or erotic, coercive or consensual, hierarchical or mutual, active or

212
Loader, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 39-40. See also Loader, Sexuality in the New Testament, 28.
213
Via, “Bible, Church, and Homosexuality,” 14. Also Fitzmyer, Romans, 286: “…in the context of vv. 19-
23 [of Romans 1], “nature” also expresses for him the order intended by the Creator, the order that is
manifest in God’s creation…” See also Schmidt, Straight and Narrow? 77-83.
214
This interpretation explains why Paul puts female-female sexual intercourse in parallel with male-male
sexual intercourse, a fact that is anomalous on Scroggs’ thesis: If Paul is condemning only specific forms of
pederasty, why would he even mention female-female sexual intercourse, much less condemn it? Scroggs,
New Testament and Homosexuality, 115, struggles at an explanation.
215
Brooten, Love between Women, 244.
216
Note that the scholarly conclusions of Brooten, Loader, and Via are not influenced by traditional
theological convictions: each one is personally favorable to an innovationist view.

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passive—as “abhorrent” or “detestable.” 217 Brooten comments on this inter-textual
parallel:
What does the Levitical background of Romans mean for our interpretation of it? The concept that
some sexual acts defile the participants serves as a basis for the Levitical prohibitions against
certain sexual relations. That the intercourse is an abomination has nothing to do with consent or
coercion, categories that most ethicists today consider central for moral discourse. Likewise for
Paul, consent and coercion do not play a role in his condemnation of homoeroticism. A concern
for the holiness and purity of the Israelites as a group guides the Levitical code; similarly, Paul
wants the Christian community to be holy and to avoid the impurity that exemplifies gentile life…
When Paul defines homoeroticism as impure, he—like Leviticus—is helping to maintain strict
gender differentiation.218

Same-sex intercourse and sin

Did Paul characterize same-sex intercourse as sin?
William Countryman maintains that Paul, despite judging same-sex intercourse in
negative terms at Romans 1, did not consider it as inherently wrong:
While Paul wrote of same-gender sexual acts as being unclean, dishonorable, improper, and “over
against nature,” he did not apply his extensive vocabulary for sin to them. Instead, he treated
homosexual behavior as an integral if filthy aspect of Gentile culture. It was not in itself sinful, but
had been visited upon the Gentiles as recompense for sin… 219
Countryman’s textual interpretation carries a practical implication: according to Paul,
because same-sex intercourse is an “integral if filthy aspect of Gentile culture” but not a
sinful behavior opposed to God’s will, Gentiles who continue to practice same-sex
intercourse are not thereby precluded from the church. 220 In support of this view,
Countryman argues from two angles, each of which suffers weaknesses.
Countryman’s first argument: Paul says that same-sex intercourse is unclean, but
impurity is not equivalent to sin, and Paul does not, in so many words, say that same-sex
intercourse is “sin.” Countryman is correct that biblical law (Leviticus) does not simply

217
On Leviticus, see Appendix G. See also Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 37–44; Wold,
Out of Order, 101–20; Milgrom, Leviticus, 207; and Loader, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 21–23.
218
Brooten, Love between Women, 293–94. Brooten, 282–83, comments further on Leviticus as the
background of Romans: “Even though Romans 1 does not explicitly cite Leviticus 18 and 20, they overlap
at three points: (1) Romans 1 and Leviticus 18 and 20 use similar terminology; (2) both Romans and
Leviticus contain a general condemnation of sexual relations between men; and (3) both describe those
engaging in such relations as worthy of death.”
219
Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 116.
220
Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 120.

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equate impurity with sin: sins do cause impurity, which requires purification by sacrifice;
but various things that are not sins also cause impurity and require purification, including
normal occurrences in the life cycle (e.g., menstrual bleeding, seminal emission, giving
birth, and burying the dead). While we cannot simply infer “sinful” from “unclean,”
however, sin and impurity are not mutually exclusive. It thus may be that Paul
characterized same-sex intercourse as both unclean and sinful; and Romans 1 provides
good evidence that he meant to do so.
Paul leads his account of Gentiles turning from the Creator to idolatry, and the
cascading consequences that follow, with the announcement that God’s wrath is being
revealed from heaven against all “impiety and injustice [asebeian kai adikian]” (Rom.
1:18, my translation). Paul’s pair of terms—asebeia (“impiety” or “ungodliness”) and
adikia (“injustice” or “unrighteousness”)—encompasses both aspects of wrong that Paul
depicts in his account: wrong reverence manifest in idolatry (vv. 19–25); and wrong
attitudes and activities manifest in vices (vv. 28–31; cf. adikia at v. 29), which follow as a
consequence.
Paul’s terms— asebeia and adikia—have a biblical background, in the Greek
translation of the Old Testament. They are used as a pair or in parallel in the psalms and
prophets (LXX Pss. 72:6; Jer. 3:13; Hos. 10:13; Mic. 7:18). They are also used together
in conjunction with “sin” (hamartia) or “sinner” (hamartōlos) and with other terms that
connote evildoing or wickedness (LXX Pss. 10:5–6; 72:1-12; Hos. 10:13–15; Mic 7:18–
19). In particular, the pairing of adikia and asebeia in LXX Psalm 72, where Asaph
decries the seeming success of the wicked, shows the connections: he confesses his envy
of the “lawless [anomois],” having seen the “sinners’ peace [eirēnē hamartōlōn]” (v. 3
NETS); he characterizes these lawless sinners as possessed by “pride” and having
“clothed themselves with injustice and their impiety [adikian kai asebeian autōn]” (v. 6
NETS); their “injustice [adikia]” proceeds from a corrupt heart and speaks “malice
[ponēria]” against heaven (vv. 7-9 NETS); these, he sums up, are the “sinners
[hamartōloi]” who flourish (v. 12 NETS).
Each of these terms, moreover, is used in parallel or interchangeably with “sin” or
“sinner” or similar terms. Here are examples with asebeia: “Happy the man who did not
walk by the counsel of the impious [asebōn], and in the way of sinners [hamartōlōn] did

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not stand” (Ps. 1:1 NETS; cf. 1:5; 25:5); “you forgave the impiety [asebeian] of my sin
[hamartias]” (LXX Ps. 31:5 NETS); “All this is for the impiety [asebeian] of Iakob and
for the sin [hamartian] of the house of Israel” (Mic. 1:5a NETS; cf. 3:8; 6:7; Amos 5:12).
And here are examples with adikia: “Do not drag my soul away together with sinners
[hamartōlōn]; together with workers of injustice [adikian] do not destroy me” (LXX Ps.
27:3 NETS); “For your hands have been defiled with blood, and your fingers with sins
[hamartiais], and your lips have spoken lawlessness [anomian], and your tongue plots
unrighteousness [adikian]” (Isa. 59:3 NETS); “your sins [hamartiai] multiplied relative
to all your injustice [adikian]” (LXX Jer. 37:14c NETS; cf. 16:10; 27:20). In the Greek
translation of the Old Testament, therefore, the terms “impiety and injustice” are used in
parallel or interchangeably with the terminology of “sin.”
In Romans, moreover, Paul twice uses asebeia in parallel with “sins” or “sinners.”
In one place, he constructs the parallel by his own phrasing: “For while we were still
weak...Christ died for the ungodly [asebōn]…while we were still sinners [hamartōlōn]
Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6, 8). In another place, he constructs the parallel by a
conjunction of quotations: “Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish
ungodliness [asebeias] from Jacob” (Rom. 11:26, citing Isa. 59:20); “And this is my
covenant with them, when I take away their sins [hamartias]” (Rom. 11:27, citing Isa.
59:21; 27:9). Paul also uses adikia in conjunction with “sin” in an exhortation: “No
longer present your members to sin [hamartia] as instruments of wickedness [adikias]”
(Rom. 6:13).221 In Romans, therefore, Paul sees “impiety and injustice” in parallel with,
and as connected to, “sin.”
Paul, furthermore, characterizes the misdirected ways of Gentiles who lack the
law but have the witness of creation (Rom. 1:18-32) and the disobedient ways of Jews
who have the law but do not follow it (Rom 2:1-29) in the same terms: sin. Gentiles have
“sinned apart from the law” while Jews “have sinned under the law” (Rom. 2:12)—and
both are without excuse before God’s judgment (Rom. 1:19–20; 2:1–11). Paul even
summarizes the entire exposition of Gentile wrongdoing and Jewish waywardness by
stating: “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin” (Rom. 3:9; cf. 3:23).

221
Paul also repeatedly uses “sin” or “sinners” in opposition to “righteousness” or “righteous” (Rom 5:19;
6:16, 18, 20).

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 Paul’s pair of terms, “impiety and injustice,” thus carries connections with and
connotations of “sin.” Therefore, Paul’s announcement of God’s wrath against all
“impiety and injustice,” which heads the entire series of human “exchange” and divine
“giving up” that follows, already places all the Gentile attitudes and activities that flow
from idolatry, including same-sex intercourse, under the domain of “sin.” And Paul’s
summary that “all are under the power of sin” subsumes the Gentile attitudes and
activities that manifest disregard for the Creator, including same-sex intercourse, as well
as the Jewish attitudes and activities that manifest disregard for the law. 222
Countryman’s second argument: Paul depicts same-sex intercourse as the
consequence of idolatry, such that same-sex intercourse functions as the punishment for
sin and thus is not itself sin. Countryman is correct that Paul sees God’s “giving up”
women and men to degrading their bodies by same-sex intercourse as their “due penalty”
for denying God’s reality by idolatry. Countryman’s argument implicitly makes a sharp
distinction between sin and punishment: he assumes, in effect, that God does not punish
sin with sin—that is, deal with sin by handing over the sinner to further sinning. There is
good evidence, however, that Paul did not observe a sharp distinction between sin and
punishment and saw same-sex intercourse as punishment from God and sin against God.
Paul’s pattern of humanity exchanging worship of the Creator for worship of
creatures and God handing humanity over to punishment has a close parallel in the
Wisdom of Solomon, a Greek text from the first-century B.C. written by a Hellenistic
Jewish author. As a Jew of the Diaspora, Paul may well have been familiar with the
Wisdom of Solomon. Even if Paul was not familiar with it, the several parallels between
Romans 1 and Wisdom of Solomon indicate that these texts and their authors share
similar perspectives of idolatry and its consequences.223 Recognizing this fact suggests
reading Romans 1 from the parallel perspective of Wisdom of Solomon.
Wisdom of Solomon addresses idolatry and its consequences (chapters 13 to 15)
in the middle of an extended reflection on God’s providential action in Israel’s history by
means of the created order (chapters 11 to 19). Reflecting on God’s deliverance of Israel

222
Schmidt, Straight and Narrow? 68–77, likewise, critiques Countryman, showing that several more of
Paul’s terms in Romans 1 connote or connect to “sin.”
223
On the inter-textual parallels between Wisdom of Solomon and Romans 1, see Brooten, Love between
Women, 294–98, and Toews, Romans, 71.

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from Egypt by plagues and wonders, and God’s judgment of Egypt for its idolatry, the
Wisdom writer infers from God’s actions two principles of God’s providence: God
benefits Israel by the same means by which God punishes Israel’s enemies (11:5; cf.
11:13; 18:8); and God deals with sin such that “one is punished by the very things by
which one sins” (11:15–16). According to this second principle, which figures centrally
in Wisdom of Solomon’s portrayal of idolatry and its consequences, God’s providence
converts the means of sin into the means of punishment. Humans sin by perverting for
evil the things that God has created for good (2:6–11); thus, the idolater sins by
perverting creatures into gods. God deals with sin by converting what humans have
perverted through sin into instruments of punishment that work against the sinner; thus,
God punishes the sin of idolatry by turning the creatures whose images the idolater
worships to the torment of the idolater. Those who sinned by idolatry, “[God] tormented
through their own abominations” (12:23–27; cf. 15:18–16:4). The providential
perspective of Wisdom of Solomon, then, does not recognize a sharp distinction between
sin and punishment. Reading Romans 1 from this providential perspective, we see Paul
depict sin and punishment as two aspects of the one activity of same-sex intercourse:
“Men committed shameless acts with men [sin] and received in their own persons the due
penalty for their error [punishment]” (Rom. 1:27b).
Wisdom of Solomon, moreover, sees idolatry as the capital vice: “the worship of
idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil” (14:27). In
particular, “the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication (porneias)”
(14:12a). Perverting creatures into gods not only is “to err about the knowledge of God”
(14:22) but also causes all manner of moral deviance and social disorder, from child
sacrifice to murder to deceit, reaching an extreme in a variety of sexual immorality:
“defiling of souls, sexual perversion, disorder in marriages, adultery, and debauchery”
(14:23–26). According to the providential principle, these evildoings, which are sins in
themselves, are also punishments of those who worship idols: the vices caused by
idolatry, including sexual immorality, are the means by which “just penalties will
overtake them” (14:28–31). Like Wisdom of Solomon, Romans 1 sees idolatry as the
progenitor of all vices, giving birth to the full array of evildoing: “And since they did not
see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up…to things that should not be

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done…every kind of wickedness…” (Rom 1:28–29). Reading Romans 1 from the
perspective of Wisdom of Solomon, therefore, suggests that Paul sees the evil offspring
of idolatry, including same-sex intercourse, as both sin and punishment.
Besides the parallel perspective of Romans 1 and Wisdom of Solomon, the
parallel structure within Paul’s account at Romans 1 suggests that Paul saw same-sex
intercourse as sinful. The three-fold parallel of “exchange” and “giving up” places same-
sex intercourse in parallel with attitudes and activities that surely seem sinful:
Because they traded the Creator for creatures, “God gave them up in the lust of
their hearts,” leading “to impurity” and “to the degrading of their bodies
among themselves” (Rom. 1:23–24).
Because they chose a lie instead of the truth about God, “God gave them up to
degrading passions,” issuing in same-sex intercourse (Rom. 1:25–27).
Because they did not keep themselves cognizant of God, “God gave them up to a
debased mind and to things that should not be done.” Consequently, “They
were filled with every kind of wickedness…” (Rom. 1:28–29).
The repeated phrase, “God gave them up,” suggests that Paul judged the activities that
follow in each instance as belonging to the same category. The practice of same-sex
intercourse would thus be of the same category as body-degrading, impurity-causing
activities that issue from lusting hearts and activities of “every kind of wickedness” that
“should not be done” that issue from God-disregarding attitudes. It seems, then, that Paul
considered all activities that issue from denying God, including same-sex intercourse, to
be sinful.224

Did Paul judge same-sex intercourse as inherently sinful?

Some innovationists, focusing on Paul’s description that “men…were consumed
with passion” for their male partners (Rom. 1:27), have argued that Paul was condemning
specifically same-sex activity driven by “excessive lust.” Paul, this view maintains, was
critiquing, not same-sex intercourse per se, but rather only sexual activity driven by
“excessive lust,” which could be the case with either same-sex or opposite-sex

224
See also Brooten, Love between Women, 235–36n57, and Loader, Sexuality in the New Testament, 13–
14, for further critique of Countryman’s approach to Romans 1.

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intercourse. Paul, accordingly, did not judge same-sex intercourse as inherently sinful but
as sinful only when issuing from excessive lust. Hence, the argument goes, the church
today should teach against excessive lust in sexual activity, whether opposite-sex or
same-sex, but not against same-sex intercourse itself.225
The “excessive lust” view is an inadequate interpretation of Paul for at least two
reasons. First, this view does not do justice to Paul’s text in its context. Before
mentioning men engaging in same-sex activity, Paul has set the background against
which to see these men who are “consumed with passion for one another” (Rom. 1:27).
God has “given up” those who have turned away from God: “God gave them up in the
lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves…God
gave them up to degrading passions” (Rom. 1:24, 26). As Paul saw it, the problem is not
simply that these men are “consumed with passion” but that their desires are directed
toward impurity-causing, body-degrading activity. According to Paul, the proper
diagnosis of the problem is not simply the degree of desire but the kind of desire: these
men are consumed with “degrading passions.” Second, this view neglects Paul’s
fundamental analysis of same-sex intercourse as an “exchange” of “natural” for
“unnatural”—a substitution of male for female, female for male—in sexual relations,
contrary to the order of creation. As Paul saw it, men (or women) “consumed with
passion for one another” is not simply a moral issue—a failure to moderate desire, a lack
of self-control. According to Paul, this moral phenomenon indicates the deeper disorder
of a creation turned away from its Creator.226

Did Paul condemn desire or activity?

William Loader argues that Paul regarded same-sex erotic desire, and not just
same-sex sexual activity, as inherently sinful: the person who is same-sex attracted, in
Paul’s view, not only has misdirected desire but also, simply on that account, is deserving
of damnation (even if he or she refrains from same-sex intercourse).227 Loader’s textual
interpretation carries a practical implication: insofar as we make a distinction between

225
See Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality, 149–169; Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 103–107;
DeFranza, “Journeying from the Bible to Christian Ethics,” 84–86.
226
For further, cogent critique of this view, see Sprinkle, People to Be Loved, 98–101. See also Loader,
“Homosexuality and the Bible,” 34–42.
227
Loader, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 40–41.

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same-sex attraction/orientation and same-sex activity/conduct, judging the former as
acceptable but the latter as unacceptable, we must acknowledge that we diverge from
Paul’s view at Romans 1. Loader thus argues that the church cannot both adhere to
Scripture and adopt an “accept and refrain” position (i.e., receive believers who are same-
sex attracted/oriented, but require that they refrain from same-sex intercourse): the church
must choose whether to adhere to Scripture (and thus not accept gay members) or to
accept gay members (and thus not adhere to Scripture). 228
Loader’s interpretation of Paul on this point misses the mark, I think, for four
reasons. First, whereas Philo described the “pleasure” (hēdonē) of male-male intercourse
as “against nature” (para physin),229 Paul applies the description “unnatural” only to
same-sex activity: women exchanged the “natural use” (physikē chrēsin) of sex for that
which is “against nature” (para physin), and men abandoned the “natural use” (physikē
chrēsin) of women for sex with men (Rom. 1:26–27). Second, Paul, in describing male-
male same-sex intercourse (Rom. 1:27), pairs desire (“men…were consumed with
passion for one another”) with activity (“Men committed shameless acts with men…”).
Paul does not single out for discussion same-sex desire apart from same-sex activity.
Third, Paul’s declaration of condemnation for sinners at Romans 1, which comes
at the end of a long list of varied vices (Rom. 1:29–31), is stated this way: “They know
God’s decree, that those who practice [prassontes] such things deserve to die…” (Rom.
1:32a, my emphasis). Paul is specific—it the habitual practice or ongoing performance of
the wrongful activity, not having the disordered desire by itself, that draws divine
judgment. Paul goes on, moreover, to affirm that “God’s righteous judgment…will repay
according to each one’s deeds” not each one’s desires: “everyone who does evil” will
receive wrath while “everyone who does good” will receive honor (Rom. 2:5–10, my
emphasis). Thus, while Paul sees same-sex activity as manifesting God having given up
rebellious humans to “degrading passions” (Rom. 1:24–27), he pronounces judgment, in
terms of deserved penalty, on only the sexual activity.
Fourth, Loader’s argument on this point is premised on interpreting Paul’s view
(and the Genesis account) in terms of modern categories of sexual orientation. Loader

228
Loader, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 43–44.
229
Philo, Special Laws 3:39.

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asserts repeatedly that Paul (following Genesis) thinks that human beings are naturally
heterosexual: creation as “male and female,” Loader claims, simply means creation with
a heterosexual orientation (such that the Genesis account implicitly excludes non-
heterosexual orientation from the created order).230 As we demonstrated above, however,
Paul at Romans 1—following Genesis and Leviticus—designates human persons as
sexual actors only in terms of bodily gender (male and female) and not in any terms that
might be analogous to contemporary notions of sexual orientation. It is doubtful,
moreover, that Paul even thought of human persons as sexual actors in terms of sexual
orientation, much less interpreted Genesis in such terms. (It is more doubtful yet that the
Genesis account is structured, and should be read, in terms of sexual orientation.) Wesley
Hill comments:
it is more probable that Paul—like other ancient authors of his time—thought of people as neither
“heterosexual” nor “homosexual.” He did not think of a normative “sexual orientation” because he
did not think at all in terms of sexual orientations in the modern sense of that term. 231
Loader’s view here, as does Boswell’s view above, it seems to me, disorients
interpretation by projecting modern categories of sexual orientation back onto the biblical
text in a way that distorts the meaning of the text.232

Caveat as conclusion
Paul’s characterization of same-sex intercourse as sin should not be taken as
intended to single out as sinners, or even as especially egregious sinners, those who
practice same-sex intercourse. Paul’s argument at Romans 1 cites same-sex intercourse as
plain evidence of the consequences of humankind’s denying God in place of honoring
God, of humankind’s devotion to its own desires in place of devotion to the one God
manifest in creation. Paul’s extended argument in Romans makes clear that it is not a
select group or even just Gentiles generally who “are under the power of sin,” but also
“Jews” and thus all humankind (Rom. 3:9; cf. 5:12). Paul thus argues that Jews and
Gentiles alike should see themselves in his depiction of humankind as misdirected in
reverencing, confused in knowing, disordered in desiring—and so as “doing the very

230
Loader, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 23, 29, 40, 42.
231
Hill, “Response to William Loader,” 56.
232
See also Holmes, “Response to William Loader,” 62.

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same things” that God has decreed are deserving of death (Rom. 2:1). Paul emphatically
includes himself among the sinners: “I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin” (Rom.
7:14b). Paul even speaks frankly of himself as, in effect, morally immobilized by
disordered desire:
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…I
can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want
is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is not longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within
me. (Rom. 7:15, 18b–20)
Indeed, we are all “without excuse” for failing to know God from what God has created.
And we all worship idols in place of God. Whenever we choose to live by what we desire
despite what God wills, we “exchange the truth about God for a lie” and “worship and
serve the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). Insofar as we pronounce God’s
judgment on the sins of others, we likewise condemn our own sins (Rom. 2:1–2; cf. 1:20–
21). Thus, “there is no distinction,” Paul says—we all have sinned (Rom. 3:22b–23),
stand under God’s judgment (Rom. 1:18; 2:3–16), and need redemption by God’s grace
(Rom. 3:24). Ephraim Radner aptly observes:
St. Paul here clearly casts homosexual behavior in a negative light. But he makes it a part—and a
very distinct and limited part—of a condition we all share…And so his question, “How do you
judge one another?” gains special weight: If heterosexual Christians condemn gay people for their
homosexual acts, they inevitably condemn themselves even more so (for their own pride,
arrogance, lack of love, etc.). The point here is not that what is right in God’s eyes is unknown,
but that what is wrong in human eyes is obscured by self-righteousness.233
It would be a serious abuse of Paul’s text to deploy it as a moral cudgel against any group
of persons separated out for condemnation as “sinners.” It is thus awkward at best,
hypocritical at worst, when traditionalists cite Romans 1 in reference to those who
practice same-sex intercourse as if they were themselves exempt from Paul’s reference to
“sinners.”234

233
Radner, Hope among the Fragments, 148.
234
See also Jeal, “Ideology, Argumentation, and Social Direction in Romans 1.”

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 Appendix F

Paul on Vice:
1 Corinthians

At the core of the Pauline marriage proposal, which we considered in Chapter 8,

is the argument that the church should sanction same-sex union in order to provide the
relational context in which same-sex couples might benefit from the virtue-promoting
practices that are integral to maintaining a marriage within the faith community. As
argued in Chapter 8, this proposal could at most warrant sanctioning same-sex union on a
Pauline analogy (“Better to marry than to burn”) as a conditional exception to a
concession. For the central argument to work, it must be the case that all the activities
constitutive of marriage can be practiced virtuously within a same-sex union. Otherwise,
a Pauline proposal in favor of sanctioning same-sex union, even as a conditional
exception to a concession, would defeat Paul’s exhortation that believers who lack sexual
self-control should marry (1 Cor. 7:9) as a guard against “sexual immoralities” (1 Cor.
7:2). Among the many activities that are constitutive of marriage, one such activity is
sexual intercourse. The Pauline proposal thus must assume that same-sex intercourse
within a monogamous partnership counts among those activities that can be practiced
virtuously. This key premise of the Pauline proposal requires careful scrutiny and should
be weighed on the same Pauline terms on which the proposal is made.

Virtue and vice: a brief primer

In general, a virtuous activity is any human activity that is conducive to formation
of good character of soul and consistent with the habit of a well-lived life that promotes
genuine human flourishing. A human activity is practiced virtuously by being done in a
right way in every respect: under self-control, with honorable motive, for a proper end,
toward the appropriate person, at a fitting time, and so on. Many activities can be
practiced either according to virtue or contrary to virtue, depending on how they are

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done. Giving assistance to the needy, for example, can exemplify generosity and promote
humility, if done sacrificially and secretly, or exhibit selfishness and promote pride, if
done for advantage and admiration.
Not every activity can be practiced virtuously, however; some activities can be
done only wrongly. For example, there is no way to practice adultery virtuously by doing
it the right way. There can be no “loving adultery” or “faithful adultery” or “righteous
adultery.” Every instance of adultery, no matter how done or with whom done, is wrong
in every respect: selfish, faithless, and unjust toward one’s spouse and children—and
even dishonest toward one’s partner in adultery. Because every instance of adultery
violates the good of marriage, the wrong of adultery is inherent to the activity. Adultery,
then, counts among those activities that are called simply vice, which is where Paul lists
it (1 Cor. 6:9). The same goes for idolatry, murder, greed, and fraud. None of these
activities can be practiced virtuously—there is no true way to worship a false god, no just
way to murder a neighbor, no generous way to grasp more than one’s share, no honest
way to defraud another of his due—because the wrong of each is inherent to the activity.
Practicing each of these activities, no matter which way done, is contrary to what is
virtuous or “excellent” in Christian conduct: what is true, honorable, just, and so on (Phil.
4:8). Accordingly, Paul puts idolatry (Rom 1:23, 25; 1 Cor 5:10-11; 6:9), murder (Rom
1:29; 1 Tim 1:9), greed (Rom 1:29; 1 Cor 5:10-11; 6:10), and deceit (Rom 1:29; 1 Tim
1:10) on the vice list along with adultery.
Now, activities that are inherently wrong—that is, wrong no matter which way
done and thus properly called vice—can still exhibit virtue in a warped sense. The classic
expression “honor among thieves” illustrates this point: how thieves deal with each other
may exhibit fairness, even as their common activity of plundering others is itself
inherently wrong. A thief that makes off with all the loot and deprives his partner of her
“fair share” is worse, we may say, than a thief that divides the loot evenly with his crime
partner. Because fairness between thieves is premised on injustice toward others,
however, it can at best be considered a flawed form of the real virtue. Consider, again,
adultery. Adultery, as Augustine observed, violates the fidelity owed between spouses.
Yet there can be a flawed fidelity in adultery: a spouse that cheats on his or her spouse
with a lover and then cheats on his or her lover with yet another is worse than a cheating

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spouse that remains constant to his or her lover. Because fidelity to one’s lover in
adultery is premised on falsity and infidelity toward one’s spouse, however, it can be at
best a tainted virtue.
The premise of the Pauline proposal, that same-sex intercourse within
monogamous partnership counts among those activities that can be practiced virtuously,
presupposes that there is no wrong inherent to the activity of same-sex intercourse, that
the activity of same-sex intercourse does not inherently involve immorality. The Pauline
proposal thus presupposes that same-sex intercourse within monogamous partnership is
exclusive of those activities that Paul considered “sexual immoralities.” Paul names
same-sex intercourse within or in conjunction with three separate vice lists: male-male
and female-female at Romans 1:26–27; male-male at 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 and 1
Timothy 1:9–10.235 The Pauline proposal thus requires one to think that Paul counted
same-sex intercourse among the vices only on account of its being practiced wrongly in
some specific way, such that Paul judged same-sex intercourse as wrong only
circumstantially but not inherently. According to the Pauline proposal, same-sex
intercourse would be wrong if, but only if, practiced, say, coercively, or exploitatively, or
unfaithfully, which would leave open the possibility that it could be righteous if practiced
lovingly, justly, and faithfully.
Such interpretation of Paul’s teaching is logically necessary to the Pauline
proposal. Such interpretation, however, would seem to cut across the grain of Paul’s vice
lists. A proper assessment of the Pauline proposal thus requires a careful reading of
Paul’s vice lists.

Reading Paul’s vice lists

We will read Paul’s vice lists, particularly his two lists in 1 Corinthians 5–6, in
four stages. First we will examine the vice lists in their individual terms; then we will
consider the vice lists in relation to their adjacent contexts; next we will consider the vice
lists in relation to their surrounding context; last we will consider the vices lists in

235
First Timothy is a deposit of apostolic instruction concerning church order, possibly handed down by
Paul and edited by Timothy. For sake of this discussion, I will treat the vice list in 1 Timothy as derived
primarily from Paul’s teaching.

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relation to their biblical background.236 At each stage, our question will be whether the
evidence of the text implies that Paul regards the activities identified in the vice lists as
inherently wrong—that is, as wrong no matter how or why done. If that is so, then Paul’s
judgment countermands the Pauline proposal. In the context of Paul’s ethical instruction
to a Christian congregation, whether an activity is inherently wrong is judged not
according to a generic principle of human conduct but according to the specific norms of
Christian conduct: whether the ongoing practice of an activity is compatible with the
church as body of believers that has been sanctified through Christ, or congruent with a
habit of life befitting one who has been united with Christ, or conducive to replicating a
Christ-like character.

Individual terms
Let’s consider first the terms of Paul’s lists. Several items in these lists—adultery,
idolatry, murder, greed, deceit—name activities that are, manifestly, inherently wrong.
Paul’s other terms in these vice lists—for example, “wickedness,” “evil,” “malice” (Rom.
1:29); “reviler” (1 Cor. 5:11; 6:10); “lawless,” “godless,” “unholy,” “profane” (1 Tim.
1:9)—likewise do not indicate attitudes and activities that can be right some ways or
wrong some ways but rather indicate attitudes and activities that are wrong all ways.
These attitudes or activities are not even potentially conducive to forming dispositions
that would replicate a Christ-like character or issue forth in a manner of life congruent
with having been sanctified in and united with Christ. Accordingly, Paul begins or ends
each vice list with an emphatically negative verdict: “things that should not be done”
(Rom 1:28); “none of these will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:10); “contrary to
the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Tim.
1:10–11). These verdicts seem to imply that Paul regards the items named in the vice lists
to be inherently wrong because they are simply “contrary to the gospel of God”—that is,

236
For extensive analysis of the structure, content, context, and background of 1 Corinthians 5–6, see Hays,
First Corinthians, 80–109, Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 381–482, and Bailey, Paul through
Mediterranean Eyes, 155–95. For a judicious discussion of the scholarly debate concerning Paul’s vice
lists, see Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 440–52. Regarding the extensive OT background of
Paul’s ethical teaching at 1 Corinthians 5–6, see Rosner, Paul, Scripture, and Ethics, 61–146.

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contrary to conduct that is constructive of Christian character and consistent with the
Christian calling.237

Adjacent contexts
Let’s consider next the vice lists of 1 Corinthians 5–6 in relation to their adjacent
contexts. Considering the adjacent context of the vice list at 1 Corinthians 5:11 reinforces
the inference that Paul regards the activities practiced by those named in that list as
inherently wrong. Paul addresses this vice list specifically concerning certain members of
the Corinthian congregation that, despite their baptism, have persisted unrepentantly in
the habitual practice of certain activities: “anyone who bears the name of brother or sister
who is sexually immoral, or greedy, or is an idolater…” (1 Cor. 5:11).238 Concerned for
the integrity of the congregation, Paul repeatedly emphasizes that the believers in Corinth
are to avoid association with any baptized believer in their midst who persists in
practicing such activities:
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons (pornois)—not at all
meaning the immoral (pornois) of this world…since you would then need to go out of the world.
But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister
who is sexually immoral (pornos)…Do not even eat with such a one. (1 Cor. 5:9-11)
Paul’s three-fold emphasis—“Do not associate” or “Do not mix together
indiscriminately”239—implies that the ongoing practice of these activities is incompatible
with maintaining the integrity of the church and incongruent with conducting oneself as a
Christian. Indeed, Paul underlines this point that such conduct is intolerable within the
church by calling upon the congregation not only to judge such conduct within the church

237
Here the comment by Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 90, is worth repeating: “It is important to note that the
list in vv. 9–10 [of 1 Corinthians 6] denotes habits and practices, not isolated acts. Paul does not suggest
that a Christian who was once tempted into a single act of adultery, theft, verbal abuse, or exploitation of
others remains forever excluded from the kingdom of God” (original emphasis).
238
Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 413: “these “vices” are indeed listed as characteristics, or
continuing practices, as against lapses from which an offender subsequently turns away” (original
emphasis).
239
On the connotation of Paul’s verb, see Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 409, and Bailey, Paul
through Mediterranean Eyes, 169.

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but also to expel baptized believers who persist unrepentantly in the named conduct (1
Cor. 5:12–13).240
Considering the adjacent context of the vice list at 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 also
reinforces the inference that Paul regards the activities practiced by those named in that
list as inherently wrong. Again speaking directly to the Corinthian congregation—“Do
you not know…? Do not be deceived!” (1 Cor. 6:9a)—Paul highlights the dramatic
difference in their existential situation by drawing a stark contrast between their past lives
as unbelievers and their present lives as believers. Those named in that list, Paul says, are
engaging in practices that characterize their former habit of life and contradict their
Christian identity: “Fornicators (pornoi), idolaters, adulterers … this is what some of you
used to be” (1 Cor. 6:9b, 11a). Paul then reminds them that, as those “called to be saints”
(1 Cor. 1:2), God’s saving work in them has released them from the grip of their old habit
of life and redeemed them for the new habit of life to which they have been called: “But
you were washed … sanctified … justified … in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in
the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11b). The implication is that, on account of the believer’s
new reality “in Christ,” the practices named should not any longer, nor ever again in any
way, characterize their new habit of life.241

Surrounding context
Let’s consider next the vice lists in 1 Corinthians 5–6 in relation to their
surrounding context. The surrounding context of 1 Corinthians 5–6 further reinforces the
inference that Paul regards the activities named in those lists as inherently wrong. In
these chapters, Paul renders judgment in two reported cases of sexual misconduct
occurring within the Corinthian congregation: a member persisting in an illicit sexual
union, and a member satisfying sexual desire with a prostitute. As Thiselton comments,
these cases involve “moral issues that require clear-cut challenge and change”—
challenge from the congregation and change by the wrongdoers—because in these cases

240
Here the comment by Bailey, Paul through Mediterranean Eyes, 169, is apropos of the present matter:
“In a modern world that worships at the altar of inclusivity and sees all forms of inclusion as a “justice
issue,” Paul’s admonition is deeply challenging.”
241
Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 438: “these verses [vv. 9–10] set in contrast an active
lifestyle which contradicts claims to Christian identity…with stances that characterize the Christlike
qualities of the new creation (v. 11).”

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“the integrity of the Christian as a new creation is compromised (2 Cor. 5:17).”242 The
sexual misconduct in these cases also compromises the integrity of the Christian
community, as Hays observes:
In 1 Corinthians 5–6 Paul calls the Corinthians to discipline church members whose actions
compromise the holiness of the community…Those who commit sexual sins…are doing damage
not only to themselves but also to the community; consequently, the community must act to
preserve its unity and its identity as the sanctified people of God (cf. 1:2).243
Paul’s judgment in each case is premised on gospel grounds—namely, the difference, on
account of redemption, between an old life in which one once belonged to oneself (slave
to sin) and lived in “the world” and a new life in which one now belongs to God (free
from sin) and lives “in Christ.”
The man engaging in “sexual immorality” (porneia) by living in a sexual
relationship with his stepmother should not be accommodated, much less celebrated,
within the congregation but rather should be “removed from among you.” Tolerating
such a person within the church would allow “old yeast”—detestable conduct
characteristic of an unredeemed way of life—to contaminate the “new batch” of
unleavened dough—the redeemed community—that has been set apart by God’s election
and sanctified by Christ’s sacrifice. Celebrating the unholy union of an immoral
relationship is incompatible with celebrating the holy feast of Christ’s sacrifice (1 Cor.
5:1–8; cf. 1:2, 9, 26–31). The people redeemed by God in Christ, furthermore, are “God’s
temple” in which “God’s Spirit dwells” and God will destroy anyone who desecrates
God’s temple because “God’s temple is holy” (1 Cor. 3:16–17). The believer persisting
unrepentantly in an incestuous relationship with his step-mother is to be expelled from
the Christian community not only because he violates his father’s rights (cf. Lev. 18:7–8;
Deut. 22:30) but also—and more importantly—because he desecrates God’s temple.
Rosner comments:
There are good reasons, then, for thinking that 1 Corinthians 3:16–17 provides the theological
framework for understanding perhaps the most fundamental reason for the expulsion of the sinner

242
Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 81–2 (original emphasis).
243
Hays, First Corinthians, 80.

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 in 5:1–13: the sinner must be “destroyed” because he has defiled the holiness of God’s temple, the
church.244
The man habitually satisfying his sexual desires with a prostitute, as a person
would routinely satisfy hunger with food, desecrates both the body of Christ and his own
body. First, sexual intercourse with a prostitute (pornē) conjoins his body to that of the
prostitute, by which he becomes “one body” with her, when he has already become “one
spirit” with Christ. In baptism, the believer has become figuratively betrothed to Christ
(cf. 2 Cor. 11:2), so that now the believer’s body is intended for Christ and Christ for the
believer’s body: “The body is…for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor. 6:13b;
cf. 7:2–4). The believer’s sexual union with a prostitute thus violates his baptismal
fidelity to Christ and creates a bodily conjunction of Christ with a prostitute (6:14–17).
Further, by engaging sexually with the prostitute, the man does not simply sin regarding
something “outside of the body” (ektos tou sōmatos) but sins “against his own body” (eis
to idion sōma). Indeed, the one practicing sexual immorality (ho porneuōn) desecrates his
body, which God has redeemed and sanctified to be a “temple (naos) of the Holy Spirit”
and thus in which he is to “glorify God” (6:18–20 NET).
The term Paul uses to denote the body as “temple” (naos) is significant. The
Greek translation of the Old Testament uses this term variously to refer to the Shiloh
shrine that housed the covenant chest (1 Sam. 1:9; 3:3), the outer sanctuary of Solomon’s
temple (1 Kings 6; Ezek. 41), the holy house of God (Pss. 18:6; 48:9; 65:4; Isa. 66:6), or
the Jerusalem temple in general (Jer. 24:1; Hag. 2:15, 18; Zech. 8:9). The New Testament
uses this term elsewhere to designate the earthly sanctuary in which the curtain divides
the holy place from the holiest place (Matt. 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45), or the
heavenly temple which houses the covenant chest, is filled with God’s glory, and from
which comes God’s judgment (Rev. 11:19; 15:5–8). Paul thus designates the believer’s
baptized body, which has been “washed” and “sanctified” in Christ’s name and by God’s
Spirit (1 Cor. 6:11), as God’s holy house, indwelled by the Holy Spirit. A Christian that
practices sexual immorality, sinning against his own body, commits sacrilege against

244
Rosner, Paul, Scripture, and Ethics, 80; cf. 73–80 regarding the “holiness motif” in Paul’s teaching at 1
Corinthians 5–6. Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 192–95, strains against Paul’s text to avoid the purity
implications of Paul’s language.

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God’s sanctuary.245 Paul’s exhortation to eschew such conduct is emphatic: “Never!”
(6:15); “Flee sexual immorality (porneian)!” (6:18a NET).
Paul’s judgment in these two cases, we should note, is not simply an ethical
argument. Paul does not judge their behavior as wrongful only on grounds of injustice or
maltreatment, that the one man exploits his stepmother or that the other man abuses the
prostitutes. Were that Paul’s argument, then their behavior could be judged as potentially
righteous, provided the one man treats his stepmother fairly and the other man treats the
prostitutes respectfully. Had Paul judged such conduct solely on ethical terms, then an
incestuous union, or sexual union with a prostitute, could be made righteous by being
done in the right way—by being done justly and lovingly rather than graspingly and
indulgently. Such a view, however, does not take full account of Paul’s argument.
Consider the man engaging sexually with a prostitute, who, Paul says, sins against
his own body. That he sins against his body indicates that his sin involves more than
unethical (unjust, unloving) treatment of the prostitute. That he sins against his body
indicates that his sin involves the acts of his body as well as the intents of his heart. And
that he sins against his body indicates that his sin violates not only the fidelity of his
baptism as a sacred pledge but also the integrity of his body as a sacred space. Sexual
conduct befitting a baptized believer thus involves not only the right intention of one’s
heart but also the appropriate use of one’s body; a holy body as well as a clean
conscience is at stake in sexual conduct. For Paul, then, sexual purity concerns the body
as well as the heart.246
Paul’s argument in these cases of sexual misconduct thus concerns holiness as
well as righteousness. Paul judged sexual immorality as wrongful, not only because it
involves injustice or maltreatment, but also because it renders unclean both body and
spirit.247 Persisting unrepentantly in sexual immorality desecrates both the church body

245
See Hays, First Corinthians, 106, and Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 474–5.
246
Paul’s concern for the believer’s body (sōma) in sexual conduct at 1 Corinthians 6 indicates that the sin
of sexual immorality (porneia) involves both property and purity: the believer not only disrespects God’s
ownership by redemption (vv. 19b–20) but also desecrates his body as sacred space (vv. 18b–19a). This
confounds Countryman’s claims on two counts: that “Paul uses property language in the present context,
not purity language” (Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 100); and that in Paul’s treatment of vice “the purity that
counts…is that of the heart” (Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 108). Countryman’s discussion of the prostitution case
in connection to purity (Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 99–102) omits 1 Corinthians 6:18b–19a.
247
Paul’s attention to holiness alongside righteousness undercuts claims by some scholars—for example,
Kraus, “Making Theological and Ethical Decisions,” 268–71; see also Via, “Bible, Church, and

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and one’s own body, which have been redeemed and sanctified through Christ for God’s
service and the Spirit’s dwelling, such that the church body should expel the habitually
immoral and the baptized believer should flee the prostitute. Paul’s verdict, then, is
unequivocal: the habitual practice of sexual immorality (porneia), of any form and in any
way, is conduct incompatible with belonging to the church, which has been sanctified
through Christ for the worship of God, and incongruous with the behavior of a believer,
whose spirit is united with Christ and whose body is God’s sanctuary indwelled with the
Holy Spirit. Paul’s instruction, likewise, is unequivocal: Dissociate! Avoid!
We can see that Paul frames his two vice lists in 1 Corinthians 5–6 with a two-
fold indictment of sexual immorality (porneia) on gospel grounds. Fitting with this
framing, Paul names first in both lists the person who habitually practices sexual
immorality (pornos, 1 Cor. 5:11; pornoi, 6:9). We can depict the vice lists within their
contextual framing as follows:

5:1–8 Indictment: sexual immorality (incestuous union) defiles holiness

of the believing body as worshipping community
5:9–11 Instruction: Dissociate from members practicing sexual
immorality

5:11 Vice list: The believer practicing sexual immorality, etc.

Verdict on vice: Those practicing these things violate
the integrity of the church body
5:11–13 Instruction: Dissociate from members who practice
these things

6:1–8 Reminder: The saints will sit in judgment over the

world [in the kingdom of God]
Instruction: Do not mistreat fellow believers by
lawsuits or submit believers to judgment by

Homosexuality,” 10–11—that Paul redefined sexual holiness in ethical terms and reduced holiness to
righteousness in sexual matters.

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 unbelievers; the church should settle disputes
among, and exercise judgment over, its own
members

6:9–10 Vice list: Those practicing sexual immorality, etc.

Verdict on vice: Practicing these things is incompatible
with inheriting the kingdom of God
6:11 Instruction: You used to be these things but are not to
be so any longer now that you are in Christ

6:12–20 Indictment: sexual immorality (union with prostitute) violates the

believer’s baptismal fidelity to Christ and desecrates the believer’s
body as God’s sanctuary
6:18–20 Instruction: Avoid sexual immorality; glorify God in your
body.

Paul, then, frames his vice lists with unqualified indictments of sexual immorality and
heads both vice lists with that same activity. On account of the sanctifying work of Christ
and the indwelling presence of the Spirit, Paul regards the activity of sexual immorality
as inconsistent with the integrity, and corruptive of the holiness, of the church and the
Christian. It is reasonable to infer that this perspective informs Paul’s judgment of the
other items in the vice lists as well. The surrounding context of Paul’s vice lists thus
further reinforces the sense that Paul regards the activities named in those lists, including
male-male sexual intercourse (named in the second list), as inherently wrong.

Old Testament background

Let’s now consider Paul’s vice lists at 1 Corinthians 5–6 in relation to their Old
Testament background. Doing so provides yet further reason to think that Paul regarded
same-sex intercourse as inherently wrong. Let’s consider first Paul’s vice list at 1
Corinthians 5:11. As Rosner has shown, by comparing Paul’s list to the Greek translation

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of the Old Testament, we see that there is an approximate correspondence between the
activities named on Paul’s list and behaviors that are proscribed in Deuteronomy. 248

Paul’s vice list (1 Cor. 5:11) Deuteronomy (Greek OT)

“Do not associate with anyone who bears Laws proscribing…
the name of brother or sister who is…” 249
“…sexually immoral” (pornos) sexual promiscuity (ekporneusai) (22:20-
21)250
“…greedy” No direct OT parallel (but linked with
“robbers” at 1 Cor. 5:10)
“…an idolater” worshipping of other gods (17:3)
“…reviler” malicious false testimony (19:18)
“…drunkard” rebellious son who indulges in feasting and
is a drunkard (21:18-20)
“…robber” thieving (kidnapping) (24:7)
“Drive out (exarate) the wicked person (ton “And you shall remove (exareis) the evil
ponēron) from among you (ex hymōn one (ton ponēron) from yourselves (ex
autōn)” (v. 13b) hymōn autōn)” (17:7; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21;
24:7 NETS)

Paul, having headlined his list with the instruction to not mix indiscriminately with
believers who practice such activities, underlines the list by quoting the repeated refrain
from Deuteronomy to express his verdict on the named activities: expel the evildoer. In
Deuteronomy, each of the above laws appends the injunction to expel the evildoer, which
is coupled with an explicit or implicit instruction to put the evildoer to death. Paul thus
apparently affirms as appropriate for the church the Deuteronomic attitude of severe
censure toward the activities named in his vice list: such activities are so contrary to and
corruptive of a community of believers made holy through the sacrifice of Christ that

248
Rosner, Paul, Scripture, and Ethics, 69; see also Hays, First Corinthians, 87-88.
249
For detailed discussion of each term in this list, see Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 409–17.
250
We could also include here incestuous union, which is the presenting case preceding the vice list and is
expressly forbidden at Deut. 27:20.

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members who persist in practicing such activities must be excluded, pending repentance,
from the worship and fellowship of the church. 251 Paul’s verdict of excommunication,
which expresses the spiritual seriousness of a death sentence while allowing for
repentance from sin and restoration by grace (1 Cor. 5:5), strongly indicates that Paul
regards the activities named in the vice list as inherently wrong.
Let’s consider now Paul’s vice list at 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, in which Paul
mentions males engaging in same-sex intercourse (arsenokoitai), in relation to the Old
Testament. As Bailey has shown, this vice list, in which Paul names vices by the persons
who practice them, comprises two sets of five vices:
Set A: Sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, malakoi, arsenokoitai252
Set B: Theives, greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers
Each of the persons named in Set A is engaging in activity that involves, or is associated
with, illicit sex. A common theme among the persons named in Set B is “grasping”
behavior that seeks more than one’s due by mistreating others. These two categories of
behavior unbecoming a baptized believer—sexual misconduct (1 Cor. 5:1–8; 6:12–20)
and unjust treatment (1 Cor. 6:1–8)—are the major topics of Paul’s instruction in these
two chapters (as well as elsewhere in 1 Corinthians). This implies that some Christians in
Corinth were once in the habit of practicing these activities (1 Cor. 6:11) and that some
Christians in Corinth were still in the habit of practicing these activities (1 Cor. 5:11).253
Besides the resonance of “ten vices” with the Ten Commandments, there is an
approximate correspondence between the activities named in this vice list and behaviors
prohibited in the Decalogue:

Paul’s vice list (1 Cor. 6:9–10) Decalogue (Exod. 20)

Sexually immoral (pornoi) Adultery (form of illicit sex) (v. 14)
Idolaters Idolatry (vv. 4–5)

251
Regarding the OT background of the expulsion motif in Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 5, see Rosner,
Paul, Scripture, and Ethics, 61–81.
252
We must take due care in how we render these latter two terms into English, which I leave untranslated
here. Various translations in church history and Bible versions have burdened these terms with much
baggage—see Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 38–39, 43–44. For accessible reviews of evidence and
arguments concerning how to interpret these terms, see Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World,
113–18, and Sprinkle, People to Be Loved, 103–20.
253
Bailey, Paul through Mediterranean Eyes, 176–79.

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Adulterers (moichoi) Adultery (v. 14)
Malakoi
Arsenokoitai
Thieves Stealing (v. 15)
Greedy (pleonektai) Coveting (v. 17)
Revilers Blasphemy (v. 7); false witness (v. 16)
Robbers Stealing (v. 15)

If we look at the other vice list (1 Tim. 1:9–10) where Paul mentions males engaging in
same-sex intercourse (arsenokoitai), which Paul prefaces by references to “the law” (1
Tim. 1:7–9), we find named there persons engaging in activities that correspond even
more closely to behaviors prohibited in the Decalogue:

Paul’s vice list (1 Tim. 1:9–10) Decalogue (Exod. 20)

Unholy and profane Blasphemy (v. 7)
Kill father or mother Honor father and mother (v. 12)
Murderers Murder (v. 13)
Sexually immoral (pornoi) Adultery (form of illicit sex) (v. 14)
Arsenokoitai
Slave traders Stealing (v. 15); coveting (v. 17)
Liars False witness (v. 16)
Perjurers False witness (v. 16)

What is the upshot of these correspondences between Paul’s vice lists and the Decalogue
regarding the question under discussion? Activities that are inherently wrong, wrong no
matter how done, are prohibited unconditionally: they are not to be done—ever, by
anyone, in any way, no matter what. Most of the activities named in Paul’s vice lists
correspond directly to a prohibition in the Ten Commandments. The Decalogue’s
prohibitions are unconditional: “You shall not…” This suggests that Paul regarded the
activities in his vice lists that correspond to the Decalogue as prohibited unconditionally,
which corroborates his verdict that these activities are inherently wrong. This suggests

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further that Paul also regarded male-male sexual intercourse, mentioned in these lists,
likewise as prohibited unconditionally and thus inherently wrong.
Consider, moreover, Paul’s Greek term for males engaging in same-sex
intercourse in both vice lists: arsenokoitai. Paul’s term corresponds closely to, and was
likely derived from, the Greek version of Levitical laws that prohibit male-male sexual
intercourse: “And you shall not sleep with a male (arsenos) as in a bed (koitēn) of a
woman, for it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22 NETS); “And he who lies with a male in a
bed (arsenos koitēn) for a woman, both have committed an abomination” (Lev. 20:13
NETS).254 As argued in Appendix G, the biblical law prohibiting male-male sexual
intercourse neither distinguishes the sexual partners by age (adult or juvenile), status (free
or slave), or role (active or passive), nor restricts the prohibition to cultic contexts (temple
prostitution) or coercive relations (rape) or kinship relations (incest). Moreover, the
penalties appended to the prohibition apply equally to both partners (Lev. 20:13).
Leviticus thus prohibits unconditionally all male-male sexual intercourse, whether cultic
or erotic, active or passive, coercive or consensual, hierarchical or mutual.255
That the Decalogue prohibits unconditionally idolatry, blasphemy, murder,
adultery, robbery, fraud, and greed corroborates Paul’s verdict that these activities are
inherently wrong. Analogously, that Leviticus prohibits unconditionally male-male
sexual intercourse, in terms that correspond closely to Paul’s term in his vice lists, makes
it likely that Paul regarded the habitual practice of that activity, to which he gave the
same verdict, also as inherently wrong. It is thus reasonable to infer that Paul considered
the habitual practice of same-sex intercourse as simply contrary to conduct compatible
with the Christian community and conducive to a Christian character.

Alternative readings of Paul’s vice lists

One might dispute such a reading of Paul’s vice lists with respect to same-sex
activity. Some innovationists contend that Paul counted same-sex intercourse as a vice
only on account of its being done unfaithfully (a husband/wife with a male/female

254
On the etymology of arsenokoitai, see Wright, “Homosexuals or Prostitutes?” (technical analysis) and
“Homosexuality” (general discussion).
255
See Milgrom, Leviticus, 207; Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 37–44; Wold, Out of
Order, 101–20; Loader, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 21–23.

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companion), or coercively (a master with his male slave), or exploitatively (a man with a
boy, or a free male with a male prostitute). Such practices were known and tolerated in
first-century Roman society. And there is a common theme of “grasping” behavior in
Paul’s vice lists at 1 Corinthians 5 and 6.256 One might then see Paul’s condemnation of
same-sex intercourse as a variation on his theme of condemning greedy conduct that
“grasps” others for one’s own satisfaction.
We should thus consider the possibility that Paul intended to judge same-sex
intercourse only by its social connection to unloving or unjust practices of one kind or
another. Is that what Paul intended? What reason do we have for reading Paul’s text in
that way? A reason for such a reading of Paul’s text would have to warrant the view that
Paul’s term arsenokoitai does not refer generally, or directly, to male-male sexual
intercourse.

Scroggs’ analysis
Here innovationists often follow the hermeneutical approach of Robin Scroggs. 257
Scroggs contended that “The two vice lists [in which Paul mentions male-male
intercourse] attack very specific forms of pederasty.” 258 The key to Scroggs’ argument is
his claim that Paul’s term arsenokoitai does not refer generally to male-male same-sex
activity in these vice lists. Scroggs contends that the juxtaposition of arsenokoitai with
malakoi at 1 Corinthians 6:9 means that “A very specific dimension of pederasty is being
denounced with these two terms”—namely, a man keeping or hiring an “effeminate call-
boy” as a “mistress.”259 Likewise, Scroggs contends that the sandwiching of arsenokoitai
between pornois (which could refer to male prostitutes) and andrapodistais (“slave
dealers”) at 1 Timothy 1:10 may mean that arsenokoitai refers here to men who procure
sex with male prostitutes who were kidnapped and sold into the sex trade.260 Therefore,
Scroggs argues, Paul judges as inherently wrong only specific forms of same-sex

256
See Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 88–92.
257
See Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality, 273–75, Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 117–31; Grimsrud,
“Theology of Welcome,” 157–61.
258
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 121.
259
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 108.
260
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 120.

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activities on account of being exploitative or coercive, leaving all other forms of same-
sex activity potentially open to righteous practice.
Scroggs’ approach thus depends on interpreting Paul’s term arsenokoitai with a
specific gloss that narrows the scope of that term to only certain kinds of same-sex
activity. Is such a restriction of scope warranted? If we inspect Paul’s term arsenokoitai
and the Levitical laws from which it was likely derived, we see nothing in Paul’s term or
those laws to restrict the combination of male partners, or condition the prohibition of
their sexual union, by age, status, role, or quality of relationship. Nothing about Paul’s
term, or those laws, restricts their scope of application to pederasty, much less specific
forms of pederasty, or to prostitution. Paul’s term and the Levitical laws refer to “males”
generally and are applicable to sexual intercourse between male partners in any
configuration and in any circumstance. Likewise, as we observed in Appendix E, Paul’s
description of same-sex activity at Romans 1:26–27 refers simply to “males” and
“females,” without restricting the sexual partners by age, status, or role. While it is
possible that Paul intended his term arsenokoitai to refer only to certain kinds of same-
sex activity, neither the term itself nor the text from which the term is likely derived
warrant such a restriction in scope.
Any reason for restricting the scope of arsenokoitai to specific forms of pederasty
would thus rest entirely on drawing inferences from cultural milieu and textual context.
Scroggs’ argument, however, suffers from weaknesses in that regard. First, Scroggs
premises his interpretation of Paul on the “beginning presupposition that these passages
all oppose one form or another of pederasty, insofar as they speak of male
homosexuality.”261 His interpretive presupposition is itself based on his historical claim
that, because “in the Greco-Roman world…pederasty was the norm for homosexual
relationships,” therefore “Paul, with regard to the statement about male homosexuality,
must have had, could only have had, pederasty in mind.”262 As we showed in Appendix
A, these strong claims are seriously disputable by historical evidence. Second, Scroggs
presses his case beyond what the terms arsenokoitai and malakoi, and their contexts,
warrant: the contexts of Paul’s vice lists do not allow us to determine the target of these

261
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 101.
262
Scroggs, New Testament and Homosexuality, 101, 122 (original emphasis).

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terms as specifically as Scroggs wants. In particular, Scroggs’ specification of malakoi as
“effeminate call-boy”—and his specification of arsenokoitai as a predatory form of
pederasty on account of its juxtaposition with malakoi—goes beyond what the contextual
evidence can support. As Dale Martin has shown, while malakoi would have referred to
persons derided as displaying effeminacy of character, and while a male who was
sexually penetrated as the “passive” partner was derided as malakos (“soft” or
“effeminate”), that term was applied also to men who groomed themselves to attract
women or over-enjoyed sex with women—and thus need not have implied any desire for,
much less participation in, same-sex intercourse.263 In putting such specific glosses on
arsenokoitai and malakoi, Scroggs burdens those terms with extra baggage and thereby
biases the text in favor of his view.

Martin’s analysis
Whereas Scroggs distances the judgment of Paul’s vice lists from present-day
same-sex practices by arguing that arsenokoitai narrowly targets a specific activity, the
innovationist might follow a different strategy: distance the judgment of Paul’s vice lists
from present-day same-sex practices by disputing that the meaning of arsenokoitai is
even known. That is the hermeneutical path of biblical scholar Dale Martin. Martin flatly
rejects any attempt to ascertain the meaning of arsenokoitai by analyzing the term into its
linguistic components or by tracing the term to its biblical source, dismissing such
analyses of the meaning of arsenokoitai as “naïve and indefensible.” 264 Some
innovationists have followed Martin’s lead. 265
Rather than looking to the construction or derivation of arsenokoitai, Martin
claims that the only way to know the term’s meaning is “to analyze its use in as many
different contexts as possible.”266 Because Paul’s uses of arsenokoitai are historically the
earliest known, such that there are no precedents with which to compare Paul’s uses,
Martin looks to later uses of the term in vice lists among Jewish and Christian writers. On
the basis of this survey, Martin writes:

263
Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 44–47; see also Via, “Bible, Church, and Homosexuality,” 11–12.
264
Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 39.
265
See Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 116–18; Helminiak, What the Bible Really Says about
Homosexuality, 105–15.
266
Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 39.

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 Analyzing the occurrence of arsenokoitês in different vice lists, I notice that it often occurs not
where we would expect to find reference to homosexual intercourse—that is, along with adultery
(moicheia) and prostitution or illicit sex (porneia)—but among vices related to economic injustice
or exploitation. Though this provides little to go on, I suggest that a careful analysis of the actual
context of the use of arsenokoitês, free from linguistically specious arguments from etymology or
the word’s separate parts, indicates that arsenokoitês had a more specific meaning in Greco-
Roman culture than homosexual penetration in general, a meaning that is now lost to us. It seems
to have referred to some kind of economic exploitation by means of sex, perhaps but not
necessarily homosexual sex.267
Martin goes on to conclude his discussion of arsenokoitai by making a somewhat more
confident claim about the term’s meaning: “It is certainly possible, I think probable, that
arsenokoitês referred to a particular role of exploiting others by means of sex, perhaps
but not necessarily by homosexual sex.”268 To summarize Martin’s argument: from the
evidence of extra-biblical vice lists we can infer that, probably, arsenokoitai referred to
persons playing a certain role in exploitative sexual activity that, possibly, involved
same-sex intercourse. In Martin’s view, then, while “no one knows what it meant,” 269 we
know enough to know that arsenokoitai did not mean male-male sexual intercourse in
general.
Despite Martin’s critique of Scroggs’ argument, the logical upshot of Martin’s
argument is similar in effect: arsenokoitai likely referred to persons engaging in specific
activities of an unjust character involving sexual intercourse; and to the extent that
arsenokoitai was associated with same-sex intercourse, it had a narrower scope than
male-male sexual intercourse in general. And despite taking a different approach than
Scroggs, the hermeneutical import of Martin’s argument is similar: because arsenokoitai
did not refer generally to male-male sexual intercourse, the weight of Paul’s judgment
does not fall squarely on same-sex intercourse; rather, the verdict of Paul’s vice lists is
directed at unjust practices with which same-sex intercourse may have been associated.
Martti Nissinen comes to a similar conclusion:
Regardless of the kind of sexuality meant in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, in their current
contexts they are examples of the exploitation of persons. This is the hermeneutical horizon for

267
Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 40.
268
Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 43.
269
Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 43.

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 understanding the individual components of the lists of vices. What Paul primarily opposes is the
wrong that people do to others.270

Re-reading Paul’s vice lists: Contexts of use

Martin is surely correct that we must avoid making claims about the meaning of
arsenokoitai that ignore the contexts in which that term was used. Martin’s argument,
however, oddly does not actually analyze the contexts of use that would seem most
relevant for ascertaining what Paul might have meant by this term—namely, 1
Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1. So, let’s reconsider Paul’s lists of vices from Martin’s
angle of analysis, taking into account both textual context and social context.

Textual context
In the textual contexts where Paul used arsenokoitai, Paul included this term in
the middle of a vice list. At 1 Corinthians 6, arsenokoitai is preceded by terms naming
persons who engage in impiety (idolaters) and illicit sex (immoral, adulterers) and
succeeded by terms naming persons who commit injustice (thieves, greedy, etc.). At 1
Timothy 1, arsenokoitai is preceded by terms naming persons who engage in impiety
(godless, sinners, unholy, profane), bloodshed (patricide, matricide, homicide), and illicit
sex (pornois) and succeeded by terms naming persons who commit injustice (kidnappers,
lying, perjury). If, following Martin, we take our clues to Paul’s intended meaning of
arsenokoitai from its placements within these lists, and we take notice of parallels
between the lists, then we might see an association of arsenokoitai with persons who
engage in impious activity or with persons who engage in unjust activity. 271 In both lists,
in any case, Paul juxtaposed arsenokoitai with terms that indisputably implicate persons
who engage in illicit sexual activity: at 1 Corinthians 6, sexually immoral and adulterers;
at 1 Timothy 1, sexually immoral (possibly, male prostitutes). Whether one sees an
association of arsenokoitai with impiety or with injustice—and whichever association

270
Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 118.
271
Such associations of arsenokoitai with impiety and injustice at 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1 would
parallel the context of Romans 1:18–32, in which Paul names both female-female and male-male same-sex
intercourse in conjunction with a vice list, all of which is placed under the revelation of God’s wrath
against “all impiety (asebeian) and injustice (adikian)” (Rom 1:18, my translation). On the significance of
“impiety and injustice” for interpreting Romans 1, see Appendix E.

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seems more likely in one’s estimation—the connection with illicit sexual activity is
evident in Paul’s lists. The contexts of Paul’s vice lists thus consistently connect
arsenokoitai with illicit sexual activity of some kind.
We might attempt to delimit the illicit sexual activity named by arsenokoitai by
its juxtaposition with malakoi in Paul’s vice list at 1 Corinthians 6. Given the
combination of these terms and the common association in Greco-Roman culture of
malakos with a male playing an “effeminate” role in sexual activity, we might infer that,
in the context of Paul’s list, these terms defined each other: as a pair, malakoi and
arsenokoitai refer to the “passive” and “active” partners in male-male intercourse,
respectively.272 In Paul’s list at 1 Timothy 1, however, arsenokoitai appears without
malakoi. If these terms were mutually defining in Paul’s lists, then arsenokoitai would
have had a different meaning, or at least its meaning would have been indeterminate, in
Paul’s list at 1 Timothy 1. That seems implausible to me. It makes better sense, I think, to
suppose that Paul used arsenokoitai with the same meaning in both lists. It is thus
reasonable to infer that Paul used arsenokoitai with a meaning that could have been
understood apart from malakoi.

Social context
To ascertain further what Paul might have meant by arsenokoitai, let’s now
consider Paul’s social context of use, particularly at 1 Corinthians 5 and 6. Here we
should take into account that Paul’s vice lists occur in a pastoral letter written to a local
congregation and thus consider the recipients and audience of Paul’s letter. The believers
at Corinth were an ethnically mixed congregation comprising Jewish believers and,
mostly, Greek converts.273 They were stratified socially and economically: some free,
some slave; some wealthy, some poor; some educated, some illiterate (1 Cor. 1:26–28).274
We should take into account also the first century practice of communal reading
in synagogues and congregations.275 Jews and Christians gathered regularly for public
reading of Scripture and other writings, for purposes of teaching and exhortation (Luke

272
See Sprinkle, People to Be Loved, 116; Gagnon, “The Bible and Homosexual Practice,” 82–83;
Waetjen, “Same-Sex Sexual Relations in Antiquity,” 109; and Loader, Making Sense of Sex, 138.
273
See Hays, First Corinthians, 6–7, and Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 23–25.
274
See Meeks, First Urban Christians, 52–53, 57–58, 67–73.
275
See Wright, Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus, 153–84.

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4:16–20; Acts 13:14–15; 1 Tim. 4:13). In the synagogues, public reading customarily
included weekly lections, one each from “the law and the prophets.” Jesus, when teaching
his disciples, evidently expected them to know the law, especially the Decalogue, from
having “heard” the Torah read and taught in the synagogue (Matt. 5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38,
43). The disciples may even have heard Jesus read the Torah when he was “teaching in
their synagogues” (Matt. 4:23; 9:35). In the congregations, public readings included also
letters of the apostles (Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 5:26–27; cf. Rev. 1:3). Paul’s letters to the
Corinthian congregation would thus have been read aloud among the assembled
believers. Jewish believers and some Greek converts in the Corinthian congregation who
heard Paul’s letters would have known the Torah from public reading in the synagogue.
And Paul evidently expected the Corinthian believers to know “the scriptures” according
to which Christ had died and been raised, knowledge they would likely have gained by
Paul’s teaching from Scripture based on public reading of Scripture while he was in
Corinth (1 Cor. 15:3–4; Acts 18:11).
Now, in his vice list at 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, Paul named arsenokoitai
immediately after several terms that his audience would have known already, including
terms that Paul had used previously: the sexually immoral (pornoi; cf. 5:9, 10, 11),
idolaters (cf. 5:10, 11; 10:7), and adulterers.276 And Paul did so without any explanation
of its meaning: arsenokoitai, like the previous terms, needed no introduction to his
audience. Paul evidently expected that his hearers—whether Jewish or Greek, educated
or illiterate—could have understood what he meant by this term. Paul’s use of
arsenokoitai thus presupposed either that some hearers in his audience had prior
familiarity with the term, or that the term’s meaning would have been perspicuous to his
audience, or both. William Loader thus writes:
This term is unknown in literature before Paul. Paul assumes it is comprehensible to his hearers.
This suggests that he has not invented the word on the spot, but that it is nevertheless a relatively
recent invention, in which case its etymology is likely to be of significance….The word is made
up of ‘bed’ (koit) and ‘male’ (arseno), suggesting sexual intercourse involving males.277

276
Paul lists arsenokoitai just after malakoi. Paul could expect his audience to be familiar with malakoi as
well, which was a common epithet with a long usage in Greco-Roman culture—see Martin, Sex and the
Single Savior, 44–47.
277
Loader, Sexuality in the New Testament, 31.

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Contrary to Martin’s claim, therefore, it is not “naïve and indefensible” to ascertain the
meaning of arsenokoitai by analyzing the term into its linguistic components. For, likely,
that is just how some hearers in Paul’s audience would have grasped the term’s meaning
in its original context of use. One may thus reasonably argue, as does Anthony Thiselton,
that “no amount of lexicographical manipulation over malakoi can avoid the clear
meaning of arsenokoitai as the activity of males (arsên) who have sexual relations with,
sleep with (koitês) other males.”278 Some hearers in Paul’s audience—whether Greek or
Jewish, educated or illiterate—could thus have understood what Paul meant by
arsenokoitai from its linguistic components. Paul’s social context of use at 1 Corinthians
6 thus indicates that Paul meant arsenokoitai as referring to males engaging in same-sex
intercourse.
Jewish hearers in Paul’s audience, moreover, could have understood what Paul
meant by arsenokoitai from biblical sources. Jewish believers in Corinth—for example,
Crispus, the former synagogue official, whom Paul baptized (Acts 18:8; 1 Cor. 1:14)—
may well have recognized the implied biblical background of Paul’s ethical teaching at 1
Corinthians 5–6. To frame his arguments in this section of his letter, Paul appealed to
several motifs and themes drawn from Israel’s Scriptures: community exclusion,
covenant, corporate responsibility, holiness, appointing judges, and fleeing sexual
immorality.279 His admonition concerning the man living with his stepmother, including
casting this as a case of porneia, drew from biblical and rabbinical sources of Jewish
law.280 As we observed above, furthermore, Paul’s vice lists in these chapters correspond
to legal injunctions from Deuteronomy and the Decalogue. The textual context in which
Paul listed arsenokoitai among vices is thus significantly shaped by biblical allusions and
sources, which strongly suggests that Paul had a biblical background in mind when using
arsenokoitai in this context. Some Jewish believers in Paul’s audience could have
recognized the biblical allusions and sources in Paul’s teaching, thus priming them to
hear the terms of Paul’s vices lists, including arsenokoitai, against a biblical
background—and thus possibly to connect arsenokoitai with biblical law.

278
Thiselton, “Can Hermeneutics Ease the Deadlock?” 167.
279
See Rosner, Paul, Scripture, and Ethics, 61–146.
280
See Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 97–103.

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 In addition to Jews, such as Crispus, who had become believers in Jesus and left
the synagogue to join Paul, the Corinthian congregation comprised also God-fearing
Greeks who had been associated with the synagogue and became believers in Jesus
through the preaching of Paul (Acts 18:4; cf. 13:16, 43; 14:1; 16:14; 17:4, 12, 17). One
such God-fearing Greek convert was Titius, whose house was adjacent to the synagogue
in Corinth and who hosted Paul after he left the synagogue (Acts 18:7). Both Jewish
believers and Greek God-fearers in the Corinthian congregation would have been familiar
with the common stock of synagogue teaching among the Jewish Diaspora. The common
ethic of Hellenistic Judaism, which was derived from the Torah and transmitted through
the synagogue, comprised a selective adaptation of Mosaic Law for Jewish life in
Hellenistic culture. Three primary emphases of this common ethic were avoiding
idolatry, maintaining purity (including abstaining from sexual immorality), and keeping
Sabbath. Correspondingly, three Torah texts in particular were core sources of this
common ethic among Hellenistic Jewish writers: the Decalogue (Exod. 20), the Holiness
Code (Lev. 18–20), and Deut. 27.281 Jewish believers and Greek God-fearers in the
Corinthian congregation, then, may well have been familiar with the Greek text of
Leviticus 18–20, because they would have heard the Torah read aloud, in its Greek
version, in the synagogue on a weekly basis. And they may well have been familiar with
the specific content of Leviticus 18–20, because they would have heard ethical
instruction on sexual practice in the synagogue. Thus, they may well have been familiar
with not only the Hellenistic Jewish prohibition of same-sex intercourse, but also the
Greek phrasing of that prohibition from the Greek version of Leviticus. 282 Hearing
arsenokoitai against a common background of Torah reading and ethical teaching, in
Greek in the synagogue, therefore, Jewish believers and Greek God-fearers in the
Corinthian congregation may well have understood the meaning of arsenokoitai from its
biblical source (Lev. 18:22; 20:13)—and thus as referring to males engaging in same-sex
intercourse.

281
See Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem, 155–85, and Runesson, “Entering a Synagogue with Paul.”
282
Wright, Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus, observes that texts read frequently became so familiar
to their regular audiences that hearers could detect alterations in wording from one reading to another (e.g.,
differences in translations).

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 A careful consideration of the contexts of use in Paul’s vice lists, therefore,
warrants drawing the very inferences that Martin dismisses regarding what Paul meant by
arsenokoitai. Dan Via, a biblical scholar favoring an innovationist position, reaches a
similar conclusion on this question:
The term is a compound of the words for “male” (arsēn) and “bed” (koitē) and thus could
naturally be taken to mean a man who goes to bed with other men. True the meaning of a
compound word does not necessarily add up to the sum of its parts [citing Martin]. But in this case
I believe the evidence suggests that it does. In the Greek version of the two Leviticus passages that
condemn male homosexuality (Lev 18:22; 20:13)—a man is not to lie with a male as with a
woman—each text contains both the words arsēn and koitē.283
These inferences of the meaning of arsenokoitai in Paul’s vice lists, based on the
apparent linguistic composition and the probable biblical source of the term, cannot be
stated with certainty, of course. Yet both inferences, reasonably based on the contextual
evidence, point toward the same conclusion: Paul meant arsenokoitai as referring to
males engaging in same-sex intercourse.

A test case: Adultery

While Paul’s vice lists might suggest an association of arsenokoitai with impiety
or injustice, his contexts of use indicate that his audience in Corinth could have
understood what Paul meant by arsenokoitai apart from such associations. It follows that
Paul’s audience could also have understood Paul’s judgment of the activity to which he
referred by arsenokoitai as pertaining to that activity itself, apart from any judgment of
impiety or injustice. Perhaps, however, Paul meant his audience to make such an
association. So, let’s further examine Paul’s contexts of use to test whether, as Martin
claims, Paul meant to indict arsenokoitai based on the association of that activity with
impiety or injustice. To do this, let’s consider another sexual vice in Paul’s list, adultery.
If Martin’s interpretation applies to arsenokoitai, then it should apply also to adultery.
Paul explicitly mentions “committing adultery” (moicheuō) or “adulterers”
(moichoi) relatively infrequently in his letters—only three times, by my count.284 But in
each use Paul juxtaposes adultery with either impiety, or injustice, or both. Two instances

283
Via, “Bible, Church, and Homosexuality,” 13.
284
This fact should serve as a caution against claims that same-sex intercourse is unimportant in Paul’s
teaching because he mentions it “only” three times.

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of Paul’s uses are in Romans. Building his case to convict Jews as sinners the same as
Gentiles, Paul writes: “you, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself? While
you preach against stealing, do you steal? You that forbid adultery, do you commit
adultery? You that abhor idols, do you rob temples? You that boast in the law, do you
dishonor God by breaking the law?” (Rom. 2:21–23). Later, stating that love fulfills the
law, Paul writes: “The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not
murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”, and any other commandment, are
summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself”” (Rom. 13:9). In both
instances, Paul draws from the Decalogue to generate his vice list. In the first instance,
Paul brackets adultery between acts of injustice (stealing) and impiety (idolatry); in the
second instance, he follows adultery with acts of injustice (murder, stealing). Paul’s third
use, as we have seen, is in 1 Corinthians 6, where Paul lists adulterers between those
practicing impiety (idolaters) and those committing injustice (thieving and robbing).
Using Martin’s analysis, the contexts in which Paul names adultery in vice lists
would indicate that Paul intended to associate the activity of adultery with activities of
impiety or injustice or both. Following Martin’s logic, this would suggest further that
Paul judged the activity of adultery to be wrong, not on account of the activity itself, but
based on its association with these other activities. That conclusion, however, seems to
me most implausible. For it would imply that Paul considered adultery to be possibly
righteous, potentially compatible with Christian conduct, if only one were to commit
adultery in such a way that one also feared God and did justice. Yet, as Paul argued in
Romans, every way of breaking the law shows dishonor to God (Rom. 2:23–24). And as
Paul warned the Corinthians, all sexual relations outside the monogamous conjugality of
husband and wife is porneia (1 Cor. 7:2–3), which he commands the believer to “shun”
(1 Cor. 6:18).
Paul’s juxtaposition of adultery with impiety and injustice in his vice lists does
not imply that Paul judged adultery to be wrong only by association with such activities.
What follows for adultery should follow likewise for arsenokoitai. From the fact that
Paul names arsenokoitai in vice lists along with impiety and injustice, it does not follow
that Paul considered arsenokoitai as a vice only on account of association with such
activities. Paul’s audience, therefore, not only could have grasped what Paul meant by

138
arsenokoitai on its own terms, apart from association with other terms in Paul’s lists, but
also could have understood Paul’s judgment of arsenokoitai as pertaining to the activity
itself, apart from association with other wrongful activities that Paul names.

Conclusion
The Pauline marriage proposal—namely, that the church concede same-sex union
in analogy to Paul’s concession of marriage—depends logically on a complex series of
interlocking steps. The Pauline proposal requires (1) maintaining that Paul allowed the
possibility of the virtuous practice of same-sex intercourse, which requires (2) contending
that Paul included same-sex intercourse in his vice lists only on account of its being
practiced unlovingly or unjustly (abusively, coercively, exploitatively) in some way.
There are two paths along which one might develop a supporting argument for this
position. The Scroggs path proceeds by (3) narrowing the scope of arsenokoitai to refer
to only certain activities, which requires (4) putting specific glosses on arsenokoitai,
which requires either (5) deriving restrictions on the reference of arsenokoitai from (i)
the term itself or (ii) the biblical laws from which it is likely derived, or (6) determining
the reference of arsenokoitai by inference from (iii) its juxtaposition with other items in
his vice lists or (iv) the cultural milieu in which Paul was writing. The Martin path
proceeds by (7) denying that anyone knows what arsenokoitai meant from its
lexicography or etymology but (8) inferring from contexts of use that arsenokoitai,
probably, referred primarily to unjust activities involving sex and, possibly, referred
secondarily to same-sex intercourse but, (9) if so, not male-male intercourse generally.
Reasonable doubt about any one link in either logic chain casts doubt on the Pauline
proposal. As shown above, there are good reasons to doubt each of (3) to (9).285 In my
estimation, this leaves the Pauline proposal in serious doubt.
Close examination of Paul’s teaching on chastity and the contexts of his vice lists,
it seems to me, points in a different direction. (1) Paul uses terms that (a) could have been
understood by his audiences as referring to persons engaging in same-sex intercourse and
(b) could have been understood as referring to such activity apart from any association
with other wrongful activity. (2) Paul’s vice lists in which, or in conjunction with which,

285
See further Thiselton, “Can Hermeneutics Ease the Deadlock?” 161–73.

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he names persons engaging in same-sex intercourse (c) generally include activities or
attitudes that are inherently wrong, (d) begin or end with emphatically negative verdicts
on the habitual practice of the activities or attitudes named in the lists, (e) are framed by
unequivocal indictments of sexual immorality, (f) name several activities, including
male-male sexual intercourse, that are prohibited unconditionally by biblical law, and (g)
depict same-sex intercourse in terms not restricted by age, status, role, or relation. Taking
together (1) and (2), it is reasonable to infer that Paul regarded the habitual practice of
same-sex intercourse, like the other activities named in those vice lists, as inherently
wrong.
All this supports the conclusion that Paul judged the ongoing practice of same-sex
intercourse as inherently incompatible with a habit of life that is fitting for those who
have been “washed” and “sanctified” and “justified” in “the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11). Hence, in Paul’s judgment, the activity
of same-sex intercourse cannot be practiced virtuously by being done lovingly, faithfully,
and justly: it is, simply, a vice. One might want to interject that Paul’s judgment was
based on ignorance: Paul, in his historical situation, could not have known of mutual,
faithful same-sex partnerships, the loving kind of relationships for which innovationists
today are advocating church sanction. Yet, as we have shown in Appendices D and E, it
is possible from Paul’s milieu, and plausible from Paul’s text, that Paul was in fact aware
of such same-sex relationships.
A careful analysis of Paul’s vice lists thus shows that the Pauline marriage
proposal rests on an argument that, in effect, pits Paul (“Better to marry than to burn”)
against Paul (“Never!” “Abstain from sexual immorality!”). At very least, the Pauline
proposal in favor of sanctioning same-sex union stands in acute tension with Paul’s
teaching on chastity.

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 Appendix G

Same-sex Intercourse in the Holiness Code

The argument that I construct in Appendix F depends, in part, on the claim that the
Holiness Code prohibits male-male sexual intercourse unconditionally. I thus have the
burden of making a case for that claim. The view that I develop in Appendix H makes a
case that the moral mandates of the Apostolic Decree were drawn primarily from the
Holiness Code and include same-sex intercourse in the mandate to abstain from sexual
immorality. Accordingly, as a bridge between Appendix F and Appendix H, I offer here a
brief examination the Levitical prohibition of male-male sexual intercourse.
The Levitical prohibition of male-male same-sex intercourse reads: “You shall not
lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22). This law belongs to
a section of laws forbidding several forms of sexual immorality: sex within close degrees
of kinship (18:6–18); sex during a woman’s menstruation (18:19); adultery (18:20);
male-male sexual intercourse (18:22); male and female bestiality (18:23). The Levitical
sexual prohibitions belong to a larger body of laws, the Holiness Code (Lev. 17–26),
which concerns Israel’s vocation as God’s people: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD
your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2). The Levitical sexual prohibitions are in a section of laws
for both Israelite and non-Israelite residents (Lev. 17:8–18:30). The Levitical sexual
prohibitions are not casuistic laws that address particular cases; they are not conditioned
on the inclinations or the intentions of the actor, nor on the circumstances or the
consequences of the action (cf. Exod. 21–22). All the Levitical sexual prohibitions, like
the prohibitions of the Decalogue, have the form of apodictic (unconditional) law: “You
shall not.”

What does the Holiness Code prohibit?

Which kinds of male-male sexual intercourse did the Holiness Code judge as
unclean? Many scholars have followed John Boswell’s view that Leviticus prohibits

141
specifically sexual practices associated with foreign cults. 286 That view has received
considerable critical scrutiny, however. Martti Nissinen summarizes the case against
Boswell’s influential view:
It has been commonly assumed…that the writers of the Holiness Code associated homoerotic
behavior with sex connected to cultic practices….The conclusion that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
refer solely to homosexual acts related to cultic practices…leaves many things hanging in the air.
In the present textual context of these prohibitions [viz., the prohibition of child sacrifice to
Molech], this conclusion would easily suggest itself, but the scanty evidence for the practice of
cultic homoeroticism makes it appear enigmatic at best. Therefore, it is unwarranted to restrict the
prohibitions to a sacred sphere, and it is also unrealistic to assume that the Holiness Code would
assess other kinds of homoeroticism as more acceptable.287
William Loader draws a similar conclusion: “Cultic concerns are part of the mix…but
one can hardly on that basis conclude that the prohibition of same-sex intercourse
pertains only to cultic contexts, such as in cultic prostitution, since the other prohibitions
clearly show more than a cultic concern.” 288
Some argue that the Levitical prohibition is directed specifically at the passive
partner in male-male sexual activity. They conjecture that the phrase “as with a woman”
points to the sexual roles of the respective partners: it is only the passive partner’s
“playing the woman” that is prohibited.289 The subsequent section of the Holiness Code
that attaches penalties to the sexual prohibitions, however, does not differentiate by
sexual role, treating alike active and passive partners: “If a man lies with a male as with a
woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death” (Lev.
20:13). Others argue that the passive partner, by “playing the woman,” defiles himself as
a man, which defiles the sexual act, thereby defiling the active partner, such that both
partners are subject to penalty.290 Yet, the text states explicitly that “both” partners in
male-male sexual intercourse have “committed” or “done” a detestable act, not that one
partner commits a detestable act that transfers defilement to the other partner. Both sexual
partners defile themselves by the detestable sexual activity.

286
Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 100–2.
287
Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 39–41.
288
Loader, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 22.
289
Helminiak, What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality, 52–53.
290
Furnish, “Bible and Homosexuality,” 20.

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 Still others would argue that the Levitical prohibition condemns sexual relations
structured by social hierarchies—say, between a man and a boy, or a master and a
slave—that are abusive of the inferior partner. The Hebrew phrasing of the prohibited
activity—a “man” (ish) lying with a “male” (zâkâr)—counts against this view, however.
The prohibition designates the sexual actor by the term for an adult male (a man or
husband) but designates the sexual partner by the general term for a male human (cf.
Gen. 1:27; 5:2). The latter term could designate a “male” of any age or status, such that
the prohibition does not differentiate the sexual partners by age difference or social
status. The Levitical prohibition is thus not limited to exploitive relations between social
unequals, as Nissinen observes: “Unlike the sources from classical antiquity, the Holiness
Code does not even make any difference with regard to the social status of the partners;
the prohibition concerns all male couplings even if the social stratification is otherwise
widely recognized in its proscriptions.” 291

Why does the Holiness Code prohibit?

What is the rationale for the Levitical prohibition of male-male sexual
intercourse? Jacob Milgrom argues that the sexual prohibitions in the Holiness Code,
including of male-male sexual intercourse, can be explained by the imperative that sexual
relations generate legitimate offspring. According to Milgrom, the “common
denominator of all the prohibitions” is “the emission of semen” in ways that result in
“illicit progeny or, as in this case [viz., male-male sexual intercourse], lack of
progeny.”292 This argument has some merit: sexual intercourse during a woman’s
menstruation and male-male sexual intercourse produce no progeny, while incest and
adultery potentially produce illicit progeny. This fails to explain, however, why male
masturbation, which does involve emission of semen but does not produce progeny, is
not prohibited while female bestiality, which does not produce progeny but does not
involve emission of semen, is prohibited. Milgrom’s “common denominator” is not
common across, and thus does not explain, all the prohibitions.

291
Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 44.
292
Milgrom, Leviticus, 207.

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 Perry Yoder suggests that the prohibition of male-male sexual intercourse could
be an extension of the prohibition of incest and thus might draw its rationale from the
prohibition of sexual relations within close degrees of kinship. Read this way, the law
would forbid sexual intercourse between males of the same kin-group but would not
forbid sexual intercourse between males of different kin-groups.293 This reading of the
law depends on taking Leviticus 18:6—“None of you shall approach anyone near of kin
to uncover nakedness”—as a general heading subsuming all the sexual prohibitions listed
in Leviticus 18:7–23. This interpretation has some merit: the prohibition of adultery
forbids “sexual relations with your kinsman’s wife” (v. 20). As Yoder acknowledges,
however, this interpretation has exceptions. It does not explain the prohibition of
intercourse with a woman during her menstruation, which forbids intercourse with any
“woman” regardless of kinship, even one’s wife, with whom one is otherwise permitted
intercourse (v. 19). It also does not explain the prohibition of intercourse with animals,
which does not involve human kinship (v. 23). We may observe, moreover, that the
several prohibitions of incest are specific, naming persons related by kinship (father,
mother, sister, daughter, father’s sister, son’s wife, etc.) with whom sexual relations are
forbidden (vv. 7–18). By contrast, the prohibition of male-male sexual intercourse is
generic, forbidding sexual relations with any “male” regardless of kinship relation (v.
22).
The Holiness Code expresses no rationale for prohibiting male-male sexual
intercourse other than that such action constitutes a purity violation that offends God. 294
The Levitical prohibition of male-male sexual intercourse is not due to the fact that such
sexual relations are non-procreative. The Holiness Code presents no casuistry that
distinguishes detestable from acceptable instances of male-male sexual intercourse by

293
Yoder, Leviticus, 184, 213.
294
Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 32: “The prohibitions against male-male anal intercourse, cross-
dressing, and intercourse with an animal…belong entirely to the sphere of purity ethics, no other rationale
being offered for them.” Likewise, Loader, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” 22: “The text gives no rationale
for the prohibition beyond its offence against divine will.” Concerning why male-male sexual intercourse,
and the other sexual transgressions listed in the Holiness Code, constitutes a purity violation, various
theories have been proposed. Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, promotes a socio-cultural
explanation. Dresner, “Homosexuality and the Order of Creation,” and Wold, Out of Order, explain the
sexual prohibitions of the Holiness Code as referring to transgressions of divinely ordained boundaries in
the creational order. The creational theory best explains the textual evidence, I think.

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criteria pertaining to the intentions of the actors or the circumstances of the activity.295
The Levitical prohibition of male-male sexual intercourse is not limited to forbidding
sexual practices connected to foreign cults, or exploitive sex between social unequals, or
sexual relations within kinship groups. The Holiness Code uses no terms that distinguish
the sexual partners in male-male sexual intercourse by age difference or sexual role or
social status or kinship relation.
The Levitical prohibition of male-male sexual intercourse, then, is categorical and
unconditional: it proscribes all male-male sexual intercourse, whether cultic or erotic,
coercive or consensual, hierarchical or mutual, regardless of the age, status, role, or
relation of the sexual partners. That the biblical law prohibiting male-male sexual
intercourse does not differentiate the sexual partners by such categories or criteria sets the
Holiness Code apart from the law codes of Israel’s neighbors, as Milgrom observes:
“Therefore the difference between the biblical legislation and other Near Eastern laws
must not be overlooked. The Bible allows for no exceptions: all acts of sodomy are
prohibited, whether performed by rich or poor, higher or lower status, citizen or alien.” 296

295
Contrast with the Covenant Code (Exod. 21:12–22:17), which distinguishes cases of bloodshed and theft
by criteria of intention and circumstance.
296
Milgrom, Leviticus, 207.

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 Appendix H

The Jerusalem Council and the Apostolic Decree

The Jerusalem Council, issuing in the Apostolic Decree, was a watershed event by which
the early church entered a new era marked by a fundamental change in Christian identity
that significantly altered church history.297 The discernment process of the Jerusalem
Council, I have suggested in Chapter 10, should serve as a guiding precedent for the
church today. And, I have argued, the Apostolic Decree is directly relevant to the ethical
matter of our present debate. Others have looked to the Jerusalem Council as precedent
for inclusion and innovation.298 Because of its considerable import, the discernment and
decision of the apostles and elders deserves careful examination.299

The matter for discernment

According to Luke, the success of the mission to the Gentiles (Acts 15:3–4)
prompted the apostles and elders, together with the assembly of believers, to gather in
Jerusalem (Acts 15:6, 12, 22). The question at stake, Luke states explicitly, concerned
what Gentile believers in Jesus must do (not believe) in order to “be saved” (Acts 15:1, 5,
11). The question to be decided was whether Gentile believers were required to receive
circumcision and observe the whole Torah in order to belong to God’s people in Christ
and thereby receive God’s promise of salvation.
The Jerusalem Council, we should note, assumed implicitly that circumcision and
Torah observance were appropriate for Jewish believers. There was no question whether
Jews should be required to become Gentiles (i.e., reverse circumcision and reject Torah
observance) in order to be Christians (cf. Rom. 2:25; 1 Cor. 7:17–18; Gal. 5:3). Indeed,

297
Concerning historical background, cultural context and missional implications of the Jerusalem Council,
see Strong, “The Jerusalem Council.”
298
Johnson, “Disputed Questions.”
299
My exposition on the Jerusalem Council is indebted in part to lectures by Prof. Perry Yoder in his
seminar “Torah and Ethics” at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Summer 2001).

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according to Acts, circumcision continues to be permitted (Acts 16:3), and Jewish
believers are portrayed explicitly as consistently observant of Torah (cf. Acts 21:20–21; 1
Tim).300 The question, rather, was whether circumcision and Torah observance should be
required of Gentile believers also. In effect, the question addressed by the Jerusalem
Council was whether Gentiles could belong to God’s people in Christ as Gentile
believers or only as Jewish proselytes—that is, whether Gentiles had to become Jews, by
receiving circumcision and observing Torah, in order to be saved. Richard Bauckham
thus comments: “the issue which divided the Jerusalem church at the time of the Council
of Acts 15 was evidently not whether Gentiles could join the messianically renewed
Israel, but whether they could do so without becoming Jews.” 301
The matter for discernment at the Jerusalem Council, then, concerned the
salvation of Gentiles. In this respect, we should distinguish the Jerusalem Council from
the Antioch affair (Gal. 2:11–14).302 Although both episodes concerned Jews and
Gentiles in the church, they did so in different respects. The Antioch affair concerned the
matter of Jew-Gentile commensality within the church, which was subsequent to the
matter of Gentile salvation. That is, once the church had recognized Gentile salvation and
baptized Gentile believers, the question then arose whether Jewish believers and Gentile
believers could and would fully share a common life, including table fellowship. The
Antioch affair, then, pressed the question of whether Jewish Christians and Gentile
Christians, both having been accepted by God through believing and baptism in the name
of Jesus, would now comprise a single body, socially and spiritually—or whether Jewish
congregations would function separately from Gentile congregations.
Some commentators, associating the Jerusalem Council with the Antioch affair,
conflate the matter of Gentile salvation with the matter of Jew-Gentile commensality.
They thus construe the Apostolic Decree as a modus vivendi to facilitate fellowship
between Jews and Gentiles in mixed congregations.303 For sure, the Jerusalem Council

300
Miller, “Reading Law as Prophecy,” 77–84; Johnson, Acts of the Apostles, 259, 261.
301
Bauckham, “James and the Gentiles,” 168.
302
For extended discussion of the Antioch affair, see Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches, 49–83.
303
So Tannehill, Acts of the Apostles, 190: “The underlying point would be that gentile Christians need to
find ways of living with people deeply committed to the Mosaic law.” Also Johnson, Acts of the Apostles,
273: “The point would seem to be to provide the basis for table-fellowship and full communion between
Jew and Gentile Messianists.” Similarly, Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 138: “the Jerusalem council

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and the Antioch affair were linked: reception of Gentile believers into the church did
lead, as a practical consequence, to situations of Jew–Gentile commensality within the
church. This sequential linkage is evident in Luke’s account: Peter recognizes that God
has given salvation by the Holy Spirit to Gentile believers, to which Peter responds by
baptizing them “in the name of Jesus Christ;” this is followed by Peter staying at
Cornelius’ house, which precipitates criticism from the circumcision party in Jerusalem:
“Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” (Acts 10:44–11:3). This
sequential linkage is evident also in Paul’s account: Paul visits Jerusalem and reaches
agreement with the “pillars” of the church (James, Peter, and John) that Gentile
circumcision would not be required and thus that the Gentile mission could proceed with
approval of the Jerusalem leaders (Gal. 2:1–10); then the dispute over Jew-Gentile
commensality erupts later when Peter, and representatives of James, visit Antioch (Gal.
2:11–14).304 The question of Jew–Gentile commensality, therefore, is practically
implicated in the question of Gentile salvation. The question of Jew-Gentile
commensality, however, is theologically posterior to and logically distinct from the
question of Gentile salvation, and we should avoid collapsing them into a single issue.
Luke’s account specifies that the Jerusalem Council convened to decide the prior
question of Gentile salvation: whether Gentile believers could be saved—belong to God’s
people and receive God’s promise—while remaining Gentiles (i.e., without
circumcision). The Jerusalem Council then addressed, correspondingly, the ethical
entailments of Gentile salvation: On account of the facts that God has saved Gentile
believers as Gentiles and that God has given the Torah for observance by God’s people,
which laws should Gentile believers observe as members of God’s people? Markus
Bockmuehl comments:
Luke’s account pinpoints the central halakhic problem with great accuracy: should Gentiles who
believe in Christ be treated as proselytes [i.e., Jews] or Noachides [i.e., Gentiles]? It should be
noted carefully that the primary point in this Lucan account is not that of table fellowship in mixed

sought a purely practical accommodation by which Gentiles would avoid foods tainted by idolatry and
blood while Jews waived other purity demands.”
304
Lining up Paul’s chronology with Luke’s chronology, and sorting out apparent discrepancies between
their respective accounts of the Jerusalem meeting(s), is notoriously, and perhaps intractably, difficult.

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 congregations…but more generally the halakhic status of Gentile believers: verse 1 clearly defines
the question as being about what Gentiles must do to be saved.305

The proceedings of the council

Some Jewish believers of the Pharisee sect had argued in favor of requiring
circumcision and Torah observance for all believers, Jews and Gentiles. In their view,
Gentiles could belong to God’s people and inherit God’s promise of salvation only by
becoming Jews (Acts 15:1, 5). At the council meeting, Peter, Barnabas, and Paul each
testified in favor of not requiring Gentiles to receive circumcision and observe Torah.
Drawing from the events he witnessed at the house of Cornelius (Acts 10), Peter testified
that the fact that God had given the Holy Spirit and baptism to the believing Gentiles, just
as God had done to the believing Jews at Pentecost (Acts 2), proved that God had already
accepted believing Gentiles into God’s people and thus that God would grant the
covenant promise of salvation to Gentiles the same as to Jews—by grace through
believing in, and receiving baptism in the name of, Jesus—without any need for Gentiles
to receive circumcision and observe Torah (Acts 15:7–11). Barnabas and Paul, likewise,
testified to “the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles”
in Antioch and Asia Minor (cf. Acts 11; 13–14) as evidence that God had already
accepted Gentile believers into God’s people (Acts 15:12).
The apostles’ testimony to Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit, while it testified to
God’s intention to accept and save Gentile believers along with Jewish believers, did not
settle the question of whether Gentile believers should observe Torah on account of
belonging to God’s people and inheriting God’s promise. As Bauckham observes, “this
line of argument [based on experience] cannot, for an assembly of Jewish Christians, be
the finally decisive one: the issue is a matter of halakhah, which can only be decided
from Scripture…The clinching argument, provided by James, is therefore a scriptural
one.”306 James, citing the prophets, argued that the Scripture agreed with the testimony of

305
Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches, 164 (original emphasis).
306
Bauckham, “James and the Jerusalem Church,” 452.

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Peter: the prophets testified to God’s intention to incorporate Gentiles as Gentiles into
God’s people (Acts 15:13–18).307
James, who presided over the Jerusalem Council, then rendered a decision,
concluding two things. First, he concurred with Peter, Barnabas, and Paul that “we should
not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God” and thus that Gentile believers would
not be required to be circumcised and observe the whole Torah: Gentile believers could
belong to God’s people and receive salvation as Gentiles, without becoming Jews (Acts
15:19). Second, he affirmed that Gentile believers should “abstain from things polluted
by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood”
(Acts 15:20). This decision was communicated “with the consent of the whole church” in
a letter stating what has come to be called the Apostolic Decree:
it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these
essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is
strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. (Acts
15:28–29)
That this letter was addressed specifically “to the believers of Gentile origin” in the
churches of Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia reinforces the observation made earlier: the
Apostolic Decree does not in any way entail that receiving circumcision and observing
Torah is abrogated for Jewish believers in Jesus.
The Jerusalem Council decided to not burden Gentiles with circumcision and
observing the whole Torah as necessary for belonging to God’s people in Christ: only
belief in, and baptism in the name of, Jesus were required to receive God’s promise of
salvation. This decision meant that God’s people gathered in Christ—the church—would
henceforth comprise both Jews as Jews and Gentiles as Gentiles. At the same time,
however, the Apostolic Decree did require Gentile believers to observe “essentials” or
“necessities” of belonging to God’s people: receiving God’s promise entails abstaining
from activities inappropriate for God’s people. 308 Moreover, the Jerusalem Council

307
Concerning the relevance of the prophets cited by James to the question addressed by the Jerusalem
Council, see Bauckham, “James and the Gentiles,” 156–70, and “James and the Jerusalem Church,” 453–
58.
308
Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches, 164–65 (original emphasis): “James’ speech,” including
the ethical requirements, “simply spells out the halakhic consequences” of recognizing that Gentile
believers who have received the Holy Spirit “have in fact already been saved, as Gentiles” and thus already
belong to God’s people.

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assumed that Jewish believers would continue to observe Torah. Thus, the Jerusalem
Council discerned that, while both Jews and Gentiles “will be saved through the grace of
the Lord Jesus” (Acts 15:11), nonetheless the law remained in effect for both Jews and
Gentiles in the church. David Miller thus observes:
Luke certainly thought that Jesus was more important than Moses and that “salvation” was not
available in the law (Acts 13:38–39; 15:11). In this sense, Luke limits the role of the law and
makes it subordinate to Jesus…But when Peter affirms that both Jews and Gentiles “believe in
order to be saved” (Acts 15:11), it does not follow that law observance is optional for the covenant
people. Just as the four terms of the apostolic decree (Acts 15:20) were imposed on Gentiles as
requirements for those saved by faith, so we may conclude in light of the trajectory of Acts that,
from Luke’s perspective, the law remained obligatory for Christ-believing Jews.309
This prompts two questions: From what source did the apostles and elders draw
these ethical requirements for Gentile Christians? And, insofar as these ethical
prescriptions were drawn from the Torah, why was Jewish law understood as being
applicable and appropriate, even while circumcision was not required, for Gentile
Christians? Luke’s account of the Jerusalem Council does not specify answers to either
question, so we must begin by examining the particulars of the Apostolic Decree.

Source of the decree

First, from what source did the apostles and elders draw the ethical mandates for
Gentile believers? While the text does not cite a source, one can observe a high degree of
correspondence between the Apostolic Decree and the Holiness Code, specifically
Leviticus 17–18.310 As Bauckham observes, all four abstentions named in the Apostolic
Decree (Acts 15:29) parallel the prohibitions in Leviticus 17-18, appearing in the same
order and expressed in similar terms.311 I’ve arranged the correspondence in the table
below:

Leviticus 17–18 Acts 15:29

Prohibitions Abstentions
Offering sacrifices to idols What has been sacrificed to idols

309
Miller, “Reading Law as Prophecy,” 80.
310
For general discussion of this section of the Holiness Code, see Milgrom, Leviticus, 184-211.
311
Bauckham, “James and the Gentiles,” 172-74. See also Milavec, Didache, 168-70.

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(sacrifices offered only to YHWH)
(17:7–9)
Eating blood from sacrifices Blood
(blood = life, which belongs to YHWH)
(17:10–12)
Eating a hunted animal that has not been What is strangled
slaughtered and so retains its blood (“strangled” or “choked” animals retain
(17:13–14) their blood)
Incest, intercourse during menstruation, Sexual immorality
adultery, male-male intercourse, bestiality (porneia)
(18:6–23)

The Holiness Code prohibits several categories of illicit sexual relations: within close
degrees of kinship (Lev. 18:6–18); during a woman’s menstruation (v. 19); with another
man’s wife (v. 20); male sexual relations with males (v. 22); and female sexual relations
with animals (v. 23). The law concerning same-sex intercourse reads: “You shall not lie
with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22). Throughout this section
of the code, the implied “you” to whom the laws are addressed is always an adult male.
Thus, the law prohibits a man having sexual relations with a male as a man would have
sexual relations with a woman. Bauckham comments on the correspondence between the
Apostolic Decree and the Holiness Code: “Thus the four prohibitions in the Apostolic
Decree constitute a precise reference to the laws in Leviticus 17–18 which are said to be
binding on “the alien who sojourns in your midst”.” 312 This high degree of inter-textual
correspondence makes it quite plausible—highly probable, in my estimation—that the
holiness laws of Leviticus 17–18 served as the template for the ethical requirements in
Acts 15.313 We’ll consider an alternative source below.
As we argued in Appendix G, Leviticus prohibits all male-male sexual
intercourse—whether cultic or erotic, active or passive, coercive or consensual,
hierarchical or mutual, regardless of the age, status, relation, or role of the sexual

312
Bauckham, “James and the Gentiles,” 174.
313
See Hays, Moral Vision of the New Testament, 383.

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partners. If, as seems probable, the Jerusalem Council drew on the Holiness Code in
mandating Gentile Christians to abstain from “sexual immorality,” then the ethical
standard of the early church subsumes the Levitical prohibition of all male-male sexual
intercourse.

Rationale of the decree

Now let us consider what rationale the apostles and elders might have had for
using this source from Leviticus: Why apply holiness laws from Israel’s Torah to Gentile
Christians, if they are not required to become Jews by receiving circumcision? To answer
this question, we must attend to the particulars of Leviticus 17–18, especially the matter
of who is obliged to observe these laws.
The holiness laws in Leviticus 17–18 are said to apply to “anyone of the house of
Israel” and to “the aliens who reside among them.” The foreigner (gēr) who resides
among (or “in the midst of”) Israelites is to be distinguished from the “proselyte,” a
foreigner who joins himself to Israel by receiving circumcision and thereby taking upon
himself the covenant obligation of observing the whole Torah (see Isa. 56:6–7). Thus,
resident aliens are those foreigners who reside among (“in the midst of”) Israelites but do
so as Gentiles (i.e., without circumcision). Such resident aliens are obliged to observe
some, but not all, laws of the Torah. Which laws? While Leviticus mandates that the
same civil laws apply equally to Israelite citizen and resident alien (Lev. 24:22),
Leviticus draws an implicit distinction among laws between performative
commandments (e.g., observe the Sabbath or Passover) and prohibitive commandments
(e.g., no idolatry or illicit sex): “the alien is bound by the prohibitive commandments but
not by the performative ones.” 314
The rationale for obliging resident aliens to observe the prohibitive laws,
moreover, is that these laws forbade the detestable practices of the surrounding nations.
Forbidding these practices prevented defilement of the people and the land—and thus of
the temple (Lev. 18:24–20). Any violation of prohibitive commands by commission of a

314
Milgrom, Leviticus, 186. See also Milgrom, Leviticus, 42, and Yoder, Leviticus, 64, 71–72.

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forbidden act, whether by an Israelite citizen or a resident alien, generated an impurity
problem for everyone.315
Aliens living on the land must keep themselves free from impurity for the same reasons that the
Israelites must: failure to eliminate impurity threatens God’s land and sanctuary. The welfare of all
of Israel residing in God’s land and under the protection of God’s sanctuary is jeopardized by the
prolongation of impurity....Anyone in residence on YHWH’s land is capable of polluting it or the
sanctuary.316
On account of the potential consequences of a polluted sanctuary, therefore, “the alien
and the Israelite are equally obliged to refrain from violations that produce impurity.” 317
The Apostolic Decree thus entails (1) receiving Gentile believers (by grace,
through believing and baptism in the name of Jesus, without circumcision) into equal
membership with Jewish believers among God’s people and (2) binding Gentile
Christians to holiness laws for uncircumcised foreigners residing “in the midst of”
Israelites. This linkage between Gentile Christians and uncircumcised foreigners residing
“in the midst of” Israelites involves, further, the apostles and elders making three
interconnected hermeneutical moves: (a) identifying the people covenanted with God in
Christ (i.e., the church) as the messianically renewed Israel, the eschatological people of
God; (b) interpreting prophecies concerning the eschatological people of God as implying
God’s intention to include Gentiles as Gentiles (i.e., without circumcision) among God’s
people; and (c) associating prophecies concerning Gentiles to be included “in the midst
of” God’s people, by way of inter-textual verbal correspondence, with the laws for aliens
residing “in the midst of” Israelites. 318

315
This point is evident in the “sin offering” (Lev. 4). That particular sacrificial ritual dealt with inadvertent
transgressions of prohibitive commands—“When anyone sins unintentionally in any of the LORD’s
commands about things not to be done, and does any one of them” (Lev. 4:2, emphasis added)—and was
designed for the purification of uncleanness from the sanctuary and expiation of guilt from the sinner
through the offering of blood. Because transgressing a prohibition generates impurity that impinges on the
sanctuary, any sin of commission, committed by anyone, affects the whole community in its relation to
God.
316
Milgrom, Leviticus, 186.
317
Milgrom, Leviticus, 186.
318
Regarding this last hermeneutical move, Bauckham, “James and the Jerusalem Church,” 461,
comments: “The use of [the Hebrew phrase “in the midst of”] as the principle of selection may seem to
modern minds an arbitrary method of determining which Mosaic laws apply to Gentile Christians, but to
1st-century Jewish hermeneutics it is not the least arbitrary: it is a precise and disciplined use of a well-
recognised exegetical method.”

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 To summarize Bauckham’s argument:319 The ethical application of holiness laws
to Gentile Christians by the Jerusalem Council was premised on seeing Gentile believers
belonging to God’s people as coming under holiness laws prescribed for aliens residing
“in the midst of” Israelites. This ethical adjudication turns on the hermeneutical
identification of Gentile Christians with those Gentiles whom the prophets had
envisioned God would bring, as Gentiles (i.e., without circumcision), “into the midst of”
a messianically renewed Israel. Therefore, the ethical application of holiness laws to
Gentile Christians, without requirement of circumcision, is warranted by a scriptural
interpretation that envisions the church as a messianically renewed Israel comprising both
Jews as Jews and Gentiles as Gentiles. In this way, the Torah remains valid for both
Jewish believers and Gentile believers, each observing those laws of the Torah
appropriate for each. The adherence of Gentile believers to the holiness laws appropriate
to Gentiles residing within Israel would guard the purity of the church as the
messianically-renewed Israel.
Miller, who critiques Bauckham’s “resident alien” interpretation and proposes an
alternative explanation, nonetheless agrees that the Jerusalem Council affirmed the
continuing authority of biblical law for all Christians:
In Acts, Jews are depicted as consistently Torah observant; Gentiles, by contrast, are directly
obligated to only four requirements of the law, as authorized by the apostolic decree. Yet although
Luke did not think that Gentile Christ-believers encountered the Torah in the context of God’s
covenant with Israel, he presumably took for granted that the law…remains authoritative and
relevant for Gentile Christ-believers when it is read as prophecy and applied by analogy. 320

Alternative source/rationale of the decree

Now, let’s consider, in my estimation, the most plausible alternative explanation
for the ethical requirements of the Apostolic Decree.321 Many commentators suggest that
the ethical requirements might have been an early version of Noahide Laws. These laws
were derived originally from the biblical origins account (Gen. 1–11) and were later
codified by rabbinic tradition. The underlying premise of Noahide Laws is that God’s
giving the Torah in covenant with Israel at Sinai did not repudiate the commands that

319
See Bauckham, “James and the Gentiles,” 177–79.
320
Miller, “Reading Law as Prophecy,” 91.
321
For an examination of several commonly proposed explanations, see Keener, Acts, 2260–69.

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God had given to Gentiles through covenant with Noah. The Talmud would eventually
enumerate seven laws for Noah’s descendents: Do not worship idols, blaspheme God’s
name, murder, steal, engage in sexual immorality (viz., incest, adultery, bestiality,
pederasty, or same-sex intercourse), or eat a limb torn from a live animal (i.e., meat with
blood); and establish law courts. A rabbinic rationale why these specific prohibitions
applied to Gentiles is that they forbid activities for which, were they to be done by an
Israelite, biblical law mandated the death penalty: if an Israelite would be put to death for
doing these things, then these are things that simply must not be done by anyone, Jew or
Gentile. The rabbis used these to define “righteous Gentiles” whom God would honor
with a place in the age to come.322
The earliest extant rabbinic codification of Noahide Laws dates from the 2nd C.
CE, although the tradition is possibly evident from the 2nd Century BCE (see Book of
Jubilees 7:20–33). Rabbinic law, however, deposited in writing already existing oral
tradition, which might extend back to the 1st Century CE; and there is textual evidence of
a developing tradition of Gentile laws in Jewish sources during this period. 323 It is thus
plausible that the Jerusalem Council could have drawn from an early tradition of Noahide
Laws.
Accordingly, one might see the Apostolic Decree as a response to the baptism of
Gentiles like Cornelius, whom Luke describes as “a devout man who feared God” and
who “gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God” (Acts 10:2).
Bockmuehl summarizes the argument for the Apostolic Decree having been derived from
Noahide Laws:
Peter’s opening argument at the Council is that people like the household of Cornelius have in fact
already been saved, as Gentiles…and there is therefore no need to make them converts. If it is the
case that in Christ these Gentiles have a portion in the world to come (to adapt Rabbi Joshua’s
language), i.e., that they are saved as Gentiles, then it suffices to apply to them the same ethical
principles that would in any case apply to righteous Gentiles living with the people of Israel, i.e.,
resident aliens.…in their original text form the principles themselves are strongly reminiscent of
the second-century lists of Noachide Commandments… 324

322
For an authoritative treatment of the Noahide Laws in rabbinic tradition, see Weiner, Divine Code.
323
See Keener, Acts, 2264–66.
324
Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches, 164–65 (original emphasis). Bockmuehl, 145–73,
develops the Jewish tradition of Noahide laws and elaborates its significance for Christian ethics in the
New Testament. See Keener, Acts, 2263–69 for general discussion of this explanation.

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Among the early converts to Christianity in Paul’s first missionary journey were believers
from two distinct groups: Gentiles who had become “devout converts to Judaism” by
receiving circumcision; and Gentiles called “God-fearers,” who were attracted to Jewish
monotheism and ethics and associated with the synagogue but had not become proselytes
by receiving circumcision (Acts 13:16, 43, 48; 14:1).325 The latter group, God-fearing
Gentiles, although not Jewish proselytes, would likely have been already familiar with
these laws from the synagogue and may have already observed them in practice.
Both explanations of the Apostolic mandates—Holiness Code and Noachide
Laws—allow us to make good sense of James’ comment to the Jerusalem Council: “For
in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has
been read aloud every sabbath in the synagogues” (Acts 15:21). The ethical mandates for
Gentile believers (Acts 15:20) are “not trouble” for “those Gentiles who are turning to
God” (Acts 15:19) because Gentiles have long known God’s law for Gentiles from
scripture reading and ethics teaching in the synagogues of Greek cities.326 Therefore, as
Keener aptly observes, we need not regard the Holiness Code and Noahide Laws as
competing alternatives but may see them as complementary sources from a common
tradition: “The options are not mutually exclusive but point to a central tradition about
expectations for Gentiles…”327

Conclusion
Luke’s account gives us these facts: (a) the Jerusalem Council met to discern the
question of the salvation of Gentiles and, therefore, the ethical entailments of Gentile
salvation; and (b) the Jerusalem Council discerned that, through the Holy Spirit, God was
bringing Gentile believers as Gentiles into God’s people in Christ. In accord with these
facts, a plausible explanation of the mandates for Gentile Christians in the Apostolic
Decree must appeal to laws within the Torah that God had provided for Gentiles. In my
judgment, the Holiness Code at Leviticus 17–18 is the most probable source, with the
ethical tradition of Noahide Laws derived from Genesis 1–11 an additional plausible

325
Concerning “God-fearing” or “pious” or “righteous” Gentiles among Hellenistic Jews, see Collins,
Between Athens and Jerusalem, 264–70.
326
Concerning Jewish ethics and synagogue teaching in Hellenistic Judaism, see Collins, Between Athens
and Jerusalem, 155–85, and Runesson, “Entering a Synagogue with Paul.”
327
Keener, Acts, 2268.

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source. These biblical sources belonged to a common tradition of Jewish teaching of
Gentile ethics, transmitted through the synagogues of Hellenistic Judaism.
The Jerusalem Council’s discernment, then, established the continuing validity
and appropriate applicability of Old Testament law for the church based on a scriptural
interpretation that locates Gentile believers within God’s people and promises. In effect,
the apostles and elders discerned that God’s grace, dispensed through the Torah, had
already made provision for these Gentile believers from among Noah’s descendants,
whom the prophets envisioned would be gathered into God’s people and who were now
being drawn to Jesus by the Holy Spirit: God had already given laws for observance by
Gentile Christians. Accordingly, Keener’s comment provides a good last word: “Whether
we think of laws concerning sojourners or of Noahide laws, the outcome is largely the
same: a pre-existing category allows the church to welcome Gentiles as Gentiles, hence
without requiring them to observe the full Torah.” 328

328
Keener, Acts, 2263.

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 Appendix I

Porneia in the New Testament

The Greek word porneia appears frequently, in various forms, throughout the New
Testament in reference to sexual conduct. Because the term porneia figures prominently
in both the Apostolic Decree of the Jerusalem Council and the ethical teaching of the
Apostle Paul, a closer examination of that term’s reference in the New Testament and
discussion of its relevance to the present question is warranted.
Beth Felker Jones offers a theological definition of porneia:
If sex is real, we need to call it what it is when sex strains against the very nature of reality—when
it denies who God is and tells lies about what it means to be human. The New Testament calls
such sex porneia…which is any kind of sex that violates God’s reality…Porneia is sex deformed
by sin.329
Luke Timothy Johnson upholds the New Testament prohibition of porneia as an enduring
standard of Christian conduct: “The church cannot say “yes” to what the New Testament
calls porneia (“sexual immorality”).”330 I concur with both Jones and Johnson: the church
cannot sanction the God-denying, sin-deformed sex that Scripture calls by porneia.
This prompts two questions: Which kinds of sex are God-denying and sin-
deformed and so deserve to be called by porneia? Which forms of sex does the New
Testament call by porneia? This appendix addresses only the second question. At stake in
this second question is whether the church could sanction same-sex union while
maintaining the New Testament prohibition of porneia as a standard of Christian
conduct. And that, in turn, depends on whether what the New Testament calls by porneia
includes all forms of same-sex intercourse.

329
Jones, Faithful, 43–50.
330
Johnson, “Homosexuality and the Church.”

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Porneia: A (very) brief historical sketch
The Greek word porneia referred originally to prostitution (pornos/pornē =
male/female prostitute): sex bought by the act, typically with a slave, without further
obligation. In Greco-Roman literature of Paul’s day, the term connoted treating a human
being as a traded good.331 To understand its meaning in the New Testament, we need to
look beyond Greco-Roman literature and consider its history of use in Hellenistic
Judaism. Within the latter tradition, the negative moral connotations of porneia were
transferred to other forms of illicit sex that came to be designated by the same term.
Classics scholar Kyle Harper has traced the varying reference and evolving
meaning of the term porneia within Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity. Several
quotations from Harper’s study chart the course of the term porneia:
In Hellenistic Judaism we witness a widening of the term’s meaning to indicate sexual
acts of male commission and to include virtually any form of prohibited sexual relationship.332
In the OT, [znh] [i.e., the Hebrew counterpart to the Greek porneia] remained limited to
these two basic meanings: female sexual dishonor and idolatry. But in Second Temple Judaism,
[znh] came to encompass any sexual act that transgressed the boundaries of licit sexual conduct.
This decisive expansion of meaning long precedes the elaboration of Christian sexual morality and
would profoundly influence it.333
By the first century C.E., [porneia] was the chief vice in a system of sexual morality
rooted in conjugal sexuality. [Porneia] was broad enough to cover sexual sins as diverse as incest
and exogamy. But for Hellenistic Jews, in a culture where sex with dishonored women, especially
prostitutes and slaves, was legal and expected, the term condensed the cultural differences
between the observers of the Torah and Gentile depravity. 334
The LXX does not call incest [porneia], but Paul uses the term [at 1 Cor 5:1] in its
expanded sense that arose in Hellenistic Judaism, to cover any sexual relationship in violation of
the law.335
In a number of early Christian texts, the rhetorical function of porneia is in the
foreground. Principally, these are texts that speak in an apologetic voice, and porneia is presented
as a signal difference between the norms of the morally upright Christian community and the
depraved culture of the nonbelievers. 336

331
See Ruden, Paul Among the People, 15–18.
332
Harper, “Porneia,” 365 (original emphasis).
333
Harper, “Porneia,” 370–71.
334
Harper, “Porneia,” 374–75.
335
Harper, “Porneia,” 377.
336
Harper, “Porneia,” 380.

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Beginning in the fourth century, with the legal toleration of and mass conversion to
Christianity, the meaning of porneia narrowed again such that it no longer signified a
fundamental difference in sexual practices between those inside and those outside the
church but rather referred to illicit sex prohibited to those inside the church. Harper
concludes:
Jewish and Christian [porneia] could evoke the whole array of extramarital sex acts of which
Greek and Roman culture approved. The word porneia…effectively and…dramatically condensed
the differences between pre-Christian and Christian sexuality… 337
During the first century, then, Jewish and Christian writers used the term porneia to
encompass every form of illicit sex in violation of marital union.
Consistent with the Hellenistic background sketched by Harper, we find that the
New Testament authors use porneia both with reference to specific forms of illicit sex—
adultery (Matt. 5:32; 19:9; John 8:41; Rev. 2:20–22), incest (1 Cor. 5:1–5), and
prostitution (1 Cor. 6:12–20)—and with reference to generic “fornication” or “sexual
immorality” (Matt. 15:19//Mark 7:21; 1 Cor. 7:2; 2 Cor. 12:21; Gal. 5:19; Eph. 5:3; Col.
3:5; 1 Thess. 4:3; Heb. 13:4; Rev. 9:21).338 While porneia could refer to same-sex
intercourse, which is one practice prohibited by Leviticus, whether a particular use of
porneia includes reference to same-sex intercourse cannot be inferred from the word
itself but must be determined by either context or background. Let’s consider two texts of
particular relevance to the present matter.

Porneia in Paul’s teaching

As Harper observes, “it is through the epistolary conversations between Paul and
his eclectic assemblies of messianic believers that we watch the early and decisive
development of the term.”339 So, first, we look at Paul’s teaching about sexual conduct at

337
Harper, “Porneia,” 383.
338
Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, tries to interpret porneia in the NT as metaphorical—“harlotry” in
the sense of “idolatry”—at nearly every opportunity. Granted that some uses of porneia in both OT and NT
do refer to idolatry (e.g., Ezek. 16; 23; Rev. 19:2), it stretches the evidence to claim that the metaphorical
meaning dominates NT use. Countryman’s interpretation of porneia, in particular, does not take into
account the historical background of New Testament usage in Hellenistic Jewish usage.
339
Harper, From Shame to Sin, 90–91.

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1 Corinthians 5–7, part of which we examined closely in Appendix F. Paul uses the term
porneia (in various forms) several times across these chapters. 340
In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul uses porneia to denote an illicit sexual relationship (a
man having sexual relations with his stepmother) that would fall under the heading of
incest, forbidden sexual relations within close degrees of kinship (vv. 1–5; cf. Lev. 18:8;
Deut. 27:20). He follows this with a warning to dissociate from “sexually immoral
persons (pornois)” within the church (vv. 9–10). In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul draws together
several terms referring to illicit sex in a vice list. Paul uses the generic term for those who
engage habitually in sexual immorality (pornoi), in close conjunction with specific terms
referring to those committing adultery (moichoi) and males practicing same-sex
intercourse (arsenokoitai) (v. 9; cf. LXX Lev. 18:22; 20:13). Further on, Paul follows a
specific warning against being sexually united to a prostitute (pornē) with a general
injunction to “flee sexual immorality (porneia),” contending that the one who engages
habitually in illicit sex (porneuōn) sins against his own body (vv. 16, 18).
In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul counsels those who are not able to exercise the self-
control necessary to keep celibate: they should commit to monogamous marriage and
practice sex within marriage as a guard against sin, “because of sexual immoralities
(porneias),” to which those lacking self-control might succumb (vv. 2–9 NET). Paul’s
disjunction between husband-wife conjugal fidelity and porneias (vv. 2–5) implies that
Paul uses porneias here to encompass all sex outside man-woman monogamy.341 Any of
the sexual activities of which Paul has warned already—namely, incest, prostitution,
adultery, and same-sex intercourse—are thus possible forms of porneia against which
conjugal fidelity might act as a guard. Further, Paul’s pair of phrases—“his own wife”
and “her own husband” (1 Cor. 7:2)—indicate that in his mind conjugal fidelity is
restricted to the one-and-one of man-and-woman. Paul’s injunction against porneia and
exhortation to conjugal fidelity, by implication, prohibit polygamy as porneia.
Paul’s use of porneia at 1 Corinthians 7 may be compared to that that found in
Hebrews: “Marriage must be honored among all and the marriage bed kept undefiled; for
God will judge sexually immoral people (pornous) and adulterers (moichous)” (Heb. 13:4

340
On Paul’s usage of porneia in 1 Corinthians, and its background in Jewish and Jewish-Christian sources,
see Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 97–99.
341
See Ruden, Paul among the People, 106–7; Westfall, Paul and Gender, 200–1.

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NET). This text poses a disjunction between the honor of marriage and holiness of
marital sex, on the one hand, and the judgment of the “sexually immoral” and
“adulterers,” on the other hand. This text implies two things: that porneia violates the
honor of marriage and holiness of marital sex; and that porneia and adultery,
conjunctively, encompass all sex outside marriage. Thus, where Hebrews uses porneia
and adultery together to denote the entire range of sexual relations outside conjugal
fidelity, Paul condenses all extra-marital sex into the single term, porneia.
Paul’s use of porneia may be compared also to the Didache, a first-century
manual for training Gentile believers in Christian discipleship. In elaborating the “way of
life,” the Didache lists three injunctions concerning sexual conduct: no adultery (ou
moicheuseis), no corruption of boys or pederasty (ou paidophthorēseis), no fornication or
promiscuity (ou porneuseis).342 Again, whereas the Didache uses adultery, pederasty, and
porneia together to denote the entire range of sexual relations prohibited to Christian
disciples, Paul condenses all illicit sex into the single term, porneia.
When reading Paul on porneia, we must remember that Roman society allowed
free men, married and unmarried, the use of slaves (male or female) and prostitutes (male
or female) and others (boys, mistresses, etc.) as outlets for sexual desires. The only sexual
liberties that Roman society denied to free men were incest (sex that violates
relationships within one’s family), adultery (sex that violates another free man’s rights
with his wife), and stuprum (sex that dishonored or shamed a free unmarried woman,
neither slave nor prostitute). Observing that Paul uses porneia in reference to, or in
discussion of, incest and adultery as well as prostitution and same-sex intercourse, it is
reasonable to infer that Paul intends porneia to encompass all forms of extra-marital sex,
whether sex prohibited (incest, adultery) or sex permitted (prostitution, same-sex
intercourse) to free males by Roman society. Paul’s injunction against porneia (1 Cor.
6:18) and exhortation to conjugal fidelity (1 Cor. 7:2) thus jointly demarcated the ethical
boundary of the Christian community from the sexual culture of Roman society by
drawing a line between marriage and porneia that cut across the sexual liberties of free
males in Roman society.

342
Didache 2.2, in Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 252–53. Likewise, Epistle of Barnabas 19.4.

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 Paul, then, uses porneia to name the entire range of sexual relations with any
person other than one’s own spouse, the same for husband as for wife. Sex is either
porneia or marriage: sex that is not restricted to husband-wife conjugality is porneia; sex
that is not porneia is restricted to husband-wife conjugality. This strongly suggests that
Paul considered man-woman monogamy to be the ethical norm for sexual conduct and
defined porneia as the negation or violation of marriage.343 In Paul’s usage, therefore,
porneia encompasses all sexual intercourse outside man-woman monogamy—and thus
includes all forms of same-sex intercourse.344

Porneia in the Apostolic Decree

We see the term porneia deployed with its broadest connotation in reference to
sexual immorality in the Apostolic Decree of the Jerusalem Council at Acts 15, which we
examined in Appendix H.345 Harper comments:
In the first decades of the Christian mission, no single form of sinful sexual behavior stuck to the
term with any greater force than others. In the texts that would become part of the Christian canon,
porneia still means, variously, incest, exogamy, even idolatry. Nowhere is this extreme breadth
and pliability of the word’s meaning clearer than in the Apostolic Decree, the code of conduct laid
down at the Council of Jerusalem to impose minimal standards of purity on gentile converts. The
inclusion of porneia on the short list—the very short list—of moral imperatives signals the
uncanny power of the term to condense a whole bundle of expectations about the use of the
body.346
In the Apostolic Decree, then, the injunction against porneia, while comprehensive, is
generic; it does not refer explicitly to specific forms of illicit sex. Harper thus claims that

343
See also Meeks, First Urban Christians, 100–1; Schmidt, Straight and Narrow? 52–53.
344
As we noted in Appendix B, Paul’s sweeping definition of porneia correlates with his revolutionary
rejection of the double standard in sexual ethics.
345
Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 71–72, argues that porneia in the Apostolic Decree is ambiguous
between its literal meaning in reference to sexual immorality and its metaphorical meaning in reference to
cultic infidelity. This ambiguity, he argues, is due to the different ordering and wording of the mandates
between James’ decision (Acts 15:20) and the council’s letter (Acts 15:29). Countryman thus concludes
that “we can be certain only that the council concerned itself with two matters: idolatry…and the eating of
blood.” Even granting Countryman’s case for ambiguity, because the literal and metaphorical meanings of
porneia are not mutually exclusive, one need not choose between them to interpret the text of the Apostolic
Decree. And given the context of the Jerusalem Council, both meanings of porneia could make sense.
Rather than unnecessarily pitting literal against metaphorical in a zero-sum semantic game, therefore,
insofar as one sees ambiguity here, one would do better to infer that both meanings of porneia are implied
in the Apostolic Decree.
346
Harper, From Shame to Sin, 90.

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we can infer nothing further from the reference to porneia in Acts 15 than a generic
prohibition of illicit sex:
In any case, the decree remains enigmatic, and we can say no more about [porneia] here than that
it probably recognizes the fundamentally different sexual culture of the Greeks and asks Gentile
converts to observe the stricter norms of Jewish sexuality.347
Despite Harper’s reticence here, I think it is possible to say more about the significance
of porneia in the Apostolic Decree by considering the biblical sources from which the
ethical mandates of the Apostolic Decree were probably derived, and by considering the
social and ecclesial contexts in which porneia was invoked at the Jerusalem Council.
In Appendix H, I considered two plausible sources from which the ethical
mandates of the Apostolic Decree may have been derived: the holiness laws for non-
Israelite residents in Leviticus 17–18, and the ethical tradition of Noahide Laws for
righteous Gentiles based in Genesis 1–11. Both of these plausible sources would
positively support an inference from an injunction against porneia to a prohibition of
same-sex intercourse. The strongest case is in favor of Leviticus 17–18 as the probable
source for the ethical mandates of the Apostolic Decree. If that is the case, then we can
infer that porneia in Acts 15 subsumes all forms of illicit sex prohibited in Leviticus 18
and enumerated in the table in Appendix H.348 As argued in Appendix G, the Levitical
prohibition includes all forms of male-male intercourse.
In reaching this conclusion I concur with Richard Bauckham and Richard Hays.
Bauckham writes:
“Sexual immorality” [porneias] refers to Lev. 18.26, where all the forms of sexual relations
specified in Lev. 18.6–23 (relations within the prohibited degrees, intercourse with a menstruating
woman, adultery, homosexual intercourse, bestiality) are prohibited to the “alien who sojourns in
your midst.” The general term [porneia] covers all of these.349
Likewise, Hays writes:
If, as seems likely, these stipulations are based on the purity regulations of Leviticus 17:1–18:30—
which apply not only to Israelites but also to “the aliens who reside among them” (Lev. 17:8–16,
18:26)—then the umbrella term porneia might well include all the sexual transgressions

347
Harper, “Porneia,” 376.
348
Similarly, Milavec, Didache, 170, argues concerning the prohibition of porneia in the Didache, a first-
century training for Gentile believers preparing for baptism: “It is quite probable that the Didache wished
to include all these prohibited unions [Lev 18:7–23] when it communicates to gentiles that the Lord
commands, “do not have illicit sex” (ou porneuseis) (Did. 2.2).”
349
Bauckham, “James and the Gentiles,” 173–74.

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 enumerated in Leviticus 18:6–30, including inter alia homosexual intercourse. This suggestion
about the Old Testament background for Acts 15:28–29 is probable but not certain.350
We can consider further the social and ecclesial contexts in which porneia was
invoked at the Jerusalem Council. Comprehensive opposition to the same-sex practices
existing within Greco-Roman society was a significant element of “the stricter norms of
Jewish sexuality” that fundamentally differentiated the common ethic of Hellenistic
Judaism from the “sexual culture of the Greeks” (as Harper puts it), as Collins and
Loader each observe. Concerning the common ethic of Hellenistic Judaism in general,
Collins writes:
…the Jewish documents [of the Hellenistic Diaspora]…reflect an emerging common ethic. The
characteristic feature of this ethic was that it emphasized those aspects of Jewish law which were
respected by enlightened Gentiles and fitted easily into the self-understanding of the Jewish
authors as enlightened Hellenes—chiefly, monotheism and the prohibition of idolatry, and various
sexual laws such as the prohibition of homosexuality. These matters had an important place in
Jewish tradition, but they could also be formulated in ways that were thoroughly Hellenistic.351
In all these points [viz., adultery, homosexuality, and abortion], the sexual morality
defended by the Jewish writers was indeed faithful to Jewish law, but it could also be expected to
find some sympathy among enlightened Gentiles and could be defended within the context of
Hellenistic debates.352
Concerning the Jewish sexual ethic in a Hellenistic cultural context, Loader writes:
Same-sex intercourse took on particular significance because of its prevalence, at least in the
Jewish mind, among other peoples of the period…Issues with same-sex intercourse feature
significantly, however, in writings composed where Hellenistic influence was strong…Here the
concern extends beyond pederasty to adult consensual same-sex relations.353
Whether the ethical mandates for Gentile Christians stated in the Apostolic
Decree were drawn from Leviticus or Genesis or both, particular features of the social
and ecclesial contexts of the Jerusalem Council support inferring a prohibition of same-
sex intercourse from the injunction against porneia. (a) Hellenistic Judaism used porneia
(i) to condense the fundamental difference in sexual cultures into a single word and (ii) to
reference all forms of illicit sex. (b) Early Christianity used porneia in continuity with
Hellenistic Judaism (i) to signify the fundamental difference between the Christian sexual

350
Hays, Moral Vision of the New Testament, 383.
351
Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem, 158.
352
Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem, 160.
353
Loader, Making Sense of Sex, 132.

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ethic and Greco-Roman culture and (ii) to reference all sex outside man-woman
monogamy. (c) The Jerusalem Council required Gentile converts to differentiate
themselves in sexual practice from Greco-Roman society. (d) Greco-Roman society
tolerated same-sex practices in various forms. And (e) Hellenistic Jewish and early
Christian writers universally condemned all forms of same-sex practices in Greco-Roman
society.
Moreover, when the social-ecclesial context is combined with the argument that
Leviticus 17–18 was the probable source of the ethical mandates for Gentile Christians
(including the injunction against porneia), this inference becomes all the more plausible
on the basis of an analogy between the two situations.
The holiness laws of Leviticus 17–18 functioned to differentiate people in the
land of Israel, both Israelite citizens and resident aliens (Lev. 17:8, 10, 12, 13, 15; 18:26),
from the surrounding nations: “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where
you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing
you. You shall not follow their statutes. My ordinances you shall observe and my statutes
you shall keep…I am the LORD your God” (Lev. 18:3–4). And the rationale for both
Israelite citizens and resident aliens was that, by observing these laws, they would abstain
from engaging in activities detestable to YHWH, activities that the nations who were in
the land before them had practiced, and thus would prevent the defilement of the people,
land, and temple (Lev. 18:24–30).
Likewise, the ethical mandates of the Apostolic Decree forbade certain practices,
especially idolatry and sexual immorality, which were perceived as common to Greco-
Roman society but are detestable to God and thus incompatible with God’s kingdom. By
requiring Gentile Christians, in addition to Jewish Christians, to abstain from those
detestable practices, the Apostolic Decree required Gentile Christians to differentiate
themselves from their surrounding society (as Leviticus had required of the aliens
residing within Israel). Concerning sexual immorality, the term porneia summed all the
detestable sexual practices of Greco-Roman society from which Hellenistic Jews and
early Christians sought to distance themselves as God’s people. And, of course, one such
detestable sexual practice, denounced by Jewish and Christian writers alike, was same-
sex intercourse (in various forms). Because the Apostolic Decree calls upon Gentile

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Christians to differentiate themselves as members of God’s people by abstaining from the
detestable practices of Greco-Roman society, including detestable sexual practices, it is
reasonable to infer that the injunction against porneia at Acts 15 implicitly includes
reference to same-sex intercourse.

Porneia and the present matter

While we cannot draw a conclusion with certainty, based on the evidence and
arguments presented here and the foregoing appendices, we can safely say the following:
Given the textual usage of porneia in the New Testament, the canonical background of
the Apostolic Decree, and the social and ecclesial contexts of the Jerusalem Council, it is
reasonable and probable to infer that the injunctions against porneia at 1 Corinthians 5–7
and Acts 15 implicitly include same-sex intercourse in any form under the heading of
illicit sex, from which Christians were required to abstain.
This conclusion carries implications for the church today concerning the question
of whether to sanction same-sex union. The New Testament draws a disjunction between
marriage and porneia and includes all forms of same-sex intercourse in porneia.
Sanctioning same-sex union, in effect, would move at least some forms of same-sex
intercourse from one side to the other side of the line between porneia and marriage.
Sanctioning same-sex union as marriage, therefore, would require narrowing the scope of
porneia such that at least some forms of same-sex intercourse are excluded from porneia,
in order that same-sex intercourse may be included within marriage. Sanctioning same-
sex union would thus entail at least revising, if not revoking, the New Testament
prohibition of porneia as a Christian standard of ethical conduct.
We can see the revision of the prohibition of porneia for the sake of sanctioning
same-sex union in the work of Luke Timothy Johnson. As we noted above, Johnson
argues that the church must maintain the New Testament prohibition of porneia as an
ethical standard of sexual conduct. Johnson acknowledges that the prohibition of porneia
in the Apostolic Decree encompasses sexual immorality “of any form” and that the New
Testament condemns “all forms of porneia.”354 Yet Johnson also advocates that the

354
Johnson, Acts of the Apostles, 266–67. Oddly, while Johnson connects the Apostolic Decree to the
Torah’s laws for non-Israelite residents, citing Leviticus 17, he does not connect the prohibition of porneia

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church today should decide to sanction same-sex union, by analogy with the Jerusalem
Council’s decision to baptize Gentile believers.
Given the Apostolic Decree’s mandate that Gentile believers abstain from
porneia, and given the New Testament condemnation of all forms of same-sex
intercourse known within Greco-Roman society, both of which Johnson acknowledges,
the coherence of his innovationist view requires revising the definition of porneia so as to
no longer prohibit at least some forms of same-sex intercourse. Johnson proposes such a
revision:
Another order of questions concerns the connection of homosexuality to porneia. The church, it is
clear, cannot accept porneia. But what is the essence of “sexual immorality”? Is the moral quality
of sexual behavior defined biologically in terms of the use of certain body parts, or is it defined in
terms of personal commitment and attitudes? Is not porneia essentially sexual activity that
ruptures covenant, just as castitas is sexual virtue within or outside marriage because it is
sexuality in service to covenant?
Johnson reconstructs the ethical standard of sexual conduct by drawing the disjunction
between porneia and chastity solely in terms of covenant: chastity preserves fidelity,
porneia violates fidelity. So revised, the prohibition of porneia would prohibit only sex
incompatible with the “personal commitment and attitudes” that are characteristic of
covenantal fidelity. With porneia so redefined, the church may consider fidelity in same-
sex union on par with fidelity in marriage: “If sexual virtue and vice are defined
covenantally rather than biologically, then it is possible to place homosexual and
heterosexual activity in the same context.” Now, Johnson’s redefinition of porneia does
not simply void the prohibition of porneia, which still forbids various violations,
including some forms of same-sex activity:
Certainly, the church must reject the porneia which glorifies sex for its own sake, indulges in
promiscuity, destroys the bonds of commitment, and seduces the innocent. Insofar as a “gay life
style” has these connotations, the church must emphatically and always say “no” to it. 355
Nonetheless, Johnson’s redefinition of porneia entails substantial revision of both the
ethics of sex and the theology of marriage.

in the Apostolic Decree to the prohibitions of illicit sex in Leviticus 18, which include same-sex
intercourse.
355
Johnson, “Disputed Questions,” 370–71, and Scripture and Discernment, 146.

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 Johnson distinguishes sexual virtue (chastity) from sexual vice (porneia) by a
covenantal criterion (fidelity)—and, at the same time, separates sexual virtue from a
creational criterion. What Johnson speaks of “biologically” as “body parts” is, biblically
speaking, the sexuate pattern of embodiment in which God created humankind: “male
and female [God] created them” (Gen. 1:27). In Johnson’s terms, sexual virtue is
covenant-preserving fidelity, whether that fidelity fits the creational pattern of “male and
female” or exhibits some other sexual pattern. Indeed, Johnson deletes how we dispose of
the sexuate body from the definition of sexual virtue: “the moral quality of sexual
behavior,” he says, does not have to do with “the use of certain body parts.” In Johnson’s
terms, sexual virtue has to do with only the personal qualities of sexual relationship
between sexual partners, not the physical disposal of sexuate bodies in sexual activity. In
effect, then, Johnson’s redefinition of porneia repudiates creation as a criterion of sexual
virtue and thereby deprives the sexuate pattern of human embodiment of moral meaning.
This separation of covenantal fidelity from creational pattern in the ethics of sex
also carries implications for the theology of marriage. Because the New Testament draws
a disjunction between marriage and porneia, and because Johnson agrees that the church
must maintain this disjunction, redefining one side of this disjunction (porneia) entails
redefining the other side of this disjunction (marriage). Johnson redefines porneia by
separating covenantal fidelity from creational pattern in sexual virtue. This logically
entails separating covenantal fidelity from creational pattern in marriage: the covenantal
fidelity of marriage need not be inscribed within the creational pattern of humankind.
Johnson’s redefinition of porneia, for the sake of sanctioning same-sex union, therefore,
alters marriage. Johnson’s proposal thus illustrates the implications of altering marriage
that we examined in Chapter 6: sanctioning same-sex union requires desexuating the
unity of marriage and thus disembodying the fidelity of marriage and the purpose of sex.
Johnson’s redefinition of porneia also cuts against the grain of Paul’s sense of the
moral significance of porneia. Paul explicitly connects sexual virtue and vice to the body
and the body’s use: to habitually engage in porneia is to sin against one’s own body;
fleeing porneia honors the body as God’s temple, the dwelling place of God’s Spirit,
which is to be used for God’s glory (1 Cor. 6:18–20). Paul premises the ethical injunction
against porneia on the theological imperative that we respect the body as sacred

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precincts: how we dispose the body in sex, and how we dispose the body in worship, are
intimately connected. What Paul joins—chastity and the body—Johnson separates.

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 Appendix J

Love in Truth and Action:

Counsel and Challenge to Congregations

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. (1 John 3:18)

Every preacher should be “heard” more by his deeds than by his words. Before they offer
any words of exhortation, they should proclaim by their actions everything that they wish
to say. —Gregory the Great356

Welcome one another: Counsel to congregations

Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoked upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and
you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt.
11:28–30)

Welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. (Rom.
15:7)

I offer here a brief proposal of pastoral counsel that aims to hold together the
biblical call to holiness and the biblical emphasis on hospitality: hospitable holiness, holy
hospitality (see Chap. 8). The several points in this counsel complement and supplement
what I have stated in the practical lessons throughout the book. My intent is that this
356
Gregory the Great, Book of Pastoral Rule 3.40.

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counsel would also complement Tim Otto’s suggested practices for “compassionate
traditionalism”357 and Wesley Hill’s list of ten “ministries that help.” 358
The common premise of this pastoral counsel is committed adherence to the
consistent witness of Scripture that is maintained in the catholic doctrine of the church:
according to God’s intention from the beginning of creation, confirmed by Jesus Christ,
sex belongs properly within marriage and marriage is monogamous man-woman union.
This counsel insists, accordingly, that congregations teach and practice this single
standard of sexual chastity for all believers. This counsel thus coheres with the core
convictions of “mere sexuality,” as articulated by Todd Wilson. 359

Invite all to Jesus

Invite to Jesus all persons on equal terms by the same decision reached by the
apostles and elders at the Jerusalem Council in agreement with the Holy Spirit: belonging
is extended to all through believing and baptism in the name of Jesus; behaving is
restricted for all by biblical norms of holiness and righteousness. Congregations should
thus adopt a welcoming posture toward all persons, prepared to receive in love all those
who seek God by faith in Christ as full members of the same body, including sexual
minorities. The gospel invitation to follow Jesus within the fellowship of the church calls
us to repentance from sin and confession of faith and offers us regeneration of life and
purification of desire through the Holy Spirit—the same for all believers who belong by
baptism in Christ, whether straight or gay.360
Adopting a welcoming posture will prompt congregations to recognize that sexual
minorities not only are found among “them” outside the church but also belong to “us”
inside the church. In fact, more than eighty percent of sexual minorities in the United
States are reared in Christian faith communities.361 Recognizing that gay believers are
already in the church, we should consider whether the ethos of our fellowship is
conducive toward gay believers remaining in the church. A welcoming posture will need

357
See Otto, Oriented to Faith, 85–97.
358
See Hill’s two-part blog post at https://spiritualfriendship.org/2016/07/11/ministry-that-helps-part-
1/#more-6859 and https://spiritualfriendship.org/2016/07/12/ministry-that-helps-part-2/#more-6867.
359
Wilson, Mere Sexuality, 139–42.
360
See Holmes, “Response to William Loader,” 63, and O’Donovan, Church in Crisis, 116–17.
361
See Marin, Us Versus Us, 1–29, 176–77.

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to make space in congregational life for anyone to share openly of his or her journey,
both joys and struggles, with faith and sexuality. Congregations would do well to begin
by listening to the personal stories of sexual minorities among our own members.

Call all to chastity

We should affirm that our sexuate bodies, created male and female in God’s
image, are good gifts from a loving God. Called to be faithful stewards of God’s gift, we
are responsible to rightly order our sexual desires and sexual conduct according to God’s
design. At the same time, congregations should confess that each one’s sexual desire is
susceptible to sin-distortion and thus every one’s perception and judgment is liable to
moral disorientation. Both affirmation of sex and confession of sin are appropriate to all
Christians, whether straight or gay. 362
Accordingly, pastors and teachers should present a comprehensive and
compelling Christian vision of holiness and righteousness for intimacy, sex, celibacy, and
marriage.363 Pastors and elders should actively encourage and patiently support
repentance from sexual sin and practice of consistent chastity, for every member—
whether male or female, married or single, straight or gay. Above all, the authentic
teaching of the church—whether on sex and marriage or anything else—can never be
separated from proclamation of the gospel: the indispensible prologue to the church’s
doctrine is the message that God loves all God’s creatures, wills that all come to know
God in truth, and seeks to save all in Christ. Every presentation of ethical teaching should
thus be aimed at and conducive to forming disciples of Jesus who love God with their
whole lives and love all their neighbors as themselves—and who love themselves as God
loves them. Teaching chastity with charity will require critiquing distortions of doctrine
and correcting abuses in practice by which the church has warped and wounded some

362
See Holmes, “Listening to the Past and Reflecting on the Present,” 170–71.
363
See Dawn, Sexual Character; Grant, Divine Sex; Hershberger, Sexuality; Hirsch, Redeeming Sex;
Hollinger, Meaning of Sex; Jones, Faithful; Pearcey, Love Thy Body; Tennent, For the Body; Wheeler,
“Creation, Community, Discipleship;” Wilson, Mere Sexuality; Winner, Real Sex; Woodhead, “Sex in a
Wider Context;” and Yuan, Holy Sexuality. See also the several essays in the Chastity issue (2016) of
Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics, published by the Institute for Faith and Learning at
Baylor University and available online at
http://www.baylor.edu/ifl/christianreflection/index.php?id=937372.

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believers with messages that have instilled attitudes of self-hatred and even induced acts
of self-harm.
The Christian teaching of chastity maintains that sex belongs properly within
marriage, and that marriage is man-woman monogamous union. Yet these norms state
only what is minimally necessary for chastity; one could stay within these lines and still
violate chastity, as Jesus observed (Matt. 5:27–28). Chastity, as a standard of Christian
life, can neither be summed in following rules (no promiscuity, no adultery, etc.) nor be
separated from cultivating virtues (obedience, patience, charity, fidelity, etc.). Chastity
concerns the proper disposition of all desiring, not only sexual desiring, in relation to God
and neighbor; chastity involves disciplining our desires in accord with God’s design and
taking delight in observing God’s commandments (cf. Ps. 119). As wisdom begins in
reverencing God, so chastity begins in recognizing that all our desiring comes from God
and thus that rightly ordered desiring points back to, and is fulfilled in, God.364

Be patient in hope
A few believers have testified to dramatic changes in sexuality through
conversion to Christ. Some believers who are same-sex attracted may experience modest
change in degree or direction of sexual attraction through prayer or counseling. 365 The
church, however, should not select the experiences of some to set the expectation for all.
Making orientation change the favored course for believers who are same-sex
attracted would misplace Christian hope in the promises of therapy rather than the
promises of God. Nate Collins, an Evangelical theologian with a same-sex orientation,
notes that “Christians have no scriptural warrant to regard orientation change as an object
of hope,” as something that God promises to gay people. 366 The expectation of
orientation change through therapy, he writes, “fuels the unwarranted belief that the
Christian process of sanctification routinely results in gay people’s becoming straight.” 367
Misplaced hope has human consequences. Most gay believers have prayed earnestly,

364
Augustine, Confessions 1.1: “You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us
for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
365
See Yarhouse, Homosexuality and the Christian, 81–95.
366
Collins, All but Invisible, 279.
367
Collins, All but Invisible, 280.

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sometimes for years, for change in sexual attraction.368 Some gay believers have sought
change, even repeatedly, through “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy.” And
many of these have experienced only frustration and disappointment, or suffered
enduring trauma, leading some to doubt God, deceive others, or even, in desperation,
harm themselves.
The church’s welcome to sexual minorities, therefore, should not be contingent on
actual or expected change in the believer’s experience of sexual attraction. We should
never deny or downplay the power of the Holy Spirit to work regeneration in any part of
anyone’s life. At the same, we cannot presume upon the Holy Spirit to act according to
our expectations. Testimonies to dramatic change indicate what is possible in us, but not
what has been guaranteed to us, by the Holy Spirit. For most Christians, myself included,
sanctification is not a linear process of constant progress toward perfection but more of a
stochastic process—striving for righteousness, missing the mark, lapsing into sin,
repenting of sin, and striving again with the Spirit’s help. While the church should exhort
all believers to strive for the kingdom, aware of the stubbornness of sin in each of us, we
should be patient while we wait in hope for the redemption of our bodies and the
perfection of our souls (Rom. 8:18–25).369
This point concerns all believers. There are many followers of Jesus, including
me, who have suffered sexual wounds or struggle with sexual afflictions—such as
wounds received by abuse or afflictions expressed in addiction—but have not (yet)
received full healing or experienced miraculous transformation, even despite prayer and
counseling. Although outwardly “straight,” we strive to live chastely with a sexuality that
is inwardly “bent.”370 Many Christians, like Paul, live with a “thorn in the flesh” that,
despite persistent prayer, God has not (yet) removed. What is essential, and enough, for
all Christians to acknowledge is that God’s grace is sufficient for our redemption and
God’s power is perfected in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:7–10), that Jesus sympathizes with
us in our weakness and offers mercy to us in our need (Heb. 4:14–16), and that the Holy
368
Marin, Us Versus Us, 113: “At least once in their life, 96 percent of our study’s participants prayed that
God would make them straight.”
369
Likewise, it would be inappropriate to take Paul’s dramatic conversion on the Damascus road (Acts 9) to
set the expectation for all believers, as if anyone who has not had such a “conversion experience” is not a
true Christian.
370
See Joel Willitts’ personal testimony in Wilson, Mere Sexuality, 143–63, and his counsel to pastors in
“Bent Sexuality and the Pastor.”

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Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us according to God’s will (Rom. 8:26–
27).
Making welcome for sexual minorities contingent on actual change or expected
change in sexual attraction, moreover, would misdirect the focus of Christian life from
voluntary choices of action to involuntary causes of attraction and mistake becoming
heterosexual for becoming holy.371 Rachel Gilson, who remains same-sex attracted many
years after her conversion to Christ, testifies: “Slowly, I came to understand that “making
me straight” wasn’t the answer. There is no biblical command to be heterosexual.” 372
Christopher Yuan, who continues to experience same-sex attraction years after his
redemption by Christ, testifies: “God never said, “Be heterosexual, for I am
heterosexual.” He said, “Be holy, for I am holy.”…Holy sexuality is not focused on
orientation change—becoming straight—but on obedience.”373 Greg Johnson, a
Presbyterian pastor who still wages “a constant battle for sexual holiness” many years
after coming to faith, testifies: “While sexuality has a degree of fluidity in some people,
the real change for me has not been in my sexual orientation but in my life orientation.
Jesus has rescued me. That’s everything.” 374 What matters, whether one experiences
opposite-sex or same-sex attraction or bi-sex attraction, is for each one to recognize that
all one’s desiring, sexual and otherwise, has become disoriented by sin—and that
sanctification involves all one’s desiring becoming reoriented toward desiring union with
God, which (as Augustine observed) is the end for which God has made us.
Finally, making welcome contingent on orientation change would create an
unnecessary stumbling block for many sexual minorities. Surprisingly, some three-
fourths of sexual minorities are open to returning to the faith communities from which
they have left, including those reared in theologically conservative traditions.375 To
traditionalists wary of welcoming believers who identify as gay, or skeptical that many
gay believers do not experience any change in sexual attraction, I commend reading the

371
See Yarhouse, Homosexuality and the Christian, 163–76.
372
Gilson, “I Never Became Straight,” 53.
373
Yuan, Out of a Far Country, 187.
374
Johnson, “I Used to Hide My Shame.”
375
See Marin, Us Versus Us, 65–90.

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writings of gay believers who are convinced by traditional doctrine and are striving to
live chastely with an unchanged same-sex orientation.376

Be gentle in discipline
Inviting all to become disciples of Jesus in the way of righteousness and holiness
and calling all disciples to steward sexuality according to a consistent standard of
chastity, if these are to be more than mere well-meant words, will mean exercising moral
discipline in serious cases of sexual sin. It is the responsibility of the Christian
community to hold its own members accountable to the standards of conduct to which we
have corporately committed ourselves as disciples of Christ. Although there is no one
rule to cover all cases, Scripture does give general counsel concerning the spirit in which
the church should exercise discipline.
Believers should exercise discipline of fellow believers in accord with the Jesus of
whom we are disciples. Jesus’ own way of welcome shows us the way. Jesus issues a
three-fold invitation. First, he calls us, weary and burdened, to come to him to receive our
rest in him. Second, he exhorts us, “take my yoke upon you”—that is, yield to his
teaching of God’s kingdom as the authoritative rule for our lives. Third, he instructs us,
“learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart”—that is, conform the attitudes and
thoughts of our hearts and minds to his pattern of gentleness and humility. In this way—
coming to Jesus, obeying his teaching, and imitating his heart—we will find rest for our
souls (Matt. 11:28–30). As fellow disciples, we are responsible to hold each other
accountable to the teaching of Jesus as our rule of life. Yet we should exercise discipline
in accord with Jesus’ own heart, with gentleness and humility, so that we show forth
Jesus’ way by both obedience and correction of disobedience. Even when a believer
refuses to turn away from sin despite being confronted by fellow believers, warranting
turning that believer away from fellowship, our discipline should be exercised with the
patient mercy by which God has forgiven us and should seek the wayward believer’s
return to fellowship (Matt. 18:15–35).

376
See especially Hallett, Still Learning to Love; Hill, Washed and Waiting; Coles, Single, Gay, Christian;
and Bennett, War of Loves.

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 Paul emphasized that, even as we are to be patient in hope, we should be gentle in
discipline. Those who belong to Jesus Christ should act according to the Holy Spirit in all
things. Paul counseled the church to discipline fellow believers yet cautioned us to avoid
becoming conceited in exercising discipline. The purpose of discipline is not securing
bragging rights for the righteous but bringing about restoration of the sinner. So, Paul
says: “if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should
restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.” To wit: if a believer obeys the desires of the
flesh and does the works of the flesh, then communal discipline of that believer by those
who live by the Spirit should be guided by the Spirt and thereby manifest the fruit of the
Spirit (Gal. 5:16–6:1). Likewise, Paul counsels, regarding believers who profess false
doctrines: the servants of Christ should correct them with patience and gentleness. Such
correction of fellow believers is exercised in the hope that God will bring them to
repentance from error and knowledge of the truth, that they may be released from the
snare by which Satan holds them captive to his will (2 Tim. 2:24–26). Even in the
extreme case when a believer persists unrepentantly in immorality despite admonition by
the church, warranting the last-resort measure of excommunication, our discipline should
seek the believer’s repentance from sin and restoration to communion (cf. 1 Cor. 5:1–13;
2 Cor. 2:5–11).

Honor celibacy and marriage

Remembering Jesus’ own celibacy and commendation of celibacy to his disciples
(Matt. 19:10–12; Luke 20:34–35), the church today, in denominations where it has been
lost, should reclaim and honor a vow of celibacy-for-life, alongside the vow of marriage-
for-life, as a chaste path of Christian discipleship. Reclaiming and honoring the path of
celibacy will require recognizing that celibate Christians, as much as married Christians,
need charitable, faithful companionship, mutual relationships in which love may be given
and received. Recognizing the emotional, physical, and spiritual needs of celibate
Christians, and remembering that Jesus chose to share life with a company of “friends”
(John 15:15–16), the church should revitalize the practice of spiritual friendship among
believers. In addition, to provide avenues of affection and opportunities of service
between celibate and married, the church should cultivate non-marital forms of

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relationship within the church (e.g., godparenting, faith-and-life sharing groups, and
intentional community) that can join celibate and married in mutual bonds of Christian
love.377
Maintaining a traditional view of marriage pertains also to preparation for
marrying and celebration of marriage in the congregation. Pastors should intentionally
instruct couples preparing to marry in the Christian vision of marriage, candidly stating
the church’s expectation that couples enter marriage wholly committed to mutual
partnership of husband and wife in an exclusive and enduring covenant, genuinely
desirous of all the goods of marriage (including children), and properly reverent toward
marriage as a symbol of salvation. Instruction in the Christian doctrine of sex and
marriage is not enough, however. Rituals of worship, whether sacred or secular, orient
our desires and form our habits even before we receive instruction in doctrine. We need
to be attentive to how wedding services and celebrations are formative events that
inscribe habits into our hearts, for better or for worse. Weddings project an image of what
marriage should be and thus have the potential to distort our vision of marriage into
something more pagan than Christian.378 Mindful of this fact, congregations should adopt
marriage rituals that direct couple and congregation—in body and spirit, by word and
symbol—to perceive and receive marriage as proceeding from God’s design and pointing
to God-self as the end-goal of all our desiring as God’s creatures. Accordingly, I would
commend congregations not already using an officially prescribed marriage liturgy to
retrieve traditional rites of solemnizing marriage, such as that preserved in the older
editions of The Book of Common Prayer, for the sake of retraining our hearts to desire the
heavenly kingdom, to which marriage points as a sign and of which marriage offers a
foretaste.

Incorporate all in one family

Every congregation should cultivate a common life that incorporates, encourages,
and nurtures all members, whether married or single. While honoring both celibacy and

377
See Conrad, “Gift and Celibacy;” Hill, Spiritual Friendship; Tushnet, Gay and Catholic, and “Vows of
Friendship;” Collins, All but Invisible, 86–92, 98–103; and Milliner, “One Soul in Two Bodies.” For the
classic discussion, see Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship.
378
See Smith, You Are What You Love, 118–26.

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marriage as valid paths of fidelity to Christ, we should equally acknowledge that every
Christian, whether single or married, is called by God into community. None of us joins
the church through the blood and water of birth or the vow of marriage; we all belong to
the family of God through the vow and water of new birth in baptism and the blood and
water of Christ’s death in communion. None of us receives the blessings of covenant by
inheritance from buried ancestors; we all inherit the promises of God through adoption in
the risen Christ. God’s action of adoption in Christ, sealed through the Spirit and
symbolized in baptism, joins each of us to a people that exists, not by nature, but by
grace, and that subsists, not of flesh, but of faith: the “household of God,” the “body of
Christ,” the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” the “family of believers,” the “communion of
saints.” Baptism and communion are the main markers of Christian belonging; in the
Christian family, accordingly, celebrations of baptism and communion should at least as
important as celebrations of marriage.
Marriage should not occupy a privileged place in congregational life in the church
today, any more than celibacy should have occupied a privileged place in pastoral
ministry in the medieval church. Every believer, whether married or celibate, belongs to
the one body by one baptism (1 Cor. 12:12–13; Gal. 3:26–29; Eph. 4:4–6). The family of
believers comprises, not couples and singles, but brothers and sisters in Christ, beloveds
and friends of God. No Christian, then, even a believer vowed to celibacy, is mandated to
live in sheer “singleness”—a solitary, lonely life deprived of intimacy with other
believers. As God said in the beginning, so it is now: “it is not good that [the human
being] should be alone” (Gen. 2:18). The primary way that Christians are “not alone” is
our mutual belonging to one another as fellow members of Christ’s body, which Paul
termed koinōnia. This mutual belonging in Christ is initiated by baptism, celebrated by
communion, and enacted by spiritual care, common meals, mutual aid, and many other
practices. In our congregations, if the only way a believer can be “not alone” is to be
married, then our congregations fall short of who we are called to be as Christ’s body.
Here we should be especially mindful of those who are single by circumstance not
choice, as well as those who have been bereaved of partners by death or divorce. A
congregation should comprise—through families and friendships, small groups and home

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fellowships—a spiritual household in which each member has his or her “place at the
welcome table.”
This proposal of pastoral counsel entails the responsibility of the church—in each
congregation, with every member—to make plausible, by not only what we teach and
preach but also how we give ourselves to God and to one another in worship and service,
a distinctively Christian vision for chastity in celibacy and marriage. This requires,
practically, that congregations make visible the kind of community in which celibacy and
marriage make sense on distinctively Christian terms—and make livable the costly
discipleship that following Christ demands of all believers in every aspect of life, and
especially of those who forego sexual relationship for the sake of obedience to Christ’s
command and service to God’s kingdom.379

I urge you in the Lord: Challenges to congregations

Bear one another’s burdens
Bear one another’s burdens, and…fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal. 6:2)
Congregations committed to maintaining the biblical norm and traditional
doctrine of marriage have the burden of working out in practical ways how the church
might do so while embracing the precedent set by the church’s welcome of Gentile
believers. This, as I see it, is a pressing challenge for marriage traditionalists: Acutely
aware of painful experiences of exclusion and rejection that sexual minorities have
suffered, from both society and the church, how can the church follow traditional
teaching on sex and marriage without either narrowing the invitation by which the church
welcomed Gentiles, or diminishing the compassion with which Christ welcomed the
weary and burdened? Traditionalist congregations, then, face urgent questions.
Regarding welcome: Is your congregation ready to recognize the sexual minority
believers who already belong to your fellowship? Is your congregation willing to receive
sexual minorities as equal members of Christ’s body? How will your congregation ensure
that the spiritual gifts and ministerial callings of diverse members are acknowledged,
blessed, and utilized?

379
See Eileen, 8 Essential Thoughts; Hill, Washed and Waiting, 51–79; Shaw, Same-Sex Attraction and the
Church, 135–51; Callaway, Breaking the Marriage Idol, 213–41; and Hitchcock, Significance of
Singleness, 132–40.

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 Regarding compassion: Remembering Jesus’ saying that “my yoke is easy” and
“my burden is light” and heeding Jesus’ warning against “experts in the law” who “tie up
heavy burdens” for others to bear (Matt. 11:28–30; 23:2–4), how will your congregation
make known the gentle and humble heart of Jesus and make “light” the “burden” of
following Jesus as you walk together the holy road of obedience to Jesus? Recalling
Paul’s exhortation to restore gently those who transgress and warning to avoid being
tempted in correcting others, how will your congregation engage courageously and
encouragingly with the questions and struggles of believers burdened with “bent
sexuality” in one way or another, so that we might “bear one another’s burdens” and
“fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:1–2)? As Nate Collins observes, “One uncomfortable
implication of this verse is that straight people who resist carrying the unique burden of
their gay brothers and sisters are disobeying the law of Christ.”380 Mindful of Paul’s
exhortation to “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and
patience,” how will your congregation put these virtues on yourselves and into practice so
as to promote a community of Christ-like character that includes all “God’s chosen
ones”—whether male or female, married or single, straight or gay—among those whom
God calls “holy and beloved” (Col. 3:12)?
Marriage traditionalists have the responsibility to offer positive responses to
concrete challenges affecting real persons in our congregations. It might be easy for a
denomination or a congregation to state a formal position on this matter. It is much more
difficult for a congregation to extend itself toward sexual minorities in a welcoming and
compassionate disposition. It is not enough to simply maintain a traditional doctrine of
sex and marriage, for correct doctrine is not enough of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus
teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves and, moreover, to love one another as Jesus
loved us by giving himself for us. Jesus’ gospel summons us to active initiative toward
persons who have been left wounded and bypassed at the roadside—to embrace, bind up,
and restore with mercy (Luke 10:25–37). The teaching of the apostles likewise calls the
church both to “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15) and to “love in truth and action” (1
John 3:18). Believing and speaking the truth without acting in truth and love is thus no
good, as Augustine noted: “the man who has not love believes in vain, even though his

380
Collins, All but Invisible, 37.

183
beliefs are true.” Indeed, as Augustine emphasized, all of God’s teaching aims at “love
that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5).381

Welcome as witness
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. (Matt. 18:5)
The challenge for traditionalists, furthermore, concerns the church’s witness
before a watching world. The Christian teaching of chastity will not prove credible within
a secularized, sexualized culture apart from the church’s corporate witness to its own
teaching as a lived reality. The first, and best, apologetic for Christian doctrine in a
skeptical society are the corporate practices of the Christian community, which render
what the church teaches visible to the eyes and thus, potentially, sensible to the mind and
desirable to the heart.382 And the first, and worst, discredit to Christian doctrine is the
failure to demonstrate the love of Christ through the life of the church.
Congregations that are not intentionally welcoming toward sexual minorities may
unintentionally project a message of unwelcome. That unintended message can foster
negative perceptions of Christians among those outside the church—that we are at best
hypocritical, failing to practice the gospel that we preach, or at worst disdainful,
regarding sexual minorities with contempt rather than compassion. It can also cause
negative perceptions within the church. The children in our congregations will learn—
from what we say and don’t say, from what we do and don’t do—what we truly believe.
If what they observe does not reflect the gospel, they may reach the same conclusions as
the church’s worst critics in secular society. Our gay children might conclude that they
are not welcome in our congregations and, despite their faith in God and love for Jesus,
leave the church as a young adult—as do roughly half of sexual minorities who grow up
in the church.383 Our straight children might conclude that their gay friends in church or
at school are not welcome in our congregations and, out of loyalty to their friends, join
their gay counterparts in an exodus from the church.384 Then it will not matter whether
our stated position respects biblical teaching and preserves doctrinal tradition, for we will

381
Augustine, Enchiridion CXVII and CXXI.
382
See Hollinger, “Church as Apologetic.”
383
See Marin, Us Versus Us, 31–63. This is double the rate of young adults generally. Research conducted
by the Marin Foundation.
384
See Kinnaman and Lyons, unChristian, 91–119. Research conducted by The Barna Group.

184
have ruined our public witness and squandered our spiritual heritage. Jesus, we do well to
remember, warned of severe judgment for those who put stumbling blocks before the
“little ones” who believe in him and whom he welcomes (Matt. 18:1–7).
Congregations that are not intentionally accepting of sexual minorities may also
unintentionally condone rejection of gay children by families within our congregations.
In the United States, some forty percent of homeless youths are sexual minorities; and
nearly seventy percent of those have experienced family rejection because of sexual
identity.385 Indeed, family religiosity is inversely correlated with family acceptance:
sexual minority youths from highly religious families report lower family acceptance
than those from less religious families.386 Young adults rejected by their families because
of sexual identity face high risks of mental disorder, drug use, sexual exploitation, and
suicide.387 There is little difference, as I see it, between Christian parents casting a gay
teen out of the home defenseless into the streets and a Roman father ordering an
unwanted infant to be taken out and exposed on the trash heap. Christians should shudder
at the very thought of replicating the sins of the Romans by treating our children like
refuse. Early Christians repudiated the practice of rejecting children, whether by abortion
or exposure, and even rescued rejected children, adopting them as their own, thus saving
them from fates of death or sexual slavery. The church today would do well to follow the
example of the early church: our congregations should resolve never to reject our own
children and even prepare to embrace with compassion children rejected by others.388

Remove the log

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye… (Matt. 7:5)
The challenge for traditionalist believers and congregations, finally, concerns the
spiritual necessity to undertake serious self-scrutiny regarding all aspects of sex and
marriage. To maintain the credibility of Christian doctrine, the question of same-sex
union cannot be separated from other questions of sex and marriage. Same-sex union is
385
Durso and Gates, Serving Our Youth. Study conducted by The Williams Institute.
386
Ryan et al., “Family Acceptance in Adolescence and the Health of LGBT Young Adults.” Study
conducted by Family Acceptance Project.
387
Ryan et al., “Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes. Study conducted by Family
Acceptance Project.
388
Concerning how Christian families might respond in healthy, helpful ways to members who announce a
gay identity, see Yarhouse, Homosexuality and the Christian, 99–153.

185
not a “special issue”—it should be considered as part of the church’s whole teaching on
chastity. Maintaining a traditional view thus requires a congregation to consider how it
addresses the theology of marriage and ethics of sex in general.
Insofar as traditionalists have already made their peace in practice with various
deviations from God’s design for marriage or have failed to consistently teach chaste
sexuality for both single and married Christians, they are not disposed properly to discern
well concerning same-sex union. Insofar as traditionalists have already gone along with
the sexual revolution within Western society in other ways, they are poorly positioned to
witness credibly, even within the church, concerning same-sex union. To wit: to the
extent that traditionalists have already accepted, even tacitly, pornography, premarital
sex, cohabitation,389 habitual contraception, chosen childlessness, casual divorce, and
adulterous remarriage, they are unlikely to be able to persuade other Christians, including
their own children, why the church should refrain from sanctioning same-sex union in the
name of a biblical-traditional doctrine of sex and marriage.390 To quote a friend who was
quoting his teenage daughter who was pondering our denomination’s confession of faith
amidst ongoing debate over same-sex union: “It says that marriage is one man and one
woman for life. But we already don’t believe that—we accept divorce.”
The early church distinguished itself from the sexual culture of Roman society by
its sexual ethic, which repudiated the double standard that expected sexual chastity of
women and wives but granted sexual liberty to men and husbands. The church today
cannot distinguish itself from the sexual revolution of Western society by reasserting its
marriage doctrine while reinventing the double standard: vocally condemning the sexual
sins of gay folks while quietly accommodating the sexual sins of straight and married
folks. Heeding Jesus’ warning, the church should judge the sins of straight and married
folks by the same standard as that by which the church would judge the sins of gay
folks—and should address the more obvious and prevalent sins of straight and married
folks before addressing the sins of gay folks (Matt. 7:1–5). The church today would do
well to follow the example of the early church: each congregation should explicitly

389
Why not accept cohabitation, even if a couple plans to marry? By accepting cohabitation, the church
implicitly approves separating sexual intimacy from marital promises, which either permits marital
infidelity (Christians may have sex with non-spouses) or implies inconsistent chastity (non-married persons
may have sex with non-spouses, but married persons may not).
390
See Douthat, Bad Religion, 288–91.

186
expect all its members—men and women, married and single, straight and gay—to live
by a consistent standard of chastity. Doing so with clarity and compassion will mean
acknowledging that consistent chastity, while binding all to the same standard, will mean
different burdens for women than men, for single than married, for gay than straight, and
so will call for pastoral approaches that are responsive to those circumstantial differences
and congregational practices that are supportive of brothers and sisters in bearing their
burdens.

187
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