Why We Hate Paul: Homophobia (Romans 13:7-10)

1. The Apostle Paul

Last week, I began a sermon series focusing on all the writings of Paul the apostle that many Christians - and especially many progressive Christians - have problems with. 

For this sermon series, I was inspired by a book I recently read titled, Paul the Progressive?: The Compassionate Christian’s Guide to Reclaiming the Apostle as an Ally. The book is by Eric C. Smith, an ordained Disciples of Christ minister who teaches at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and who gave a wonderful presentation at this summer’s Disciples Virtual Gathering.

The structure of this sermon series comes from his book. However, the ideas I’m talking about are ideas that I’ve been familiar with for some time. I’ve encountered them in articles and commentaries, and in a book called The First Paul by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, which I serendipitously found while browsing the collection at the Signal Hill Public Library not long after I moved here thirteen years ago. 

It was in reading The First Paul that I realized how important it is to understand that not everything in scripture attributed to Paul was actually written by Paul.

This is important information to know when trying to figure out what Paul the apostle actually thought concerning women in church leadership. Last week, during the sermon time, we learned that scriptures which say that women are to be silent in church weren’t actually written by Paul. None of them! 

The actual Paul was very supportive and affirming of women in the church, teaching and exercising authority. It was later writers writing in Paul’s name who decided that women should be silent, and that Paul’s ideas about women in leadership were just too radical.

2. “Homosexuality” in Paul’s writings

Today’s sermon is about Paul’s views on homosexuality. And on this topic, things are a little bit more complicated. 

There are three main passages attributed to Paul that appear to condemn homosexuality: 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Romans 1:26-27; and 1 Timothy 1:10. 

Using the tools we talked about last week, scholars have determined that the 1 Timothy passage was not actually written by Paul. In fact, the entire book of 1 Timothy, along with several other New Testament books attributed to Paul, were written by someone who used Paul’s name, but who was, in fact, not Paul. 

This was a common practice in ancient times. Writers would use a respected name to give authority to what they were writing. Probably, they believed that what they were writing was a tribute or honor to Paul. One scholar called it a type of “fan fiction.”

Since this sermon series is focusing on the real, authentic Paul, we can ignore the 1 Timothy passage.

However, the other two passages, from 1 Corinthians and Romans, scholars do believe were written by Paul himself.

Which means that, if we want to know what Paul thought, we can’t just dismiss those two passages. We have to take them seriously. We have to study them.

Both of these passages present lists of vices, of practices that are “unnatural” or characteristic of unspiritual people. Lists of vices like these were common in Paul’s time. Paul may even have been using lists that were commonly recited when people were pointing out who not to be like. 

And the things on these lists were related to worship of idols. The things on these lists are bad because they are what people who worship idols do. People who worship idols do these things, so you should avoid them.

Now, if someone were to practice these things who wasn’t worshiping idols, would they still be bad in Paul’s eyes? Some of them, I’m sure, would; but I don’t know about all of them.

The point is that Paul’s focus isn’t on these specific practices, these specific vices. Paul’s focus is on the worship of idols. Paul’s emphasis is that his readers not be idol-worshipers like “those people.” 

The worship of idols is the context. That is not the context for people today who practice and who identify as homosexual. So: does Paul’s condemnation still apply?

It’s almost certain that Paul had no concept about homosexuality as a person’s orientation. Since they were associated with idol worship, the homosexual acts Paul’s talking about were associated with cultic rituals. And if we study the Greek words Paul used, we discover that Paul certainly did not have in mind a loving, sexual relationship between two consenting adults.

3. Malakos and arsenokoitai

Paul uses two words here which in Greek are malakos and arsenokoitai. The New Revised Standard Version translates them as “male prostitutes and sodomites.” It’s an unfortunate translation - especially that word sodomites - because the Greek word makes no reference to Sodom, and a close study of the story of Sodom shows that the real sin there is inhospitality and hostility toward immigrants, manifesting itself in the form of rape. It has absolutely nothing to do with same-sex relationships, and nothing to do with what Paul is talking about.

Sodom has nothing to do with homosexuality, and “sodomy” has nothing to do with Sodom.

But what do these two Greek words mean? 

Malakos is a word that means “weak,” “effeminate,” or “soft.” It’s used elsewhere in the Bible, and not always in a sexual way. It could refer to someone who’s wishy-washy, or who has no integrity or no morals. How does Paul want us to understand that word? Well, scholars aren’t really sure. 

The other word - arsenokoitai - it appears Paul made that word up. There is no other writing where that word appears, other than these New Testament passages. This makes it very hard to define precisely, but since it is a compound word made up of two separate words that mean “man” and “bed,” it does seem that some sort of same-sex interaction is implied. 

But because this list of vices is in the context of idol worship and cultic ritual ceremonies, what is probably meant is some sort of situation where a dominant male uses or forces a younger or less powerful male for sex - a boy, even - because that’s what happened during these rituals. A social inequality of some sort is implied. 

4. Money, power, & abuse

What Paul is talking about could also be financial. It could be a master/slave relationship. It could be one person who owed another person money, and this was a way to pay off part of the debt.

Again, it’s an unequal relationship.

When I came across that idea, it got me thinking. Paul talks a lot about debt. When Paul talks about idol worship, he talks about how those who worship idols are constantly in debt to those idols, always having to pay them back in order to stay in their good favor. 

And Paul condemns this.

And in our passage today, Paul encourages people to pay what they owe, so that they don’t owe anyone anything. Don’t owe anyone anything, except to love. 

Financial matters like debt, we think of as having nothing to do with faith and spirituality, so we often overlook them when we worship and when we read our Bibles. Yet every week we pray the Lord’s Prayer, which includes the words, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

Are we really thinking about financial debts when we pray that? 

In some churches, they’ve changed those words to “forgive us our trespasses,” or, “forgive us our sins,” but the words Jesus taught his disciples actually had financial connotations. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

You know what I want? I want some scholar to write a book about this. I want some scholar to research whether or not there is a connection here, between Paul’s condemnation of same-sex practices, and Paul’s words against debt. 

Because I’m starting to wonder if there is a connection. They both refer to oppressive, abusive relationships in which one person has power and control over another, and Paul wants all followers of Christ to be free - free from that sort of abuse, free from situations in which one person has that kind of hold on another.

There’s a lot of uncertainty here, even among scholars, since we’re trying to define a word that Paul basically made up. But it does seem that Paul is not condemning consensual same-sex relationships characterized by love, the type of loving relationships that many gay and lesbian couples are capable of having and do, in fact, have. Paul is not condemning homosexuality as we understand it. What Paul is condemning is abusive relationships, oppressive relationships, relationships that do not have love at their center.

Romans 13 says: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. [All the commandments] are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

5. Free to Love

So when it comes to homosexuality, I find no reason to hate Paul. It’s not entirely clear what Paul is talking about in these passages, but it is clear that he’s not talking about homosexuality as we understand it today.

That’s not to say that Paul would be out there, marching in pride parades, writing in all his epistles about the importance of being open and affirming. I really think there’s just no way to know how supportive and affirming Paul would be, given our modern awareness of homosexuality as a sexual orientation, and the possibility of two people enjoying a same-sex relationship based on consent, caring, and mutual love. 

But I do know that Paul did believe in equality between Jews and Gentiles, and between slaves and free, and between women and men, and that these were radical ideas in his time. So who knows? 

I also know that you and I do live in a time when it is clear that same-sex couples can have relationships characterized by consent, caring, and love. And if love is present in those relationships - if love is at the center of those relationships - then so is God, because God is love; and those relationships are sacred.

Furthermore, there is throughout the Bible a movement toward openness, inclusion, equality, and affirmation. God is constantly at work widening the circle, so that those who were once condemned are no longer condemned, and are brought in and welcomed and affirmed. 

Case in point: the foreigners and eunuchs who are forbidden to enter the temple in Deuteronomy, but whose worth is affirmed by Isaiah when he declares that God’s house will be a house of prayer for all people, including and especially foreigners and eunuchs. And so when the disciple Philip actually encounters someone who is both a foreigner and a eunuch in the book of Acts, Philip welcomes him into the church and baptizes him - despite Deuteronomy’s prohibition.

And who are we to ignore this leading of God’s Spirit? And don’t you think that Paul - who seemed to be intimately connected to the Spirit - would follow this leading?

Anyway, as I’ve said before: it’s not in spite of what scripture says that we are Open and Affirming - it’s because of what scripture says. All of scripture - including those parts written by Paul - emphasize love as the first and most important command. And all of scripture emphasizes an overcoming of barriers, and an end to oppression, and an end to persecution, and the removal of the barriers that keep people separated from God.

Scripture emphasizes a coming together of Gentiles and Jews, slaves and free, women and men, and a welcoming of foreigners and eunuchs and anyone else who had been told they don’t belong in God’s house. 

Our job is not to close the doors to the kingdom, but to open them wide, for God’s house is a big house - a big, big house, with room for everyone. In God’s house, the barriers are broken down, and all are welcome and given access to the place at the table which God has set just for them.