Romans Study Notes

What Does the Bible Say About Gay? (Romans 1:18-32) Who are “they” and why did God give “them” over? Introduction: • Who is Paul talking about in Romans 1:18-32? o We assume that Paul is talking about homosexuals in Romans 1, but homosexuals don’t show up until later in the passage. The actual characters are introduced earlier. o “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godless and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness…” (v. 18) • The key question, then, are: o What made them wicked? o How did they suppress the truth? • To find the answer, we must explore: o Literary Context (writing style) o Cultural Context (pagan deity worship) o Language issues (“natural relations”) Literary Context Paul is a tricky writer. One of the problems with interpreting Romans is that Paul is a very complicated writer. Until you figure out how all the pieces fit together, Romans is like reading a puzzle. •

Paul’s Writing Style In order to answer these questions (what made them wicked? how did they suppress the truth?), we must understand Paul’s writing style. o Modern readers/writers are used to communicating in a linear style. Every idea leads directly into the next in a “logical” progression:  A → B → C → Conclusion o Ancient Writers (especially poets) used parallelism where ideas mirror each other to either build or show the contrast between ideas.  A → B → A¹ → B¹ → A² → B² → Conclusion  Example: • Tom rode his bike all the time. (A) • Regina liked to follow him. (B) • Tom rode his bike to the store. (A¹) • Regina followed him on her bike. (B²) • When they got to the store, Tom and Regina shared a Coke. (C) o Couplets in Romans 1  They exchanged the glory of the immortal God (v 23)… Therefore God gave them over (v. 24).  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie (v. 25)… Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts (v 26).  The women exchanged natural relations… in the same way the men (v 26b)… he gave them over to a depraved mind (v 28)  They exchanged the glory of God (A) → God gave them over (B) → They exchanged the truth of God (A¹) → God gave them over (B¹) → The woman exchanged natural relations (A²) → God gave them over to a depraved mind (B²). o The problem with our interpretation is that we focus on the result (lust, etc.) before we look at the cause: 1. They exchanged the glory of God 2. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things.

3. They exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 4. All of these culminated in them not thinking it was worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God. (v 28) This denial of god was the cause of him giving them over – not homosexuality. • Within the first two parallels, we see that God gave them over to evil behaviors because of certain actions they took ("exchanging the glory of God for images", and then worshipping and serving created things rather than the creator). However, God did not give them over because of the exchange itself, but because of actions taken as a result of the exchange. In the third parallel, they exchanged natural relations for those that are against nature. However, it was not those exchanges that caused God to give them over. Those exchanges resulted in the action of verse 28, "they did not think it worthwhile to retain a knowledge of God", which is what caused God to give them over. It was not the sexual behavior that caused God to give them over, but it was the fact that they abandoned their belief in God that caused Him to give them over. Question: What does this culmination sound like (exchanging the glory of God, exchanging truth for a lie, exchanging the natural for the unnatural, and not retaining the knowledge of God)? Answer: Idolatry. (c/c Leviticus discussion of “abomination” as a condemnation of idol worship. Cultural Context: Cult of Cybele (www.jeramyt.org/papers/paulcybl.html) • Prominence: In Rome, the Cybele/Attis temple was built in the heart of the city on one of the Seven Hills of Rome. Cybele’s image was printed on Roman coins and two major city-festivals (the Day of Blood and the Megalensia) were organized around Cybele and Attis. A statue of Cybele presided over most of the public games. The popularity and power of the goddess religions during the time of Paul’s ministry gave him a readily available target to use in his description of people who fall away from God. • Story: (http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/nemythology/a/cybeleattis.htm) Cybele was the “Great Mother,” goddess of nature and wild animals. The story goes that when Cybele, one of Zeus' would-be sex partners, rejected him, Zeus wouldn't take "no" for an answer. While his victim slept, Zeus spilled his seed on her. In due course, Cybele gave birth to Agdistis, a hermaphroditic demon so strong and wild the other gods feared him. In their terror they cut off his male sexual organ. From its blood sprang an almond tree. The river Sangarius had a daughter named Nana who ate the fruit of this almond tree. As a result, Nana became pregnant and delivered a child which she tried to kill by exposing it to the cold. But infant death was not to be the child’s fate. Instead, reared by area shepherds, the boy soon became healthy and handsome -- so handsome his grandmother Cybele fell in love with him. The boy, whose name was Attis, was unaware of the love Cybele bore him. In time, Attis saw the king of Pessinus' beautiful daughter, fell in love, and wished to marry her. The goddess Cybele became insanely jealous. As revenge for her not returning her love, she drove Attis (her grandson) mad. Running crazy through the mountains, Attis stopped at the foot of a pine tree. There Attis castrated and killed himself.

Attis' flesh would have decayed had not Zeus stepped in to assist Cybele in the resurrection of Attis. A yearly ritual was performed to purify the body of the dead Attis. The priests -- referred to as Galli or Gallae -- were emasculated in emulation of Attis. A pine tree is chopped down, covered with violets and carried to the shrine of Cybele on Mt. Dindymus. There Attis is mourned for 3 days. Then, when Cybele brings him back to life, there is a wild and joyful celebration. • Priests: The priests and priestesses of Cybele, were called galli. Their goal was to transcend gender in order to become more like Attis (the father God, son/lover of Cybele) and Cybele (the mother goddess). Attis was castrated and Cybele was a virgin. In order to become more like their gods, all galli voluntarily castrated themselves, and were involved in ritual sexuality with the worshippers that would come to the temple. The Romans had difficulty accepting the gender-variant nature of the galli activities (cross dressing and castration), and Roman citizens were prohibited from becoming galli, primarily because of their repulsion of emasculation. The Jews would have had obvious difficulty with this, as it was a rebellion from their idea of holiness. (gender confusion and holiness discussion from Leviticus notes) • Practices: During their annual festival, the Day of Blood, the galli would wander the streets in full crossdress: amulets, flowing robes, make-up, depilated bodies and long hair dyed blond. They would dance in a frenzy with tambourines and flutes, often with knives or swords, with which they would cut their arms, letting blood to help them tell fortunes for the people who would give them money. In both the Greek and Roman sources, gender-variant, frenzied and orgiastic festival behaviors are described, continuing at least up to the 4th century CE. Most of the Christian invectives focus on their gender-variant sexual behaviors, as encompassed in the pagan rituals. o Firmicus describes the behavior as of the galli using language reminiscent of Paul’s attacks in Romans 1: In their very temples one may see scandalous performances, accompanied by the moaning of the throng: men letting themselves be handled as women, and flaunting with boastful ostentatiousness this ignominy of their impure and unchaste bodies. They parade their misdeeds in the public eye. … Next, being thus divorced from masculinity, they get intoxicated with the music of flutes and invoke their goddess to fill them with an unholy spirit so that they can ostensibly predict the future to fools. What sort of monstrous and unnatural thing is all this? They say they are not men, and indeed they aren't; they want to pass as women. (Firmicus, The Error of Pagan Religions, 4.2) o Lucretius in the 2nd century CE describes them: The Galli come: And hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines resound around to bangings of their hands; the fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray; The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds in Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives, wild emblems of their frenzy. (The Nature of Things, 2.611) o Juvenal, in the 1st century CE, describes a similar scene: There's the Good Goddess, whose rites and mysteries scarcely are secrets, not when the flute music stirs the pelvis, and there they come sweeping, carried away by the horns and the wine, Priapus's maenads, tossing their manes and howling, craving, in absolute frenzy, the beast with two backs, the gymnastics of lust, and their limbs fairly oozing passions unmixed wine. (Satire 6.315ff)

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Philo: (Remember, Philo lived from 20 BC to AD 40. He probably wrote this around AD 35.) “(40) And I imagine that the cause of this is that among many nations there are actually rewards given for intemperance and effeminacy. At all events one may see men-women [androgynes] continually strutting through the market place at midday, and leading the processions in festivals; and, impious men as they are, having received by lot the charge of the temple, and beginning the sacred and initiating rites, and concerned even in the holy mysteries of Ceres (Ceres is another name for Cybele, the fertility goddess first century Romans referred to as the Mother of the gods.) (41) And some of these persons have even carried their admiration of these delicate pleasures of youth so far that they have desired wholly to change their condition for that of women, and have castrated themselves and have clothed themselves in purple robes...[Philo here describes the castrated Galli priests who served Cybele and other fertility goddesses worshiped by the Romans]. (42) But if there was a general indignation against those who venture to do such things, as was felt by our lawgiver [Moses]...” (Philo, The Special Laws, III, VII, 40-42.)

• Self-Castration: As a part of their worship of (and attempt to become like Attis), galli made themselves into eunuchs. This was an essential aspect to their religion. o And on these days Galloi are made. For while the rest are playing flutes and performing their rites, frenzy soon enters into many, and many there are who just came to watch who subsequently perform the act. ... The young man whom Fortune has given to do this casts off his clothing and rushes into the center with a great shout, and takes up a sword, which has stood there many years for this purpose, I believe. Then he immediately castrates himself and runs through the City bearing in his hands those parts he has cut off. And from whatever house into which he shall cast these, he gets female clothing and womanly adornments. Thus they do when they castrate themselves. (Lucian, De Dea Syria, 51) • Women: In addition to showing the presence of “female” galli, women would also have sex with the effeminate men. These may or may not have been the male galli – source texts do not allow us to draw a conclusion either way. It is likely that the women used artificial phalli to perform anal sex on the men, which could easily be applied to Rom 1:26 to help us understand the context for interpreting the behavior described by Paul as heterosexual. • Outline Comparing Rom 1:21-27 with Cybele/Attis Worship. 21-22: They claimed to be wise but were foolish: The galli claimed to tell people's fortunes, but everybody thought they were mad due to their frenzied dancing and self-mutilation. This madness mirrored Attis’ madness in the Cybele story. The Greek texts describe the "mania" of the galli rituals. 23: They made images of man and animals to worship: Because Cybele was the “Great Mother” goddess of nature and wild animals, her statue was typically surrounded by images of other animals, particularly lions, birds and snakes. In addition, these temples were often filled with birds, because the galli believed they were too holy to touch, to chase them away. 26-27: They exchanged natural relations, etc: One of the primary goals of the galli was to remove gender differences. This occurred through transvestitism, physically cutting off one's genitals and the exchange of sexual roles. The male galli would serve sexually "as women" to male worshippers in the temple. Women had sex with men (and possibly with other women), but in order to avoid pregnancy, they would have anal sex, not vaginal, as indicated by early church writers such as Anastasius, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine

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Conclusion: o Cause of God “giving them over”: “They did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God.” (v 28) o Demonstrated by:  exchanging the glory of God for images (idolatry)  exchanging truth of God for a lie (idolatry)  exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones (idolatry) o Effect: He gave them over to a depraved mind (v 28)  “They have become filled with every kid of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents, they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless…” (v 29-31) Homosexuality is nowhere in this list.

Whatever kind of sexual behavior Paul is referring to (v 26-27), it causes them to stop believing in God (v 28). However, there is a huge population of gays and lesbians who believe in God. In the absence of such models, it would be much easier to accept that Romans 1:18-32 claims that all homosexuality is sin, because it would then be obvious that since no homosexuals believed in God, therefore verses 26-27 refer to all homosexual behavior. However, since there are many gay/lesbian Christians who have a strong belief in God, then it becomes obvious that verses 2628 cannot refer to all homosexual behavior, otherwise Scripture would be in error. (www.jeramyt.org/papers/paulcybl.html)

Language Issues: “Against Nature” •

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The Problem: Many people read the phrase “their men abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another” and make the logical connection that “natural relations with women” are a universal standard for all men – therefore abandoning them is universally wrong. o We assume “natural” is a universal, as in “what is natural for animals to do.” There are multiple problems with this:  Homosexuality is seen in the animal kingdom  Is “uniquely human” behavior “unnatural?” • “In the second place [the idea that homosexuality is “unnatural”] is predicated on another assumption – that uniquely human behavior is not ‘natural’ – which is fundamentally unsupportable… Many animals in fact engage in behavior which is unique to their species, but no one imagines that such behavior is ‘unnatural’… Most of the behavior which human societies most admire is unique to humans: this is indeed the main reason it is respected. No one imagines that human society ‘naturally’ resists literacy because it is unknown among other animals.” (Boswell, 13)  Animals have sexual habits that are “morally wrong” for humans • “The fact that most animals practice incest did not inspire Philo or Clement to infer that incest was one of ‘nature’s purposes” in sexual relations, nor did the knowledge that females of most mammal species allow many males to mount them during their fertile period prompt them to approve female promiscuity as ‘natural.’” (Boswell, 156) “Nature” as a local (not universal) idea

For Paul, “nature” is not a universal truth, but something that is appropriate (or “natural”) for a specific person or group of people. (Not a law for all of mankind, but for a specific man – or group of men)  “For Paul, “nature” was not a question of universal law or truth but, a matter of the character of some [individual] person or group of persons, a character which was largely ethnic and entirely human… A possessive is always understood with ‘nature’ in Pauline writings: it is not ‘nature’ in the abstract but someone’s ‘nature’… Nature” in Romans 1:26, then, should be understood as the personal nature of the pagans in question.” (Boswell, 110-111) o The phrase used is para phusin (“against nature”). The syntax of “against” causes it to mean not “opposed to,” but rather “more than.”  In New Testament usage, “para” connotes not “in opposition to” (expressed by “kata”) but, rather, “more than,” “in excess of…” “…it signifies behavior which is unexpected, unusual, or different from what would occur in the normal order of things” (Boswell 111-112) o The meaning of “para phusin” is not unlike the definition of “abomination” as something that isn’t a universal wrong, but something that is wrong for a specific group of people – something that is “more than” what they should do. o Homosexuality is as natural as hot water.  Aquinas comparison of homosexuality to hot water: although water is not naturally hot, it may not be altogether natural for water under the right circumstances to become hot. Although it may not be “natural” for humans in general to be homosexual, it is apparently quite “natural” for particular individuals. (Boswell, 326) Other things that are “against nature”  Any non-procreative sex (see Sodom and Gomorrah notes re: history of the word “Sodomy”). This is a theme when talking about early cultural bias against homosexuality. • “… the phrase para phusin (against nature) could, in other sexually related contexts, refer to sex with a barren or pregnant woman, sex with a menstruating woman, pederasty or sex between animals of different species. These contexts are tied together by the understanding of many popular Jewish and Greek thinkers that described the purpose of sex as solely for procreation. (Brooten, Love, 247. R. Ward, “Why unnatural? The Tradition Behind Romans 1:26-27,” J. DeYoung, “The Meaning of Nature in Romans 1 and its Implications for Biblical Proscriptions of Homosexual Behavior,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 31 (1988) 429-41.) • “contrary to nature” would eventually come to infer that semen and its ejaculation were intended by “nature” to produce children, and that any other use of them was “contrary to nature” and hence sinful, since the design of “nature” represented the will of God. – Thomas Aquinas (Boswell 321-322) th Historical changes: It wasn’t until the 12 century that “natural law” was transformed from what was observed in nature to a highly refined ethical precept. (Boswell, 314) o

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E. Stehle, “Venus, Cybele, and the Sabine Women: The Roman Construction of Female Sexuality,” Helios 16 (1989) 143-164. M. J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult (London: Thames and Hudson) 1977, 96

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B. Thorbjornsrud, “What Can the Gilgamesh Myth Tell us about Religion and the View of Humanity in Mesopotamia?” Temenos 19 (1983) 112-137. Nissinen, 2930. M. J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult (London: Thames and Hudson) 1977, 96 – 97. Brooten, Love, 247. R. Ward, “Why unnatural? The Tradition Behind Romans 1:26-27,” HTR 90 (1997) 263-284. R. Kroeger and C. Kroeger. I Suffer Not a Woman: Rethinking 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in Light of Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House) 1991, 94. Greenberg, Construction, 106. D. J. Wold, Out of Order (Baker Books: Grand Rapids) 1998, 60, 98.