Does God condemn homosexuality?
It is God’s settled and perfectly righteous antagonism to evil. It is directed against people who have some knowledge of God’s truth through the created order, but deliberately suppress it in order to pursue their own self-centred path.
And it is already being revealed, in a preliminary way, in the moral and social corruption which Paul saw in much of the Greco-Roman world of his day, and which we can see in the permissive societies of ours.
The Bible says nothing specifically about the homosexual condition (despite the rather misleading RSV translation of 1 Cor. 6:9), but its condemnations of homosexual conduct are explicit. The scope of these strictures must, however, be carefully determined. Too often they have been used as tools of a homophobic polemic which has claimed too much.
The exegesis of the Sodom and Gibeah stories (Gn. 19:1–25; Jdg. 19:13–20:48) is a good case in point. We must resist D. S. Bailey’s widely-quoted claim that the sin God punished on these occasions was a breach of hospitality etiquette without sexual overtones (it fails to explain adequately both the double usage of the word ‘know’ (yāḏa‘) and the reason behind the substitutionary offer of Lot’s daughters and the Levite’s concubine); but neither account amounts to a wholesale condemnation of all homosexual acts. On both occasions the sin condemned was attempted homosexual rape, not a caring homosexual relationship between consenting partners.
The force of the other OT references to homosexuality is similarly limited by the context in which they are set. Historically, homosexual behaviour was linked with idolatrous cult prostitution (1 Ki. 14:24; 15:12; 22:46). The stern warnings of the levitical law (Lv. 18:22; 20:13) are primarily aimed at idolatry too; the word ‘abomination’ (tô‘ēḇâ), for example, which features in both these references, is a religious term often used for idolatrous practices.
Viewed strictly within their context, then, these OT condemnations apply to homosexual activity conducted in the course of idolatry, but not necessarily more widely than that.
In Rom. 1 Paul condemns homosexual acts, lesbian as well as male, in the same breath as idolatry (vv. 23–27), but his theological canvas is broader than that of Lv. Instead of treating homosexual behaviour as an expression of idolatrous worship, he traces both to the bad ‘exchange’ fallen man has made in departing from his Creator’s intention (vv. 25f.).
Seen from this angle, every homosexual act is unnatural (para physin, v. 26), not because it cuts across the individual’s natural sexual orientation (which, of course, it may not) or infringes OT law (contra McNeill), but because it flies in the face of God’s creation scheme for human sexual expression.
Paul makes two more references to homosexual practice in other Epistles. Both occur in lists of banned activities and strike the same condemnatory note. In 1 Cor. 6:9f. practising homosexuals are included among the unrighteous who will not inherit the kingdom of God (but with the redemptive note added, ‘such were some of you’); and in 1 Tim. 1:9f. they feature in a list of ‘the lawless and disobedient’.
The latter is especially important because the whole list represents an updated version of the *TEN COMMANDMENTS. Paul parallels the 7th commandment (on adultery) with a reference to ‘immoral persons’ (pornoi) and ‘sodomites’ (arsenokoitai), words which cover all sexual intercourse outside marriage, whether heterosexual or homosexual. If the Decalogue is permanently valid, the significance of this application is heightened still further.
It has been suggested that the meaning of arsenikoitēs in 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10 may be restricted to that of ‘male prostitute’ (cf. Vulg. masculi concubitores). Linguistic evidence to support this view is lacking, however, though the word itself is certainly rare in literature of the NT period. It seems beyond reasonable doubt that Paul intended to condemn homosexual conduct (but not homosexual people) in the most general and theologically broad terms he knew. His three scattered references fit together in an impressive way as an expression of God’s will as he saw it. As Creator, Law-Giver and King, the Lord’s condemnation of such behaviour was absolutely plain.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. H. Thielicke, The Ethics of Sex, E.T. 1964; D. H. Field, The Homosexual Way—A Christian Option?, 1976; J. J. McNeill, The Church and the Homosexual
Field D. H. (1996). Homosexuality. In D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer, & D. J. Wiseman (Eds.), New Bible dictionary (3rd ed., pp. 478–479). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
