Angel sex not homosexual sex?
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| Lot leaving Sodom, Woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The references to Sodom in Jude and 2 Peter do not condemn homosexuality. Jude speaks of desiring “strange flesh,” and Peter refers only to sexual immorality, not to homosexuality. Some assert that the sin of the Sodomites in Jude consisted of a desire to have sexual relations with angels. Both passages show us that the attempt to connect the Genesis story with homosexuality lacks the support of New Testament writers.
Biblical Response
The two passages under consideration are Jude 6–7 and 2 Peter 2:4–10. Jude writes,
6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. 7 Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
And Peter addresses the same issue by writing,
4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment, 5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; 7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men 8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority.
Both passages follow directly in line with the use of Sodom and Gomorrah as the icon for sexual debauchery and unrepentant evil. Jude describes Sodom and Gomorrah as a symbol, a type, an example of God’s punishment upon gross immorality. Jude makes a direct connection between the judgment upon angels who “abandoned their proper abode” and the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah who “indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh.”
Surely these are not words that can be made to describe mere inhospitality! Some have attempted to avoid the weight of the description of going after “strange flesh” by saying that the sin here is that the men desired to engage in relations with angels. While this would surely amount to going after “strange flesh,” there is one rather obvious problem with this idea. The men of Sodom did not know the visitors were angels. They believed them to be mere men, like themselves.
Therefore, Jude’s description is best understood to refer to the homosexual desire of the men to engage in relations with the visitors. Here the Scriptures use very strong language to describe homosexual desire. The first term is a strengthened form of the standard word for sexual immorality and debauchery. The second term, rendered “strange flesh” by the NASB but more interpretively as “pursued unnatural lust” in the NRSV and “perversion” in the NIV, literally means “flesh of a different kind.”
How should this be understood? Given the background, this would surely be in reference to homosexuality. Why, since homosexuality is a desire for flesh of the same kind? Because the natural desire of man is for the woman, not for man. The “unnatural lust” or “perversion” here referred to is that which causes a man to lust for different flesh than that which God intended. Just as the angels did not remain in the place where God intended (verse 6), but abandoned their created purpose, so these men abandoned what was natural and pursued what was unnatural: homosexuality.
Peter’s description parallels this, describing the regular activities of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah as daily being ungodly and wicked. Peter speaks of the “filthy lives of lawless men” (NIV), the “licentiousness of the lawless” (NRSV), or the “filthy conduct of the wicked” (NKJV). Clearly Peter likewise interpreted the sinful acts of the Sodomites as having a sexual nature. It is certain he did not view their sin as in-hospitality. Indeed, verse 8 speaks of the daily nature of their sinful acts. Are we to understand that daily the Sodomites showed in-hospitality to strangers, or is it much more logical to realize that Lot was tormented by the constant homosexual lifestyle of the Sodomites, a lifestyle that brought God’s eventual judgment?
White, J. R., & Niell, J. D. (2002). The Same Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible’s Message about Homosexuality (pp. 47–50). Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers.
