Using the Bible to oppose homosexuality is a rather recent occurrence. True or False?

Objection Stated

  Using the Bible to oppose homosexuality is a rather recent occurrence.

Similar to the previous argument about the word “homosexual,” it is commonly claimed that the Bible only recently is being interpreted to condemn homosexuality. It is argued that translations of certain passages are being accomplished in accordance with “anti-gay bias” and that such opposition from the church has not always been present. Daniel Helminiak wrote,

  Taken on its own terms and in its own time, the Bible nowhere condemns homosexuality as we know it today.… It should be considered outrageous for any educated person to quote the Bible to condemn homosexuality.… A millennium ago, Western society was rather indifferent to homosexuality and even supportive of it.”8

Later he offered these surprising comments:

  Since about the 12th Century, this story [regarding the destruction of Sodom] has been commonly taken to condemn homosexuality. The very word “sodomite” was taken to refer to someone who engages in anal sex, and the sin of Sodom was taken to be male homogenital acts. So supposedly God condemned and punished the citizens of Sodom, the Sodomites, for homogenital activity.

Biblical Response

While it is important to note that truth is not determined by the counting of heads, we will also demonstrate Helminiak’s view of history to be inaccurate. Historically, Christian interpretation of the Bible has recognized homosexuality as contrary to God’s law and that God’s judgment did come upon Sodom, in part, due to homosexuality. When Helminiak writes, “since about the 12th Century,” he misleads his readers into thinking that prior to this time the sins of Sodom were not understood to be of a homosexual nature.10 While it requires only one citation that is prior to the twelfth century to refute such a claim, let us consider a number of them.


Athenagorus (second century)

Athenagorus offered a defense of the moral excellence of the Christians in contrast with their accusers. He refers to the “shocking abomination” of male intercourse:

  But though such is our character (Oh! why should I speak of things unfit to be uttered?), the things said of us are an example of the proverb, “The harlot reproves the chaste.” For those who have set up a market for fornication and established infamous resorts for the young for every kind of vile pleasure—who do not abstain even from males, males with males committing shocking abominations, outraging all the noblest and comeliest bodies in all sorts of ways, so dishonoring the fair workmanship of God (for beauty on earth is not self-made, but sent hither by the hand and will of God)—these men, I say, revile us for the very things which they are conscious of themselves, and ascribe to their own gods, boasting of them as noble deeds, and worthy of the gods. These adulterers and pederasts defame the eunuchs and the once-married (while they themselves live like fishes; for these gulp down whatever falls in their way, and the stronger chases the weaker: and, in fact, this is to feed upon human flesh, to do violence in contravention of the very laws which you and your ancestors, with due care for all that is fair and right, have enacted), so that not even the governors of the provinces sent by you suffice for the hearing of the complaints against those, to whom it even is not lawful, when they are struck, not to offer themselves for more blows, nor when defamed not to bless: for it is not enough to be just (and justice is to return like for like), but it is incumbent on us to be good and patient of evil.

Tertullian (c. 160–225)

Tertullian referred to the deeds of homosexual intimacy in the terms employed by the apostle Paul; they are “against nature.” Tertullian also referred to such deeds as contrary to the law of God:

  Demanding then a law of God, you have that common one prevailing all over the world, engraven on the natural tables to which the apostle too is wont to appeal, as when in respect of the woman’s veil he says, “Does not even Nature teach you?”—as when to the Romans, affirming that the heathen do by nature those things which the law requires, he suggests both natural law and a law-revealing nature. Yes, and also in the first chapter of the epistle he authenticates nature, when he asserts that males and females changed among themselves the natural use of the creature into that which is unnatural, by way of penal retribution for their error.

Origen (c. 185–254)

Origen speaks of those who know the Lord Jesus Christ and declares “that they often exhibit in their character a high degree of gravity, purity, and integrity.” On the other hand, those who do not follow Jesus “have despised these virtues and have wallowed in the filth of sodomy, in lawless lust, ‘men with men working that which is unseemly.’ ”13 In this we see that Origen referred to homosexual acts as sodomy and, contrary to law, they are lawless.


Cyprian (d. 258)

Cyprian spoke of the value of Christian morality and decried the ethical baseness of those who followed lawless lusts. He clearly spoke of homosexual lusts as reprehensible:

  For, their own proper character being overcome, it sends the entire man under its yoke of lust, alluring at first, that it may do the more mischief by its attraction,—the foe of continency, exhausting both means and modesty; the perilous madness of lust frequently attaining to the blood, the destruction of a good conscience, the mother of impenitence, the ruin of a more virtuous age, the disgrace of one’s race, driving away all confidence in blood and family, intruding one’s own children upon the affections of strangers, interpolating the offspring of an unknown and corrupted stock into the testaments of others. And this also, very frequently burning without reference to sex, and not restraining itself within the permitted limits, thinks it little satisfaction to itself, unless even in the bodies of men it seeks, not a new pleasure, but goes in quest of extraordinary and revolting extravagances, contrary to nature itself, of men with men.

These church fathers, all of them prior to the twelfth century, are clear: homosexuality is contrary to the law of God, it is against nature, and it is not consistent with biblical morality. 

These fathers appealed to an abiding standard of morality (God’s law) and declared homosexuality to be contrary to it. They also referred to homosexuality as being part of the sin of Sodom. One could also refer to the writings of Lactantius,15 Eusebius,16 Athanasius,17 Chrysostom,18 and Augustine19 and find the same conclusions.

These results are consistent with those preached in Chrysostom’s Fourth Homily on the Epistle to the Romans and are worth reading today. The claim that the Bible prohibits homosexuality is not a recent development. It is the Christian interpretation of antiquity.


White, J. R., & Niell, J. D. (2002). The Same Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible’s Message about Homosexuality (pp. 168–172). Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers.