But begin Gay is natural for me- argument.
Objection Stated
What is “natural” in Romans 1 is not what is “natural” in the sense of “natural law,” but what is “natural to me.” The reference is not to homosexuals but to heterosexuals who go beyond their natural bounds and engage in homosexuality.
Thus John Boswell writes,
On the other hand, it should be recognised that the point of the passage is not to stigmatise sexual behaviour of any sort but to condemn the Gentiles for their general infidelity.… The reference to homosexuality is simply a mundane analogy to this theological sin; it is patently not the crux of this argument.… What is even more important, the persons Paul condemns are manifestly not homosexual: what he derogates are homosexual acts committed by apparently heterosexual persons.
The whole point of Romans 1, in fact, is to stigmatise persons who have rejected their calling, gotten off the true path they were once on. It would completely undermine the thrust of the argument if the persons in question were not “naturally” inclined to the opposite sex in the same way they were “naturally” inclined to monotheism.2
Biblical Response
This perspective, presented in some of the most popular revisionist works,3 tries to find a way to allow for a “natural” homosexuality by reading out of the text the basic meaning. Our exegesis has already shown, however, that this viewpoint is untenable.
The entire context would be completely disrupted by such an eisegetical4 reading. The focus upon the willful twisting of God’s truth, and the resultant judicial “giving over” of men to the results of their own refusal to worship Him and acknowledge Him, is utterly lost if, in fact, the only point here is that homosexuality itself is not sinful in God’s sight, but rather it is wrong to engage in it if you have “natural” desires.
The above quote from John Boswell contains numerous errors. Aside from the impossible task of understanding what “general infidelity” can possibly mean, it is surely untrue that Romans 1:26–27 “is simply a mundane analogy.” Such is a complete misreading of the flow of the text that we established above.
Next, it is very instructive to read a scholar stating, “The persons Paul condemns are manifestly not homosexual.” Remember that this passage specifically speaks of adult men who engage in mutual sexual desire and activity. It is eisegesis in the extreme to dismiss this clear description of basic homosexual activity based on the extra-contextual assertion that since these men chose this activity, then it must follow that they were not “true” homosexuals.
The hidden, and false, assumption is that homosexuals do not choose to engage in the activities they do. Homosexuals “are the way they are” and did not, and do not, choose to do what they do. But such is obviously far from the apostle’s meaning, let alone the truth. The words of Romans 1 would apply to anyone engaging in homosexual activities or desires, and this is exactly what we see in the modern homosexual movement.
To insert an anachronistic definition into the text to exclude the very audience Paul describes is the height of eisegesis. Nor does it touch the heart of Paul’s assertion: that the twisting of God’s creative design in man and woman is exemplary of the pervasiveness of man’s desire to replace the true knowledge of God with “the lie.”
To adopt Boswell’s position is to turn Paul’s argument on its head, for his opponents could easily retort, “Well, that is only true in a certain group, but other than those, the ‘natural’ homosexual activity of ‘true’ homosexuals who likewise desire one another would not show this ‘twistedness’ you are attempting to demonstrate.”
Paul’s argument does not allow this shift in meaning. The meaning of the words (the “natural use” of the male or female, the active choice to engage in homosexual behaviour, the desire expressed in the mutuality of the activity) and the context of the argument (God has given them over to “degrading passions,” and they remain degrading no matter who is engaging in them) militate strongly against this revisionist attempt.
2 Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 108–09.
3 Letha Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? present a bewildering array of “possibilities” in their discussion of Romans 1 (66–74), including, it seems, this one. As with so many revisionist works, the intention seems to be to present so many possibilities or theories that the reader is left with the distinct impression that no one could possibly know what the text is actually talking about, and any who say they do are obviously unaware of all these other “possibilities.”
4 Eisegesis is the common error of “reading into” a text a meaning that the original author and context did not intend. It is the opposite of “exegesis,” the proper interpretation of a text in its original context.
White, J. R., & Niell, J. D. (2002). The Same Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible’s Message about Homosexuality (pp. 125–127). Bethany House Publishers.
