moral madness; as polygamy was illegal and Nero married heterosexually as well, these other unions were not taken in the same way. Later rabbis mythically depict ancient Israel’s enemies as involved in such marriages (Sipra A.M. par. 8.193.1.7), but without relying on genuine historical information. Apart from rare exceptions like these (most of them meant to evoke horror), however, ancients thought of marriage as heterosexual unions designed especially to produce legitimate heirs, regardless of their views toward homosexual behavior. With a few exceptions, “marriage” by definition involved both genders (and an economic agreement between families).98 Those who engaged in homosexual romance, even in the rarer cases when it involved long-term sexual relationships into adulthood, would not have used the title “marriage” to describe it.
Most readers today would share Paul’s revulsion against the dominant forms of homosexual practice in his day: pederasty in both its voluntary and involuntary forms. Some scholars (especially Scroggs) argue that Paul opposed merely pederasty or other kinds of sexual exploitation. Critics of this proposal sometimes too readily dismiss the evidence for it: as we have observed, pederasty was in fact the dominant expression of homosexual activity in the ancient Mediterranean world.
But did Paul limit his criticism to simply those forms that remain most offensive in Western culture today? The dominant practice was not the only practice, and the word “pederast” was already available. More importantly, as most commentators (e.g., Jewett, Byrne) point out, he specifies lesbian as well as male homosexual behavior, and it is the same-sex element of the behavior that he explicitly targets.
The same criticism may be leveled against the view that Paul merely rejects homosexual behavior in the way that some philosophers did, as a failure to control one’s appetites (comparable to gluttony). Rather, Paul’s rejection of homosexual behavior belongs to his larger Jewish sexual ethic, which rejects all sexual behavior outside heterosexual marriage. His “against nature” argument echoes philosophic arguments that other Diaspora Jews had already applied to homosexual behavior in general. Readers today may agree or disagree with Paul, but some modern attempts, no matter how valiant, to make him more palatable to certain Western liberal values have failed to persuade a number of commentators, including this one.
At the same time, we must not exaggerate what Paul is saying. He uses the examples of idolatry and homosexual behavior because Jewish people recognized these as exclusively Gentile vices. This recognition plays into Paul’s strategy to expose all sin as deadly (1:28–32), hence all persons as sinners (3:23). Paul is not providing pastoral counsel here to believers struggling with homosexual temptation, and he is certainly not granting license to abuse those who practice homosexual behavior. (Nor would he grant license to denounce this vice while tolerating heterosexual behavior outside marriage, a condemnation that consumes considerably more space in his letters.) Given how common bisexual practice was, Paul undoubtedly worked closely with many believers who had come from this background (some of whom were still tempted by it; cf. the likeliest interpretation of arsenokoite¯s in 1 Cor 6:9–11). Paul’s message here would be more analogous to a preacher appealing to an audience on the basis of their shared values regarding homosexual behavior—then leading them to consider their own vices.
Various Vices (1:28–32)
For the third time (cf. 1:24, 26), in 1:28 Paul repeats the refrain that God “gave them over” to their own ways through their minds being corrupted (cf. 1:21–22). They did not “approve” (from dokimazō) God in their knowledge, so God gave them “unapproved” (adokimos) minds to do “unfitting” things.99 For Paul, humanity’s distortion of the truth about God’s character leads to their distortion of the purpose of human sexuality, and ultimately to every kind of vice. As he will point out later, though, retaining true knowledge about God’s standards by the law makes one responsible for sin, rather than saving one (2:20; 7:23–25; 8:5–8).
Paul then lists examples of the “unfitting” things produced by this depraved mind, what he will later call the perspective of the flesh (8:5–8). Ancient moralists commonly used vice lists,100 sometimes arranged with repetitions to rhetorically drive home the point. Paul’s is longer than average, though far briefer than some. His rhetorical repetition and variation makes the list all the more effective: “filled with” four basic evils; “full of” five sins; a summary of eight kinds of sinners; and deficiency in four positive traits (1:29–31).101 Whereas Jewish people could relegate idolatry and homosexual intercourse to the corrupted ideologies of Gentiles, the present sins also appear in lists of Jewish misbehavior: envy, strife, gossip, slander, arrogance, disobedience to parents, and so forth. By the end of his list, Paul has inductively convicted both Jews and Gentiles as being under sin (he might do so deductively in 3:9–19), paving the way for his argument in ch. 2.
Paul shows that humanity rightly stands under the sentence of death (1:32). For though they technically should know better (1:19–20; cf. 2:14–15), they do what they know to be worthy of death (the way of the fleshly worldview, which yields death, 8:6).102 Those who refused to approve God in their thinking (1:28) now approve others who share their own behavior (1:32). God’s “righteous standard” or “requirement,”103 however, demands capital punishment for all transgressors, whether idolaters or gossipers and (most relevant for Paul’s continuing argument in 2:17, 23; 3:27, albeit with different terminology) boasters.
1. For purpose statements as titles, see Porphyry Ar. Cat. 57.15–19. Because 1:16–17 is not explicit that it so functions, however, ancient commentators (in contrast to modern ones) do not seem to have identified it as such.
2. Weima 2000: 328; Aune 1987: 163. This is true even when orators write the letters (e.g., Seneca Controv. 2.pref. intro).
3. See Stowers 1986: 20–21, 66. Paul’s expansions reflect rhetorical interest (Anderson 1999: 113) and are unusual (Anderson 1999: 207 n. 45); for connections to the letter body, cf. Wuellner 1976: 335.
4. See e.g., Rhet. Alex. 29, 1436a, lines 33–39; Dionysius of Halicarnassus Lys. 24; Seneca Controv. 1.pref.21; Quintilian Inst. 4.1.35. Outside speeches, see e.g., Polybius 3.1.3—3.5.9; 11.1.4–5; Dionysius of Halicarnassus Thuc. 19; Virgil Aen. 1.1–6; Aulus Gellius Noct. att. pref. 25.
5. Paul’s Roman name itself was most often a Roman cognomen usually belonging to Roman citizens and typically associated with high status (cf. Judge 1982: 36 n. 20). Roman Jews usually avoided using their full (three-part) Roman names, and most letters omit such full names anyway, but Romans would likely infer Paul’s citizen status (cf. Rapske 1994: 85–86; Lüdemann 1989: 241). Paul’s own interest, however, is in communicating his divinely ordained mission.
6. See discussion and sources on ancient slavery in e.g., Keener 2003b: 448–49, 748; see also Martin 1990 (positively, see esp. 47–49, 55–56); Buckland 1908; Barrow 1968. For “slaves of God” as a positive image in Judaism, see Hezser 2003: 418–20.
7. See Aune 2003: 347; but cf. BDF §464.
