James V. Brownson is James I. and Jean Cook Professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan, and author of the new book Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships.
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By Illustrator unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
One of the things I try to argue in my book, Bible, Gender, Sexuality, is that something like this happens in a lot of the discussion about “nature” and same-sex intimate relationships as depicted in Romans 1:26-27. One of the things Paul says about these relationships is that they are “contrary to” or “outside of” nature. But different people have very different ways to interpret what Paul means by “nature.”
On the more progressive side of the broader debate over the interpretation of Romans 1, we see a couple of different perspectives. For some, Paul is speaking here about heterosexual men who act against their “natural” heterosexual orientation by engaging in sex with other men. By this view, Paul says nothing about gay men who are acting in accordance with what is “natural” for them in terms of sexual orientation. Others on this side of the larger debate focus not so much on “nature” as one’s individual disposition, and more on “nature” as social consensus, or “what everybody knows.” Often, these folks cite texts like 1 Cor 11:14, “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him?” In this view, “nature” refers to little more than commonly-held social assumptions, which can change dramatically in different times and cultures.
Those on the more conservative side of the broader debate strongly disagree with both of these readings. They insist that what Paul means by “nature” in this text is all about human anatomy — the “fittedness” of male and female sex organs. By this argument, “nature” has nothing to do with one’s individual “orientation,” or even social consensus. Instead, it has everything to do with the way that human bodies are designed. Same-sex intimate relationships are wrong, by this view, because they involve a misplacement of body parts.
Bible, Gender, Sexuality
In Bible, Gender, Sexuality, I explore all these arguments. I’m not convinced that “nature” in the ancient world refers primarily to the shape of body parts, though I think the ancient view of nature included an awareness of the link between sex and procreation. But at a deeper level, I also argue that for the ancients, “nature” was an all-encompassing vision, including individual disposition and social consensus, as well as the physical and biological world. The various dimensions emphasized by different sides of the contemporary debate were all part of the ancient discussion. All the blindfolded folks are holding on to part of the elephant. But what the ancients were looking for at the deepest level, when they spoke of “nature,” was a convergence of individual disposition, social consensus, and the biological world. They wanted to take off the blindfold, to see the whole, and to determine how it all fit together.
What might it mean to embrace such an integrative vision today, when we have a different social consensus, and when many people are recognizing that one’s individual sexual orientation, regardless of its origin, is often deeply persistent and resistant to change? Human biology hasn’t changed, but many other aspects of the ancient vision for “nature” have changed in the modern world. Pursuing an integrated and converging vision for “nature” will be considerably more complicated in our contemporary context. Where should we put the emphasis today, and how do we integrate these various dimensions of what is “natural” or “contrary to nature?” One my book’s aims is to explore the various aspects of that more complicated vision.
Click to order James Brownson’s Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships.
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January 28, 2013 at 6:15 PM
Paul
Since Jim Brownson is following this blog, I would like to ask when he will resign from Western Seminary and also step down as General Synod Professor of Theology in the RCA. Please don’t force another damaging trial on the RCA.
January 25, 2013 at 5:59 PM
Ephirius
I agree with Paul, with the exception that I don’t know if I found this thoughtful.
Your analogy of the elephant and his various pursuers is used for one purpose alone: to declare superiority to the ancients by means of our “reasonable” and “scientific” advancements (in biology in particular). Despite our advancements in technology, it would take but a glance at the past century to see that what we have advanced is not a healthy agenda. You could reduce the analogy down to its purpose and simply declare, as a proposition to your argument, that you believe we are intellectually superior and more capable of deciding such things as the morality of homosexuality. It would reduce the length of this article, and be more clear as well. You don’t explicitly state this, I understand, but you imply it, particularly in the final paragraph. “Social consensus” has never resulted in Truth. Not once. Ever.
The primary substance of your argument is that Paul, by his use of the term “nature”, did not mean to say the physical realities of our human sexuality, but instead some “all-encompassing vision”, including such modern buzzwords as “individual disposition” and “social consensus”.
Ultimately, of course, your argument is that Paul did not disagree with homosexuality for people who were “actual homosexuals”, or as you put it, “acting in accordance with what is ‘natural’ in terms of [their] sexual orientation”. I do not understand where you find these entirely modern notions in an ancient Jewish writer, but I will, for the sake of argument, grant you temporarily that they are present.
So, it would be “natural” for someone to act “in the nature of their sexual orientation”, and thus it would be moral. Now, I doubt you would find disagreement if I were to suggest that it would be immoral for someone to act lustfully even if it were in their nature to do so. Being in one’s “nature”, as you use the phrase, is again a modern distinction. It is in our healthy nature, as the ancients (and particularly the Philosophers) understood, to procreate. Anything holding that back would be illness, and early editions of the American Psychological Associations books on mental illness included homosexuality as a mental illness for this very reason (among others).
But suppose for a moment that Paul was giving the meaning that you suggest. How does this tie in with: “But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” (1st Corinthians 7). Until recent decades, no one understood marriage to mean “two people who love each other and commit to each other for life”. That definition does not include procreation, child rearing, sexuality, or parental responsibilities. Marriage is very simple and is never, not once, in all of Scripture, seen as a potential relationship between two people of the same sex.
So, if Scripture (and Paul particularly in those verses) suggests that marriage is the moral outlet for sexual activity, how does one reconcile homosexuality, which can never be done in a (non-post-modern) marriage?
Still beyond this, how does one know their “natural” is “homosexuality”? And how does inconclusive and often over-trusted data in the soft science of psychology give us the authority to rewrite Scripture as it changes?
I do not see any possible reason to take your interpretation over traditional interpretations except for the purpose of pursuing a politically correct agenda. And if that is the purpose, that would be heresy, definitively.
January 27, 2013 at 10:36 AM
jimbrownson
You infer that I am saying a great number of things that I don’t actually say in the book. And you leave unanswered many of the problems I try to identify. For example, what exactly does Paul mean when he says that “nature” teaches that it is shameful for a man to wear long hair? What are the implications of this statement for life today and our contemporary understanding of “nature?” And what does this claim mean for the interpretation of Romans 1? My book is an appeal to actually talk more about the texts–in this case, Paul’s appeal to “nature.” The temptation is always to jump to where the argument is leading–I’d like to invite folks to simply spend a bit more time with the text itself.
I wouldn’t expect anyone to change their mind on the interpretation of Romans 1, based only on what I said in this blog. it simply is an invitation to explore these issues further–which I try to do in the book.
January 27, 2013 at 12:18 PM
Ephirius
You say them in the thread, which is the only source of information I have on your views. What does Paul mean by nature? Certainly not a modern notion of it. Probably an ancient one. Here is but a taste of the various meanings of the term:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/10/whose-nature-which-law.html
Do you know how long the hair was on men back in Israel at the time? Since men, by nature, are physical laborers, it would be imperative that their hair not go down to their waste, as was common on women of the day. It would simply get in the way. On the other hand, Paul frequently discusses on a woman’s hair is a glory to her. It is feminine. That we accept it on men today should tell us something about our culture, not the ancients.
My concern is that, thanks to the feminism movement of the past century, you are inferring things about men and women that were never there in the original text. You reveal your hand in this matter when you suggest that Paul meant by nature “social consensus”, to which I once again appeal that no one in the first century Jewish world believed any such thing would determine whether something was True or not, such as the morality of sexuality.
But again, if sex is only moral within the confines of a marriage, which is plainly a relationship exclusive to men and women, why would any homosexual activity be moral for anyone?
Whereas your interpretation revolves around the definite meaning of Paul’s use of the word “nature”, homosexuality is discussed at length elsewhere, and sexuality and marriage as well. The discussion to have today should involve an analysis on the purely social/cultural worldview shifts we have had and how they taint us with bias towards our ancient forefathers.
January 25, 2013 at 3:43 PM
Paul
Thoughtful, maybe.
Faithful, no.
Heresy, yes.
January 25, 2013 at 10:21 AM
wayne
Reblogged this on waynebowerman.com and commented:
One more Thought provoking post from Dr. James Brownson