Homosexuality in the Bible and the Law

There is a considerable amount of biblical data which bears on the subject of homosexuality. Apart from explicit mention of the practice of Leviticus (where it is referred to as an “abomination,” and one of several offenses which merit the death penalty),¹ there are two incidents recorded within the Old Testament where homosexual behavior assumed a particularly aggressive form (Gen. 19:5–9; Judg. 19:22–28); in both cases the judgment of God fell upon the offending cities.²

It is of interest to note that D. S. Bailey, who has devoted considerable attention to these passages in both his works, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition and Sexual Offenders and Social Punishment,³ and whose views at this point are noted in D. J. West’s Homosexuality,⁴ is not convinced that the Hebrew word “to know” (yada’) has a sexual connotation in these passages. This view, however, according to Derek Kidner, has attracted more attention than it deserves, and he has little difficulty in his commentary on Genesis in exposing its inadequacies.⁵

In the New Testament, the practice is explicitly referred to as contrary to the law (1 Tim. 1:9 f.), and those who indulge in it show themselves to be under God’s judgment (Rom. 1:24 ff.) and are excluded from the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9 f.).

Some attention, nevertheless, must be paid to the contexts to which these verses belong. In Leviticus 18, the sin of homosexuality (or sodomy) is listed along with bestiality, child sacrifice, adultery, coitus with family relations and with a wife during menstruation. In Leviticus 20 it appears as a capital offense, together with child sacrifice, wizard-consultation (?), cursing of parents, adultery, incest, bestiality, and other improper unions. Turning to the Corinthians passage, we note that the catalogue of vices which exclude a person from the kingdom of God includes fornication, adultery, effeminacy, idolatry, theft, covetousness, drunkenness, reviling, and extortion. Equally comprehensive are the lists in the Timothy and Romans letters. In the last mentioned, Paul refers to the homosexual sin as a symptom of God’s wrathful withdrawal from man who refuses to acknowledge him as God.

What is manifestly clear from these passages is that homosexuality is not singled out for separate treatment or given special prominence. It is one sin—one symptom—among many, and our alarm at its presence in society ought, perhaps, to be no greater than our alarm over the presence of adultery, drunkenness, covetousness, boastfulness, insolence, gossip, and so on. It might, however, be argued that, judging by St. Paul’s location of this vice in his Romans catalogue (vv. 24, 26, 27), it was a particularly conspicuous symptom of sinful man’s abnormality.

Moral Assessments

The challenge has been posed by R. Atkinson in his Sexual Morality⁶ that it is not immediately obvious that homosexual relations between consenting adults in private should be classified as immoral. In the course of his discussion he indicates that the whole issue turns on the practice being “unnatural” and that this, in turn, presupposes that we are certain as to the purpose of sex (whether, for instance, it is “conceptional,” “relational,” or both). Atkinson’s complaint is that this question is not capable of an empirical demonstration. And while admitting that a theological foundation may have to be invoked, he makes clear his belief that such a maneuver can be of no value because theology is a more than doubtful occupation!

Atkinson’s argument brings before us two questions of fundamental importance: (1) What is the basis of our moral assessments? and (2) What is our assessment of the role of sex in human life?

The answer to the first, from the evangelical Christian viewpoint, is the revealed Word of God, the Bible. It is from this source that God’s mind and intentions are clearly learnt. These will accord with our created natures and therefore we will appreciate their reasonableness, but it will not necessarily make it possible for us to demonstrate beyond dispute the truthfulness of the Christian position to those who wish to oppose it.⁷

Sex And Procreation

The answer to the second question may broadly be given in “conceptional” or “relational” terms (or a combination of the two). The Roman Catholic position is that sex is primarily “conceptional,”⁸ but many theologians, particularly within the Protestant tradition, remain unconvinced that such a view adequately reflects the biblical emphases. In this connection Brunner, for instance, has written:

To the scandal of all ascetics, the New Testament nowhere explicitly bases sexual intercourse upon procreation, but always upon the natural impulse.… Christian ethic must stand for the independent meaning of the erotic and sex element within marriage as an expression of love, not merely as a means of procreation.⁹

A similar opinion has been expressed by G. F. Thomas: “At its best, the sexual act is a physical expression of the desire of two persons to share their lives and purposes with one another in love.”¹⁰

While this emphasis does, we believe, do something to restore a biblical perspective, it must not be interpreted to mean that where there is such love—even between members of the same sex—then the union is fulfilling the purposes of God!¹¹Genesis 1:26–28 stands behind Genesis 2:24. There is an antecedent naturalness which is defined physiologically and expressed in the basic act of procreation within which the “relational” goal is pursued. This is not to reinstate the “conceptional” basis of sexual polarity as the Church of Rome understands it, but it is to say that such a natural possibility in the Bible provides the framework within which the relational bond is fulfilled. This is everywhere assumed by the New Testament writers.

The task of commending such a Christian perspective is, as we have indicated, not free from problems, but it must be undertaken nevertheless.¹²

Homosexual practices are symptoms of a disordered life, though this is not to deny the occurrence of homosexual attraction, at periods quite intense, in most people’s experience. Such practices further stand, as we have seen, under the explicit condemnation of God, along with numerous other activities and attitudes.

Irrespective of whether the homosexual practice is only temporary (Kinsey’s inquiries indicated that some 37 per cent of males and 13 per cent of females had had some homosexual relations at some time by the age of 45),¹³ or is a more permanent pattern of behavior (4 per cent of males and less of females, according to Kinsey), the question of “blame” must be faced. Either homosexuality arises from a congenital condition (a view indicated by the use of alternative terms such as sexual inversion, interosexuality, hermaphroditism, the third sex, all of them implying that the homosexual is neither completely male nor female but a mixture of both sexes),¹⁴ or it is precipitated by environmental factors (the view favored by most modern research).¹⁵ On either count, however, the individual homosexual would appear to be more sinned against than sinning. This will not make homosexuality any less a sin, but it may help towards an understanding of the true nature of the plight of the homosexual. He is caught up in the complex entail of a world and a society estranged from God (as we all are), and this exhibits itself in his particular case either as a congenital condition predisposing him towards homosexuality, or in a complex set of social and domestic circumstances which achieves, though less permanently, perhaps, the same result.

To understand this situation we must ultimately trace it back to its historic source in Adam’s defection and its domestic as well as environmental consequences (Gen. 3). But even when we admit this vice-like grip of an ancestral catastrophe, we are not permitted either to condone or to excuse any attitude or action which arises from our distorted natures. We are confronted in the Bible with the paradox that though we cannot but fall, we are reproached (both in the Scriptures and within our consciences) for falling. In secular philosophy this theological problem has its counterpart in the tension between determinism and freedom of the will. Homosexuality is a sin, and those who engage in it commit sin.

Forgiveness Is Needed

All homosexuality needs the forgiveness of God, and all homosexuals for whom the problem is not a passing phase precipitated by some exceptional set of transitory circumstances may stand in need of the regenerative and restraining work of God’s creative Spirit and continued opportunities for counseling and direction, if a permanent alternative to homosexuality is to be found.¹⁶

Need it be said, however, that the spiritual resources which Christians experience are not simply “available” to enable us to straighten up our lives so that we may live more comfortably in this world, but are for all those who with repentance and true faith “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33).

The Hellenistic world into which the Church of the New Testament was born afforded plenty of examples of homosexuality. To the Greeks, homosexuality between men, and pederasty in particular, were commonplace and even represented the ideal expression of love (Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus provide interesting illustrations of this outlook).¹⁷ Indiscriminate infatuations and homosexual prostitution were, however, not encouraged. To the Romans, on the other hand, “homosexuality is depicted as a luxurious vice, to be practiced together with rape, sadistic torture, and every form of revolting orgy.”¹⁸

Under Roman law homosexuality was apparently punishable under the lex Scantinia (c. 226 B.C.), but it was in the third century that the jurists extended the lex Julia de adulteriis (c. 17 B.C.) so as to protect minors and to restrain those desiring to commit stuprum cum masculo. Legislation continued under the later emperors, including the edict of Theodosius, Valentinian, and Arcadius (A.D. 390) which made sodomy punishable by death (burning), and the two novellae issued by Justinian I (483–565) to supplement his revision of the Theodosian Code (438). Both these novellae (538, 544) were directed against homosexuality but their aim “was not so much to punish as to bring offenders to repentance.”¹⁹

D. S. Bailey’s survey of the history of the attitude of the Christian Church to the problem of homosexuality²⁰ has led him to the conclusion that, so far as the Church of the first few centuries was concerned, it regarded male homosexuality as “gravely sinful but not as deserving exemplary treatment.”²¹ With reference to the Middle Ages he points out that the offense was in general regarded “as properly cognizable by the Church, which imposed spiritual penalties but rarely surrendered offenders to the civil magistrate.”²²

So far as British legislation is concerned, the laws of 1533 imposed the death penalty for sodomy and, while Continental legislation was softened under the Code Napoléon, the British legal position has remained severe right up until the twentieth century (the laws of 1861 and 1885 did modify the severer measures of 1533 and 1828). With the publication of the Wolfenden Report (1957) and the success of the subsequent legislation this whole scene has changed quite drastically, so that the practice of homosexual relations between consenting adults in private is now no longer a criminal offense.²³

The Problem Of Legislation

The Christian regularly finds himself in a difficult situation. He seeks to live his life according to the mind and will of God revealed in the Bible, and yet it is a life which must be lived in a society which may not, perhaps, embody a great deal of the Divine Law within its civil laws. If this society happens to be a democracy, he finds, in addition, that it might be quite constitutionally possible for him (in cooperation with others) to reduce this gap and bring the social legislation more into line with the perspectives of the Bible. But at this point two questions arise which he must face: (1) Should a secular society be urged to adopt a biblical morality? and (2) What is the precise function of law within a society?

The first one must be answered in the affirmative in the sense that the will of God is God’s will for all men; that, quite apart from the word of the Gospel, it is the task of the government to implement the general will of God (Rom. 13:1–7); and that a failure to do this will only bring the wrath of God down upon that particular society (Amos 1:3–2:3). Where, as in the situation described in First Peter, there is no possibility of the Christian’s altering the legal or social character of a society by direct means, he must simply testify to God’s will by his life (First Peter, passim). But where there are ways of influencing directly the structure and patterns of our society, we will use these to the full and claim the “right to interfere.”²⁴

The second question has been the subject of an important debate which began with Lord Devlin’s criticism of the Wolfenden Report.²⁵ Atkinson’s discussion of the problem which Devlin raises is a useful one.²⁶ He points out that two distinctly different conceptions of the function of law are involved. The Wolfenden Report (and subsequent legislation) adopted a conception of law which was espoused by J. S. Mill in his famous essay “Liberty” (1859). Mill pleaded that legislation should not be directed against an individual’s activities unless they were clearly affecting adversely his neighbor.²⁷ Devlin’s conception of the role of law, and it is one that would be shared by a great many Christians, is that it is to be creative and should foster ideals which the social majority approves of. Atkinson admits that the choice between these two views is not easy. He says that Devlin’s arguments “add up to an impressive expression of a possible attitude to law and morals.”²⁸ His own preference is for Mill (and so Wolfenden), although he admits that he does not think that it is possible to refute Devlin decisively. “Here is a point,” he concludes, “at which one has to choose one’s side.”²⁹

But even if one’s sympathies in this vexed question were not to lie on the side of Mill and the Wolfenden Report, this would still not, in itself, mean that the treatment of homosexuality as a criminal offense is the right form of legislation. The issues are complex, and certainly once the deterrent and remedial aspects of punishment are considered, the record of traditional British legislation is disappointing. It may well be, as Walker and Fletcher suggest,³⁰ that the only appropriate judicial attitude towards homosexuality practiced in private between consenting adults is to treat it as a capital offense! If we are not prepared to return to this Old Testament ruling, then, perhaps, a strong case can be made out for a revision along the lines of the Wolfenden Report. This is certainly the view of H. Thielicke, who says, “It is our conviction that homosexuality is primarily an ethical question, insofar as it is not a matter of the seduction of youth or the exploitation of relation of dependency or a recognizable danger of infection. Therefore it is not the concern of criminal law.’³¹