Dr. Manfred Brauch and Dr. William Hertzog, II
at the American Baptist Assembly in Greenlake, Wisconsin

Part Three - Manfred Brauch
The Exclusiveness of the Gospel
I Corinthians 6:2-11; I Timony 1:10

A. Context and Flow of Argument

I want to begin discussion and reflection on I Corinthian 6:9-11 and I Timothy 1:10 with consideration of the context and flow of Paul's argument, particularly in I Corinthians. The passage of First Corinthian's 6:9, which contains the words that have generally and historically been understood to refer in some way to homosexual persons or behavior: malakoi and arsenokoitai is part of Paul's extended critique of Corinthian Christians' attitudes and actions which are incompatible with the fact that they are dwelling places of God's spirit, (3:16-17) throughout this letter, there are indications that the Corinthian Christians believed themselves to have achieved a spiritually exalted place, which made bodily acts, including those held to be immoral in both Greek and Jewish teachings, irrelevant.

The more immediate context consists of the strong condemnation of a case of incest and the Corinthians arrogant affirmation of it, 5:13. A severe rebuke against taking the internal grievances to a court of law for adjudication, 6:1-8, and an unqualified rejection of an apparently libertine openness to and participation in prostitution. In light of some Corinthian Christians' participation in heathen temple ceremonies, chapters 8 through 10, the prostitution referred to in 6:12 through 20 may be temple prostitution, but that is by no means certain.

In the midst of this series of judgments, Paul confronts them with this rhetorical question: "Do you not know that wrong doers, literally, the unrighteous, will not inherit the kingdom of God? 6:9. And then gives an illustrative list of the kind of persons and their practices which he has in mind: fornicators, idolatrists, adulterists, thieves, malakoi, arsenokoitai, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers."

The behaviors cataloged in this vice list were formerly practiced by some of the Corinthians says Paul 6:11, but within the context of their new life in Christ, they have been washed, sanctified, justified, that is, they have been placed in a new relationships with God through Christ and that new reality is incompatible with their former ways of life.

Paul's judgment of the practices and attitudes which are unacceptable to God concludes with an exhortation to glorify God in their bodies, since they now belong to God, 6:19 through 20. This forceful conclusion, with its emphasis on the totality of their being, including the physical dimensions of life, as subject to the lordship of Christ, demonstrates clearly that for Paul, contrary to the Corinthians libertine spirituality, how we use our bodies, and particularly in the area of sexuality, is of critical significance.

2. The terms malakoi and aresenokoitai

Though there is clearly a measure of uncertainty about the precise connotation of these terms, particularly in isolation from one another, they're used by Paul in juxtaposition here, their inclusion in a context where major attention is given to sexual sins, and their use and meaning in other Hellenistic Jewish texts, provides a strong basis for interpreting them as designations of same-sex relations.

The basic meaning of the term malakoi is soft, but it appears in Hellenistic sex as a pejorative epithet for the passive partners, mostly young boys or young men in homosexual activity. In Greek society, young men often sold themselves as mistresses for the sexual pleasure of older men. Hence, some interpreters translate the term as male prostitute. New Revised Standard Version, New International Version. Though pedarasty was clearly the most common form of homosexual activity in the Greek world of Paul, the view that Paul's judgment against homosexual behavior is restricted to this particular form, that is, the use and/or misuse of boys or young men for the selfish pleasure of older men, is untenable I believe, for several reasons:

1. There is no evidence to support the claim that same sex relations between consenting adults was unknown in the world of Paul. Even in pedarasty, given the likely ages of between 17 and 12 and 17, according to some scholars, the presence of mutuality and consent and pleasure for both parties, cannot simply be ruled out of court.
2. Paul's description of male-to-male homosexual behavior in Romans 1 seems to me to be all inclusive. It is based on mutual passion and desire.
3. The inclusion in Romans 1:26, a female, same sex practice, as I and others understand it, in the depiction of homosexual behavior as against nature, that is contrary to God's design, points to the existence of homosexual in the ancient world beyond its most prevalent form, pederasty. It would have been both unnecessary and incomprehensible for Paul to name it if in fact it was no known to exist. Sex between females was almost everywhere condemns, though clearly not in a vast amount of literature and the Patristic interpreters of Romans 1:26 uniformly interpret this text as a rejection of female same-sex relations.
4. The juxtaposition of the term asenocoiti with malocoi clearly expands Paul's view beyond a limitation to pedarasty, particularly in light of Paul's Jewish context. To that term we now turn.

The compound word arsenokoitaiis not found outside the new testament prior to its use by Paul here and then in the Pastorals. It consists of two words, literally male and sleeping with or intercourse. The latter was common vulgar, four-letter slang for sexual intercourse. As a compound, it could possibly either mean males who have sex and designate male prostitutes of all sorts, or those who have sex with males and designate homosexual men. In light of the term's ambiguity and because of its juxtaposition with malacoi, it has been argued by Scrugs and others that it refers to the active, older partner in a pederast relationship.

Such a limitation of the meaning of this term can, however, I believe, not be maintained in view of the linguistic evidence from Paul's Jewish context, as well as the fact that in First Timothy 1:10 the term arsenokoitai is used by itself and can therefore not be limited to a designation of the necessary older partner in a pederast relationship. It has been shown by numerous studies, that the compound word, arsenokoitai, is a translation, perhaps coined by Paul himself, of the Hebrew term, mishkav zakur, literally, lying with a male derived directly from Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 and used in Rabbinic texts to refer to homosexual intercourse. Such a connection between Paul's term, the Hebrew Leviticus text and the Rabbinic interpretation of that text, is confirmed by the Septuagint Greek translation rendering of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 as follows:

meta arsenos ou koimethese koiten gynaikos
("with a man do not lie [as one] lies with a woman")

hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gynaikos
("whoever lies with a man [as oone] lies with a woman")

The point is that arsenokoitai and coiten, both in the text of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are used together in those two lines in the language with a man do not lie as one lies with a woman, or, whoever lies with a man as one lies with a woman, a cenois coiten. This background for Paul's compound word seems all too obvious and needs to be acknowledged I believe as the most appropriate determinant of Paul's meaning. Paul's use of this term, whether or not originally coined by him, presupposes and reaffirms the judgment of the Levitical holiness code and all of Judaism and early Christianity, that same sex relations are seen as contrary to God's will.

The inclusion of the same compound word, in First Timothy 1:10, in the list of vices, which includes everything from lying to murdering one's own parents, behaviors in that text are characterized as "contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel," makes it absolutely clear that for both Paul and the early Christians, homosexual behavior was understood to be morally wrong and that wrongness had nothing to do with ritual purity codes and thus outdated and irrelevant. Well, then, this wrongness was determined by the good news of God's creative transforming power in Christ which sought to restore all of our human brokenness, towards that image of God in and for which we are created as male and female.

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