In Romans 1:18-28, Paul relates the idea that God gives people over " in the lusts of their hearts" toward "uncleanness to dishonor their bodies among themselves" (v. 24), which he also describes as "dishonorable passions" (v. 26).
The terms "uncleanness" and "dishonor" likely refers to sexual activity that is not sanctioned by God and is not in accord with a noble use (cf. 9:21, where honor and dishonor likely refer to bowls that both serve food and those that hold refuse). Hence, the phrase "to dishonor their bodies among themselves" likely refers to using their bodies in a way that was not sanctioned by God and against the noble use for which they were made.
Paul continues to describe this ignoble use by stating that their "females exchanged the natural function for that which is against nature." He uses the word θῆλυς "female" here instead of the regular word for "woman" as he also uses the word ἄρσεν "male" in the text rather than the regular word for man. Paul does this because he is appealing to the creation account and drawing from it the idea that worshiping the right God causes right worship in one's sexual activity. He then argues from that implicit premise that worshiping the wrong god causes, by divine judgment, wrong worship in one's sexual activity.
It is clear here that Paul means to suggest, from both his allusions to the creation account and his explicit statements that there are natural and unnatural "uses" of the body in sexual activity, that the primary purpose of the sexual act is procreation. This is the natural use of the body in sexual activity, i.e., that which is in accordance with φύσις "nature," the pattern God has set in place from creation (Moo, Romans 115). One might even translate the terms here "divinely ordered" versus "disordered," given Paul's worldview that nature is not a materialistic phenomenon but that which is purposed for specific functions by God in creation.
As I have argued before, "their" in the phrase "their females" is masculine and could refer to a generic description of pagans or a more specific description of the males having illicit sexual relations with their wives. Either way, however, it refers to women who are not engaging in sexual activity for the purpose of procreation, and therefore, covers any sexual activity, homosexual or heterosexual, in marriage or outside of it, that does not carry with it this possible outcome.
Hence, the females engage in non-procreative sexual activity, either with their husbands or in other ways (traditionally thought to be lesbianism from the phrase ὁμοίως τε καὶ in v. 27), and the males engage in non-procreative sexual activity either both with women and men or at least with other men here. This is why it is described as males abandoning the "natural function of the females."
In order to understand what Paul is arguing one must go back to Genesis 1, where God's work in creation is all about undoing the state of chaos described in v. 2. The world is not a place that can be inhabited by human beings and therefore there are no human beings. God orders the world into a place that will support human life and then begins to reverse chaos by placing human beings who are in covenant with Him upon it. But He both purposes and commands them to join Him in His work of filling up the earth with other human beings in covenant with Him. In this way, they function like an image in a temple, joining with God in their activity so that chaos is removed from the realm in which their activity is accomplished. The creation mandate, therefore, is tied to who they are as God's images and whether or not they join with God in the creative activity of undoing chaos, specifically the state of a disordered and humanless world.
Their job is to partake in the right order of their sexual activity and therefore join with God as He works through their ordered sexual activity to fill up the earth with His covenant human beings. This is the basis of human worship toward God in Genesis 1 and throughout the rest of the Bible.
Hence, the disordered use of sexual activity is a rebellion toward God and all humanity. Since life-giving in one's sexual activity is the foundational act of worship for human beings partaking in the sexual act, it most often functions as a synecdoche for all morality. Likewise, its opposite, sexual immorality, non-procreative sexual activity, functions as a synecdoche for all immoral activity.
What Paul is saying in Romans 1, therefore, is that the loss of worshiping the true God is evident in the loss of the role of the image, which has to do with the creation mandate, i.e., the proper function of the female as created by God for the man so that he might join with Him as His image and be fruitful and multiply and fill up the earth.
"In many Jewish polemical works, the gross sexual immorality that the Jews found rampant among the Gentiles was traced directly to idolatry . . . The verb "exchange." which has been used twice to depict the fall into idolatry (vv, 23, 25), is now used to characterize this tragic reversal in sexual practice" (Moo, Romans, 113-14).
The section is filled with wording and allusion to the creation account, but the most striking, perhaps, is the fact that the glory of God is "exchanged" for ὁμοιώματι εἰκόνος "a likeness of an image" of corruptible man and other creatures. The use of the words "likeness and image" recall the fact that man was made to be like a likeness and as an image of God (Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans, 213-14). Instead, man has made God in his and the creatures under him likenesses and images. Thus, having distorted who God is, God gives him over to be distorted and no longer function as His image.
Hence, to lose the right God is to lose the right role one takes on in his or her sexual activity. Therefore, those without God are first and foremost portrayed as engaging in sexual immorality (Rom 1:18-28; Eph 4:17-19), false teachers are characterized by it (2 Pet 2; Jude; Rev 2:14, 20), the works of the fallen flesh (Gal 5:19; Col 3:5), and sanctification is described as its opposite (Acts 15:20; 21:25; 1 Cor 6:13; 7:2; Eph 5:3-5; 1 Thes 4:3; Heb 12:16; 13:4).
This should seem obvious even when pagans have children it is not to make them worshipers of the true God in covenant with Him, but rather they make those who will partake in false religion, and therefore, even their procreational sexual practices have an element of anticreational and immoral activity essential to them, as they are not meant to make covenant children but either children of the devil or no children at all.
The role of the image is linked to the worship of the right God, and humanity has fallen in its sin precisely because it has turned from their Creator and worshiped the creation instead. All such worship begets chaos, as creation is not the source of life, and so their sexual practices produce more chaos rather than life and order.
This provides a foundation for what Paul will later argue concerning man falling short of the "glory of God" and a seeking after this glory once again in his redemption through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.
I totally agree with you Brian and would like to add to your point. Most modern patriarchal and anti-birth control movements fail because the first waves of feminism removed sex from provision which made it easy for each following wave to separate sex from procreation. The first two world wars provided the cultural upheaval liberal writers could not accomplish themselves. contraception was illegal and socially unacceptable but even when premarital sex is done au natural and results in pregnancy and then marriage it reduces provision into a non sexual part of marriage. This was the problem "without a name" by Betty frieden in her book the feminist mystique
ReplyDeleteExactly. It seems to also suggest, according to Rom 1, that our feminist culture has a different god than the God who has revealed Himself in creation and the Bible.
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