Clear
and consistent?
A
little while ago I bought a second-hand copy of a book called
‘Christian Attitudes to Homosexuality’ by Peter Coleman [ ]. In
his introduction he wrote: “From the time of Paul until the middle
of the present century, the Christian attitude to homosexual
behaviour remained unchanged and seldom questioned.” Something
about the italic handwriting of a previous owner on the inside cover
of the book made me look the name up in Wikipedia. Sure enough, the
previous owner of the book was yet another very successful priest
whose career had been cut short because of his 'homosexuality'
'Traditionalists'
write books with titles that suggest permanence and consistency in
the area of Christian sexual ethics, for example 'Unchanging Witness
The consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and
Tradition'. Often, though not in this particular book, there is
barely a mention of the relevant history of the 2000 years of
consistency.
In
a more formal survey of the subject (and to prove that perhaps we
have moved on a little since since the 1960's) - 'Some issues in
human sexuality A Guide to the debate' 2003 includes this in
paragraph 1.2.25: 'because of the five core beliefs about human
sexuality previously mentioned, and because it has been believed that
it has been specifically condemned by a number of biblical texts (the
usual six suspects listed!) homosexual activity has been consistently
condemned within the Christian tradition.' This passage went on to
criticise the historian John Boswell, ending up by criticising
Boswell's unconvincing attempt to find a same-sex blessing in an
ancient rite, in such a way as to cast doubt on the more substantial
and challenging parts of Boswell's more important book and
contribution.
Despite
the withering rebuke of Boswell by Professor Southern, and however
one regards the 'specific condemnation' of the 6 texts claimed by
'Some issues …' , I really can't see consistency in the
condemnation of homosexuality in the nearly '2000 years' of Church
history. Consistency is an odd claim, and one wonders why it appears
in so many books. Indeed it comes across as 'Everything else in
this subject is chaos: but one thing is clear: this has been the
Church's consistent teaching for 2000' years'.
But
the teaching on homosexuality has been far from clear. For example
about halfway through the '2000 years' Peter Damian, a theologian,
coined the term 'Sodomy'. Confusingly, it came to mean every sort of
sexual activity apart from procreation, apparently ending up as a
sub-section of 'luxuria' in the penitential
scheme. This suggests to me a willingness to deal with sin on an
industrial scale not seen in the previous 1000 years of the Church's
history. And actually the '5 core beliefs' mentioned above
didn't really come together until the time of Thomas Aquinas. This
would seem to cut down 'the consistency over 2000 years' claim
somewhat.
One
might almost be led to believe by 'Some issues …' that the 6 texts
were quoted by Christian moralists from the time of the early Church.
Boswell argued, convincingly I think, that when they did quote
Scripture it was the Epistle of Barnabas (whose allegorical reference
to hares was actually condemning pederasty), and occasionally
Leviticus. He also pointed out that to begin with the Church hardly
did any condemning of homosexuality at all.
This
appears to be true of the earliest early Fathers: their sin lists
included pederasty and trafficking, but not 'homosexual behaviour'.
1 Clement had a paragraph on the fate of the city of Sodom, and the
prime example of sin he picked out was the double-mindedness of Lot's
wife. The Didache, in its comprehensive lists of sins, mentioned
pederasty and 'sexual deviation' but there was no explicit mention of
homosexuality. Ignatius doesn't appear to have mentioned sexual sin,
being more concerned with sin against Church order. Polycarp doid
mention homosexuality among the sins for young people to avoid. He
quoted Paul and put homosexuality in the context of lust. Aristides,
in his Apology, is supposed to have refered to homosexuality, but
since his examples were about Roman gods having sex with mortals (eg
Jupiter/Zeus and Ganymede) it sounds again more like pederasty or
rape. Papias did not refer to homosexuality at all. 2 Clement
didn't mention it. The Shepherd of Hermas mentioned adultery, but
not homosexuality.
In
Justin Martyr's 1st Apology there is a disturbing
reference to homosexuality, probably in this instance actually
meaning trafficking, mutilation, prostitution and pederasty, which he
condemned partly because of the possibility of having sex with one's
own child. (We seem here to be a very long way from 'clear and
consistent'.)
With
regard to the '5 core beliefs' mentioned in 'Some issues ...',
Gregory of Nyssa, Justin Martyr, Epiphanius of Salamis, and Irenaeus
of Lyons all believed that sexual congress occurred only after the
Fall so that it was not one of the 'good' things God created.
John
Chrysostom apparently believed the same - and at last I am able to
mention a Christian thinker who clearly and unequivocally condemned
homosexual behaviour! So also, by the end of the 2nd
Century, did Tertullian.
'2000
years of clear and consistent teaching', then, is pushing it
somewhat. When I tried to engage with an Evangelical history
lecturer on the subject, the earliest example of Church teaching on
homosexuality he came up with were the Irish penitentials. There
would appear to be a gap here. There is not much actual evidence
that the very early Church condemned homosexual behaviour.
Absence
of evidence is not decisive of course, especially when dealing with a
period where surviving written sources are rare. I don't actually
think there are many Conservative Evangelicals who have read much
early Church history, and I think those in the Catholic tradition
tend to see Church history, as it were, from the Church's point of
view: the result is that early Church history is seen as a
continuation of the Book of Acts. It tends to be non-religious
historians who are good at noting the influence of individuals,
social trends, politics and economics, and take seriously the 'what
ifs' that historians sometimes consider when engaging with other
types of history. Most of the people in the pew, and probably quite
a few in the pulpit, have a hazy view of the history of the Church,
and this may be another reason why the 'clear and consistent' idea
has not been challenged.
I
believe until the history of the early Church has been revised, we
will continue to miss a crucial point in the debate about the
Church's attitude to homosexuality. I believe when historians have
dug a bit deeper, they will find that the Church actually got the
issue wrong from the beginning. If so, it would follow that the
first thing the Church will need to do is to apologise for the
(1700?) years of persecution it has supported and to some extent led.
The
replacement of 2000 years by a possible 1700 may give the clue as to
where I am going. In 323 CE the Emperor Constantine made
Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire,
replacing the traditional Roman state gods, and putting what might be
described as a peculiar stamp on the type of Christianity that
emerged in the Mediterranean Church. Throughout the 4th
Century the state passed a number of harsh laws against homosexual
behaviour, the Emperors seeing this as a way of strengthening the
moral fibre of the nation. This began an uneasy double standard of
the Church encouraging repentance and the state threatening
execution.
At
this point I want to mention two important books that have shone some
light into this neglected area of Christian history. The first one
is actually about medieval history: 'The
Formation of a Persecuting Society Power and Deviance in Western
Europe 950 -1250' by R.I.Moore [pub. Blackwell 1987/2003] He
presented in broad brushstrokes a vision of the 'Medieval
Renaissance' somewhat less rosy than the traditional one set forth in
what might be called the traditional view. His initial monograph
arose from a question he had asked his students: 'Why did persecution
of heretics take place in the 13th
Century?' to which the main answer he got was 'there were more
heretics.'
The
need for persecution, he decided, was in the minds of the
persecuters. The mechanisms of interrogating potential heretics
meant that vigorous denial meant they were part of an evil
conspiracy. Elaborate conspiracy theories saw society under threat
from moslems, jews, lepers and homosexuals, all regarded as the great
'Other' that threatened society. The persecution gradually spread
its influence over the whole population of Europe.
This
was a time when feudal society was being created and a money economy
emerging. Also secular and Church governments were trying to
consolidate power – and to turn on a common 'enemy' helped. 'The
destitute, filthy, scheming, sorcery and satan inspired jew' was
portrayed as a stereotype that looked remarkably similar to lepers,
heretics etc. This was the context in which the Church began to
expand its powers.
Boswell
had already pointed out that in general there had not been a great
deal of action against homosexuals in the early Middle Ages. Moore
provided an explanation of how and why this changed. It is also
interesting to note that this was the period when the Church at last
decided it should become more involved in the administration of
marriage. Moore's book was a monograph, and no doubt historians will
argue the issue for half a century before coming to any hasty
conclusions, but as an historian firmly embedded in a secular
approach Moore has moved the issue away from the kind of Church
history which just sees monasteries and dioceses.
It
seemed to me that this phenomenon, the Church drawing strength from
social and economic events which were not under its control, might
also have happened in the early history of the Church.
Again,
this particular history has not, as far as I could see, been written
up, not by an historian at any rate. The
construction of homosexuality' was written by David F Greenberg, an
anthropologist. [Pub. University of Chicago Press 1988]. Many
accounts of early Christianity focus on ecclesiastical matters.
Greenberg put these within the context of politics, sociology and
economics. He depicted an Empire under increasing strain after it
stopped expanding.
One
of the new features of Roman society was to be found among the rich
as well as everybody else, a yearning for asceticism. As early as
the 240's CE the Emperor Philip the Arab made a law against
pederasty. Greenberg points out this trend took place before
Christianity began to emerge as a main contender among the many
religions.
By
this time, the third century CE, the Empire was in chaos. There were
serious incursions by Germanic 'barbarians', invasions by a revived
and powerful Persia, and deeply divisive civil wars as an
increasingly frequent way of replacing Emperors became in effect
trial by battle. There was even a 'Brexit', the provinces of
Britannia having to be re-conquered by Rome.
At
the end of the 3rd Century, people's reaction to
insecurity was to look for new gods to give them certainty. The
population of the Empire fell as the economy collapsed. When law and
order was finally reestablished by Diocletian, it was at a high cost,
an army double the size, requiring ever greater taxation. According
to Greenberg there were a whole series of reactions which fit in with
any society that was under pressure in this way. Here he drew on the
work of [] He even offered the opinion that any society like that
would be expected to have laws against homosexuality.
It
was in the context of an Empire and a Church reacting and influencing
one another that Church doctrine on homosexuality emerged. Boswell
claimed that the Roman Empire had a gay community. As more and more
research has been done on sexual behaviour in the Roman Empire, that
seems unlikely. The contempt with which Roman society regarded the
'passive' partner in such a relationship has been shown in numerous
examples by Craig Williams in 'Roman homosexuality'. Williams also
explicity [] supports Greenberg's thesis regarding the completely
different social background.
We
simply don't now how in the early Church the bishops reacted to the
issue of same sex couples. Constantine's successors banned any such
marriages in 342 CE. We do know that one of the most influential
Patriarchates, that of Alexandria, was the source of strong views on
the matter at an early stage. Clement of Alexandria wrote against
it, for example. But the most important influence was perhaps the
Jewish Elexandrian scholar Philo, in the first century CE. He
insisted that the Old Testament Scriptures declared homosexual
behaviour a sin. Indeed he linked the sin of Sodom with homosexual
behaviour long before Christian scholars thought of the idea.
If
any Christians did defend the idea of same sex marriage, they would
have been few and far between. They would have been silenced, I
think, by the rising spirit of ascetism, which saw celibacy as the
Christian ideal, while even the institution of marriage for a time
just hung on by its fingernails. The monasteries, with a growing
interest in the practice of Church, would have had dealing with
homosexual behaviour in mind as they began to figure out ways for a
community of men to get closer to God. The thought that perhaps this
was one of the features of Jewish Law that Christians did not
necessarily need to follow may not have even been aired, particularly
in the age of persecution and martyrs.
I
have not mentioned the words St Paul wrote in his letters at the
start of the '2000 years'. There is some doubt about what they
mean, and considerable doubt about their relevance given our modern
understanding of sexual orientation. Where some traditionalists and
and some revisionists see certainty of meaning, from an historical
point of view I am inclined to see a need for the more humble
'probably', and therefore greater willingness to keep an open mind.
It
seems to me that the early Church failed to see that this was another
issue where the Old Testament laws did not apply to Christians.
Given the extreme view of sexual purity that they took, they may not
have seen it as something worth discussing. But they should have
done. And in the light of modern understanding of sexual
orientation, the Church needs to think again, acknowledge its role in
1700 years of oppression, and be willing to think again. Just as in
Roman times (on this issue) it seems the Church will need to follow
the lead of society and the state, but for our own clear and
consistent reasons.
Norman
Pratt©September
2019
