New Testament Ethics and Ours: Homosexuality and Sexuality in Romans 1:26-27

Abstract

AbstractThe article contains one major argument and one minor argument. The major argument is that Paul's strictures against homosexual practice were taken over from Leviticus and expressed a concern of Hellenistic Judaism. The Pauline subversion of the web of relations which make sense of the exclusion of homosexual practice within the Jewish tradition, however, leaves the Pauline strictures without warrant. The minor argument is that we in the twentieth century should subvert the Pauline assumption of difference between males and females, again adopted from the Jewish tradition, and that we should recognize a continuum and variety. Such a subversion would allow us to see ourselves primarily as people rather than primarily as either men or women.