Recovering from the Abuse of Romans 1
What if Romans 1 doesn’t criticize what or whom you’ve been told it does?
We just published our episode of Found in Translation about Romans 1:24-32, and it was so rewarding to dismantle the anti-LGBTQ propaganda that has managed to infiltrate so much Christian teaching. And we didn’t have to do it by dismissing the text as outdated or irrelevant. We did it by surfacing what it actually has to say that’s liberating and healing.
I’m writing this as a supplement of that discussion and basing it on what I taught about it for my church community last summer. It’s a little longer than most of my posts, but I hope it’s worth sticking with it.
Here is what I see as the thesis statement of Romans overall:
16 You see, I’m not shamed by the triumphant message since it is the power of God for restoration for everyone who is faithful, for Jews first and then also for Greeks. 17 God’s justness is revealed by it because of faithfulness that results in faithfulness, just as it is written, “The just will be alive because of faithfulness.”
I’m sure that sounds different than you’re used to if you’re familiar with Romans. Here’s what I mean by ‘triumphant message.’ It’s translating euangelion, which is traditionally translated as ‘gospel’ or ‘good news.’ It literally means ‘good message’ and was used specifically of a message announced publicly when rulers and military leaders returned to a city after victory in battle. A herald would be sent ahead to announce the victory and the ruler’s impending arrival. The writers of the Bible took this word and applied it to Jesus’ victory of a different kind. The use of ‘triumphant message’ here is intended to communicate the full meaning of the word in context.
Lots of different people have lots of different ways to summarize what message constitutes the triumphant message, or ‘the gospel.’ Paul defines it explicitly in Galatians 3—
6 Just as “Abraham faithfully trusted God, and it was recorded as a credit for him toward justice,” 7 so then, know that those who receive the Life-breath by faithfulness, they are heirs of Abraham. 8 Scripture, expecting that God is making other peoples participants in justice by faithfulness, announced the triumphant message in advance to Abraham: “All peoples will be praised as worthy through you.”
Again, if you’re familiar with the Promise to Abraham, you’re probably used to seeing ‘blessed’ there. Part of the confusion that can be caused by the word ‘blessed’ in English is that there are two unrelated words in Greek (and Hebrew) that are both translated as ‘blessed’ in English. This one is not the adjective, which means something like ‘happy’ or ‘gratified.’ This one here is the verb, which can mean ‘speak well of’ or ‘praise’ or ‘give well wishes.’ I’ve translated it here as ‘praise as worthy.’
Romans doesn’t ever define the triumphant message in a single sentence, but the whole point of the book is to stop excluding others and forcing people to conform in order to belong. Here’s a snippet that demonstrates that idea, especially focused on not earning belonging by keeping Torah because the Promise to Abraham was for EVERYONE.
13 You see, the promise to Abraham, or to his descendants—him being the heir of the whole world—was not through Torah but through justness from trustful faithfulness. 14 If they are heirs because of Torah, faithfulness has been voided, and the promise has been counteracted. 15 You see, the Torah produces anger, but where there is no Torah there is also no stepping around it. 16 That’s why it is from trustful faithfulness, so that it is based on generosity, for the promise to be secure for all the descendants—not only for whoever receives it from Torah but also for whoever receives it from the faithfulness of Abraham, who is the father of us all 17 from the perspective of the God to whom he was faithful (just as it is written, “I have appointed you father of many people groups”), who gives life to the dead and names things that don’t yet exist as if they exist already.
Here's another way Paul says it:
8 Owe nothing to anyone except love to each other. Whoever loves the other fulfills Torah. 9 You see, the part that says, “Do not engage in marital infidelity, do not murder, do not steal, do not crave” (and any other directive) is summarized with this saying: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love doesn’t produce harm to the neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of Torah.
I’m leading up to verses 26-27 here, so follow the basic flow of verses 18-25 real quick with me.
Paul says God is angry because of injustice and treating people as unworthy of love, being disrespectful to both God and God’s children, which makes it difficult to see the truth that the way to goodness for all is by loving each other, that the promise that all people will be spoken of as worthy is a promised and guaranteed outcome. In fact, worshiping objects sets the objects above humans, dehumanizing the people in the process. It makes people seem to have less value even than objects. It’s exactly the opposite of God’s vision for Creation where everyone and everything is valued and reconciled.
The Triumphant Message, what Jesus is all about and what Paul is trying to get the church to be all about, is about human dignity and treating each other with dignity and with love. The alternative is a spiral descending into humiliating and harmful ways of being. The “truth” is that all people groups are praised through the trustful faithfulness of Abraham and Jesus. The “lie” is that some people don’t qualify for that praise because they don’t meet all the requirements of the scriptures. Paul describes that spiral like this:
24 For that reason, God gave them over, regarding the desires of their hearts, to uncleanness, to treating their own bodies with contempt. 25 These people exchanged the truth of God for the lie and abased themselves in tribute to and served as representatives performing rituals for the creation instead of the creator, who is praised throughout the ages. Amen.
Now we’re finally to the most controversial part: Romans 1:26-27. (Content Warning: sexual abuse and assault)
Just like the verses right before them, these two verses are about demeaning, humiliating experiences being imposed by others and for the benefit of others. They are being treated as lower even than objects.
26 Because of that, God gave them over to demeaning experiences, for as the females among them exchanged being sexually used by males in natural ways for that which is beside nature
Read that again, keeping in mind that “being sexually used” is not the same Greek/Hebrew words for mutually consensual sex. Those words for intimacy are ginosko (Greek) and yada (Hebrew) and literally mean ‘to know.’ This one has a one-sided, objectifying, dehumanizing quality to it. “Being sexually used” is not my interpretation. That’s the literal definition of it.
The church has not historically taught that this verse was about women having sex with women. Not until the last century or two anyway.
This verse is about women being used by men who were not their partners. So, as a means of contraception, the sex was not vaginal. They were objectified and used solely for the men’s gratification through nonconsensual, anal sex.
Most likely, this was in the context of the worship of the idols of fertility gods, and it involved domination and power dynamics. ‘Natural sex’ referred to vaginal intercourse, and ‘unnatural sex’ was indicating anal sex. The context in the surrounding verses of multiple references to words like ‘abase themselves’ and ‘demeaning’ and ‘humiliating’ and degrading’ indicates this was not consensual, loving, partnered sex but was part of a ritual in which men used women with whom they had no relationship, and—maybe—the women didn’t fight it (which doesn’t constitute consent) because it was seen as necessary for pleasing the gods, or maybe the women did fight it and were unequivocally, violently raped.
In an article in the Journal of Biblical Literature, David Murphy (p. 221) writes,
“According to the standard view, the “females” of Rom 1:26b have sexual intercourse with other females. According to an older interpretation, however, they engage in nonprocreative sex with men. First, when χρῆσις/χράομαι (“use”) denotes a sex act, its subject is the man, and the context involves penetration. It is doubtful that χρῆσις in Rom 1:26b refers to female–female sex. Second […] three additional ancient writers […] deem male–female nonprocreative sex “unnatural.” Third, discrepant views among earlier Byzantine writers (Anastasius, Arethas, and Greek redactors of Pseudo-Methodius’s Apocalypse) reinforce how the female–female interpretation was not the prevailing one in the early centuries. Fourth, linguistic features of Rom 1:27a more readily support the anal–oral interpretation than the female–female interpretation.”
Murphy, D. (2019). More Evidence Pertaining to “Their Females” in Romans 1:26. Journal of Biblical Literature, 138(1), 221-240. https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1381.2019.522595
So, the issue was not about sex between women in a consensual, loving relationship. In fact, it didn’t involve sex between women at all. It was about women being used as sex objects to gratify dominating men and appease unloving idols.
Remember, it doesn’t stop there.
27 likewise, after the males abandoned the natural sexual use of females, they were inflamed with their appetite for each other, males performing humiliating acts with males and receiving from among themselves the inevitable repayment for their straying.
Essentially, the dehumanizing sexual domination is insatiable. The violence escalates. After getting a taste for sexually abusing women, humiliating and dominating women as less than objects, they decided to start ‘climbing the domination ladder’ and abusing each other that way, humiliating other men for their own gratification. Thus, the abuse was spread even among the abusers. The abusers became victims of the kind of world they themselves built.
Paul continues from there and says that they chose to abandon God’s path of love and inclusion, and God let them go. The path they chose instead was one of spiraling dehumanization and domination.
28 And just as they knowingly decided not to hold close to God, God handed them over to a degrading mind to do things that aren’t appropriate, 29 having been filled with every injustice, disgraceful behavior, greed, and abuse and being full of spite, murder, competitiveness, deception, and malice, being whisperers, 30 people who speak badly of others, who are horrifying to God, violent, arrogant, frauds, inventors of harm, who disregard parents, 31 who are uncomprehending, disunited, cruel, and without loving-faithfulness.
Not a single one of them is about sex, especially not about mutually consensual and loving sex. That suggests verses 26-27 weren’t about sex either. They involved sex, but they were about harming, humiliating, dominating, and dehumanizing other people, which ultimately dehumanizes the perpetrators.
That’s what connects all of these. They are all about causing harm, ‘othering’ people, refusing to include people fully, finding ways to manipulate and control people, and ultimately, treating people as less valuable even than objects.
The church’s stance over the last century or so to humiliate, exclude, dominate, and even do violence to people who engage in loving same sex relationships or consensual sex between members of the same gender (or people with any other characteristic we have decided disqualifies them from full inclusion) fits the description of the list of condemned behaviors in verses 28-31. This section of Romans 1 doesn’t criticize what and whom we’ve been told it does.
Let’s be people who love and praise everyone as worthy, rejecting the domination games and virtue signaling, even when it’s done by following rules from the Bible. Love and inclusion are what Abraham, Jesus, Paul, and all of us who follow their path are about. We follow them and fulfill Torah by loving our neighbors; otherwise, we might find ourselves described as people who “knowingly decided not to hold close to God.”
