Even Gentile intellectuals could have followed Paul’s argument here. Apart from the more skeptical Epicureans, most Greek and Roman intellectuals recognized divine design in nature;62 many reckoned as absurd the alternatives, namely, that the universe resulted from chance or human activity.63 Various philosophers affirmed that the supreme deity was present in and known by his works.64 Many of these writers also affirmed, like Paul, that one could infer much about God’s character from creation. For example, some believed that God’s character transcended merely human religion,65 or that deities were benevolent and cared for people.66 Paul would not have endorsed all their inferences;67 many of these philosophers still accepted their culture’s belief in many deities. But many Stoic thinkers by Paul’s day ultimately believed in one divine designer behind everything (including the other gods).68
Thus, after arguing for the necessity of a cause,69 the late first-century Stoic philosopher Epictetus argues from the structure of objects that they reflect a designer and not mere chance:70 “Assuredly from the very structure of all made objects we are accustomed to prove that the work is certainly the product of some artificer, and has not been constructed at random.”71 Anyone who observes the facts of nature, yet denies the existence of a creator, he opines, is stupid.72 Epictetus believed that human beings, and especially their intellect, most complex of all, particularly revealed the designer.73 Many others (including Cicero and Seneca) concurred: humans,74 and especially their intellect,75 were inexplicable apart from design. Jewish thinkers in the Greek world had adapted such ideas for a purer monotheism centuries before Paul,76 making his missionary job much easier.77 Jewish intellectuals like Paul, however, believed that such reasonings simply confirmed what was obvious in Genesis.
Thus, humanity “knew” God, but because they refused to “glorify” him (1:21),78 they ended up exchanging his “glory” and image for that of mortal, earthly creations (1:23). They were God’s image (Gen 1:26–27), but by corrupting God’s image in worshiping things other than God they gave up and lost his glory (cf. Rom 3:23).79 God punished their failure to act according to the truth by delivering them to their moral insanity (1:21–22).80 Jewish people considered idolatry the climax of human evil.81 Even Greeks, whose deities looked human, disdained the Egyptian animal images also mentioned here.82
Sexual Sin (1:24–27)
Paul has narrated that humanity exchanged the truth about God for idolatry (1:19–23), which he here calls a “lie,” the opposite of truth (1:25). A direct consequence of this behavior was that God handed them over to defile their own bodies sexually (1:24), including in same-sex intercourse, which was “against nature” (1:26–27), i.e., (for a Jew) against the way God created things to be. In the primeval era of the “creation” (Rom 1:20), God revealed his character and made humanity in his image (Gen 1:26–27); yet they distorted God’s image by worshiping other images (Rom 1:23).83 Exchanging God’s truth for lie involved idolatry (1:23, 25), but also a perversion of right sexuality in God’s image to distorted sexuality (1:24, 26).
Once they had perverted God’s image directly, they distorted it also in themselves. God’s image in humanity included the complementarity of male and female (Gen 1:27),84 and the distortion of his image led to same-sex intercourse against “nature,” which for Paul meant against the way God had created humans to function. (That Paul has Genesis in mind is made likelier by the distinctive terms he employs for “male” and “female” in Rom 1:26–27, terms that appear together prominently in Genesis, though not exclusively; cf. Gen 1:27; 5:2; Mark 10:6.) Possibly the penalty “in themselves” (1:27) involved not only the physical consequences of their behavior but the further effacing of God’s character and image in them (cf. 1:19, 24; contrast 8:23). Greek myths portrayed their deities committing all kinds of immorality, including sexual immorality,85 behavior that Jewish apologists connected with Greek male lifestyles and often ridiculed.86
Fusing the Horizons: Homosexual Activity
Scholars diverge fairly widely in their views about how to interpret Paul in 1:26–27, although a majority recognizes that Paul condemns homosexual behavior generally. Interpreters differ still more widely over how (and whether) to apply Paul today. In view of this disparity, we need to understand the historical context of Paul’s argument.
Homosexual Activity in Antiquity
Homosexual activity was common in the ancient Mediterranean world.87 It was usually bisexual rather than exclusively homosexual.88 Most of those who courted or molested boys planned to eventually marry women and have children of their own. Although various Greek sources report its occurrence among Gauls, Persians (especially with eunuchs), and others, the dominant cultural influence for it was Greek. This practice pervaded Greek society and was even attributed to deities.89
Homosexual practices are attested in Rome from an early period, but Greek influence multiplied these practices in Roman society, especially among the leisured aristocracy. Romans had often denounced these practices as due to Greek influence, and some Roman thinkers continued to reject the practice (see further discussion below), but it was now widely entrenched within aristocratic Roman society. Paul is thus not simply playing to Roman Gentiles who opposed the practice because of their cultural backgrounds. Indeed, Paul writes in Greek to a majority audience of Greek speakers in Rome, probably most of them immigrants from, or recent descendants of those who had immigrated from, the east. Their shared antipathy to homosexual practice is rooted not primarily in traditional Roman values (although it undoubtedly appealed to them) but in Jewish beliefs also adopted by Gentile adherents to Judaism and the early Christian movement.
As in most cultures, particular features of a society are linked with other characteristics of that society. In the Greek (and to lesser extent,