“A Different Reading of Romans 1” by Hendrik Hart, More Light Update, May 1991. Outlook, November/December 1991. “Romans Revisited”, The Other Side, July/August 1992.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
G. K. Chesterton was gay. Franz Kafka said so. He said that Chesterton was “so gay, one might almost believe he had found God”. Of course, Kafka was not saying that Chesterton was homosexual. “Gay” was not a common synonym for “homosexual”, itself, a term not coined until 1892. But what today is taken for granted in interpreting Kafka on “gayness” often is missed in interpreting the Bible on “gayness”. As a Stanford classicist observes, the study of sex in antiquity suffers “from the methodology of reading contemporary concerns … into texts and artifacts removed from their social context”. (Winkler) While “Evangelicals recognize that the Bible is culturally conditioned” (Nicholls) and, as a brain researcher notes on “The 700 Club”, acknowledge that “Science shows us how we have been reading the Bible wrongly” (MacKay), most evangelicals do not yet operate in these frames when it comes to “homosexuality”. Most evangelicals today merely fall into step behind the heterosexism and homophobia in the dominant popular American culture and read these back into the Bible. It was with this culture-bound ignorance and hostility in mind, as well as his view that the Bible does not address homosexuality as we understand it today, that Calvin Seminary biblical scholar M. H. Woudstra added a note of pastoral concern in background papers on homosexuality for the International Council on Inerrancy: “I think, as those who love the inerrant Word of God, we want to be doubly sure that we read that Word correctly. Jesus says that His yoke is easy and His burden light. Let us make sure that as we put a burden on anyone such as complete celibacy we do so because we are 100% sure that this is Jesus’ burden. Otherwise we should leave this to the individual conscience.”
The Other Side, an evangelical magazine of social justice, along with periodicals of Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns and the equivalent organization for New York Episcopalians have published a fresh interpretation of the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. This is the reforming work of distinguished philosopher Hendrik Hart at the Institute for Christian Studies, a Calvinist graduate school in Toronto. He first advanced these ideas at the evangelical Greenbelt Festival in England in 1990.
Hart calls the traditionalist view of Romans 1 the “centerpiece of all Christian homophobia” and offers what he grants to be a provisional alternative in “barest outline”. According to Hart, Paul sees “the uniqueness of the gospel” to be in the fact that beyond all boundaries, anyone – including homosexuals – who trusts in the mercy of God, as Habakkuk preached, can find life, can be saved. Hart believes that “the passage about God’s wrath (1:18-32) may not be Paul’s but an anti-gospel [and as other scholars have noted] a classic diatribe against pagans common in the Hellenic synagogue communities: and an approach to arguing with which we are “not unfamiliar” in Paul’s letters.
Hart suggests “ten angles” that show that 18-32 “need not be taken as words of Paul”. Among these are the following. Agreeing with those who say that 18-32 is “a common synagogue condemnation”, Hart asks: “If Paul opposes preaching law and wrath, would he first take that line himself?” He reasons: “The thrice-repeated ‘God gave them up’ is not obviously Paul’s view of wrath because in 11:32 he argues that ‘God’s giving over’ was intended to show people mercy’.” Hart understands Paul’s argument to be structured as thesis (1:16, 17), antithesis (1:18-32), his response to the antithesis (2:1-3:20) and an expansion of his original thesis (3:21-4:25). “Paul may be eager to show this argument against homosexual behavior as unworthy of the gospel”, says Hart. “The ‘you’ without excuse in Paul’s view may be the believer who oppresses Romans with unbridled homophobia [for] as soon as the section ends Paul vehemently exclaims: Therefore you (accuser) have no excuse! And rejects all arguments based on law and condemnation. … Who is this ‘you’? Does this person come from nowhere? Or is this the person who states 18-32?” Hart takes “the context” seriously: “Romans is written to a community struggling with traditional interpretations of the Old Testament’s attitude to sin and a new interpretation of those who followed Jesus”. Hart senses that “the important phrase ‘against nature’ better fits a Hellenic synagogue’s language than Paul’s.”
That yet another reasonable interpretation of Romans 1 can be put forth against the oppressive traditionalist opinion – and by an orthodox scholar of Hart’s standing – underscores what a mistake it is to merely repeat the traditionalist opinion and assume that one thus has Paul’s mind in the matter. In weighing Hart’s interpretation, we’d do well to remember evangelical Pauline scholar F. F. Bruce’s “one rule of thumb that”, he said, “may safely be used in interpreting Paul today, or in applying his teaching to our own situation. It is this: In view of Paul’s passionate concern for spiritual liberty, any interpretation or application that promotes liberty is more likely to be right than one that curtails liberty”.
In view of all of this as well as the long history of “tradition that nullifies the word of God”, as Jesus put it, it behooves serious Christians to consider any reasonable biblical interpretation that is open to the grace of God instead of the disgrace of oppressive tradition in the alleged name of God.