re arsenokoitai nt meaning of meta exegesis conviction of sin part ii let me return to the question stipulating that paul meant his use of arseonkoitai to refer more or less exactly to the levitical prohibition of male male sex in order to bring out the problems most clearly i ll also stipulate what i think is far less plausible that paul coined the term for this usage the question i want to turn to is what that would mean for paul s readers and for later christians this should be shorter than my last note as we will see that this question rapidly confronts us with some of the major divisions within christ s body and i am not trying to open the gates for flames across any of the terrible chasms that separate any of us from our fellow christians my own biases loosely characterizable as liberal will be evident but i am not grinding an axe here so much as trying to get all parties to see that it may be hard to reach closure when the issues involved strike at the heart of what we each in our own different ways see as crucial to the gospel of christ so stipulating paul s intent the immediate question is how can his readers understand this intent and following on that question there is a second one what is our proper action if we do manage to understand him since paul gives not a single clue about his meaning in the text of st corinthians there are two positive answers and one negative to this question a paul or apollos or someone in the apostolic community has conveyed to the corinthians the then traditional jewish condem nation of homosexual behavior and paul expects them to be sufficiently well tutored by this tradition that he needs no futher explanation i should note that there is no evidence in the letter or in corinthians for such a supposition b the spirit will teach us what paul means or if not paul what god means behind paul s inspired word choice c we don t know and cannot guess to within any better pre cision here than for comparison in the parallel use by paul in the same passage of the word pleonektai those who have more if you think that areseonkoitai is obvious from its roots try cutting your teeth on this word the neb translates it as grabbers or even methusoi drunkards at least this has the advantage of being a common insult so that at least there is some hint as to its meaning the three positions more or less if i can be allowed some exaggeration for the sake of argument define a classical catholic attitude towards tradition one form of protestant sola scriptura and a liberal critical demand for evidence all three positions have strengths and weaknesses ad a it is unquestionable that the gospel was preached in and by the community of christ s disciples and their successors and that our nt scripture itself emerges from this communal tradition but it s also the case that we know little or nothing about this tradition until almost a century after paul which is to say that we have access to the tradition only after several generations of possibly confused transmission the scripture is itself our only documentation of the tradition in the critical era ad b if we are not born of water and spirit to revert to john in an attempt to explain paul then we have no more hope of under standing the gospel than nicodemus had neither the traditions of men nor the vain elevation of our own reason can prevent the spirit from blowing where it will the paraclete is a kamikaze but the downside of protestant belief in the efficacy of the spirit as our guide in scripture is that the wing of protestantism that takes this most seriously is also the most fragmented over divergent understanding supposedly derived from the clear word of god note classical lutheran calvinist and anglican thought constrains scripture to be read within tradition even while reserving judgment against tradition out of scripture the more bizarre forms of i will read scripture my way are primarily a fringe aspect of cultic protestantism the main problem with this approach is that there is apparently no means for one person to convey to another what that one may feel is teaching received from the spirit and history shows incredible conflict between christians on this point each in his own mind convinced that he is led by the spirit no one can seriously urge point b without some sense of its potential for setting christian against christian to what purpose ad c the critical approach has the distinct advantage that when it can reach a conclusion it can lay out the data in a way which is open to all the weakness is an obvious corollary this is not usually possible if i may say a word here out of my own already acknowledged bias one complaint against critical methodology is that it dissolves faith but surely a faith that cannot honestly face the evalu ation of evidence has problems which mere theology is helpless to address anyway there is a serious and unfortunate possibility of schism between liberal and conservative positions mostly on the basis of extreme zealots of positions b and c a catholic sense of authority and tradition tends to constrain arguments of b contra c to secondary position so that despite horrendous strains rome is not as likely to find these issues as ultimately divisive as the protestant world will and anglicans will i predict muddle through on the via media attempting to give each position its due but no more than its due second question suppose tradition tells us and lots of spiritual christians tell us and critical thought at least admits as possible that paul is refering to a flat universal levitical prohibition against male male sex what then again we can abdicate our personal responsi bility to tradition and let it dictate the answer but it s precisely where inherited traditions are not questioned that they re most dangerous we have examples of christ questioning the pharisees and their use of tradition despite his urging in matthew that we are to heed them we have examples of peter and more radically still paul jettisoning the traditions that they were led by the spirit to call into question jesus and peter and paul do not so much throw out tradition as subject it to radical criticism on a couple of very basic grounds the weightier demands of the law justice and mercy and good faith matthew and on these two commandments love god neighbor hand the whole law and the prophets also matthew if there is a fundamental because derived from christ validity in the challenge to some traditions a validity that led the first generation to go so far as to waive application of the torah to gentile converts vastly beyond anything that is directly deducible from jesus reported words and deeds it signifies to me a certain failure of the imagination to postulate that only the traditions that we have specific challenges against are in fact open to challenge all traditions passed through men are traditions of men that god may lead us even so that these traditions are a source of our spiritual instruction i will freely grant but tradition is inherently human and inherently corruptible and given the fall corrupt nothing in it is immune to challenge when the spirit shows us a failure in justice mercy and good faith nothing may ultimately stand unless it does follow from love of god and love of neighbor i am perfectly willing to grant that i could be blind to my own sin that the spirit may have taught another what she refuses to teach me or i am too dense to learn that tradition might have value here but what i know of tradition is that on one occasion some superstitious christians appealed to justinian after an earthquake in asia minor and scapegoated sodomites as the cause of the earthquake so that legislation was passed making homosexual behavior a capital offense if that is in accord with the gospel of christ then i am no christian that is human tradition at its most hateful and vicious and i see nothing all that much different in all the unbidden eruptions onto usenet of people who are quick to condemn but slow to understand if that is the leading of the spirit then i want no part of it but what i have found in obedience to the lord is that i am myself totally dependent on the witness of other christians for the truth that lives in the body of christ and i say to all who doubt that gay christianity is from god what gamaliel said to doubting pharisees who would have suppressed the earliest church be careful how you deal with these people if this enterprise this movement of theirs is of human origin it will break up of its own accord but if it does in fact come from god you will not only be unable to destroy them but you might find yourselves fighting against god acts all i ask is that you listen to your traditions and read your scriptures with a mind and soul open to the spirit and to the past history of our first christian witnesses willingness to challenge tradition and other readings of scripture though read with all the authority of scribes and rabbis and a submission to the declaration that all must depend on the love of god and neighbor then study the evidence learn the history of christians oppressing christians out of their traditions and eagerness to judge where jesus and paul tell us not to judge and let the witness of the spirit in the lives of your fellow christians including those who are not of your preference in theology guide you towards god s truth michael l siemon i say you are gods sons of the mls panix com most high all of you nevertheless or you shall die like men and fall mls ulysses att com like any prince psalm there s a certain ambiguity in your discussion of position a as to whether you re speaking of tradition in paul s time or ours i think there are two ways to use tradition one is to say that when paul and his readers share a tradition it makes sense to interpret his words in the context of that shared tradition that s what makes me think that these arguments over words turn out to be silly we know that paul came out of a background that was rather puritanical on sex everything else he says on sex is consistent with that background the tone of his remarks on homosexuality in rom is consistent with that background even if the words in the sin lists aren t the most general terms for homosexual activity and it seems to me that there s some evidence that they are not they are just one more piece of evidence for something we would probably be willing to believe with no evidence at all that paul shares the common jewish rejection of homosexuality but when you identify a with the catholic position that s rather a horse of a different color the catholic position involves a continuing church tradition arguments specific to that tradition might be we can get guidance on how to interpret paul s original meaning from tradition e g the way the church fathers interpreted him and we gain confidence that his prohibitions still apply in our time because of the universal judgement of the church between his time and ours i think this is a somewhat different use of tradition a radical protestant might be willing to use known st cent tradition to illuminate paul s original meaning but not use the catholic position to answer the question of what our own attitude to homosexuality should be clh
