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Holy Week resources and reflections

A progressive myth

 

“People in Biblical times had no concept of inborn, loving, mutual same-sex behavior,” we are told in today’s sexuality debate. Not so! The Biblical period was full of normalized, loving, mutual homosexual behavior.

Many in the Biblical period believed that same-sex desire was ordained by God, such as Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, where Aristophanes speaks of men who are “born” to be “the willing mate of a man” (192B), and when two such men find each other, “the two of them are wondrously thrilled with affection and intimacy and love, and are hardly to be induced to leave each other’s side for a single moment,” and if Hephaestus should offer to weld them together forever to share a single life both here and in Hades, the two would gladly consent, this being what they had always yearned for (192D-E). Aristophanes concludes that the way to happiness is “to give our love its true fulfilment: let every one find his own favourite, and so revert to his primal estate.” (193C)

During Roman times, Callicratidas makes a speech worthy of “Brokeback Mountain,” where he pledges lifelong undying love for his male lover, and calls for their ashes to be mixed together after death:

“I pray that it for ever be my lot to sit opposite my dear one and hear close to me his sweet voice, to go out when he goes out and share every activity with him. But, if … illness should lay its hold on him, I shall ail with him when he is weak, and, when he puts out to sea through stormy waves, I shall sail with him. And, should a violent tyrant bind him in chains, I shall put the same fetters around myself. … Should I see bandits or foemen rushing upon him, I would arm myself even beyond my strength, and if he dies, I shall not bear to live. I shall give final instructions to those I love next best after him to pile up a common tomb for both of us, to unite my bones with his and not keep even our dumb ashes apart from each other” (Pseudo-Lucian, Erōtēs 46.4–10).

Callicratidas calls this “the honourable love inbred in us from childhood,” and asks, “Why then do you censure this as being an exotic indulgence of our time, though it is an ordinance enacted by divine laws and a heritage that has come down to us?” (48.2–3).

More quotes from Callicratidas: “… love of males (ho arrēn erōs), I say, is the only activity combining both pleasure and virtue” (31.1). “For marriage is a remedy invented to ensure man’s necessary perpetuity, but only love for males is a noble duty enjoined by a philosophic spirit” (33:1). “Let no one expect love of males in early times” (35:1), because intercourse with women was necessary to preserve the species, but love of males is superior because it came after humans had leisure for thought (35:5). That’s why Callicratidas argues that animals do not have such love, because they are just beasts, but “for men wisdom coupled with knowledge has chosen what is best, and has formed the opinion that love between males is the most stable (bebaiotatous, “steadfast” or “secure”) of loves” (36.10).

Plutarch (Erōtikos 750 C.) narrates a speech by Protogones, who claims, “Genuine love has no connexion whatsoever with the women’s quarters. I deny that it is love that you have felt for women and girls. …” Instead, he continues, such love is “effeminate and bastard” and should be forbidden as unmasculine: “But that other lax and housebound love, that spends its time in the bosoms and beds of women, ever pursuing a soft life, enervated amid pleasure devoid of manliness and friendship and inspiration — it should be proscribed.”

One may protest that these quotes are exceptions, and that the majority of homosexual practice was abusive pederasty or prostitution between non-equals. That reading of the evidence is wide open to challenge.

As I read writers such as Suetonius, Juvenal, and Martial, what I find most often is bisexual behavior between equals. I also find Juvenal ridiculing men having public same-sex marriages (“see the blushing bride!”) and describing their desperate attempts to conceive children. Granted, in quotes from comedians like Juvenal, one cannot be sure how much is truth, but if there were no truth in them, their jokes wouldn’t work.

As for pederasty, it seems to have been often practiced, not like today’s pedophilia, but within a loving relationship with a mentor. Seeing as how gay men are reportedly seven times more likely to have been molested as a child than heterosexuals (Holmes et. al., “Sexual Abuse of Boys,” JAMA 280 [1998]: 1855–62), how can we condemn this ancient Greco-Roman institution designed to mentor young men into manhood?

Greco-Roman culture (and the New Testament writers) clearly knew about beliefs in homosexual orientation and mutual homosexual love that were much like the beliefs advocated by today’s progressives. In this context, the New Testament’s command against unchastity in all of its forms was totally scandalous, unreasonable, and downright counter-cultural — just like Jesus’ call to follow him today.

TOM HOBSON of Belleville, Ill., a PC(USA) pastor for 27 years, has degrees from Gordon-Conwell (M.Div.) and Concordia (Ph.D.), and is currently seeking a call.

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