Romans 1:18 - 32 & Leviticus 18

 Paul is following the basic outline of a suzerain covenant in general  & the outline of Lev. 18 in particular. 

Shema & Decalogue (Rom. 1:18 - 20) God’s Image testifies to His attributes & Law.  God created people. His temple bears His Image & runs according to his Law & Gospel.  This corresponds to Lev. 18 : 1 & 2.

A - Rom.  1:18 - 19. God’s wrath falls on those who suppress His image.  

B - Rom 1:20 - For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made so that people are without excuse. 

What is the teleological intent of the created order?  To serve as an epistemic warrant on par with God Himself? No!  It’s purpose is to serve as a pointer to God who is Himself the only sufficient epistemic warrant for all faith & practice. 

The natural teleology (design & function) of the Created Order is to serve as a testimony to ***God’s*** existence, attributes, & authority which alone serves as the necessary, reasoned, & principled epistemic warrant for interpreting reality in a manner congruent with the objectively true state of affairs. 

Historical Prologue related to the issue at hand. (21- 23), corresponding to Lev. 18: 3 - 5

Rom. 1:21–23 - For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 

The text describes the unnatural use of the created order.  People, even though in truth they knew God exists, chose to suppress God’s existence, attributes, & authority & substituted their own.  The result was idols crafted for pseudodeities that looked like people & animals.  

Prohibitions (24 - 28) corresponding to Lev. 18:6-23 

Rom. 1:24–25 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 

As a consequence of their idolatry, God proverbed them via allowing them to do sex acts that resulted in worship of pseudodeities like Molech & Chemosh, worship which involved human sacrifices.  ***Twice*** this activity is related directly to pagan idolatry.   Paul is writing with the Greco-Roman temples in mind just as Moses wrote with the ANE pseudogods in mind.

If this text is about all illicit heterosexual relations, since it corresponds to Leviticus 18, then where is the condemnation of Abraham & Sarah’s admittedly incestuous relationship?   

Why mention this? Because the section of Leviticus 18 that covers heterosexual relations is not infrequently cited as a condemnation of both general & cultic relationships that are incestuous.  The authors of Scripture are frequent critics of the sins & character flaws of the biblical heroes.   Yet Abraham is never cited as an example of a man in chronic unrepentant sin , namely his marriage to Sarah.   

Moreover, if the comboxes at the Christian Post & the attitude expressed by Publisher at Reformation Charlotte are to be believed, there are people out there who think that if David & Sam are unrepentant relative to their marriage they are to be regarded as unregenerate men.  If true, then by parity of logic Abraham was unregenerate because he was unrepentant about his marriage to Sarah - yet the Bible teaches otherwise. 

All heterosexual relationships are obviously not in mind.  Paul has the sort of activity that went on in & around Greco-Roman temples in mind, the sort of thing he discusses in the back end of 1 Corinthians 6.

Note: The next level of sexual iniquity addressed is profane homosexual sex for idols. Lev. 1:26 - 27 corresponds to Lev. 18:22

Rom. 1:26–27: For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 

If you interpret “natural” to mean “heterosexual” or “heteronormative” then you wind up with the UNNATURAL moral use of the Created Order as the epistemic warrant for human sexual ethics.  

That is often the result of running to Gen. 1 & 2 to understand Rom. 1:18 - 32 & Lev. 18 - but Paul’s source material is Lev. 18 not Gen. 1 & 2.

The NATURAL teleology of the Created Order is to serve as a testimony to ***God’s*** existence, attributes, & authority which alone serve as the necessary, reasoned, & principled epistemic warrant for interpreting reality in a manner congruent with the objectively true state of affairs.   The UNNATURAL teleology of the created order looks to human anatomy & physiology to do sexual ethics, & the only road to the tradition-bound view of the word “natural” does exactly that, thus  committing 4 epistemic, logical, & exegetical fallacies : Is-Ought, Vicious Circularity, Overspecification, & Category Error. 

If used as a response to a homosexual who appeals to his genetics to warrant his sexual ethics, the result for the apologist is Special Pleading.  

Rom. 1:28 - And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.  Rom. 1:28 corresponds to Lev. 18:23 (& is the proper referent for Jude’s “strange flesh” not homosexuality). 

Document Clause & Witnesses (Rom. 1:29 - 32 - Kitchen sink immorality that proverbed Sodom & Gommorah, Gibeah, Egypt, Jerusalem, & 2/3 of Rome.  This corresponds to Lev. 18:24 - 30. 

Avoiding all logical, epistemic, & exegetical fallacies results in God prohibiting cultic homosexuality not *all* homosexuality.   In addition, since 1 Cor. 6 is related to Lev. 18 & Rom. 1 is an inerrant & infallible commentary on Lev. 18, it too, as well as I Tim. 1 - refers to *cultic* homosexuality not *all* homosexuality.

In the next article, we will look briefly at 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 & the way it has been used to drum people out of the churches & insinuate that homosexuals are to be presumed unregenerate. 

Until then, God bless us all, & “Go & sin no more.”