Romans 1:18 - 32 Again

Romans 1 exposited correctly avoids Is - Ought reasoning, Vicious Circularity, Overspecification, Category Errors, Special Pleading, & Straw Manning what God says about the purpose of the created order without substituting visible human, animal, & botanical images for God’s invisible attributes & authority. 

Reading “natural” as “heteronormative” or “hegemonic male headship” or “Protestant” or “White” or “like me” & “unnatural” as “anything that varies with the (alleged) created order results in up to 6 logical, exegetical, & epistemic fallacies.

1.  Is - Ought/Naturalistic Fallacy:   Deducing L) abstract moral principles by way of the state of the created order. 

2. Vicious Circularity: Substituting the (alleged) pattern of creation as a sufficient epistemic warrant for ethical reasoning in lieu of the existence, attributes, & authority of God replaces the one thing that can provide the necessary truth conditions to know, understand, & interpret reality objectively & correctly & reason & behave accordingly with an epistemic foundation that is reasoned & principled - but not necessary.  Therefore when asked questions about the morally natural understanding & use of the human image, the disputant is left to look at the human image to answer questions about it when the moral or immoral teleology of the human image is the very thing in dispute.  

This is a viciously — not virtuously circular reasoning process.   God’s image & authority alone provides the necessary, reasoned, & principled global truth conditions to do ethical reasoning.

3. Straw Man -  God says that the purpose of the created order is to testify to His existence, attributes, & authority.  This is part of an indictment for suppressing His image & authority & substituting the image & authority of people, pooches, & pear trees to do ethical reasoning. 

The world (& way to many Christians) says that might be true, but natural refers to the state of the created order & unnatural is whatever the opposite is.   

So, the disputant reads & understands what God says then tells him what He really said & repeatedly remonstrates with Him trying to gaslight God into thinking that He said the purpose of the created order is for ethical reasoning when the truth is that God said the opposite. 

4. Overspecification - Contextually, the range of meaning for “natural” is abstract & moral not physical & ontological. It cannot bear the meaning the tradition-bound view employs.  Moreover, the tradition-bound view ultimately agrees with the thinking processes of the pagans described in 1:22 - 23 not God’s testimony in 1:20.  

How so?  The pagans in Romans 1:22 - 24 suppressed God’s existence, attributes, & authority in favor of their own existence, attributes; & authority - which is the very definition of the Is - Ought Fallacy.  

5. Special Pleading - If a gay man appeals to his biology then Greg Koukl says (correctly), “Is-Ought fallacy!” When Greg Koukl does the same thing in the same article, it’s baptized.

6. Category Mistake/Error - A category mistake involves the conflation of the properties of two separate domains.  When defenders of the tradition-bound view depart from Romans 1:18 - 32 in order to import Genesis into the text, they inevitably conflate God’s decretal will (a descriptive domain) & God’s moral will (a prescriptive domain). 

Here is Romans 1:18 - 32 correctly exposited.

What Romans 1:18 - 32 teaches also defines what Leviticus 18 teaches insofar as Leviticus 18 is case law & Romans 1:18 - 32 is didactic (teaching) commentary on Leviticus 18.

Leviticus 18:

Shema/Prologue (Lev. 18:1 - 5)

General & Specific Prohibitions (Lev.18: 6 -23) 

Document Clause, Witnesses, & Victory (Lev. 18: 24 - 30), which refers to statutes & rules & charges the people as witnesses & proclaims victory over the nations (& Israel should they behave like the nations)

Romans interprets Lev. 18 & vice versa.

Romans 1:18 - 32:

Paul is following the outline of Leviticus 18, following the form of a Hebraic lawsuit.

Shema and Decalogue (1:18 - 21) God’s Image testifies to His attributes & Law.

God created people. His temple bears His Image & runs according to His Law & Gospel.

Historical Prologue (1:22 - 23)

They suppressed God’s image & authority substituting their own, & made idols that looked & behaved like themselves.

Stipulations/Prohibitions (1:24 - 28)  In Canaan & Rome, people did heterosexual & homosexual sex for their gods.  At times they deployed animals too.  (Lev. 18: 6 - 23).  

Document Clause, Covenant Sanctions/Renewal & Witnesses, Victory (1: 29 - 32)

Kitchen sink immorality will lead to Rome’s burning, just as it did to Sodom, Egypt, Israel, Babylon, &tc.

The text is about how we are supposed to think/reason.  God’s created order testifies to His image & authority.   God indicts us for suppressing His image & authority & supplanting it with our own & other created images & reasoning accordingly.  When you teach that human anatomy, physiology, &/or psychology is a proper warrant for sexual ethics, you are teaching the opposite of what the Bible teaches.  

In addition, the 2 terms in 1 Corinthians 6 (which have their roots in Leviticus 18) because Leviticus 18 is not a condemnation of all homosexuality (as if God morally condemns & commends human behavior apart our internal motives, ie His personal evaluation & appraisal of the workings of our hearts & minds). Rather, Leviticus 18 (per Romans 1:18 - 32) condemns sexual activity done in the service of any number of pagan pseudodeities.

In other words, Romans 1:18 - 33 targets the way moral agents think in general & sexual ethics drawn from the human (&/or any other) image, especially sexual ethics that include the worship of one or more pagan pseudodeities.    Since Leviticus 18 is about cultic sexual activity (&/or inactivity, ie thoughts alone), the same is true of 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1, & Jude.