A Zwischenzug—Paul

Paul. That's what this post is going to be about—Paul. I'd hoped to get into his radical reinterpretation of marriage, and a discussion of his comments (specifically in 1st Corinthians) regarding same-gender sexuality, but this preliminary discussion of Paul has proven to be quite lengthy, so we'll put those discussions off for tomorrow and beyond.

Although we know a lot about Paul from his letters, it would be helpful if we knew more, because what we don't know raises some interesting questions of interpretation. I'd like to start from a somewhat conservative stance regarding Paul—I will give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to what he reveals about himself 1st Corinthians (and other consensus letters), and will consider evidence from other sources (disputed letters, Acts).

A key initial question regards Paul's own sexual history, because the more we know about this, the easier it is to evaluate what he has to say. We know that Paul was unmarried at the time he wrote 1st Corinthians [1 Cor 7:8]. He also wrote, “It is well for a man not to touch a woman [1 Cor 7:1].” He implies very strongly that he is a practicing celibate, but also that he views the ability to practice celibacy as a gift that not all are given [1 Cor 7:7]. Regarding Paul's celibacy, there are three theories that I am aware of:

1. Paul was a life-long celibate.
2. Paul was a widow, who chose not to remarry.
3. Paul was a non-practicing homosexual.

In favor of option 1 is both Paul's language of ‘gift,’ and the lack of reference to a wife in Paul's letters. This option is sometimes favored by those called to a life of celibacy themselves.

Option 3 is sometimes favored by gay theologians and their supporters. It provides an explanation for both Paul's celibacy (acting on homosexual urges would have been so contrary to his beliefs as to destroy him spiritually), and also a framework for discounting his remarks on homosexuality (“Methinks thou dost protest too much...”). Finally, consider this:

Romans 1:18-27 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 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.

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

This is worth reading carefully. Paul presents “degrading passions” as God's punishment upon those who “by their wickedness suppress the truth” about God. Paul, as Saul, persecuted the early church, and perhaps he integrated his own desire for sexual contact with men by viewing it as punishment for this phase of his life. Likewise, Paul's description of male-on-male sexual activity seems a bit too explicit: who but gay people think that much about the mechanics of gay sex? It seems to me that these are attractive arguments, if less than compelling.

Finally, we come to option 2. I've heard the claim that Acts attributes a wife to Paul, but I haven't found an unambiguous proof text, and even if I did, I'd discount it without confirmation in Paul's own writing. But I do find some evidence for this proposition in 1st Corinthians. First we have this:

1 Corinthians 9:5 Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?

Doesn't this sound like a widower who still mourns his wife, and feels aggrieved that she's been taken from him? And his complaint to the Corinthians on this topic seems a bit misplaced, as I can hardly imagine that they would have objected to him getting married. But what if his beloved (and believing) wife died while accompanying Paul on his missions? Then their gain would have been inextricably tied to his loss, and him addressing this complaint to them is a bit easier to understand.

Also curious is his discussion about entering into marriage:

1 Corinthians 7:8-9 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

Note who can marry, if they cannot practice self-control: the unmarried and widows. Note a missing category? Widowers.

So, perhaps surprisingly, I tentatively favor a “romantic” theory of Paul's sexuality, which builds on option 2: He was married, and had a wife that he loved deeply. His marriage was unusually equitable for his time and place, and his radical views on equality were based on how his own marriage worked, and his esteem for the gifts and worth of women flowed from his esteem for his wife. His wife accompanied him on his early missionary journeys, but died before he started writing epistles. This may have even been causative: without a wife to talk to, maybe he turned to cathartic letter writing. Finally, I suspect that Paul did not believe in remarriage. This ties into slightly later Montanist beliefs that favored celibacy and denied remarriage (c.f. Tertullian). It is worth remembering that the Montanists were distinctly more Pauline than the Roman church of their era, and moreover were based in Asia Minor, where much of Paul's missionary activity took place.

This is perhaps easiest to understand if placed in contrast with one of the relatively few teachings on marriage that we find in the Gospels:

Mark 12:18-25 Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that ‘if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.‘ There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children; and the second married her and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

In this (and parallel passages in the other synoptics, plus Luke 20:34), Jesus says that marriages are part of our earthly existence, and will not be preserved into the afterlife. Contrast that with this:

1 Corinthians 6:15-17 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

In this, Paul stakes out a position that is about as far from Jesus's teaching as one can easily imagine. In it, Paul views sexual activity as equivalent to marriage, resulting in a union of flesh, and therefore of person. And indeed, the passage suggests that by a kind of transitivity, if we, who are spiritually united with Jesus, unite sexually with a prostitute, then we unite her with him to our own condemnation. Since Jesus is dead (although resurrected as first fruits of the afterlife) it seems that Paul believed that marriage survives death (and since the Gospels were unwritten, they could not have contradicted him in this view). Moreover, through his sexual contact with his wife, they had become one body, and so she would have continued to live on through him! So he still believed his marriage vows were binding.

As a bit of self-disclosure, I've been married for thirty-one years to a wife whom I love deeply, and with whom I live and have lived a shared life in the Pauline model. So perhaps my preference for the “romantic option” is no different from the celibate's preference for a celibate Paul, or the homosexuals preference for a homosexual Paul. Maybe there isn't enough information to know, and so we recreate Paul according to our own vision, whatever that vision might be. But this is the vision I have, and that vision will matter as I look more deeply into Paul's writings on sexuality in the following posts.

Peace