Believe Differently

I am going to pick up in future posts where I left off, hope that is OK. Obviously though, in the previous six months, life has moved on and shaped me accordingly and new content will be a reflection of that too.

In this post I want to continue with my series on homosexuality. I want to move onto the New Testament and consider what has been called the vice lists of 1 Cor 6:9-10 & 1 Tim 1:9-10. In fact I am going to focus on Paul’s words in Corinthians but I believe my approach is also applicable to the writer of 1 Timothy.

It is my belief that the Bible has nothing to teach us concerning the modern category of an immutable psycho-sexual orientation. In my last post I attempted to make clear how this was true of the Old Testament, and in this post I want to begin to unpack how this is also true of the New. I realize this may at first seem quite a claim to some because so many are convinced that the New Testament does explicitly condemn homosexuality, yet I want to contest this view.

I am not going to follow the usual route of trying to understand the exact meaning of the Greek words employed in the text - although I believe it is a useful exercise and I may still write a post which does so - instead I want to take a different and slightly more unusual tack and employ something called “Speech-Act” theory.1  It is not that I want to complicate to obfuscate, but the opposite. We approach these texts often so certain that we already know what they “mean” that sometimes it is useful to use some form of framework to structure our interrogations and help us become more self aware of the interpretative - sub conscious - processes going on.

Speech Act Theory is a grand title for what is essentially a simple suggestion: that whenever we say something, in fact, we are often also doing something - we are promising, cursing, persuading, agreeing etc. It also goes one step further and suggests that these performative speech acts are also designed to have an effect. For instance, if we are warning someone of a danger, we are hoping to affect a change in the person such that they take care to avoid whatever it is that is the object of our concern. Speech-Act Theorists divide the speech act into three parts: the illocution – that is what is said; the illocutionary force – what I am actually doing; and the perlocutionary effect – what actually happens as a result of the speech act. So if we consider my previous example, the content of my illocution carried with it an illocutionary force warning my dialog partner; and my intended perlocultionary effect was for my dialog partner to avoid coming to harm. The interesting thing, though, is that my speech act can have unintended consequences – an unintended perlocutionary affect. My warning for instance could result in my dialog partner developing an unhealthy phobia of whatever it was I tried to warn her concerning - I will pick up on the idea of an unintended perlocutionary effect later in this post.

Essentially, though, this is all there is to Speech-Act Theory. We may contest – and I would certainly agree – that Speech Act Theory does not capture all that we do in human conversation but nevertheless, I hope you will see that it is still a useful tool - as I think our current application will demonstrate.

Considering our passage in Corinthians then, the Apostle Paul writes:

[D]o you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators; nor idolators; nor adulterers; nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.2

Applying speech-act theory to this passage the first thing we must do is figure it’s locutionary content. That is, we need to attempt to discover something of the context of the passage; and specifically where in the passage the speech act begins and ends. Obviously this is subjective, but one thing I think is clear is that these two verses do not encapsulate the whole act. This is immensely important because if these two verses were the sum total of the speech act, we would hear the Apostle saying something completely different.

In fact though, I would suggest that speech-act begins in 5:1

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles…

And ends in 6:18-20

Flee immorality. … For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

The illocutionary force of the speech-act seems to be to convince his readers – the Corinthians – to live a morally pure life uninfected by the mores of their particular cultural context.

The particular sin which seems to have riled the Apostle is that “someone [in the community at Corinth] has his father’s wife”.3  But what is also bothering the apostle is that the community has not taken steps to exclude the offending individual from their midst. We have to read between the lines but it would seem that community does not feel itself capable of performing such a judgement or, it would seem, any such judgment because they are using civil institutions to resolve internal disputes – something Paul considers to be wrong and a sign of something more deeply amiss within the community.4 His concern is that the Christian community at Corinth does not at all seem to be anything peculiar within their wider cultural context. And this is where the list of vices we considered earlier functions within the whole rhetorical piece – speech act. Its serves to draw a clear dichotomy between the expected character of the community of the people of God contrasted against the wider cultural situation.

The rhetoric is powerful. In verse 8 Paul accuses the Corinthian church of wronging and defrauding their Christian brethren and, after warning them that “the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God,” he juxtaposes the vice list in such a way as it clearly blurs the conduct of the community with that of those of who practice such things.5 The force of the illocutionary warning is clear: the Corinthian community are in danger of missing their calling. The juxtaposition implies a slippery slope, or a continuum, between on the one hand, those who identify themselves with the Corinthian community, and those, on the other, outside whom Paul seems to imply live their lives participating in all of the vices he has just listed.

Clearly the rhetoric is not designed to be an objective analysis of the Corinthian situation, or at least, the context does not seem to support Paul’s indictment. It is designed though, to create a strong reaction. It relies on his and the community’s shared mutual abhorrence of the sins listed. Although the sins listed do not seem to apply wholesale to the Corinthian church and to all its members, and it is hard to believe that the wider society as a whole is also characterized by the list, the implication that Corinthian church exists on a spectrum associated with them is a strong warning.

The Apostle Paul is employing a rhetorical device commonly used in contemporary Greco-Roman culture. In this form of writing it is not the individual sins listed which matter so much as the list as a whole. Concerning this literary form, Robin Scroggs writes in an important read in connection with our subject:

What is clear is that the users or creators of these lists do not carefully select the individual items to fit the context with which they are dealing. The lists were often, apparently, traditional. What is important was the list as list, and perhaps its length. The more vices included, the greater the impression on the reader. That is the list was a club used to hit an opponent over the head or to warn the writer’s own community of the penalty of evil living. Any relation between an individual item in the list and the situation addressed was thus, more often than not, nonexistent. Furthermore, the items might well be partially, at least, memorized from a traditional stock of evils.

The implication for any item, in relation to author and context, are twofold. One it cannot be known what weight any individual author gave to any specific vice listed. Two, it cannot be known whether any specific item fits the context for which the catalogue is being used.6

The list, juxtaposed as it is, is a rhetorical device designed to shock the Corinthians’ out of their complacency. They need to get a better understanding of Christian liberty: “All things may be lawful but not all things are profitable…”7

Paul’s desired perlocutionary effect, then, is that the Corinthian church should smarten up and act to ensure the character of the community is such that it is fitting for those professing to follow Christ.  They must flee immorality in any form because they “have been bought with a price” and must “glorify Christ” in themselves.8

We can only guess as to whether Paul’s letter did have the desired effect within the Corinthian church but interestingly, we do know that is has had an unintended perlocutionary effect on the modern day church. Paul’s incorporation of the vice list within this text, and remarks he has made in other texts, have been interpreted as God’s condemnation of homosexual people. Yet, interestingly as I hope I have made clear here, this is not part of the Apostle’s intended perlocutionary effect. Paul’s use of the vice list in this passage was to provoke the Corinthian church to take action to clean up the character of the community; it was not meant as a teaching about homosexuality. The importation of the vice list wholesale into his rhetoric, demonstrated by the fact that many of the items listed do not reflect the context to which he seems to be speaking, confirms a distinct lack of engagement with its content, including the subject of homosexuality. The only thing this rhetorical device depended upon was a mutual abhorrence of the sins listed – that is a shared cultural understanding. Clearly this is something very different to a reflective, thoughtful investigation of the matters listed which might need to proceed any meaningful teaching on the subject of the homosexual situation.

Again, we see – as in my last post on this subject – that whilst the text does seem to make mention of something akin to what we understand as the homosexual orientation, the level of engagement is very minimal. And further, speech act theory makes it very clear that when we focus on the contents of the vice list as opposed to the wider context of the whole of the Apostle’s teaching, we are in fact reading the text differently to how the author intended it to be read. The issue of authorial intent raises its head again. If we choose to use this text to resource a homophobic theological interpretation, we must again realize that we are consuming the text in a way not intended by the author. This by itself is no great sin and I would suggest that it is something we all do and it is something I will have more to write about in this context later. But one thing is certain, it does bring home the fact that we are all interpreting – even those who argue they are reading the Bible literally - because surely a literal reading must in some way approximate to what the author intended to say and not what he can also be made to say.

In summary then: Paul is not in this passage teaching about homosexuality. The incorporation of the vice list within his rhetoric is designed to provoke a strong reaction amongst his readers provoked by their mutual abhorrence of the sins listed. Subtly, by means of juxtaposition, Paul hints that the church community is in danger of being infected by such practices – “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”.9 The point I am trying to make, though, through the use of speech act theory, is that Paul is not teaching about homosexuality; he is teaching about purity. The Corinthian congregation need to make the decision to cast out from their midst the person who has committed the abhorrent act of sleeping with his father’s wife. Thus the intended perlocutionary effect of his argument is that the Corinthians will be convicted of the need to take this action and, in fact, do so!

This passage of scripture is not a deeply reflective, thoughtful piece of writing concerning the subject of homosexuality. The words typically translated as “homosexual” are simply included because they form part of an already existent vice list which Paul incorporated wholesale into his argument with particular rhetorical intent. This is an important point because it emphasises the level of his engagement with the subject – minimal. His argument depends upon a shared cultural prejudice.

The point is subtle but important. If Paul was not teaching about homosexuality but something different but – because of an unintended authorial perlocutionary effect – the author can be made to say something further concerning homosexuality, is this a valid interpretative strategy? If Paul was not teaching on homosexuality in this passage yet we consume the text and say that he was, despite his authorial intention otherwise, is this an ethically moral interpretive move? Personally, if someone chooses deliberately to use my words to communicate something other than I meant to say, I would feel that in some way they have violated the trust associated with the utterance of my speech act. Such a decision on the interpreters part would, in my opinion, be morally unjustifiable.

At this point, though, let me be clear.  The apostle’s rhetoric does betray his homophobic prejudice. In fact, the whole flow of his argument, as I have presented it here, depends on his and his audience prejudice. I believe we could safely hypothesize that if the apostle had chosen to teach specifically about our subject he would have delivered a powerful piece of homophobic teaching. But, and it is a big but, nowhere in the bible – and I include Romans 1 in this – does he ever do so! And since we are dealing with scripture, this is an extremely important point. Paul may have held all number of unchristian views – we must assume he was a man just as we – but that does not mean he was allowed to include them within scripture.10 He himself testifies that “now we see in a mirror dimly… now [we] know in part”.11 Paul was not infallible in all he said, did or thought. Surely it is a core Christian understanding that none of us are without sin? If, by modern standards, we should choose to label him a homophobe that does not detract from his contribution to scripture – even if his homophobia is sometimes thinly veiled in some of his writings. But what it should do is make us very careful, in interpreting passages such as this, to determine, and differentiate, what he did say from what he might possibly have said.

Paul in this passage did not intend to teach on homosexuality. Consuming this passage in such a way that it appears that he does is an interpretive act; one which chooses to accept not only what Paul did say but also what he can be made to say. Ultimately, it is down to the interpreter to decide if such an approach is acceptable, but what the interpreter cannot do is deny that the decision itself is an interpretive decision. Ultimately if your interpretive decisions lead you to draw a homophobic conclusion, this may say as much about you as the reader as it does about the apostle as the author.

1. In using Speech Act Theory in this way, I am following a similar approach to that of Vanhoozer - Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is there a meaning in this text? The Bible, the reader and the morality of literary knowledge (Michigan: Zondervan, 1998) [↩]
2. 1 Cor 6:9-10 [NASB] [↩]
3. 1 Cor 5:1 [↩]
4. 1 Cor 6:1-7 [↩]
5. 1 Cor 6:8-10 [↩]
6. Robin Scroggs, The New Tesament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 102 [↩]
7. 1Cor 6:12 [↩]
8. 1 Cor 6:20 [↩]
9. 1 Cor 5:6 [↩]
10. Please understand, my turn of phrase here is designed to appeal to my perceived audience and does not reflect my thoughts on the inspiration of scripture! [↩]
11. 1Cor 13:12 [↩]