|
T h e F a t h e r s K n o w B e s t
HOMOSEXUALITY
|
This Rock
Volume 5, Number 7/8
 July/August 1994 
|
|
|
SOME argue that neither the Bible nor Tradition
condemns the practice of homosexuality. Passages such as Leviticus
18:22-30, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and Jude 7 serve as ample
proof from Scripture. Below is ample proof from Tradition. The Fathers
are especially harsh against the practice of pederasty, the homosexual
corruption of boys by men, but they are against homosexuality in general.
Didache
"You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit
adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication,
you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice
witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that
which is begotten" (Didache 2:2 [A.D. 70]).
Pseudo-Barnabas
"You shall not commit fornication; you shall
not commit adultery; you shall not be a corrupter of youth" (Epistle
of Barnabas 10:6 [A.D. 85]).
"You shall not be a corrupter of boys, nor like
unto such" (ibid).
Justin Martyr
"[W]e have been taught that to expose newly-born
children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest
we should do anyone harm and lest we should sin against God, first,
because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but
also the males) are brought up to prostitution. And for this pollution
a multitude of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable
iniquities, are found in every nation. And you receive the hire of
these, and duty and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate
from your realm. And any one who uses such persons, besides the godless
and infamous and impure intercourse, may possibly be having intercourse
with his own child, or relative, or brother. And there are some who
prostitute even their own children and wives, and some are openly
mutilated for the purpose of sodomy; and they refer these mysteries
to the mother of the gods" (First Apology 27 [A.D. 153]).
Clement of Alexandria
"All honor to that king of the Scythians, whoever
Anacharsis was, who shot with an arrow one of his subjects who imitated
among the Scythians the mystery of the mother of the gods . . . condemning
him as having become effeminate among the Greeks, and a teacher of
the disease of effeminacy to the rest of the Scythians" (Exhortation
to the Heathen 2 [A.D. 190]).).
"Well, then (for I shall not refrain from the
recital), Baubo [a female native of Elusis] having received [the goddess]
Demeter hospitably, reached to her a refreshing draught; and on her
refusing it, not having any inclination to drink (for she was very
sad), and Baubo having become annoyed, thinking herself slighted,
uncovered her shame, and exhibited her nudity to the goddess. Demeter
is delighted with the sight--pleased, I repeat, at the spectacle.
These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians; these Orpheus records"
(ibid.).
"It is not, then, without reason that the poets
call him [Hercules] a cruel wretch and a nefarious scoundrel. It were
tedious to recount his adulteries of all sorts, and debauching of
boys. For your gods did not even abstain from boys, one having loved
Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another
Ganymede. Let such gods as these be worshipped by your wives, and
let them pray that their husbands be such as these--so temperate;
that, emulating them in the same practices, they may be like the gods.
Such gods let your boys be trained to worship, that they may grow
up to be men with the accursed likeness of fornication on them received
from the gods" (ibid.).
"Dionysus, eagerly desiring to descend to Hades,
did not know the way; a man, by name Prosymnus, offers to tell him,
not without reward. The reward was a disgraceful one, though not in
the opinion of Dionysus . . . The god was not reluctant to grant the
request made to him and promised to fulfill it should he return .
. . Having learned the way, he departed and again returned. He did
not find Prosymnus, for he had died. In order to acquit himself of
his promise to his lover, he rushes to his tomb and burns with unnatural
lust. Cutting a fig-branch that came to his hand, he shaped the phallus
and so performed his promise to the dead man. As a mystic memorial
of this incident, phalli are raised aloft in honor of Dionysus through
the various cities" (ibid.).
Tertullian
"[A]ll other frenzies of the lusts which exceed
the laws of nature and are impious toward both [human] bodies and
the sexes we banish, not only from the threshold but also from all
shelter of the Church, for they are not sins so much as monstrosities"
(On Modesty 4 [A.D. 220]).
Cyprian
"[T]urn your looks to the abominations, not less
to be deplored, of another kind of spectacle . . . Men are emasculated,
and all the pride and vigor of their sex is effeminated in the disgrace
of their enervated body; and he is more pleasing there who has most
completely broken down the man into the woman. He grows into praise
by virtue of his crime; and the more he is degraded, the more skillful
he is considered to be. Such a one is looked upon--oh shame!--and
looked upon with pleasure. . . . nor is there wanting authority for
the enticing abomination . . . that Jupiter of theirs [is] not more
supreme in dominion than in vice, inflamed with earthly love in the
midst of his own thunders . . . now breaking forth by the help of
birds to violate the purity of boys. And now put the question: Can
he who looks upon such things be healthy-minded or modest? Men imitate
the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their crimes
become their religion" (Letters 1:8 [A.D. 246]).
"Oh, if placed on that lofty watch-tower, you
could gaze into the secret places--if you could open the closed
doors of sleeping chambers and recall their dark recesses to the perception
of sight--you would behold things done by immodest persons which
no chaste eye could look upon; you would see what even to see is a
crime; you would see people embruted with the madness of vice deny
that they have done, and yet hasten to do--men with frenzied lusts
rushing upon men, doing things which afford no gratification even
to those who do them" (ibid. 1:9).
Arnobius
"[T]he mother of the gods loved [the boy Attis]
exceedingly, because he was of most surpassing beauty; and Acdestis
[the son of Jupiter] who was his companion, as he grew up fondling
him, and bound to him by wicked compliance with his lust in the only
way now possible, leading him through the wooded glades and presenting
him with the spoils of many wild beasts . . . Afterwards, under the
influence of wine, he [Attis] admits that he is both loved by Acdestis,
and honored by him with the gifts brought from the forest . . . Then
Midas, king of Pessinus, wishing to withdraw the youth from so disgraceful
an intimacy, resolves to give him his own daughter in marriage . .
. Acdestis, bursting with rage because of the boy's being torn from
himself and brought to seek a wife, fills all the guests with frenzied
madness; the Phrygians shriek, panic-stricken at the appearance of
the gods . . . [Attis] too, now filled with furious passion, raving
frantically and tossed about, throws himself down at last, and under
a pine tree mutilates himself, saying, `Take these, Acdestis, for
which you have stirred up so great and terribly perilous commotions'<<|"
(Against the Heathen 5:6-7 [A.D. 305]).
Novatian
"[God forbid the Jews to eat certain foods for
symbolic reasons:] For that in fishes the roughness of scales is regarded
as constituting their cleanness; rough, and rugged, and unpolished,
and substantial, and grave manners are approved in men; while those
that are without scales are unclean, because trifling, and fickle,
and faithless, and effeminate manners are disapproved. Moreover, what
does the Law mean when it . . . forbids the swine to be taken for
food? It assuredly reproves a life filthy and dirty, and delighting
in the garbage of vice . . . Or when it forbids the hare? It rebukes
men deformed into women" (On the Jewish Foods 3 [A.D.
250]).
Lactantius
"[The pagans] kill their wives that they may
gain their dowries, or their husbands that they may marry adulterers;
who either strangle the sons born from them, or if they are too pious,
expose them; who restrain their incestuous passions neither from a
daughter, nor sister, nor mother, nor priestess . . . who prostitute
their own persons to lust; who, in short, unmindful of what they were
born, contend with women in passivity; who, in violation of all propriety,
pollute and dishonor the most sacred part of their body . . . These
crimes, I say, and more than these, are plainly committed by those
who are worshipers of the gods" (Divine Institutes 5:9
[A.D. 307]).
Eusebius
"[H]aving forbidden all unlawful marriage, and
all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with
men, he [God] adds: `Do not defile yourselves with any of these things;
for in all these things the nations were defiled, which I will drive
out before you. And the land was polluted, and I have recompensed
[their] iniquity upon it, and the land is grieved with them that dwell
upon it' [Lev. 18:24-25]" (Proof of the Gospel 4:10 [A.D.
319]).
John Chrysostom
"[Certain men in church] come in gazing about
at the beauty of women; others curious about the blooming youth of
boys. After this, do you not marvel that [lightning] bolts are not
launched, and all these things are not plucked up from their foundations?
For worthy both of thunderbolts and hell are the things that are done;
but God, who is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forbears awhile
his wrath, calling you to repentance and amendment" (Homilies
on Matthew 3:3 [A.D. 370]).
[The pagans] were addicted to the love of boys,
and one of their wise men made a law that pederasty . . . should not
be allowed to slaves, as if it was an honorable thing; and they had
houses for this purpose, in which it was openly practiced. And if
all that was done among them was related, it would be seen that they
openly outraged nature, and there was none to restrain them. . . .
As for their passion for boys, whom they called their `paedica,' it
is not fit to be named" (Homilies on Titus 5 [A.D. 390]).
"All of these affections [in Rom. 1:26-27] .
. . were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul
is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in
diseases. But behold how here too, as in the case of the doctrines
[Paul] deprives them of excuse, by saying of the women that `they
changed the natural use.' For no one, he means, can say that it was
by being hindered of legitimate intercourse that they came to this
pass, or that it was from having no means to fulfill their desire
that they were driven into this monstrous insaneness. For the changing
implies possession [of women]" (Homilies on Romans 4
[A.D. 391]).
"And in a like way with those, these he also
puts out of all means of defending themselves by charging them not
only that they had the [natural] means of gratification, and left
that which they had, and went after another, but that having dishonored
that which was natural, they ran after that which was contrary to
nature" (ibid.).
"[The men] have done an insult to nature itself.
And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women
seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more shame than men"
(ibid).
"And sundry other books of the philosophers one
may see full of this disease. But we do not therefore say that the
thing was made lawful, but that they who received this law were pitiable,
and objects for many tears. For these are treated in the same way
as women that play the whore. Or rather their plight is more miserable.
For in the case of the one the intercourse, even if lawless, is yet
according to nature; but this is contrary both to law and nature.
For even if there were no hell, and no punishment had been threatened,
this would be worse than any punishment" (ibid.).
Basil
"If you [O, monk] are young in either body or
mind, shun the companionship of other young men and avoid them as
you would a flame. For through them the enemy has kindled the desires
of many and then handed them over to eternal fire, hurling them into
the vile pit of the five cities under the pretense of spiritual love....
At meals take a seat far from other young men. In lying down to sleep
let not their clothes be near yours, but rather have an old man between
you. When a young man converses with you, or sings psalms facing you,
answer him with eyes cast down, lest perhaps by gazing at his face
you receive a seed of desire sown by the enemy and reap sheaves of
corruption and ruin. Whether in the house or in a place where there
is no one to see your actions, be not found in his company under the
pretense either of studying the divine oracles or of any other business
whatsoever, however necessary" (De renuntiatione saeculi
[A.D. 373]).
"He who is guilty of unseemliness with males
will be under discipline for the same time as adulterers" (Letters
217:62 [A.D. 375]).
Augustine
"[T]hose shameful acts against nature, such as
were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested
and punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be
held guilty of the same crime by the law of God, which has not so
made men that they should use one another in this way" (Confessions
3:8:15 [A.D. 400]).
"But if [a man] has filth poured all over him,
or poured into his mouth, or crammed into him, or if he is carnally
used like a woman, then almost all men regard him with a feeling of
horror, and they call him defiled and unclean" (On Lying
9 [15] [A.D. 395]).
Apostolic Constitutions
"[Christians] abhor all unlawful mixtures, and
that which is practiced by some contrary to nature, as wicked and
impious" (Apostolic Constitutions 6:11 [A.D. 400]).
|
