In this episode, Trent continues his rebuttal to Matthew Vines’s revisionist LGBT theology with an examination of what St. Paul says about homosexuality in his letter to the Romans.
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone, welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers Apologist and Speaker, Trent Horn. Last week, I shared with you an excerpt of my newest rebuttal video to Matthew Vines” LGBT revisionist theology. Vines represents a growing movement of people, Protestant and Catholic, who claim that the Bible does not condemn same-sex sexual behavior, or would not condemn modern relationships between two men and two women.
Trent Horn:
So, last week I shared with you an excerpt of Vines” treatment of the Old Testament. This week, I want to share with you an excerpt of my latest rebuttal video. So last week was part one. This week is part two where I take on Vines” treatment of the New Testament, specifically St. Paul’s Letters to the Romans and to 1 Corinthians. So if you want to see the whole rebuttal video, both rebuttal videos, in fact, go to The Counsel of Trent YouTube page, click subscribe. All of our podcast episodes are available there now. So you get to see the PowerPoints and the visual elements. I use the go along with all of our episodes. Be sure to go and check it out.
Trent Horn:
If you want to help us keep doing lots more videos, lots more rebuttal videos, in fact, go to trenthornpodcast.com. Become a premium subscriber for just $5 a month. You get access to the catechism study series, silver level subscribers, get a fancy mug, and it helps us to do so much more with this podcast. And now a growing YouTube page. Go and check it out, trenthornpodcast.com. This episodes you can catch the full rebuttal where I talk about 1 Corinthians and other elements of vine as arguments. Go and check that out on YouTube. For this podcast episode, I’m just going to focus on Vines” treatment of Romans 1. So let’s jump into that right now.
Matthew Vines:
So if our three Old Testament passages do not upon closer examination, furnish persuasive arguments against loving relationships for gay Christians. Then what about our three New Testament passages? And indeed for those who’ve spent some time studying this theological debate, they will know that the most significant of the six passages it’s not in the Old Testament. Instead, it appears in the opening chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, specifically, Romans 1:26-27.
Matthew Vines:
This passage is the most significant for three reasons. First, it’s in the New Testament, and so it doesn’t encounter the same problems of context and applicability that Leviticus does. Secondly, unlike Leviticus, it speaks of both men and women. And thirdly, even though it’s not very long, at two consecutive verses, it’s still the longest discussion of any form of same-sex behavior anywhere in scripture. And because these two verses are embedded within a broader theological argument about idolatry, that’s somewhat complex. I want to spend more time on this passage than any other.
Matthew Vines:
Paul begins his letter in Romans chapters one through three by describing the unrighteousness of all humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, and the universal need for savior. Romans 3 nears it’s closed with a famous verse, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In Romans 3:10, Paul says, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” To build his case to that effect, Paul argues in chapter two, that even though the Jews have the law, they still don’t follow it well enough to earn their salvation on their own. But he starts in chapter one by describing the unrighteousness of humanity more broadly.
Trent Horn:
One point to remember that Vines doesn’t bring up is that Paul’s indictment of the Gentiles and why they need salvation in Christ just as much as the Jews, is that he points out that they know they have sinned and they know that they need forgiveness because a Jewish critic would have told Paul, well, they didn’t have the mosaic law. How are they supposed to know? In Romans 2, Paul says that they do have a law. They have the conscience written on their hearts, but in Romans 1, Paul makes it very clear that the Gentiles are under the curse of sin and they should have known better because there are some things you just know are right and wrong just from your conscience alone. There are things that are obvious from nature itself that nature itself tells us the way we ought to live as human beings. So Paul says in Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men, 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.”
Trent Horn:
So Paul makes it clear the Gentiles stand in rifle condemnation by God because there’s things about God they should’ve known. So Paul picks two sins that are just patently obvious that the Gentiles engaged in that they should have known better. He picks idolatry and homosexual behavior, that you should just know by reason alone, by looking at nature, you ought not engage in idolatry and you ought not engage in homosexual relationships. Because as Romans 1:20 says ever since the creation of the world, His invisible nature, namely His eternal power in dainty, has been clearly perceived and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.”
Trent Horn:
So that is the important element of Paul’s argument that Vines is going to be leaving out here, that Paul selects these two sins, one idolatry, and the other homosexual behavior is just these are obvious things they should have known and did know were wrong and still chose to violate God’s law. That the natural law, the law of nature that was written on their hearts that can be seen in the natural order, they went against that and suffered a judgment consequently because of it.
Matthew Vines:
And in Romans 1:18-32, Paul writes of the descent of Gentiles into idolatry, and the consequences for them of their rejection of God. He says that they knew the truth of God, but they rejected it. They exchanged the truth for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator, birds, animals, reptiles. And so because they had given up God, God in turn let them go. He let them live without Him. And He gave them over it says to a wide array of vices and passions. Included among these passions were some forms of lustful same-sex behavior.
Trent Horn:
All right. So this is the essence of Vines” revisionist look at Paul which is similar to other LGBT revisionist theologians. The idea here is that Paul is not condemning same-sex relationships as such, he’s only condemning lustful, same-sex relationships, that if Paul were alive today, he would not condemn a same-sex couple that is allegedly not in a lustful relationship, but is monogamous, goes to church. Paul would not condemn that. Paul is only condemning lustful relationships, whether they’re opposite sex or same sex. It’s an excess of passion is what Paul is condemning, not the behavior itself, but that you’ve given into lustful passions and that’s the problem.
Trent Horn:
But is that really the problem? Would Paul have said that idolatry was only wrong if you were in a crazy idolatrous orgy and you were in some kind of idolatrous frenzy? Would he have said, oh, well, if you were a sober-minded idolater who worshiped by all, but you were kind to your neighbor and you were just as upstanding as everyone else, if all worshiper and a Christ worshiper, if they’re indistinguishable in their behavior, then the Baal worshiper is just fine. It’s just when they get a bit too frenzied. No, that’s not… Paul would not make that kind of argument. The object of proper worship is God, not Baal. And so that is why Paul condemned idolatry. That’s why idolatry is condemned. And the proper object of sexual relations are not between the same sex, but between men and women within the marital act. That is why Paul condemned it. So that’s the essence of Paul’s argument that he’s only condemning an excess of passion, not same-sex behavior as such. And so let’s look a little bit more Vines’ exposition of that argument.
Matthew Vines:
In verses 26 and 27, we read the following. Because of this, referring to their idol worship, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women, and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men and receive in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Matthew Vines:
Well, now it seems the case is finally closed. Even though the verses in Leviticus don’t apply to Christians, here we have Paul in the New Testament explicitly teaching the unacceptability, the sinfulness of same-sex relationships. And even though he only speaks of lustful behavior and not of loving relationships, he labels same-sex unions unnatural. They are outside of God’s natural design, which was set forth in Genesis 1 and 2, and is exclusively heterosexual.
Matthew Vines:
So even if a same-sex relationship is loving and committed, it is still sinful. That is the traditional interpretation of Romans 1:26-27. How solid of an interpretation is that? Does this passage require us to reject the possibility of loving relationships for gay people? And if so, how does that make sense, given the problems that I outlined earlier with that position? Was that Paul’s intent here to teach that God desires gay people to be alone for their entire lives because their sexual orientation is broken and is outside of his created natural design.
Matthew Vines:
How we understand this passage hinges in large part on how we understand the meaning of the terms “natural” and “unnatural.” It’s commonly assumed by those who hold to the traditional interpretation, that these terms refer back to Genesis 1 and 2, and are intended to define heterosexuality as God’s natural design, and homosexuality as an unnatural distortion of that design. But once again, closer examination does not support that interpretation.
Trent Horn:
So this will be key to understanding Paul’s argument in Romans 1. What does he mean by natural? What does he mean by nature? Because what Vines will eventually argue is that Paul only meant custom or human tradition, not anything in God’s design for nature itself. But if you read Romans 1, it’s patently clear what Paul means by nature is the natural order that’s created. Now, one clue for this is that we see echoes of the Book of Genesis in Romans 1. We see the discussion about the creatures, the creepy crawly things, the birds of the air, and how man chose to worship them instead of the creator. And that goes back to Genesis 1 where the creator makes the creepy crawly things, the birds of the air, the animals, He makes those things. Those aren’t the things we were supposed to worship.
Trent Horn:
Likewise, in Romans 1:26-27, it’s fascinating the word that Paul uses usually it’s translated the men likewise gave up natural relations with women. Usually it’s translated men and women, but that’s not the Greek word Paul uses. He actually uses the word for male and female. So a literal translation would be there are females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females. So it’s an odd choice of words. Normally we talk about men and women, not male and female, unless you’re hearkening back to Genesis 1, where it says that God made man in His image, male and female, He created them. So it’s clear here what Paul is talking about by natural is the natural created order. And this was something that the church fathers also recognized. This comes from a fourth century commentary on Paul by Ambrosiaster. And so this is what he says about what Paul means in Romans 1. So we look what the early church said.
Trent Horn:
Paul tells us that these things came about that a woman should lust after another woman because God was angry at the human race because of its idolatry. Those who interpret this differently do not understand the force of the argument. “For what is it to change the use of nature into a use which is contrary to nature? So what does it mean to go against nature?” Ambrosiaster tells us. “If not to take away the former and adopt the ladder, so that the same part of the body should be used by each of the sexes in a way for which it was not intended.” So even in the early church, it was a recognition that what Paul is condemning here is the misuse of the body that is not in accord with the natural order God intends. Therefore, if this is the part of the body which they think it is, how could they have changed the natural use of it if they had not had this use given to them by nature? So how could we say that men and women engage in unnatural sexual acts if there wasn’t a natural way for sexual acts to unfold in the first place?
Trent Horn:
This is why he has said earlier that they had been handed over to uncleanness, even though he did not explain in detail what he meant by that. So to understand what nature here that’s going to be an important crucial element of Romans 1 and the textual evidence within Paul and everything here points to the natural created order going all the way back to the Book of Genesis that sin unravels a created order that even the Gentiles should have been aware of and were aware of, but chose to flagrantly disregard in contrast to the exegesis that Vines tries to give us now.
Matthew Vines:
In order to understand what Paul meant by the use of these terms, we have to consider two things. First, we have to look at the broader context of the passage in order to see how the concept of nature functions within it. And secondly, we need to see how Paul himself uses these terms in his other letters and how they were commonly and widely applied to sexual behavior in particular in the ancient world.
Matthew Vines:
First, the passage’s context. In 1:18-32, Paul is making a larger argument about idolatry, and that argument has a very precise logic to it. The reason, he says in verses 18-20, that the idolaters’ actions are blameworthy is because they knew God. They started with the knowledge of God, but they chose to reject Him. Paul writes, “What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” The idolaters are without excuse because they knew the truth, they started with the truth, but they rejected it.
Matthew Vines:
Paul’s subsequent statements about sexual behavior follow this same pattern. The women, he says, “exchanged” natural relations for unnatural ones. And the men “abandoned” relations with women and committed shameful acts with other men. Both the men and the women started with heterosexuality, they were naturally disposed to it just as they were naturally disposed to the knowledge of God—but they rejected their original, natural inclinations for those that were unnatural: for them, same-sex behavior.
Matthew Vines:
Paul’s argument about idolatry requires that there be an exchange, the reason, he says, that the idolaters are at fault is because they first knew God but then turned away from him, exchanged Him for idols. Paul’s reference to same-sex behavior is intended to illustrate this larger sin of idolatry. But in order for this analogy to have any force, in order for it to make sense within this argument, the people he is describing must naturally begin with heterosexual relations and then abandon them. And that is exactly how he describes it. But that is not what we are talking about.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So the problem here is that Vines’ misunderstanding the nature of the exchange language in Romans 1. It was not the desires they exchange. It’s clear there’s an exchange going on here. But Vines is talking about as if what Paul was mad about was that the natural opposite sex desires these people had, they exchanged those desires that should have been natural for them for these unnatural desires. The desires are not the exchange that Paul has in view. It’s not the exchanging of desires that was problematic for Paul. It was the exchanging of the object of the desire. That is the problem. They exchanged the object of their desire.
Trent Horn:
So take the desire for worship. What was the problem with the Gentiles? They exchange the proper object of worship, which is the creator for the creature. They were engaged in worship, but the object of their worship was wrong. It should not be the creature. It should be the creator. They exchanged it. And the same thing happens with sexual behavior, that men and women had sexual desires, but their desires were for the wrong object, women for women, men for men, they exchanged an improper object of their desire. That is what Paul is getting at here. Not this idea that they exchanged desires that were natural or not natural for them.
Matthew Vines:
Gay people have a natural, permanent orientation toward those of the same sex. It’s not something that they choose, and it’s not something that they can change. They aren’t abandoning or rejecting heterosexuality. That’s never an option for them to begin with. And if applied to gay people, Paul’s argument here should actually work in the other direction. If the point of this passage is to rebuke those who have spurned their true nature, be it religious when it comes to idolatry or sexual, then just as those who are naturally heterosexual should not be with those of the same sex, so too those who have a natural orientation toward the same sex should not be with those of the opposite sex. For them, that would be exchanging “the natural for the unnatural” in just the same way.
Trent Horn:
This is actually pretty old argument when you go back to LGBT revisionist theology as you look at John Boswell book, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. He says in that book, the person poke condemn are manifestly not homosexual. What he delegates are homosexual acts committed by parently heterosexual person. It was interesting a few after giving this talk when Vines wrote his book. On page 103 of his book, God and the Gay Christian, he seems to walk this argument back. Vines writes, “Paul seems to be describing latent desire that were being expressed, not brand new ones. I don’t think it’s consistent to say that Paul rejected same sex behavior, only when it didn’t come naturally to the people involved. So I guess upon further reflection, Vines’ seen the argument that Paul is only concerned about nature being a person’s sexual orientation that are natural for him or her, whether that Paul did not want “heterosexual people acting in a homosexual way” that was not within Paul’s purview or thought at. And I’m glad on further reflection, he’s come see the witness of argument from Boswell and others like him.
Matthew Vines:
We have different natures when it comes to sexual orientation. But is this just a clever argument that has no grounding in the historical context of Paul’s world and therefore yields an interpretation that could not be what he originally intended? After all, the concept of sexual orientation is very recent. It was only developed within the past century, and has only come to be widely understood within the past few decades. So how we can we take our modern categories and understandings and use them to interpret a text that is so far removed from them? But that level of removal is precisely the point. In the ancient world, homosexuality was widely considered, not to be a different sexual orientation or something inherent in a small minority of people, but to be an excess of lust or passion that anyone could be prone to if they let themselves go too much.
Trent Horn:
It is true that in the ancient world, many authors said that same sexual relationships emerged because of an excess of passion, but that doesn’t mean that they thought that the passions were the only thing that made those relationships wrong, or that they had no knowledge of people who exclusively had same-sex attractions. We could even say today, there are people who engage in same-sex relationships who have opposite sex orientations. You’ve got things like prison rape, for example, as a phenomenon in and of itself.
Trent Horn:
But even in the ancient world, there was knowledge of people who had primary attractions to people of the same sex. This is a fresco painting from an archeological site in Southern Italy. It was a Greek city in what is now Southern Italy. The site is dated to about 470 BC. It’s called the Tomb of the Diver because it’s well-known for this fresco painting of a young man diving into the water. But it also has pictures of festive scenes and different couples. And one of the couples it has is a older man and a younger man, not a boy, but just a younger man, probably in like his very late teens or early 20s, even older man here with graying hair. Contrasted with other couples like other men and women, this has seemed to be on a par. So we have a very ancient fresco description of an attached same-sex couple.
Trent Horn:
We also have descriptions of this because singular might say, well, try it. How do you get that? They’re just attached. They’re just in this painting. Well, corroborates, what we also have from ancient Greco-Roman writing, take for example, Plato’s Symposium, which was written around 385 BC and in Plato’s Symposium, which is Plato’s Treatise on love, there is a character… Well, first the treatise talks about women who “do not care for men, but have female attachments,” and of men who “hang about men exclusively, hang about men and embrace them.”
Trent Horn:
One of the characters in Plato’s Symposium is someone named Pausanias and he actually critiques people who indiscriminately have sex with men, boys, and women. And he critiques casual sex, but he praises after those who seek after older boys for life-long loving commitments. So even here, well, also not just in Greek writing, but in Roman you have the Roman Saturday’s Juvenile. In his satire is he records the contempt that some people had for men who married men in private Roman ceremony.
Trent Horn:
So, it’s just not the case in the ancient world that there was no understanding. They wouldn’t have called it sexual orientation, but there wasn’t understanding that some people exclusively preferred, some women exclusively preferred women and some men exclusively preferred men. And we know St. Paul was very knowledgeable of the Greco-Roman world in Acts 17. He quotes Greek poets to make his case for the living God having revealed himself through Christ resurrection. So if Paul was aware of all of this, it’s almost certain, he was aware of these kinds of exclusive relationships and was critiquing them in Romans 1.
Matthew Vines:
Just a couple of quotes to illustrate this. A well-known first-century Greek philosopher named Dio Chrysostom wrote the following. “The man whose appetite is insatiate in such things, referring to heterosexual relations, will have contempt for the easy conquest and scorn for a woman’s love, as a thing too readily given, and will turn his assault against the male quarter, believing that in them he will find a kind of pleasure difficult and hard to procure.”
Matthew Vines:
A fourth-century Christian writer said of same-sex behavior, “You will see that all such desire stems from a greed which will not remain within its usual bounds.” The abandonment of heterosexual relations for same-sex lust was frequently compared to gluttony in eating or drinking. Sexuality was seen as a spectrum, with opposite-sex relations being the product of a moderate level of desire and same-sex relations the product of an excessive amount of desire. Personal orientation had nothing to do with it.
Trent Horn:
Well, let me just talk a little bit about the passion’s argument. It’s true that St. Dio Chrysostom did link same-sex sexual behavior as a causal element to an excess of passions, that if you can’t control your passions, they’ll lead you to engage in all kinds of sinful behavior. But I think he would say the same thing today about people with same-sex sexual orientations. He would say the difference between someone who two people who each have same-sex attractions, one of whom is chased and follows the church’s teaching and the other who indulges in same-sex sexual behavior, Chrysostom would say, it’s the passions. The one who has chased does not allow his emotions or his passions to pull him into a sinful direction, but the other one does that the person who engages in sexually deviant behavior is the person who allows his passions to control him rather than the will.
Trent Horn:
But it’s not the case that Chrysostom only thought same-sex sexual relations were only wrong in so far as the passions are misplaced. Now, here’s what he says in a homily he gives on Romans. He says, “No one can say that it was by being prevented from 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 insanity.” So he’s talking about the same sex sexual relationships in Romans 1. And he’s saying that the reason they did it was not because the men here couldn’t find wives or something like that, or that they had this burning sexual desire that drove them to other men, it was something far deeper and he calls it a monstrous insanity.
Trent Horn:
What is contrary to nature. And so he’s talking about what nature is, and we’ll get into this soon when we talk about what Paul means by nature, it’s not merely custom. For Chrysostom and for Paul and for the church in general nature primarily, primarily refers to the natural order God created. So to act against it may be pleasurable in a superficial way, but ultimately it’s not satisfying. So Chrysostom goes so far as to even say, “What is contrary to nature has something irritating and displeasing in it, so that they could not even claim to be getting pleasure out of it, for genuine pleasure comes from following what is according to nature.” So notice here Chrysostom is not saying nature is just human custom, which is what Vines tries to say about St. Paul. The pleasure we receive in our physical bodies relates to how God naturally designed and ordered us.
Trent Horn:
So to act against nature, Chrysostom would say would still end up being displeasing to our own natural bodies. For when God abandons a person to his own devices, then everything is turned upside down, thus not only was their doctrines satanic, but their life was too. How graceful it is when even the women sought after these things when they ought to have a greater sense of shame than men have. So you could even usually count on women to be more sober-minded in choosing to not engage in riskier, deviant behavior, but even here, it’s different than that.
Trent Horn:
Though, when we talk about the passions though, it’s like, Oh, Paul’s only concerned about excess passion. Well, if that’s the case, then why does Paul condemn adultery and prostitution if it’s only passions? He doesn’t talk about lustful adultery, lustful prostitution. In 1 Corinthian 1, or when he talks about incest, 1 Corinthians 5, he’s not talking about lustful passionate, sexual immorality. He just condemns sexual immorality, point blank. Passion for Paul May have been an explanation. And for early Christians in general may have explained why someone would fall into this kind of behavior. They let their emotions get the better of them, but it’s not the source of the wrongness.
Trent Horn:
To give you another example, the ancient Jewish writer Philo, living in the first century, he said that gluttony could lead to beastiality. He’s like, “Why would someone have sex with an animal?” Well, if they love food so much and their passions get a hold of them, they may just go crazy and have sex with an animal. But Philo would never say, “Oh, but if you had a sober relationship with an animal, that’s okay. But if you’re a gluttonous person, that’s wrong.” No, Philo would say beastiality is wrong in and of itself as a violation of the natural order. He seeks out gluttony as some kind of reason for why someone would fall into this sin, but that’s not the wrongness. So that’s what Vines is really mistaken here. That Paul may speak about lust and desires as a fuel to the fire, but not that that’s the source of the wrongest or the principle wrongness in and of itself.
Matthew Vines:
But within this framework, as I said, same-sex relations were associated with the height of excess and lust, and that is why Paul invokes them in Romans 1. His purpose is to show that the idolaters were given over to unbridled passion, and to depict a scene of sexual chaos and excess that illustrates that. And that is completely consistent with how same-sex relations were most commonly described at the time. But the only reason that a reference to same-sex behavior helps Paul illustrate general sexual chaos is because the people he is describing first began with opposite-sex relations and then, in a burst of lust, abandoned them, exchanged them for something else.
Matthew Vines:
And surely it is significant that Paul here speaks only of lustful, casual behavior. He says nothing about the people in question falling in love, making a lifelong commitment to one another, starting a family together. We would never dream of reading a passage in Scripture about heterosexual lust and promiscuity. And then from that, condemning all of the marriage relationships of straight Christians. There is an enormous difference between lust and love when it comes to our sexuality, between casual and committed relationships, between promiscuity and monogamy.
Trent Horn:
So Vines’ main argument has been opposite sex couples and same-sex couples are basically the same. Yeah, what they do in the physical act might differ for sure. But if you sat next to them at church, or if you saw them at a kid’s little league game, same sex couples, opposite sex couples, they’re basically the same. Why not treat them as the same? And so while Vines” argument is on behalf of same-sex, individuals with same-sex attraction who feel that a sexual relationship is the only means for them to have personal fulfillment and happiness in life, it seems like at least when Vines did the video, I don’t know if he still holds to this view today. It seems that he would put down clear markers to say, “No, there’s some things you cannot do even in the name of personal fulfillment and happiness.” Probably things like adultery, for example, or polyamory, but not everyone holds that view. I had that dialogue of Brandan Robertson about whether you could be a gay Christian and Robertson thinks not only could you be a gay Christian, you could be a polyamorous Christian. His book was also endorsed by Father James Martin. So take that as you will.
Trent Horn:
So this idea of Vines’ the same old hold them both to the standard of monogamy, but why? Why? If Vines’ whole argument is about being lonely, finding happiness, finding fulfillment, there are a lot of married people that are unhappy and desperately would like to just go marry somebody else, or even be alone to find their happiness and fulfillment. You know what? I would actually have respect for an LGBT revisionist theologian. I would still say they’re wrong. But I would have respect for them if they said divorce… If they said homosexual behavior is not a sin, but divorce is a sin. If there was an LGBT theologian who said that people with same-sex attraction should be allowed to get married, but should not be allowed to get divorced or remarry after divorce. If they said that, I would have a lot more respect for their position, but I’m not aware of any that hold that view. If you’re aware of any, let me know.
Trent Horn:
But at the end of the day, this argument, it will erode. It’s a universal acid. It arose not just the teaching on sexual relations between people of the same sex, but people of the opposite sex. And to be frank, people who have opposite sex attractions did this to themselves by embracing contraception and divorce for the past 50 years. What did you think was going to come from that? So Vines is saying we need monogamy, monogamy for these same sex couples. Why? If it’s about love, when you fall out of love, why not lose the monogamy? Why not have an open relationship? You could take Vines’ same arguments and say, “Ah, but when the Bible prohibits adultery, when the Bible prohibited that, that was about men who wanted to own their wives.” The prohibitions on adultery, they could not have fathomed the modern open family or swingers we have. Watch for it. Just watch for it in the next 10, 20, maybe five years.
Trent Horn:
Polyamorous relationships, throuples, things like that because there are throuples now where it’s three men. You hear that story about the three men, three men and a baby, not the movie, but the three men who got an egg donor so they could have a child. If these arguments work for two men in a sexual relationship, Vines’ arguments would also worked for three. He could go back to the Bible and he would destroy monogamy because monogamy only makes sense of it’s rooted. The permanence of monogamy only makes sense if it’s rooted in the permanent effects that naturally flow from the marital act. That’s why Jesus condemned divorce after remarriage. The reason He gave, He went back inside of the institution of male-female relationships in Genesis. Have you not read that He who made them from the beginning, made them male and female and said, “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. And the two shall become one. So they are no longer two, but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” Matthew 19:4-6.
Trent Horn:
So the path you take that if you endorse the LGBT revisionist theologian view, it joins that universal acid that just destroys what scripture means. And you get like Pastor Brandan Robertson, he holds this view, but he’s also a Universalist. He released a video recently saying that Jesus repented of the sin of racism as if Jesus was a sinner like us. This approach it ends up destroying the scriptures that Matthew Vines claims to venerate.
Matthew Vines:
That difference has always been held to be central to Christian teaching on sexual ethics for straight Christians. Why should that difference not be held to be as central for gay Christians? How can we take a passage about same-sex lust and promiscuity and then condemn any loving relationships that gay people might come to form? That is a very different standard than the one that we apply to straight people. And again, the primary argument that is advanced in support of this kind of a different standard is that Paul doesn’t merely condemn same-sex lust, he also calls same-sex desires “shameful” and labels same-sex unions “unnatural.” I’ve already explained why Paul’s use of the term “unnatural” requires the idolaters’ willful spurning of their natural heterosexual desires. And that’s how this term functions within the passage as a whole, mirroring the idolaters’ exchange of God for idols.
Matthew Vines:
But before we leave this passage, we also need to consider how Paul himself uses these terms in his other letters, and how the terms “natural” and “unnatural” were commonly applied to sexual behavior in his day. One of Paul’s most significant references to nature outside of Romans. One of Paul’s most significant references to “nature” outside of Romans 1 comes in 1 Corinthians 11. There, in verses 13-15, he writes, “Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory?”
Matthew Vines:
This is actually the most similar passage in the New Testament to Romans 1:26-27, because not only does Paul refer to “nature” here, he also speaks of the concept of “disgrace,” which is the same term that is translated as “shameful” in Romans 1. But the way that we interpret these terms in 1 Corinthians 11 is very different than how the traditional interpretation wants to read them in Romans 1. One of the most common meanings of the Greek word for “nature” is custom, and that is how Christians widely interpret this passage in 1 Corinthians today.
Matthew Vines:
And the reference to what is a “disgrace” or “shame” is taken as specifically being shameful given particular customs. So how we read Paul here in 1 Corinthians is basically this. “Do not the customs of our society dictate that it is considered shameful for a man to have long hair, but honorable for a woman?” This reading aligns with ancient Mediterranean attitudes about gender and hair length, and it makes much more sense than the idea that natural biological processes would lead men to have short hair. By “nature,” it would grow long. But again, this passage about hair length in 1 Corinthians is the most similar one in Paul’s writings to the passage about sexual behavior in Romans 1. So if we understand Paul’s references to “nature” and to “disgrace” in 1 Corinthians as being about custom, why do we not do the same in Romans 1?
Trent Horn:
All right. So the main argument in Romans 1 is that Paul is making an appeal to nature, saying just as the Gentiles should know by nature that you give worship to God and you don’t engage in same-sex sexual relationships, they can be held accountable for that. What Vines tries to do to get around this clear meaning of the text is to say, well, Paul, he doesn’t really mean that when he says according to nature, he really means custom. And in order to do that, he picks a standard verse that people always go to to try to say Paul was only talking about custom, human customs, human conventions. He’s not talking about nature, and that would be 1 Corinthians 11:4. Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him? The idea about women wearing veils. And of course, even today, as Catholics, we know veiling is a discipline. It’s not some kind of dogma of the faith, of the rules about whether people veil or not veil, have changed and can change. That is a matter of custom.
Trent Horn:
And so is Paul saying here, “Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him.” We would say, well, that was more of a custom in the time of Corinth. It’s not necessarily something in the natural order. But here’s the thing, First, when Paul uses the phrase “nature” the Greek word “Phusis,” he primarily means the natural order. Some kind of order beyond mere human custom, beyond an arbitrary thing that a society can change based on what they think is most helpful. And I’ll talk about that with some of these… Well, I’ll just show it to you now with some of these verses.
Trent Horn:
When Paul says by “nature,” he says in Galatians 4:l7, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in to beings that by nature are no God. So like things like idols, the nature of an idol is to not be God. It’s not, human customs can’t make an idol God because by nature, it is not a God of any kind. We see Paul uses the same meaning of nature in his Letter to the Romans, Romans 2:14. He says, “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they’re a law to themselves.” Uses the Greek word Phusis here. “They do by nature Phusis because they follow the natural moral conscience God has given them.” The whole point here is that the Gentiles don’t follow their human customs. They can follow the natural law God has given them in their hearts.
Trent Horn:
And interesting in Romans 11:24, in Romans 11, Paul is saying, “Look, that God chose the Jewish people.” The Israelites. That God chose Israel to be His chosen people.” Paul uses the analogy of a cultivated olive tree. It’s God’s special little olive tree that he grew and cultivated in a garden. And so Paul says, “Guess what? If God wants to take a wild olive tree branch and graft it.” So grafting is when you can grow one branch, you grow it onto an existing tree or plant. “If God wants to graft a wild olive tree to His cultivated olive tree, He can do that.” And so the analogy here is God wants to enlarge His covenant to include the Gentiles, to make the Gentiles a part of the true Israel. He is allowed to do that.
Trent Horn:
And so Paul uses this language. He’s talking to his Jewish audience, “For if you’ve been cut from what is by nature.” He always talking to the Gentiles here who are grafted into Israel into the church. “For if you’ve been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree.” So he’s saying here, just as when you grow something, if you grow one kind of tree, by nature it won’t produce certain kinds of fruit, but you can look online for tree grafting. You can actually graph different kinds of trees together so they produce different color blossoms in the same tree.
Trent Horn:
So here notice what he’s saying by nature contrary to nature, it’s not about custom. It’s not about human conventions. He’s talking about things, people were part of Israel because God had chosen them to be born into situations where they would be circumcised. It is up to God’s ordering of the world who was born a Gentile, who was born a Jew and God moving the Gentiles by grace through faith into true Israel. All of this shows here that when Paul overwhelmingly uses the term “Phusis” nature, he’s not talking about human custom.
Trent Horn:
So what is he saying in 1 Corinthians 11? He is making an argument by biology because what Paul is saying is that naturally women don’t tend to go bald, but men do. He even talk about male pattern baldness. Now, of course, there’s going to be exceptions. I know women who are bald, women who have alopecia, for example, and there are women who bald, but when you look about specific male pattern baldness, that’s usually men. It’s far more common to see a bald man than a bald woman. Much just the same as there are bearded ladies, that doesn’t negate the truth of nature that men tend to grow beards and not women even though women sometimes do grow facial hair. Much the same way Paul’s argument about the veils is that by nature, men tend to go bald. And so they wear a covering. But by nature, women don’t tend to lose their hair. God has given them their hair as a covering. And so men trying to grow out their hair long to imitate women is contrary to nature if they’re seeking to imitate women and doing that.
Trent Horn:
So Paul is making an argument by nature, but he’s it to a particular custom involving hair length. But the argument from nature is that men by nature have certain kinds of hair growth and loss. Women by nature have certain kinds of hair growth and hair loss. And that is true. The application of that truth, though, is a particular custom that can change. And Paul really admits this in 1 Corinthians 11 when he puts several lines of arguments out about the custom of veiling, but in Romans 1, Paul doesn’t do that. Paul just makes a straight argument from a unimpeachable nature, undeniable elements of nature, namely the creator status of God that is worthy of worship and the normality and the naturalness of relationships between men and women where sexual activity is reserved alone there within the marital act.
Trent Horn:
So Vines’ argument that tries to take Paul’s use of nature, it’s just not a good study to pick one verse that deals with Paul applying human nature to a custom that can change to the fact that Paul uses the words by nature and contrary to nature to not talk about custom the majority of the time and how in Romans 1 he’s very clear, what he’s talking about here is not mere customs. It’s rooted in the created order that we see in the Book of Genesis.
Trent Horn:
Hey, thank you guys so much for listening. Remember if you want to hear the full rebuttal that this excerpt came from, as well as my other rebuttal videos and Counsel of Trent Podcast episodes on YouTube, go to the Counsel of Trent YouTube page, click Subscribe. I’d greatly appreciate it. Share it with your friends and go to trenthornpodcast.com to support us. Thank you all so much. And I hope you have a very blessed day.
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