Why this native Greek speaker is not convinced by revisionist teaching

It is a fundamental belief of evangelical Christians that the Bible is the Word of God, delivered to us through the prophets and the apostles. It is the firm foundation of the Christian faith, which has remained unchanged for more than 2,000 years. That’s why we turn to the Bible to find the answer to every problem we face.

As a native Greek speaker, I have been blessed in enjoying unhindered access to the text of the New Testament in its original language. Of course, Greek has evolved over the last two millennia but, thanks to the strict historical spelling of the modern Greek language and the mandatory ancient Greek classes in middle and high school, New Testament Greek is  accessible to all educated Greeks.

As a Christian man who is attracted to men, this knowledge of Greek has certainly helped me to navigate the modern complexities of language and insulate me from the revisionist interpretations of biblical sexual ethics that have become so common in the West. Let me explain!

What’s not in the Bible

No matter how long we search the Bible, we cannot find the word homosexuality, its Greek equivalent homophylophilia or any synonym. This is because the concept of homosexuality as we understand it today is a modern phenomenon popularised in 1870 by Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal.

Generally, the Bible is not interested in social constructs (such as sexual identities, LGBTQ, etc.), because they are transient, "…like chaff that the wind blows away." (Psalm 1:4 NIV). Nor does the Bible discuss a person's sexual orientation. Rather, the Bible takes a more pragmatic route, focusing on sexual behaviour rather than orientation. The Bible still considers fornication and adultery sinful, even when a man is attracted to women. Therefore, the Bible views sexual orientation (the usually stable direction of one’s sexual attractions) as neither a source of condemnation nor a basis for salvation. Keeping this in mind, many modern reinterpretations of biblical texts fundamentally collapse, since they build their arguments on a concept the Bible finds inconsequential: sexual orientation.

Visibility of homosexual acts at the time

Homosexual acts are explicitly mentioned in the Bible and they were perfectly known throughout the Ancient Greek and the Roman world. Institutions such as the erastes (an adult male in a relationship with a younger male) and male concubinage were so widespread that the Early Church took extra effort to fight them (e.g. see the Didache, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian).

Regardless, modern revisionists starting with John Boswell have tried to reinterpret Greek words in the New Testament in order to fit them into a new sexual (un)ethic. Many interpret “πορνεία” (porneia) using the classical meaning of prostitution, as if the New Testament was written by an Athenian of the 5th century BC and not by Hellenistic Jews.

Since the 2nd century BC and during the Apostolic Times, the word had come to include sexual immorality in general, as is apparent in Hellenistic Jewish texts, such as the Book of Sirach and the New Testament itself. When Jesus, according to Matthew 5:32, promotes  the impermissibility of divorce, he inserts an exception, “on the ground of porneia”, which no sensible reader has ever interpreted as prostitution!

Still, guided by the same bad translating principles, queer Christian associations today have ended up approving unthinkable things, such as polyamory. At least it is not prostitution, of course! Another word in the New Testament that attracted revisionists’ rage is the Greek word “αρσενοκοίτης” (arsenokoites) widely used by Paul. For this, the revisionists employed a dual strategy. Firstly, they tried to get these verses out of the way, by mocking them as “clobber passages”. This is nothing more than an argumentum ad hominem (i.e. dismissing the writer rather than engaging with the arguments) and not worth any further consideration.

What’s more, Boswell attempted to distort the meaning of the word to limit it to male prostitution. But to do so, he did not only disregard the historical hermeneutics of the Church, but also the Jewish Scripture of the Apostolic times. “Arsenokoites” is a compound Greek word clearly echoing the prohibitions of homosexual behavior in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Both verses are rendered in the Greek translation (called “LXX”) used at the time by the Jewish diaspora as “met’ arsenos koiten” (lying in bed with a man). In this sense, “arsenokoites” is the Hellenistic equivalent of the modern MSM acronym (“Men having Sex with Men”) and this is clearly what Paul talks about.

But Jesus said nothing about homosexuality

Another common argument claims that the Lord was silent about homosexuality and the sins of the flesh in general, which could not be further from the truth, since Jesus considered sexual immorality to be a source of human defilement:
For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery… All these evils come from inside and defile a person - Mark 7:21-23 NIV.

Similarly, He condemned lust as the root cause of all carnal sins: But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart - Matthew 5:28.

Many biblical revisionists claim that Christ did not speak about homosexuality. Indeed, the gospels contain not a single word about homosexuality, just as there are no words about rape or paedophilia. This of course does not mean that Jesus condoned these acts. After all, He did condemn some other sins that are far more acceptable today, such as adultery and illicit sexual behaviour. But Jesus asks for something more: the restraint of evil thoughts, if we really want to avoid acting out.

Saint Paul, or “the one to blame”

Some modern revisionists consider the traditional Christian sexual ethic as the product of Pauline influence on apostolic theology that distorted Christ’s kindly message. However, as we've established, Christ’s teaching was not a license for sexual sin, but a call to chastity.

Paul’s mission expanded the Christian message outside the predominantly Jewish region of Palestine and thus needed to deal with the sexual permissiveness common to the Gentiles. That’s why his epistles are full of warnings against “porneia” and “arsenokoitia”.  

In his teaching, Saint Paul makes it clear that homosexual acts are not only against nature, but also a symptom of our separation from God:

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, 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 received in themselves the due penalty for their error. - Romans 1:25-27

As we saw, sexual acts between persons of the same sex were not rare in the ancient Roman world. Rather in some areas, it was a required step of socialisation. For this reason, Apostle Paul felt compelled to make explicitly clear that such acts are contrary to God's will. Indeed, if left unrepented, they can lead to eternal damnation: Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men… will inherit the kingdom of God. - I Corinthians 6:9-10

Arsenokoitia here is listed among the actions that can jeopardise our salvation. But God's grace is not in vain for those who accept it. This is why Paul goes on to add: And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. - I Corinthians 6:11

Sodom & other “heterosexist” NT authors

Blaming Paul for the “heterosexism” of the historic Christian sexual ethic, modern revisionists tend to imply that he is the only New Testament author writing against homosexual behaviour. At least two other Apostles do so: Peter and Jude. Peter reminds us that spiritual death brings God's punishment. This punishment was unleashed on Sodom and will be wreaked again on those who walk according to their spiritual blindness: …if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly… This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh and despise authority. -2 Peter 2:6,10

It is significant that Saint Peter uses the word "especially” to emphasise the destructiveness of carnal sins committed, not out of weakness, but through a deliberate denial of God's saving authority. Saint Jude similarly warns of the fate of Sodom:

As Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. -Jude 1:7 NKJV
The words in the Greek text here are striking and the New King James Version renders it more clearly: “Gone after strange flesh…”

The sexual revisionists will now come in and argue that the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality, but pride. That’s true: the root sin of the Sodomites was not a single homosexual act or a persistent homosexual orientation. It was actually what we can describe as a syndrome: a set of different symptoms that jointly comprise a disease like no other. As the Bible tells us, Sodomites displayed pride (Ezekiel 16:49), they paraded their sin (Isaiah 3:9), they were all complicit in sin (Genesis 19:4) and finally reached the point of ultimate social enforcement of “arsenokoitia” (Genesis 19:5). This was the syndrome of Sodom. Let’s reflect on whether we might be at all at risk of heading in this direction today.

This article was originally published in the Spring 2025 edition of the TFT magazine, Ascend. Click the button below to download your copy.