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Does I Corinthians 6:9 condemn homosexuality?
Yes, enthusiastically 10%  10%  [ 2 ]
Yes 25%  25%  [ 5 ]
Maybe 10%  10%  [ 2 ]
Not really 10%  10%  [ 2 ]
No way! 15%  15%  [ 3 ]
Just show the results 30%  30%  [ 6 ]
Total votes : 20

ArrantPariah
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11 Jul 2012, 6:15 pm

For some American Christian denominations, the most significant verse of the Bible is I Corinthians 6:9. This verse is esteemed by many to be more central to their faith than either Isaiah 7:14 or John 3:16.

So as not to give you half of a sentence, I'll begin the discussion with the King James translation of I Corinthians 6: 9-10.

King James wrote:
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.


A lot of Christians go easy on the fornicators and adulterers (for example, Bristol Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain), and on the covetous (capitalism would collapse without covetousness), but come down like a ton of bricks on the "effeminate" and the "abusers of themselves with mankind" (no examples needed).

I do not know any Biblical Greek, but I do know how to use Google, which is the next best thing.

A lot of people (particularly "Conservatives") take the words that King James translated as "effeminate" and "abusers of themselves" to mean "homosexuals", and that homosexuals therefore merit special attention when it comes time to find someone to persecute.

According to this:

http://whosoever.org/bible/corin.shtml

Quote:
In I Corinthians 6:9 Paul lists a many activities that will prevent people from inheriting the Kingdom of God. One has been variously translated as effeminate, homosexuals, or sexual perverts. The original Greek text reads malakoi arsenokoitai. The first word means soft; the meaning of the second word has been lost....The early Church interpreted the phrase as referring to people of soft morals; i.e. unethical. From the time of Martin Luther, it was interpreted as referring to masturbation. More recently, it has been translated as referring to homosexuals . Each translator seem to take whatever activity that their society particularly disapproves of and use it in this verse....

The two words in the original Greek are "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai". Malakoi is a very common Greek word. It literally means "soft". It is used in Matthew 11:7-18 and Luke 7:24-25 in reference to soft clothing. Scholars have to look at material outside of the Bible in order to try and figure out just what this means. The early church Fathers used the word to mean someone who was "weak" or "soft" in their morals and from the time of the reformation to the 20th century it was usually interpreted as masturbation. In Greek this word never is applied to gay people or homosexual acts in general. "No new textual data effected the twentieth-century change in translation of this word: only a shift in popular morality. Since few people any longer regard masturbation as the sort of activity which would preclude entrance to heaven, the condemnation has simply been transferred to a group still so widely despised that their exclusion does not trouble translators or theologians."....

Note: Greek contained no word which compares to the English noun "homosexual" meaning someone of homosexual orientation. In fact the word "homosexual" (meaning someone of homosexual orientation) was not even coined until the late 1800'S by German psychologists, and introduced into English only at the beginning of the 1900's. However, during scriptural times there were a number of Greek words to describe homosexual sex acts and the two words "malakois" and "arsenokoitai" do not appear among them.


Granted, the above point-of-view comes from a group of people who would especially prefer that homosexuals not be targeted for persecution.

According to the Southern Baptists, I Corinthians 6: 9 is to be interpreted to mean that the Bible calls the "homosexual lifestyle" "sinful and dangerous both to the individuals involved and to society at large",

http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/amresolution.asp?id=1128

which, as far as I can tell, is standard ignorant Southern Baptist hyperbole.

Catholics seem to maintain that the word "malakoi", the Greek word for "soft", and which King James translated as "effeminate", refers to masturbators

http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/ ... _a_sin.php

Baptist don't seem to get as hot and bothered about masturbating as they do about homosexuality, and may think that masturbating is all right, while homosexuality isn't.

Here is a list of translations of Malakoi and Arsenokoitai through History

http://www.jeramyt.org/gay/gaytrans.html

So, what say ye, the Denizens of WrongPlanet? Does I Corinthians 6:9 wholeheartedly condemn homosexuals? Can one be a Christian and still masturbate? Or, are Christians mistaken in condemning homosexuality and masturbation?



YippySkippy
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11 Jul 2012, 10:17 pm

I find the word "inherit" to be the most confusing.
You inherit when someone else dies. If it's God's kingdom, does that mean God's going to die and leave it to some of us?



Evinceo
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12 Jul 2012, 3:08 am

This is why people who are interested in what the bible is actually saying use NIV, but I digress.

If you select just a snippet part of a text like the bible, you're already being dishonest. That particular line? Yeah, it's homophobic, but that does not mean that you've got an excuse to be a homophone just because you swear by the bible.



ArrantPariah
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12 Jul 2012, 8:15 am

Here is the NIV

New International Version wrote:
Or 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[a] nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.


and the footnote provided
NIV footnote wrote:
a.1 Corinthians 6:9 The words men who have sex with men translate two Greek words that refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual acts.


The NIV folks obviously arrived at a different conclusion regarding "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai." Do we have any Koine Greek-speakers here who would like to weigh in? Were the NIV folks justified?

NIV goes with the more vague "sexually immoral" where King James uses the more explicit "fornicators."

So, do w*kers get a pass and go to Heaven, or not?

And, since NIV uses a gender-specific wording, do Lesbians get a free pass into Heaven? If the chief concern is the emission of semen for purposes other than procreating children, then males would have to be careful not to masturbate nor to have gay sex. For females, there should be no problem with non-heterosexual orgasms.



YippySkippy
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12 Jul 2012, 9:20 am

I think the point is that no one deserves to get into Heaven. The list is just meant to cover so many sins that everyone will have been guilty of at least one of them. So, it really doesn't matter if homosexuality is a sin, because everyone's a sinner anway.



Alfonso12345
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12 Jul 2012, 9:25 am

YippySkippy wrote:
I think the point is that no one deserves to get into Heaven. The list is just meant to cover so many sins that everyone will have been guilty of at least one of them. So, it really doesn't matter if homosexuality is a sin, because everyone's a sinner anway.


But it makes no sense why homosexuality in particular would be listed as a sin, when it causes no harm. All it really does is go against the "plans" of an invisible narcissist in the sky who has not been proven to exist in a way that everyone could believe in its existence.

Not believing in it is also a sin, what is the harm in that? Why would a real god care so much about whether it is worshiped or not? If it needs to be worshiped to be happy, then it is flawed.



YippySkippy
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12 Jul 2012, 9:28 am

Quote:
But it makes no sense why homosexuality in particular would be listed as a sin, when it causes no harm.


Neither does consensual fornication.



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12 Jul 2012, 9:34 am

YippySkippy wrote:
Quote:
But it makes no sense why homosexuality in particular would be listed as a sin, when it causes no harm.


Neither does consensual fornication.


You're right, that one does not make sense. If two people have each others' consent, why would it matter if they have sex or not? It's not going to cause any harm, as long as the two people involved are careful. Even if it is a group of people, why would that be such a bad thing? If they all have consent, there is no harm in that.



DefinitelyKmart
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12 Jul 2012, 11:44 am

I thought the best example is leviticus? for biblical homophobia, that says it all in clinical terms there is no real room for interpretation.



ArrantPariah
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12 Jul 2012, 1:29 pm

DefinitelyKmart wrote:
I thought the best example is leviticus? for biblical homophobia, that says it all in clinical terms there is no real room for interpretation.


Yes, but some Christians back down on Leviticus when you point out that Leviticus also tells us how to sacrifice sheep, goats and cattle. Christians use I Corinthians 6:9 as their most reliable authoritative back-up, when they don't want to explain why they aren't pleasing Yahweh with animal sacrifices.



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12 Jul 2012, 1:38 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
Quote:
But it makes no sense why homosexuality in particular would be listed as a sin, when it causes no harm.


Neither does consensual fornication.


These "harmless" acts are capable of wrecking marriages.

ruveyn



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12 Jul 2012, 1:41 pm

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These "harmless" acts are capable of wrecking marriages.


That's covered under "adultery".



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12 Jul 2012, 6:38 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
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These "harmless" acts are capable of wrecking marriages.


That's covered under "adultery".


Plus it's not really the acts themselves so much as the violation of trust that those acts represent. Similar things happen if you were to, say, suddenly discover that your husband is an arms dealer (and not a travel agent), or that they've been concealing their religion, or they used to be a different gender and didn't tell you up front. The problem isn't what happened; it's that what happened indicates a history of lies and violations of trust that make that person untrustworthy.


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ArrantPariah
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12 Jul 2012, 8:47 pm

Here is the whole of 1 Corinthians 6, Good News Translation, to get a better idea of the context.

1 Corinthians 6 wrote:
If any of you have a dispute with another Christian, how dare you go before heathen judges instead of letting God's people settle the matter? Don't you know that God's people will judge the world? Well, then, if you are to judge the world, aren't you capable of judging small matters? Do you not know that we shall judge the angels? How much more, then, the things of this life! If such matters come up, are you going to take them to be settled by people who have no standing in the church? Shame on you! Surely there is at least one wise person in your fellowship who can settle a dispute between fellow Christians. Instead, one Christian goes to court against another and lets unbelievers judge the case!

The very fact that you have legal disputes among yourselves shows that you have failed completely. Would it not be better for you to be wronged? Would it not be better for you to be robbed? Instead, you yourselves wrong one another and rob one another, even other believers! Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God's Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves—none of these will possess God's Kingdom. Some of you were like that. But you have been purified from sin; you have been dedicated to God; you have been put right with God by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Someone will say, "I am allowed to do anything." Yes; but not everything is good for you. I could say that I am allowed to do anything, but I am not going to let anything make me its slave.

Someone else will say, "Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food." Yes; but God will put an end to both.

The body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord; and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord from death, and he will also raise us by his power. You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ's body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible! Or perhaps you don't know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, "The two will become one body." But he who joins himself to the Lord becomes spiritually one with him.

Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body. Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God's glory.


Paul spends much of of his letter excoriating the Corinthians for this or that. It doesn't seem that Paul has a special thing about homosexuality--he doesn't want them having coitus with prostitutes, either.

If you read this article on homosexuality in ancient Rome:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual ... cient_Rome

It would appear that homosexuality was not at all unusual. Given that opportunities for coitus in ancient Corinth were probably more abundant than in modern Las Vegas, Bangkok and Amsterdam combined, I doubt that anyone would have bothered masturbating. And, I doubt that Paul would have bothered criticising Corinthians for masturbating in his letter (unless they were out w*king on street corners). So, my humble opinion is that the Catholics and Lutherans are completely wrong in declaring that Paul is writing about masturbation here. I am pretty certain that masturbation didn't become an issue until much later, after Christians had taken over the continent and made opportunities for coitus less available. Then, yes, the monks and nuns were very much preoccupied with trying not to masturbate.

This new religion is Paul's thing, and he is seeking to control his flock by telling them that they must not fornicate (or else to marry if they really have to). He wants to keep the donations coming in.



ruveyn
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12 Jul 2012, 10:12 pm

ArrantPariah wrote:

Paul spends much of of his letter excoriating the Corinthians for this or that. It doesn't seem that Paul has a special thing about homosexuality--he doesn't want them having coitus with prostitutes, either.



Paul look askance at the normal sex urge. He grudgingly concede marriage. "It is better to marry than to burn". Paul is a psycho-sexual basket case. He himself never married nor had children. If everyone were like Paul the human race would become extinct in under a hundred years.

ruveyn



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12 Jul 2012, 11:12 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Paul look askance at the normal sex urge. He grudgingly concede marriage. "It is better to marry than to burn". Paul is a psycho-sexual basket case. He himself never married nor had children. If everyone were like Paul the human race would become extinct in under a hundred years.

Everyone should be like Paul.