Homosexuality (sodomy) — a most grievous sin
“And the Lord said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrha has been increased towards me, and their sins are very great” (Gen. 18:20)
“And the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven” (Gen. 19:24)
That homosexuality has long since become a burning problem is news to no one. It is part of one of the diseases of the 20th century, the so-called “sexual revolution,” and troubles society no less than terrorism and drug addiction. This already lamentable situation is made still more acute by the propaganda of the sins of Sodom through the mass media. We have in mind the unprecedented flood of erotic films and photographic material, the public airing of the most intimate sides of the lives of many well-known people of homosexual inclination, interviews with many well-known contemporary artists and sportsmen of homosexual orientation, and so on. Besides this, the pages of magazines and newspapers often carry so-called “analytical” articles on homosexuality, whose authors — specialists in various fields (psychologists, physicians, politicians, sociologists) as well as journalists — set out to explain the nature of this phenomenon, give it one assessment or another (negative, positive, or even neutral), and accordingly propose different ways of solving the problem.
Clearly the Church too has her own position on homosexuality, and that position is sharply negative. We should note at the outset that this problem is by its very nature first of all a religious one, and only after that does it acquire a social, medical and other significance. Moreover, from the last century onward there were attempts to declare homosexuality a peculiar “physiological deficiency.” In recent times the search for a biological basis of this phenomenon has intensified especially — not in order to expose its pathological nature, but on the contrary, to prove that homosexuality is something entirely normal. Some sought its biological basis in peculiarities of the brain, others in the hormonal system, others again in the genes; but the research has not confirmed any biological determinism of homosexuality. Homosexuals have neither any special hormones nor a deficiency of any ordinary hormone. Biologically they are people just like everyone else (on this in detail see John Horgan's article in the book “Man and Sex,” St Petersburg, 1998). The authors of the publications mentioned above rest from the outset on a false premise, which is what leads to their mistaken conclusions. The point is that they have not managed to free themselves from a materialist mentality and present man as a “static,” uniform being. By “static” we mean that they regard man as a being that arose at a certain stage of evolution and undergoes only social and cultural development, while his pneumo-psycho-somatic properties are in principle unchanging. Clearly such a “theory” wholly ignores the biblical act of the creation of man, and therefore comes into conflict with Christian anthropology, which for its part sharply distinguishes between man's state before the Fall and after it. It is fitting, therefore, to review briefly the biblical episode of the creation of man and the question of the origin of the sexes.
Holy Scripture tells of the division of the sexes in the Book of Genesis, chapter I, verse 27, and chapter II, verse 22. In the first case (in Genesis) we read: “God created man, in his own image created he him; male and female created he them.” The words used in the Hebrew original, “zakhar” and “neqevah,” are rendered in the Greek (in the Septuagint) as “arsen” and “thely,” and both of them are neuter; that is, God at first created “the male” and “the female,” two sides of a single human nature; and afterwards, as St John Chrysostom says, “the wisdom of the Creator divided what at first was one, so that afterwards they might be united again in marriage” (Homily 12 on the Epistle to the Colossians). As for the second episode (“the Lord made a woman and brought her unto Adam,” Gen. 2:22), the Hebrew original has “ish” and “ishshah” (husband and wife), and the Greek translation “Adam” and “gyne” (woman), and it tells directly of the real division of the sexes. Besides, as we know, man is the only being created “in the image of God.” To take the “image” to be the various faculties of man (reason, freedom, immortality, creativity and so on) is not without grounds, but neither is it altogether apt. The “image” is expressed above all in the fact that man, like God, is a personal being. Moreover, God is three Persons, and so man alone cannot be the true “image” of God on earth. According to the divine design, such an image was to be the family of Adam. The Son and the Holy Spirit take their origin (a timeless, logical origin) from the Person of God the Father. From the Father the Son is “begotten” and the Holy Spirit “proceeds,” which means that the essence, the nature, of one Person is passed on to another fully and undiminished. Both “begetting” and “procession” are antinomies of creation, for a creature bears and reflects in itself the person and nature of its Creator only in part. So, just as from the eternal Father the Holy Spirit proceeds and the Son is begotten, so from the earthly forefather Adam the woman proceeds and the son is born; that is, as the three Hypostases of the Trinity, having one nature, are consubstantial, so Eve too, as proceeding from Adam's rib, has the same nature. So too Cain: he is not made by Adam but born of him. As the holy Cappadocian fathers teach (Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa), the biblical account of the first people helps us to understand the two ways in which beginningless being is passed on to another without being created.
As we see, the biblical act of the creation of the sexes reveals to us the deepest theological meaning of this process. But after the Fall man's sexual life, like his whole psychosomatic structure, underwent a radical change. “And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin, and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). As the holy fathers explain, the “garments of skin” signify the coarsening, the thickening, the earthiness of human nature. And it is precisely among the perverted, evil-inclined strivings of fallen human nature that the various forms of sexual depravity belong, homosexuality among them.
Human sexuality can be realized in only two forms — marriage and virginity. Both are held by the Church to be saving. Every other form of sexual life is sin. One of these is homosexuality. The Bible speaks of this sin rather sparingly, but very impressively and sternly, so as to leave no room at all for relativizing it. Homosexuality is a sin — a manifestation of fallen human nature — in which the course of things intended by the Creator loses its original aim and direction and develops wilfully in the opposite direction. If fornication and adultery, polygamy, polyandry or promiscuity are an animal principle (a passion) acquired “by inheritance” after the Fall, homosexuality is man's loss of the organic wholeness of his sexual role, its distortion. In human sexuality the reproductive function is separated from the hedonistic one, which can exist as an autonomous, independent principle. And if polygamy is an “animal survival,” homosexuality is “human, all too human.” It is in no way bound up with the reproductive function of sex and, however paradoxical it may sound, it is the consequence and manifestation of a specifically human, cultural form of sexuality, oriented toward communication, the overcoming of loneliness, the obtaining of pleasure, the acquiring of new experience and new knowledge, and self-assertion. Yet Holy Scripture holds the “divine purpose” of man's sexual life to be the continuation of the race (Gen. 1:28), the making of a family (Gen. 2:24) and childbearing (1 Tim. 2:15). A conscious distortion of the divine design — that is what homosexuality is; it is richly nourished by secular culture, a culture that tries to declare same-sex relations the norm and acceptable to society, and in this it does a work opposed to God. That is why every pagan civilization from the most ancient times regarded homosexuality as a normal phenomenon, for their religious views on every question, sex included, differed radically from the biblical ones; more than that, in the life of some ancient peoples homosexuality was a necessary component, and it was often backed by those very religious views. Dennis Prager, a professor at Columbia University (USA), in his essay “Judaism's Sexual Revolution” surveys the sexual life of all the civilizations of the ancient world and concludes that, apart from the Jewish one, not a single archaic civilization knew of a prohibition of homosexuality. Alongside the historical documents, European travellers of later times also tell of the wide and universal spread of this sin. Homosexuality was an ordinary phenomenon in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, in ancient Greece and Rome (as Edward Gibbon notes, of the first 15 Roman emperors all but Claudius were involved in this depravity). There are reports of the spread of homosexuality among the Carthaginians, the Gauls, the Celts, and the ancient population of Britain and Scandinavia. The Spanish conquistador Cortés describes a similar state of affairs among the Indians of Mexico, and the Jesuit monk Charlevoix among the Indian tribes of North America. European missionaries give a great many examples of homosexuality from the life of the countries of the East (China, Japan, Indochina). Homosexuality was also widespread in the Islamic world, both Arab (Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and so on) and non-Arab (Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan).
The religion of the Old Testament rose up sharply against every kind of sexual depravity, homosexuality included. As we know, the Lord punished no people as He punished the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, among whom this sin was especially widespread (Gen. 19:24). Later, after the giving of the Law of Moses, every perverted form of sexual life, homosexuality included, was forbidden to the Hebrew people. In the Book of Leviticus, chapter 18 (verse 22), we read: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” and in chapter 20, verse 13, it is written: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” As for the New Testament, the apostle Paul speaks out categorically against homosexuality (Rom. 1:25–28; 1 Cor. 6:7).
The Church laid the strictest penance on sodomites. In particular, according to Canon 62 of the third canonical epistle of St Basil the Great to Amphilochius of Iconium, sodomites were excluded from Holy Communion for 15 years; this penance is stricter than the penance for adultery, which provides for exclusion for 7½ years. For sodomy is a double sin. A sin directed both against another person and against nature itself.
St John Chrysostom, commenting on the relevant passages of the epistles of the apostle Paul mentioned above, is very categorical and regards the sin of Sodom as the gravest of sins committed before God. The holy father sharply distinguishes two sides of sexual life — the natural and the unnatural. In the first of these, if it is contained within a marriage performed by the Church, there is nothing sinful, since the dimorphism of the sexes is held to be an order established by God.
Speaking of homosexuality, John Chrysostom draws a sharp line between the sexual ethics of Christianity and the liberal position of paganism toward sodomy, according to which sodomy was an ordinary, lawful and even privileged act reserved for free citizens alone and forbidden to slaves as inferior beings. He writes: “Sodomy is more terrible than adultery, which, though unlawful, is natural; sodomy is both lawlessness and at the same time a sin against nature. If there were no Gehenna, sodomy itself would be the greatest punishment.” In Chrysostom's view the sin of Sodom is heavier than murder, for “it is better to die than to live in such filth. The murderer separates soul from body, but the sodomite destroys both soul and body. There is no sin that can be compared with this lawlessness, and if those who are in it were aware of the gravity of this sin, they would choose to die many times over rather than fall into this abomination.”
The only means of being freed from this sin is to return to God once more, and this is achieved through repentance. If a man condemns his sinful life and with repentance begs the Lord for the forgiveness of his sins, he will receive pardon, for there is no sin that surpasses the love and mercy of God. In conclusion, let us note once more that every departure from the order established by God and His Church — marriage and voluntary virginity — is sin, and this sin cannot be covered even by the modern terms with which newly appeared reformers mask it.
