[For this post I want to highlight part of a friend's response to the last post, and then part of my reponse. I thought his response was particularly helpful and thoughtful, and he also knows Greek better than I do. This also forced me to clarify my position a little bit.]
"...At the moment I am most interested in your "Homosexuality in the Bible" blogs. A close friend of mine has recently developed a relationship with a girl. The problem is that he is not sexually attracted to women, but to men. As a Christian he feels that he must overcome this, and hopes that his explaining of his situation to his girlfriend tonight will not end their relationship. I have had many conversations with him about this, and am by no means naive to the fact that his attraction to his same sex is not a choice and not the direct result of abuse, etc...
I do have trouble, however, understanding your interpretation of Romans 1, because I don't see the ambiguity you speak of as it relates to the referent of the 3rd plural pronoun in 1.18-32. Verses 1.17-18 seem to form a direct comparison between the righteous (dikaios) and the unrighteous (adikian anthropon...). The passage, as I take it, is not referring of some unidentified group of people, or homosexuals for that matter, but "unrighteous men" ("men" in the verse part of a circumstantial genitive absolute; not grammatically related, but obviously conceptually related to those perpetrating the "injustice"). Though Paul does seem to have specific instances in mind as he references idolatrous acts, I don't think that the subject, what this passage is really about, is either "all homosexuals" or "some specific group of homosexuals" (as you divide the possibilities), but not homosexuals at all. As I take it, he is elaborating on the main point of the passage, "the righteous man shall live by faith," and contrasting it with incidental examples of those people who "suppress the truth in unrighteousness." That those people--whether he had in mind the Corinthians or the Romans, the general cultural milieu, the historical Jews (notice the Messianic context with the aorist tense), or mankind as a whole-- were committing homosexual acts seems to be for Paul a clear cut, though incidental, example of sin--but plainly Paul is not referring to homosexuals as such or the Corinthians specifically, but unrighteous men categorically.
As it does pertain to the degradation of the "natural function" ("chresin," a using), it seems that it would be prudent for you to more consistently make a distinction between "homosexual activity" and "homosexuals." I think Paul, and the culture of the time (and as the phrase suggests), understood this word to be an action rather than a simple attraction to the opposite sex, as we tend to use 'homosexual'. The passions (pathos) could also be 'an incident' rather than an ongoing attraction. In that light...
It seems a bit unfair to articulate the "conservative" or "Evangelical" position as universally taking this passage to be talking about "all homosexuals." This may be the case for people like Dobson or Campollo (I don't know because I don't listen to them), but I would be surprised if even they did not recognize what this passage is about (i.e. "unrighteous men"--not simply homosexuals, whether in the particular case of the Corinthians or universally). Moreover, I personally have not heard many "evangelicals" say that it is a sin to have desire for the same sex, though they claim it is a sin to act on those desires. (i.e. it is not wrong to be tempted, but it is wrong to gratify the temptation).
To your three divisions of the passage, I think you must add two: the gospel message (vv. 3-5) and "the punchline" (2.1). That is, the verses don't make sense if we skip over the part that is usually ignored as an extra verbose introduction: the declaration of Christ as the resurrected Lord ( 1.4), the imparted grace, and the subsequent transformation of lives into the "obedience of faith" (v.5). Having been shown what happens without this (1.18-32), there's the punchline: "Therefore you are without excuse, every man of you who passes judgement, for in that you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things." I think Paul uses the third plural pronoun in 1.18-32 because he wanted the readers to think, "yeah, those scumbags," before he leveled the truth on them: its not "them"... its you!"
Response:
...I am in complete agreement with you about the ultimate referent of the "them" being "truth-suppressors". But that doesn't yet tell us enough about the group described in the rest of the passage, because we are all guilty of supressing the truth to some extent, but of course we do not all have same-sex tendencies. Therefore the referent must be narrower than all truth-suppressors. What I was getting at is that Paul was building his case against some unnamed group that he would in the next paragraph accuse of same-sex activity. But are all people that are homosexuals attracted to the same sex as a result of "truth suppression", or is there only a certain group that suppressed the truth in a certain way and has a punishment that takes the form of some kind of same-sex activity (like bi-sexual worship)? Taking your personal example and asking the same question, are your friend's struggles the result of some past idolatry of his, or was Paul simply not trying to talk about all people for all time who have same-sex desires? You (I think) and I would both answer by saying that he was not. The verses about truth-suppression simply do not help us understand your friend's sexuality.
And I think that Dobson, on the other hand, (I use him as an example because he likes to send me mailings about how gay marriage is destroying our country) would say that the description of truth-suppression is indeed relevant for helping us understand your friend. I think you have to be terribly xenophobic to think this way. For example, if I put a homosexual in front of Dobson, he would say that the Bible says that the person in front of him is being punished for truth-suppression and idolatry gone wild. So given that vv. 26-27 describe some sort of same-sex activity, the question is whether this describes all same-sex activity or not. That is what I meant by the "all homosexual" or "some homosexual" division.
And I fully agree with your point that the word "homosexuality" is not helpful, as the Greeks most likely did not have a conception of some kind of homosexual nature. Rather, it is an 18th or 19th century combination of the Greek "homo" and the Latin "sexual". But I don't buy the distinction between the disposition and the act (but I confess I don’t know what to make of your analysis of the Greek words). BOTH the burning AND the actions are described here as the punishment for truth suppression. So I don't think it’s faithful to the text for Evangelicals to separate the two as they commonly do, the desire being unfortunate but not a sin, while the action itself is the actual sin. They are both elements of the same punishment for the same crime of truth-suppression and rampant idolatry. So if the Evangelical buys into the idea that all same-sex desire is described in verses 26-27 (and I can't buy into that interpretation), then he must also say that the ONLY reason a person has same-sex desire is the result of excessive idolatry (and that is the reason my conscience simply won't let me buy into that interpretation). And furthermore, he must also say that all homosexuals are described by vv.28-32. This latter observation is perhaps the most damning of the conservative interpretation of this passage. Its just not true that all gay people are "God-haters". So I want to back away from this division between the act and the desire, and ask a broader question: just who was Paul talking about here anyway?
