Words Do Matter..Here's Why

All of this theological slop filtered into Christianity though early Church writers (all men), who bought into Plato hook, line and sinker.  With those "natural" and "unnatural" lenses, they interpreted the Bible, forgetting that Biblical Hebrew has no words for "natural" or "unnatural", with one exception.  In Deuteronomy 34:7, describing Moses at age 120, the King James Bible translated Deuteronomy 34:7, "his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated.".  That "natural force" refers to his sexual vigor. He could still have an erection and he could still produce sperm!  Any comments from you 120-year old bloggers out there? 

The Hebrew word used about Moses comes from botany, describing a "twig that is fresh and green".  When we move to the New Testament, St. Paul's words to describe "natural" and "unnatural" sex have the same botanical roots.  They mean "to spring up. bud and produce seed".  We have a great gift in the New Testament to understand what Paul means  --the Gospel!  We're back to Luther's "The Bible interprets the Bible."  Just as several Old Testament stories helped illuminate the meanings of Leviticus 18 and Sodom and Gomorrah, so Jesus' Parable of the Sower, helps us understand Paul.  

Let's remember.  It was Jesus, not Plato, who knocked Paul to the ground and called him to be his Disciple.  Paul wrote ,"Their women exchanged "natural" intercourse for "unnatural", and in the same way, also the men giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.  Men committed shameful acts with other men" (Romans 1"26-27).  Does Paul write as a follower of Plato?  Give me a break!  He writes as a disciple of Jesus!  

We need to go back to Jesus, not Plato, to find out what "natural" means to Paul.   Natural intercourse means a life-giving, germinating and fruitful  relationship between sexual partners. Unnatural means intercourse that is degrading and shameful. Paul writes to Rome, a center of sexual debauchery.  Had he heard about the emperor, Nero, who castrated a young man named Sporus, dressed him up as a woman, and then married him?  That, in Paul's mind, was "unnatural" sex between men.  It fit the list of passions he lists a few verses later in Romans (Romans 1: 29-31), sex that was "deceitful, crafty, heartless and ruthless".