Tag: Ancient Rome

Having read several reviews of Vines’ book over the last 24 hours, let me begin my critique on a different note. I don’t assume that Vines is reading his view into the text. Last time I checked, I’m not God and I don’t have direct access to his interpretive...

In the last two posts, I’ve explored the ancient Roman context of homosexuality. This, of course, will help color in the borders of the portrait that the New Testament paints—and yes, we’ll get to the New Testament in due time. I don’t want to attempt to broadcast what the...

I often hear in recent discussion about the Bible and homosexuality: “Since homosexuality as a sexual category was unknown to Paul, he could not have critiqued it.” The implication is that when Paul talks about same-sex activity in Romans 1 and elsewhere, he must have had something more specific, something...

It’s nearly impossible to understand what the New Testament says about homosexual relations until one first understands the historical context of the Roman world. After all, Paul was not writing to a modern western nation; he was writing to people living in the Roman empire. Therefore, when Paul says...