When Things Get Biblical, Things Already Got Pagan
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 7
Why use those ancient cities as an example (v. 7) if the warning concerns apostasy? One reason we have already given. The three examples used by Jude in verses 5 through 7—Israel in the wilderness, the angels in heaven, and now the pagans on an earthly plain—these were all expelled from their “ground,” so that if God would judge from among any class of personal beings due to rebellion, then none is so “privledged” as to be able to presume on God’s grace. But there is another lesson lurking in the very flow of the primeval history which Genesis overlaps between the original nations and that new seed of humanity getting started with Abraham. One such overlap came courtesy of Lot’s carnal choice of the pleasant-looking plains which included Sodom and Gomorrah. The narrative of Genesis 13 seems to hint at the lack of spiritual-mindedness in his decision.
And what about the almost incidental mention of “the surrounding cities”? Does the account in Genesis 19 make any such mention? Calvin comments,
“When he says, the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, I do not apply these words to the Israelites and the angels, but to Sodom and Gomorrha. It is no objection that the pronoun toutois is masculine, for Jude refers to the inhabitants and not to the places.”1
This strikes at the heart of the popular “Christianese” that “God loves the sinner but hates the sin.” Anyone who understands the biblical doctrine of hell will see what is wrong with this in a heartbeat. It is not impersonal sins that are cast into eternal judgment, but sinners. Persons. Moreover, “because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:6). Sin is personal, being a dishonor against a holy God. God’s reaction is therefore personal against those who have perpetrated this most grave offense. Our trouble is in always downgrading the offense, which of course shows that one’s view toward God has already been lowered.
In Defense of the Traditional View of the Sodomite Sin
In recent years it has been argued that the sin of those two cities was actually a failure of hospitality, rather than homosexuality. On the face of it, this would seem most absurd. Without any cultural context, this would be laughed at or not even paid any mind because of how obviously incorrect it is. However, there has been a concerted effort to rid the Bible of its clear condemnations of sexual perversion. One later passage in the Prophets is appealed to in order to make the contemporary shift:
“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it” (Ezk. 16:49-50).
The context of the Prophet is to liken Judah to that abominable city. Notice the poetic comparison to several pagan peoples just a few verses earlier:
“Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. And your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters” (vv. 45-46).
As usual, those whose only time spent in the Bible is to debunk it, or to water it down, are the least concerned with what its inspired authors are actually doing in context. Because God’s people had degenerated to such a level, it was fitting to show them the depths of their depravity. No one needed to be told about the homosexuality because that was what they were infamous for. So these were added for that effect. It is instructive that when the same text is rendered “an abomination” (ESV), that the same word תּוֹעֵבַה is used in the singular as in Leviticus 18:22—“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
No one who takes the traditional view denies that the Sodomites were also gross sinners in virtually all other respects—as all sinners generally are. That is to build an already pathetic case upon a straw man.
Now getting back to Jude 7, the ESV uses the words “unnatural desire,” though the Greek is “other flesh” (σαρκὸς ἑτέρας). The link is easy enough to discern. Again, to hear from Calvin,
“To go after strange flesh, is the same as to be given up to monstrous lusts; for we know that the Sodomites, not content with the common manner of committing fornication, polluted themselves in a way the most filthy and detestable.”2
Natural Law and Divine Wrath
As the past few generations in the Reformed church are just beginning to awaken from their biblicist slumbers when it comes to natural theology and natural law, among the eye-opening antidotes are those passages which use natural law reasoning of one sort or another. Jude 7 is usually joined together with Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 11:3, 14, 1 Timothy 2:12-14, Ephesians 3:14-15, and 1 Peter 3:7 as a set of passages where sexual perversion, differences between the sexes (observed and unobserved), hierarchy and patriarchy, and proper care of the weaker sex by the stronger sex, are all rooted in the way God created from the start.
That is what the classical Christian tradition has meant by natural law. That classical pagans have meant something similar actually only makes the point stronger—a point made by Paul in Romans 2:14-15, namely, that this law is written on their very rational natures. They know right from wrong at the principle level. And they know this about the most fundamental aspects of our nature, such as sexuality and marriage.
As I mentioned, the ESV translation “unnatural desire” is not the strictest rendering of σαρκὸς ἑτέρας. However, the point remains since “other flesh,” obviously implies that there is a proper flesh against which this is improper. At that point, “unnatural” is simply a logical equivalent. It also testifies to what everyone knows, deep down'; and that is that everyone knows. Everyone knows that boys and girls are different. Everyone knows which bathroom to use. The people of Sodom knew what their grossest sin was, even if they will have their modern defenders even in the church. Everyone knows, even the pagan.
Lot’s momentary attempt to reason with his pagan neighbors is fascinating on several levels: “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly” (Gen. 19:7). But we should not think that Lot was so wrong-headed about everything, that he must also have been mistaken that these people could understand. In fact, God’s righteous punishment is predicated on their consciousness of blame, as Paul said,
“Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Rom. 1:32).
Too often our definition of apostasy is reduced to otherwise very good questions about covenant theology or the perseverance of the saints, or to practical matters relating to the unpardonable sin or signs of a false convert. These are all worthy discussions and all have to do businnes with a biblical theology of apostasy. However, the universal concept of apostasy—the essence of it—is simply a “falling away” from the true God and the true religion He prescribes. Hence, before there was ever a church being redeemed, sinful humanity was already engaged in that initial apostasy and all that comes with it. But what does come with it?
If I may cut right to the chase, sexual apostasy comes with it.
Yes, that’s right. Sexual apostasy. Mankind fell away from a vision of sex and marriage that was as clear as the noonday sun. At each point in the downward spiral, they knew enough to know.
God’s design for human sexuality was as plain as anything else in nature. And try as our culture may to persuade you otherwise, one has to really work hard to get around a design so manifest. There are very plain reasons why sexual perversion is a principle mark of a civilization in the act of suicide. We often say about the catastrophes that end such historic epochs as “things getting biblical.” It may not be literal fire and brimstone falling from the sky.
But in whatever form judgment comes on a people, it must be understood that the rise and fall of any people is always a result of that people coming closer to the norms of eternity and then falling from them. Whether one wishes to classify that culture as “Christian” or even “monotheist,” the student of history will find that conformity to the logos—however much distortions and abuses may persist in other areas—is causal to cultural integration and excellence, and that the turn from rational order, aesthetic order, ethical order, etc. to chaos, equally marks the descent toward barbarism.
In short, things get biblical because things first went pagan. They didn’t start pagan. The pagan is “the bent,” to borrow from Lewis’ adjective in The Space Trilogy. Classical paganism is simply apostasy with all its poets and preists in place. It was they who (again, borrowing from Lewis) told us such “lovely falsehoods,” whether by Homer or Virgil. Unlike mere materialists, they aimed at the heavens—though at the heavens and not heaven itself. They could still tell the difference between Mars and Venus, and make it to their respective bathrooms accordingly. So in their sexuality, they did the bidding of the demons’ best first guesses at destoying the design of male and female. But the hordes of hell have learned what now makes even a Sodomite blush.
Nor are the consequences of this law of nature—I mean the negative consequences, if a people attempt to live contrary to it—in any way opposed to the judicial consequences of breaking God’s law. A man who self-identifies as woman will experience all manner of social consequences, including being removed from that society should they ever regain their nerve. But he ought to also expect damnation short of repentance and faith in Christ. So it is no stranger to link the historical overthrow of Sodom with their eternal damnation, than it was for Jonathan Edwards to preach from the words “Their feet shall slide in due time” (Deut. 32:35), as being both a generation’s fall in the wilderness and a spider held over an eternal fiery pit, all at once.3 About the destruction of those people, “We ought to observe,” wrote Calvin, “that he devotes them to eternal fire; for we hence learn, that the dreadful spectacle which Moses describes, was only an image of a much heavier punishment.”4
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1. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII:436.
2. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII:436.
3. Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
4. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII:436.
