The first two articles on Paul’s character gathered his perjury, his curses, his hatreds and the order he prescribed for slaves and subjects. This one turns to the flesh: what he confessed of his own body, what his letters reveal of his preoccupations, the licence his doctrine gave, and what the earliest witnesses and the latest readers have made of it. His contempt for marriage and the thorn in his flesh are examined under Count·IV, and are cited here without repetition.1
One limit governs the whole article. No source, hostile or friendly, records a sexual act of Paul’s. What the record holds is his own account of a war inside his body, the vocabulary in which he fought it, the doctrine of licence he preached to others, and one ancient accusation about his motives.
The deviance is documented in the mind and in the teaching. The reader will judge what it implies of the life.
The war within #
Paul describes himself as a man at war with his own members. The law of his mind is at war with the law in his members, which brings him into captivity to the law of sin; the good he would do, he does not; the evil he would not, he does.2 He tells the Corinthians that he beats his body and brings it into subjection, lest having preached to others he should himself be a castaway.3
27ἀλλὰ ὑπωπιάζω μου τὸ σῶμα καὶ δουλαγωγῶ, μή πως ἄλλοις κηρύξας αὐτὸς ἀδόκιμος γένωμαι.
27But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.4
The Greek is hypōpiazō (ὑπωπιάζω), to strike under the eye, to bruise. Whatever Paul’s body wanted, he answered it with blows.
To the Galatians he generalized the war into doctrine: the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.5 A man who cannot do what he would, and who bruises his body to keep it from doing what it would, has told the reader as much as he can bear to.
The vocabulary of lust #
The same man returns, letter after letter, to catalogues of the sins of the body. To the Romans he describes at length the vile affections of women who changed the natural use, and of men who burned in their lust one toward another, “men with men working that which is unseemly.”6
26Διὰ τοῦτο παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς εἰς πάθη ἀτιμίας· αἵ τε γὰρ θήλειαι αὐτῶν μετήλλαξαν τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν εἰς τὴν παρὰ φύσιν, 27ὁμοίως τε καὶ οἱ ἄρσενες ἀφέντες τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν τῆς θηλείας ἐξεκαύθησαν ἐν τῇ ὀρέξει αὐτῶν εἰς ἀλλήλους, ἄρσενες ἐν ἄρσεσιν τὴν ἀσχημοσύνην κατεργαζόμενοι καὶ τὴν ἀντιμισθίαν ἣν ἔδει τῆς πλάνης αὐτῶν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀπολαμβάνοντες.
26For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.7
To the Corinthians he lists fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, “effeminate,” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” among those who shall not inherit the kingdom, and adds: “and such were some of you.”8 To the Galatians the works of the flesh begin with adultery, fornication, uncleanness and lasciviousness.9 The gospels record ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him condemning lust once, in a sentence about the eye and the heart.10
Paul could not leave the subject alone. The word arsenokoitai, which no Greek writer before him used, is his coinage; the preoccupation is his signature.
Licence #
The paradox of Paul’s doctrine is that the man who bruised his body preached that everything was permitted. “All things are lawful unto me,” he tells the Corinthians twice; nothing is unclean of itself; “unto the pure all things are pure.”11
12Πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν· ἀλλʼ οὐ πάντα συμφέρει. πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν· ἀλλʼ οὐκ ἐγὼ ἐξουσιασθήσομαι ὑπό τινος.
12All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.12
Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār named the consequence a thousand years ago: Paul “opened for the people the door of permissiveness,” told them circumcision was not required, the Sabbath not binding and wine lawful, and made their customs into a religion.13 The Arabic is ibāḥah (إباحة, “permissiveness”), the doctrine that what the law forbade is allowed.
- 1 Corinthians 7:1–9; 2 Corinthians 12:7. See The letters of a man. ↩
- Romans 7:15–24, quoted in full under Count·V; see How Paul came to own the New Testament. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 9:27. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 9:27 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
- Galatians 5:17. ↩
- Romans 1:24–27. ↩
- Romans 1:26–27 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
- 1 Corinthians 6:9–11. The two Greek terms are malakoi (μαλακοί) and arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται), the second a word first attested in Paul. ↩
- Galatians 5:19–21. ↩
- Matthew 5:28. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 6:12; 10:23; Romans 14:14; Titus 1:15, the last from his school. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 6:12 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
- al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Tathbīt Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwa, in Reynolds and Samir (eds.), Critique of Christian Origins (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2010), p. 183; quoted in full under The early Islamic record. ↩
