What are the teachings of the ancient church regarding homosexuality (and sexuality more generally)?

Virginia Burrus
Professor of Early Church History
Drew University

Did ancient Christians have a concept of "homosexuality"?

It is highly doubtful that ancient Christians would have recognized our modern category of "homosexual persons" or even of "homosexual acts." Nearly all historians agree that the Greek and Roman societies of the ancient Mediterranean did not organize sexual identities or behaviors in this way. Rather than thinking in terms of "heterosexual" or "homosexual" relationships, ancient people traditionally thought in terms of "dominant" or "submissive" sexual partners, and their overriding concern was that sexual relations conform to social hierarchies. For example, an upper-class man might legitimately participate as the dominant partner in sexual acts with women, slaves (whether male or female), or boys; correspondingly, it would be scandalous for him to submit sexually to anyone in those socially inferior categories.

During the early Roman imperial period, there seems to have been a subtle shift in this traditional sexual morality. In some elite philosophical circles, sexual abstinence came to be more highly prized, and some considered that sexual activity should ideally be confined to marital relations geared not toward pleasure or love but toward procreation. Such views (which may have been confined to a minority even among the elite) did not lead toward a disapproval of homoeroticism per se, but rather of non-procreative or pleasure-motivated sex more generally.

As a subculture within the Roman empire, Jews tended to view Greco-Roman sexual practices (like gymnasium culture and other aspects of "Hellenism") with some suspicion. Jewish sexual ethics was centered around the institution of marriage and regulated by purity laws. Though the levitical code of the Jewish Bible prohibits sexual relations between men on the grounds that this constitutes an inappropriate "mixing" of categories or "kinds" (a concern that pervades the purity laws of the priestly tradition), most scholars agree that neither the Jewish Bible nor its later rabbinic interpreters recognized a special category of "homosexual" acts or persons. (The story of Sodom, often cited as an indictment of "homosexuality," is actually concerned rather with the issues of violence and inhospitality toward strangers.)

If the ancient Christians had a concept of "homosexuality," they might have been the only people in the Roman world who did! There is, however, no clear evidence that ancient Christians recognized "homosexuality" as a discrete category.

What about "fornication"?

Ancient Christians, like some elite pagans as well as some Jews of the Roman period, were on the whole inclined to take a rather "ascetic" view toward all sexual practices. Some ancient Christians actually felt that celibacy was required for all the baptized. Far more felt that it represented the highest calling for dedicated Christians, while viewing marriage as an acceptable alternative for those not able to pursue a more strict asceticism. A few argued that married life was equally virtuous in the eyes of God and it is possible that a "silent majority" shared this view; however, the surviving writings of the "Fathers" rather consistently privilege celibacy.

The ascetic tendency within Christianity meant that a great many sexual acts were classed as "porneia," that is, instances of "sexual immorality." The biblical tendency to use metaphors of sexual infidelity to describe apostasy or idolatry seems to have heightened the symbolic charge of accusations of sexual immorality (as well as frequently to have confused these issues). Occasionally, homoerotic acts were included in exemplary lists of immoral sexual acts, but they were not generally singled out or highlighted. Christians shared with the broader culture a particular concern with adultery (that is, sexual relations involving a man and another man's wife), primarily because it violated the right of a man to control his wife's sexuality and thus to ensure the legitimacy of his children. Like some others of the early Roman imperial period, Christians, however, attempted to correct the traditional "double standard," emphasizing that husbands as well as wives should avoid sexual relationships with other partners. Even more than the broader culture, Christianity was wary of any sexual acts (marital as well as extra-marital) geared toward pleasure, and during antiquity the church moved toward a procreationist stance on sexuality within marriage.

Did the ancient Christians support "family values"?

From the days of Jesus and Paul to the burgeoning ascetic movement of the post-Constantinian period, Christians tended to take a countercultural stance toward marriage and family life. The understanding of the Christian community itself as the "new family"-where Christians addressed one another as "brother" and "sister" and honored their mentors and leaders with the titles of "father" and "mother"-relativized the claims of the traditional patriarchal family. As we have seen, some Christians felt that the traditional family-which unlike modern families included not only the married couple and their children but also slaves and other dependents-had been superseded by the family of Christ and argued that Christians should no longer practice conventional marriage, child-rearing, or slave-holding. Varieties of monastic practice represented experiments in non-traditional family life that attracted great followings in antiquity-including most of the "Church Fathers." Ascetic discipline was focused on redirecting erotic desire toward Christ or God, and many Christians (men as well as women) understood themselves as the lovers or "brides" of Christ.

Nonetheless, a more traditional married life continued to be the choice of many ancient Christians, even if it provoked less excitement or discussion in the surviving sources. Augustine, who lived at the end of antiquity, was the first to develop a positive theology of Christian marriage, articulated in the face of ongoing Christian critiques of marriage. According to Augustine, there are three "goods" of marriage: first and foremost, the goal of procreation, which could redeem but not erase what Augustine felt to be the "evil" of sexual "lust"; second, the practice of friendship or sociality, marked by mutual fidelity; and third, the participation in a "sacrament" of Christ that rendered the bond holy and inviolable. Augustine believed that the authority of the husband in a Christian marriage would be exercised in gentleness and love; he did however affirm the patriarchal structure of marriage as God-given.

What is the relevance of the teachings of the ancient church for Christians today?

The mainstream teaching of the ancient church acknowledges that many Christians will live out family lives that are conventional in the terms of their own societies, while also affirming that many others will pursue more radical or countercultural ways of expressing the love of Christ by choosing to live communally or singly in non-conventional social arrangements. For all Christians, any idolatry of the conventional family was rejected and the claims of the conventional family were viewed as relativized by the eschatological call to live as brothers and sisters in the family of Christ. These are teachings that still seem relevant to contemporary Christians, especially in a period when the idolatry of "the family" appears a real threat, precisely within Christian circles.

Most contemporary Christians, however, will find it necessary to question the ancient tendency to condemn all forms of eroticism (including marital practice) that are geared toward pleasure and love rather than procreation. Since suspicion of "desire" is the basis of the occasional condemnations of homoerotic practice (together with anxiety about sexual relationships that disrupt social hierarchies, a position that few Christians do or should hold), this condemnation must likewise be questioned.