Snowed: James White and Romans 1 Examined

So gay-affirming Theologian James Brownson did a bookstore speaking engagement that was posted on YouTube and like flies drawn to a honeybun, James White's followers went to the comments section (all negative comments of Brownson were deleted since this posting). When I complimented Brownson with a comment, also deleted by the posters of the YouTube video for some unknown reason, I was given a link to a podcast by a James fan refuting Brownson before all of our comments were deleted.

I've come across White fans before and they really feel strongly about him, and I mean REALLY strongly about him, but like I've said before, I never listened to any of his arguments because I suspected he would bring nothing new other than the same bad hermeneutics others of his kind have brought and sure enough I was right with what I heard from this man.

It's one thing when White puts his poor apologetics out there for the scratchy ears of his fan base who need no convincing, but it's another thing to insult respected Theologians like Brownson who I happen to like. He also has a fixation on Matthew Vines. Vines lifted a large chunk of his arguments on the Bible and homosexuality from Brownson, refute Brownson, you refute Vines. That's why White is always goading Vines to a debate, he knows he can wipe the floor in a debate setting with Vines and he's probably right because White is a seasoned debater. 

I said In the past I couldn't be bothered with White. Now I will.

Some will say; "Aren't you doing to theologian Robert Gagnon what White is doing with theologian James Brownson?" I go after Robert Gagnon, the piñata of my blog, because you can't get better than him. I also detest the man's smugness in saying gays are excluded from the Kingdom with what is clear heretical teaching on homosexuality. The message my camp gives, if true, brings the LGBTQ to Christ. If false, it still brings them to Christ and God will convict their heart if it's sin with conviction. The condemnation message from Gagnon and White's camp, whether true or false, drives the LGBTQ away from Christ either way. When Christ tells us; "Compel people to come in, that my house may be filled," who do you think will be justified before God in compelling the LGBTQ to to come to God even if my theology is wrong? My leading others to falsehood would only fall on myself with having the harshest punishment. I understand the consequences if I am wrong. The consequences for them if they are wrong are even greater.

White says; "There's no such thing as Gay Christianity like there's no such thing as "Gluttony Christianity." The problem with this idiotic analogy along with the other White lumps in with homosexuality is that homosexuality does no harm to the homosexual or to others. Ask your clogged arteries if gluttony does no harm. Also, no one is advocating for identity Christianity like "Liar Christianity." Not even homosexuals are doing this. We say we are Christians who identify as gay.  

Along with his past comments on social media, I've never heard someone so paranoid with such a Christian persecution complex, and I've heard many. His podcast is from 2015 and Christians haven't been rounded up and put in cages for preaching the Gospel yet. This scary threat, made for years, will never happen in the United States because of what our Founding Fathers put on paper. Anti-gay Christians love to play the victim by saying Godless gays have it in for God-fearing men and women. You THINK they hate God because they hate YOU. You can't tell the difference between the love of Christ they will gladly accept and what you say and do that has no love of Christ they want nothing to do with. Can't you people just live your faith in peace instead of poking and pestering the LGBTQ in a way you do with no other group? You see the LGBTQ as walnuts you need to crack. instead of respecting them with the same respect you would demand for yourself. No anti-gay apologist, no matter how many times I've put out the challenge, can show me how homosexuality stops the homosexual from loving God with all their heart, soul, and mind or breaks the 'Royal Law' of love. Christ says to pray for those who persecute you, not stoke fear and anger of them. Anything White or anyone else says that makes you love your gay neighbor less or not at all is anathema to dikaiosune. 

The first 20 minutes of this video is nothing more than him killing time, giving his opinions he knows his listeners will accept as a given, and he admits Brownson is a conservative scholar, but has now turned apostate and is intentionally lying to you using the Word of God (James projects a lot of what he does in this video) about this subject because, according to White, Brownson loves his gay sister so much, he'd lead countless into error for her. He also thinks all the other theologians he names are doing the same by embracing heresy for the sake of their gay relatives (did he hire a detective to see if they all have gay family members?) they may not even be close to or like. Those who re-examine homosexuality and the Bible when a loved one comes out to them like Brownson and David Gushee, David is also mentioned by White, go back to those verses through the new lens of love without the blinders on their hearts, how they were to come to these passages in to begin with. A spiritual exchange occurred from love. I believe you can look at the plain words of the bible and they are just words to be read like any words, but I also think you can see those exact words and by the discernment of the Holy Spirit they become a truth only God can give (John 8:43, 1 Cor, 2:14). They can either be proven wrong or proven right like those who make the opposite case in their hermeneutics. If they have gay relatives who somehow swayed them to now be liars by spreading a false doctrine of gay-affirming with the Bible, they still have to give a convincing exegesis no matter what or who brought them to their Damascus moment of the Bible not condemning homosexuality. 

It's a red flag when any Christian like White starts using the slang of the unbelieving World (leftists, liberals, culture) to demean or dismiss a fellow Christian just because they disagree with them on a theological subject. The same goes for believing Christians are in only one political party. To me, this is the mark of an immature Christian, to God, it's something worse. Anything that even gives the slightest hint the Bible doesn't hate homosexuality, White and those of his kind cry "revisionism!" When they do that very thing (lesbians glued on to Romans, the corruption of Malakoi in translations, treatment of others not being the core of the Sodom narrative, on and on). White even admits many Christians tell him they won't hear the other side of this debate. These are people not wanting to budge from how they believe, which ironically, God sees as idolatry (1 Samuel 15:23) and not being the Bereans Paul calls us out to be with searching for the truth in the Word of God. NO ONE IS ABOVE CORRECTION. Not White. Not Myself (Proverbs 15:32).

I have respect for Brownson as evidenced by what I say about him here (he rips apart Gagnon's "Gender Complimentary" argument like it was a soggy paper bag), but I also have an issue with some of his apologetics. Those of us who do hermeneutics and come out as affirming will not always come to a common consensus on the different verses. Brownson approaches Romans 1 saying Paul was a Stoic and that's why Romans says what it says, others like myself don't believe he was a Stoic, but we all agree "homosexuality" is not condemned in Romans 1.

White makes it sound like John Boswell's book (Boswell wrote several books. I assume "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality" is the one being talked about) was refuted. Nothing can be further from the truth. Richard B. Hays wrote the first and most comprehensive refute to what Boswell wrote on Romans 1 in 1986 still referenced today and is considered the final say on Boswell by everyone. But Hays admits; "(Romans 1) is neither a general discussion of sexual ethics nor an explicitly prescriptive admonition about the sexual behavior appropriate for Christians.” He further admits that Boswell's study has; "... uncovered possible biases and weaknesses in our received translations of the biblical texts." Hays concludes: "... he (Boswell) has shown that there is room for reasonable doubt about the meaning of biblical terms that have often been understood as references to homosexual persons or behavior." Theologian Michael L. Westmoreland-White who is far from biased with being a member of the non-affirming Evangelical "Gospel Coalition" group, reluctantly showed how Hays, whom he respects greatly, broke his own 4-point methodology test to refute Boswell on Romans 1.

(In 2024 Hays renounced his former view on homosexuality and is now affirming from the Bible. His son Christopher, Professor of Old Testament at Evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary, is in agreement. 

This change shook Christendom to its foundation and I respect their honesty that was a long time in coming, an honesty I wish others had in ministry)

The biggest objections critics had with Boswell's scholarship, other than him being the first openly gay theologian who had the nerve to write on this subject in the 80s, was that he was wrong on how the medieval Catholic church saw homosexuality and read gays into pre-modern historical accounts who they believe weren't there. Notice how White brings up Boswell's homosexuality to make you suspect him of bias? Even White's Twitter followers called him out on mentioning the sexuality of those who disagree with him JUST because they disagree with him. Most gay-affirming scholars/theologians are heterosexual and I could just as easily say White's heterosexuality makes him biased with Scripture and have more of a case for it. Boswell was going to tackle his critics in his next book but sadly passed from AIDS before he had a chance to write it. James White is one of the few who still believe AIDS is a judgment from God against homosexuals. From his book "The Same Sex Controversy; "… and not every homosexual offender receives this (AIDS) punishment." 

I won't dignify this with a response. 

So let's do this.

I agree with White's general argument up to the 20:11 mark. What he states in verses 18 to 22 I also don't have a problem with. His mistakes start with verse 23. These next verses aren't soaked in the Jewish world like he thinks, they're soaked in the Jewish and Gentile world of idolatry. 

He only had to go as far as Deuteronomy 4:16-18 to find the "creatures" and "images of men" he was looking for: 

"Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground..."

Paul wasn't making a statement from the creation account, he was referencing Jewish idolatry from Deuteronomy almost word for word. The Deuteronomy verses have never been seen other than in the context of idolatry, but now that context changes to homosexuality when it's taken to Romans? The other flaw with him saying Romans 1:23 is going to Genesis is that we see these same exact objects of worship in pagan lists. From the ancient Egyptians to the cults of Paul's Corinth, they all describe almost the same order of animal creation without the knowledge of the Jewish creation order from the Hebrew Bible or having any connection to homosexuality.

He IS right, intertextuality is important because you'll see Deuteronomy links the Canaanite cult priests in Leviticus 18:21,22 to the Qa-desh cult priests in Deuteronomy 23:17. 

Paul in Romans 1 reminds his listeners, both Jew and Gentile, of the history of both turning from God and into idolatry using specific people and specific events as very real and observable examples of idolatry in the city of Corinth, the idolatry capital of the ancient world, the place where the book of Romans was written. Many times Paul took what he read and saw around him and put it in his writings (Paul was a tentmaker, he wrote 2 Cor. 5:1, watching the athletes training for the Isthmian Games, he wrote 1 Cor, 9:25. "For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship..." Acts 17:23). What he wrote in Romans would be no different with what he observed casually walking the streets of Corinth with what historians said was a city you couldn't swing a cat in without hitting a cult. Paul was very aware of what Livy wrote (Paul uses Livy's metaphor of the 'body' and its 'members' later in Romans 12:4-5) on the scandalous bi-sex bacchanalias of the Dionysus Bacchus cult when he wrote Romans 1.

Now see the flow like White says with the Roman verses because the flow is perfectly kept if you keep them in their idolatry context as I'll show by keeping only to the original Greek and showing just how much Paul drew out of the Jewish text the "Wisdom of Solomon" he put in Romans 1.

Verse 24 starts:

Therefore [Διο], BECAUSE of their willful turning from God, God gave them over to their desire [επιθυμιαις] 1, the word επιθυμιαις is "desire/yearning," (for idolatry), the hearts (of) them (their heart's desire) to uncleanliness [ακαθαρσιαν] 2, uncleanliness unto what? idolatry/idols, they dishonored [ατιμαζεσθαι] 3 their bodies among themselves (for it). 

White makes the mistake of going to the "Wisdom of Solomon" which puts Romans 1 as only a condemnation of idolatry. 4 

He then steps out of Romans and starts talking about "Arsenokoite." Another mistake. 5 

He goes to verse 25.

They exchange-ed [μετηλλαξαν] (Psalm 106:20) the truth for a lie (idols are called "lies" in Isa. 44:20, Jer. 10:14, 13:25). What truth did they exchange for a lie? Paul just told you in the prior verse, the truth of the real God for idols (Romans 2:2 gives the punishment for this action), a continuation of what he's saying, and they rendered service [ελατρευσαν] to the creation (the images and creatures named in verse 23) RATHER THAN the Creator who is blessed forever amen. 

Verse 26. 

For this 'reason,' same Greek word [Δια] starting verse 24, BECAUSE of their willful turning from God, like in verse 25 again, God gave them over to a 'specific' emotion παθη that would degrade them. What emotion? For idolatry, a specific want, "desire," for it. To dishonor [ατιμιας], the same root word for dishonor from verse 24, and (the) female [θηλειαι] (of) them [αυτων] 6 they exchanged [μετηλλαξαν] (verb past tense) the natural [φυσικην] use [χρησιν] 7 to [την] (go) beside [παρα] nature [φυσιν] 8 

This shouldn't even be stated if you follow even the most basic rules of exegesis. Verse 27 IS talking about homosexual acts between males and it isn't painted as being pretty, but these are homosexual acts of idolatry, not acts of orientation, the prior verses spell it out for you with Paul writing in the Jewish style of parallelism (saying the same thing, but in a different way later), To see this as a "stand-alone" verse condemning male homosexuality is a clear and gross display of eisegesis if there ever was one. Rape is a clear-cut case of a male having sex with a female, a man and a woman in a biological union, biology only "God approved" according to anti-gay apologists, yet seeing the context of the relationship (in this case forcible rape and not a consensual act) is everything. 

Verse 27.

Similarly [ὁμοίως] 9 the male [αρρενες] left [αφεντες] (verb past tense), Paul's listeners already knew of these males with no need of naming them, their nature [φυσικην] use (of) the female [θηλειας] (for), what were all the prior verses starting with verse 23 up to now about? Idolatry. They were inflamed [εξεκαυθησαν] (verb past tense) in the desire [ορεξει], them unto one another, male into other male 10 indecency [ασχημοσύνην] manufacturing [κατεργαζομενοι], not from what was innate, and the recompense [αντιμισθιαν] which was a necessity [έδει] of their delusion [πλανης] 11, the necessity of what they do in the delusion their idols are Gods. In themselves [εαυτοίς] accepting [απολαμβάνοντες] (this). 

Verse 28 is a restatement of the prior verses (they did not acknowledge God = God gave them over to a disapproved heart/mind to worship other things, what's in verse 23, that aren't fitting). 

Verses 29-31. 

It looks like Paul is patterning his vice list on Wisdom 14:24-26. Two crucial aspects here that are telling. The extreme of "murder" is out of place in Paul's sin list because the other sins it's listed with are sins without death. But if you go to Wisdom verse 23, it gives you the background of why Paul says murder in this specific vice list; "For whilst they slew their children in sacrifices..." Human sacrifice to idols named in Wisdom is what Paul is going to with saying murder. And what do we find in the same verse of Wisdom? "... frenzied revels of strange ordinances." The frenzied ecstasies of the cultists that worshipped what Paul names in verse 23 of Romans (jump to footnote 3 below). Along with verse 27 of Wisdom, Romans 1 and Wisdom 14 tie together perfectly in mirroring each other with a big idolatry cherry on top of the idolatry sundae that is Romans 1.  

Verse 32 "echoes" Lev. 20:2,5:

 "... whoever should give his semen ever to a chief God (Moloch), to death, let him be put to death and I will destroy him, and all the ones consenting with him, so as for them who prostitute for the ruling Gods (idols)." 

Romans 1 is all about the twisting of sexuality to homosexuality according to White. The only way he can make this about homosexuality is him plucking homosexuality out of its idolatry context and making it into its own thing, breaking the flow of the argument he says we should keep. Follow in the points and contextual arguments because they all lead to idolatry, not to "gay men" or non-existent lesbians in verse 26. White doesn't do basic hermeneutics or keeping to simple context with Romans 1.

Paul was the Apostle to the GENTILES, what was the world of the Gentiles? Idols and the worship of them. For Paul to not address their idolatry in depth, what they existed in, in Romans 1, Paul would not have spoken on the futility of their worship of idols to their worship of the living God now.

He starts playing clips of Brownson at the 49:14 mark. I don't need to refute White refuting Brownson because my arguments aren't Brownson's arguments.

 ________

1. Desire/yearning. Other examples of επιθυμιαις in Scripture are Jesus in Luke 22:15 with 'desiring' to dine with the Apostles before His suffering and Paul saying he 'desires' to see the faces of those in Thessalonica. Picture the reaction of the Thessalonians if Paul wrote he's "lusting" for their faces? 

2. ακαθαρσιαν as cultic uncleanliness. 

3. What form would this cultic 'dishonoring' of the male body take? Castration, self-cutting, and skin branding. Jeramy Townsley in his essay paper on the Cybele/Attis cult showed how their male priests (Galli), first linked to Romans 1 in the 3rd century, would in a; "frenzy, raving with the spirits," self-cut for divination and commit public self-castration, Paul witnessed or knew of with what is the ultimate act of dishonoring the male body. The sacredness of the penis was everything to the ancients. I did a little digging myself and found out Paul, who lived in Damascus and Antioch, would also have known about the "frenzied and deranged" traveling Gala of the Atargatis/Dea Syria cult whose rite involved; "... howling, ecstatic dancing with circular head-tossing, flagellation, and cutting, culminating in self-castration." The idolatrous practice of fanatical dancing, screaming prophecies, and self-cutting goes back to the priests of Baal (1 Kings 18: 26,28,29). 

4. Paul patterned Romans 1 on Wisdom (Man turning from a God who was plain for them to see, they are without excuse, finding substitutes for God in animals, icons of Gods and Goddesses, with both homosexual and heterosexual cult sex practices being an integral part in acts of worship and the result of continuing to exist in this idolatry (back-biting, hating of the real God...). And what is the conclusion of Wisdom  White ... won't ... go ... to? "The very notions of idols was the beginning of immoral sexual activity...the worship of nameless idols is the origin of all evil-its cause as well as its results." (Wis.14:12,27) 

5. This is again White trying to fool you with what he wants you to believe as a given. I give a simple and short refute of the broad prohibition of homosexuality from Leviticus that narrows it down and Paul would have brought over to 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 with 'arsenokoite.' Even though White hates it, the word DOES have multiple meanings going back to the time of Paul's first usage of it. The Oracles, written at the time of Paul, puts the word in the category of injustices after "stealing seeds" and harming others (Book 3, section 220, already covers male on male sex). Philo, a contemporary of Paul, puts the Leviticus passages with sacred prostitution (Spec. VII 40,41) and its feminization of boys with both Philo and Paul being witnesses to the cult processions of Ceres in Corinth. If Philo understood the Leviticus passages in this context, so would Paul. Both were taught in the same Jewish teaching tradition with both using the Greek Septuagint. 

6. He wants you to ignore the significance of 'them' (αυτων) in the verse. The word 'them,' says these women belong with or to these idolatrous men talked about in the previous verses and not separate and independent lesbians. The suggestion is this was referring to their wives and their daughters, the women of the cults who played gender role-reversal in penetrating the males with artificial phalli and who did acts of oral and anal sex going contrary to procreating sex. 

7. Their Women.

8. "Besides" (παρα), or "beyond," Nature (φυσιν). 

It's believed Paul is going with the stoic "nature" here and that Paul was even a stoic himself (Brownson's argument). If he were doing this, he would be going to a world view of following the rule of nature, living according to nature, and obeying the universal law of nature (Logos) that has no personal and loving God who would sacrifice Himself in death so that we might live, contrary to the very Gospel Paul preached and died for (Stoicism won't be discussed at any length here). The animal kingdom would also be a future statement against Paul because of the stoic belief that there is no normative homosexuality in the natural world of the animal kingdom because it would be against the "natural order." We now know this isn't true with studies showing homosexuality is in almost every species including animals that can change their gender. This is going beside "nature" or even beyond it. Oral sex isn't using the mouth contrary to its use, it's alongside its use or going beyond its use. 

In Romans 11:2 the word pair pops up again by saying God Himself went παρα φυσιν when he grafted the Gentiles on the tree of the Jews. Paul's pal Philo used the word pair as a strong prohibitive. Paul uses παρα φυσιν a 3rd time saying men having their hair long was παρα φυσιν, but he said this was coming from tradition (παραδοσεις) in verse 2 and not from an authority from Christ (1 Thess. 4:2). Paul in verse 16 justifies it to anyone who has a problem with it in telling them; "It's a practice we have always had and we aren't about to change it for you now." Paul wouldn't have seen the long-haired hippie males of the 70s God used in a mighty way as permissible either. Why did Paul have a problem with long hair on men? It might be because he didn't want the believers in Corinth to be mistaken for being pagans in public. The men in the Dionysus/Bacchus cult, written about by Livy, in symbolic devotion had long hair or veils and the women had short hair. In 1 Corinthians 11:3-15, Paul talks about hair and head coverings with what was always understood as traditional norms in the churches. 

I see no conflict when I believe παρα φυσιν can be in all three categories. Good in the case of God's benevolence in grafting the Gentiles. Bad in going against tradition (same with Philo and Josephus, a violation of the stoic nature they followed. Expected as both were Stoic-influenced Jews and not Christians). Neutral in the Romans passage with homosexuality that doesn't go 'beyond' its use for idolatry. Paul did use a few stoic words, but that was to lure a stoic audience to hear the Gospel pushing word buttons they'd get. Paul also used Jewish words and imagery, but that was to lure a Jewish audience to hear the Gospel with his Jewish learning he said was now 'trash' (Phil 3:7-9). Paul admits he would be and say anything that would bring people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ: 

"... I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews... To those not having the law (Roman stoics) I became like one not having the law... so as to win those not having the law... I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings." 

Am I saying Paul was a fan of gay sex? No, but he was no fan of hetero-sex either ("It is good for a man not to touch a woman." 1 Cor. 7:1). Any relationship that took time away from your relationship with God wasn't good to him ("An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs... But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband." 1 Cor. 7:34). 

9. In Brett Provance's essay; "Romans 1:26-27 in Its Rhetorical Tradition," he writes; "... Jamie Banister’s article ("Ὁμοίως and the Use of Parallelism in Romans 1:26–27") has notably challenged the hermeneutical strategy of reading back v. 27 into v. 26 via the term ὁμοίως (similarly/likewise). Addressing every New Testament passage involving ὁμοίως, and also noting various uses of ὁμοίως in the LXX, Philo, Josephus, and the Apostolic Fathers, she has demonstrated that this reading-back approach is never demanded by the NT texts, and at times would be detrimental to proper interpretation. While in a number of the cases, the antecedent clause dictated the meaning of the subsequent ὁμοίως clause, the reverse was not the case. The result is that, of the twenty-eight eligible [NT] passages for consideration, in twenty-five (89 percent) it would be impossible or illogical to use the ὁμοίως clause to interpret its antecedent clause. Of the three passages remaining for consideration, Banister finds no instance in each case of the ὁμοίως clause determining meaning in the antecedent clauses. Thus it stands that the modern interpretive assumption in finding female homoeroticism in v. 26 is simply not a rhetorical/grammatical approach utilized by the ancient authors."

10. Context, context, context. This isn't a case of a covenant relationship with loving innate sexuality or even any kind of gay relationship. This is a whole other creature happening here of self-castration with a life of homosexual prostitution with heterosexual male acolytes of girl God cults.

He says verse 27 can't be changed by any kind of revisionism, so people like Brownson don't even try, but I could say verses 26-27 weren't written by Paul but, were a later addition. The argument for this goes all the way back to Tertullian. Read Romans 1 without the two verses and you'll see the flow stays consistent. I won't make this argument, because, unlike White, I don't entertain revisionism in my favor.

11. Parallels 2 Thess. 2:11:

"Because of this, God sends them a working delusion (πλάνης) that they should believe a lie (idols)." See Romans verse 25 above. 

Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field." Jer. 10:5.