Boswell Reviews
[Note: This is a notably harsh attack on Boswell. It is also
evidence of the lack of reliability of the Catholic Right. While
Boswell has been attacked by some scholars, often advancing their
own religious agenda [exactly the charge made against Boswell],
Neuhaus is here downright misleading: he ignores completely the
support Boswell has received from scholars such as Countryman
and Scroggs, and completely fails to understand the success of
Boswell in opening up lesbian and gay history as a field of respectable
scholarly inquiry. For a long list of all Boswell's reviewers
see the list included in large Gay Catholic bibliography I made available to the net. ]
In The Case of John Boswell
By Fr. Richard John Neuhaus,
Institute on Religion and Public Life and Editor-in-Chief, First
Things.
Until a few years ago there was little need to defend the assertion
that Christianity has, in a clear and sustained manner, always
taught that homosexual acts are morally wrong. That has now changed,
and the change can be dated from 1980, the publication of John
Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press). The influence of that book is truly
remarkable; it has become a kind of sacred text for those who
want to morally legitimate the homosexual movement. In certain
circles, any allusion to what the Bible or Christian tradition
say about homosexuality is likely to be met with, "Yes, but
Boswell says..."
Boswell, a professor of history at Yale, says that in the early
Church there were few sanctions against homosexuality. "Intolerance"
of gays became characteristic of Christianity during the high
middle ages when the Church tried to assert greater control over
the personal lives of the faithful. In time, theologians such
as Thomas Aquinas would provide a theological rationale for the
prohibition of homosexual acts and canon lawyers would give the
prohibition force in ecclesiastical discipline. That, Boswell
says, is the unhappy legacy that is still with us in the attitudes
and laws prevalent in Western societies. The Boswell book was
first met with widespread acclaim. The reviewer in the New York
Times said Boswell "restores ones faith in scholarship as
the union of erudition, analysis and moral vision. I would not
hesitate to call his book revolutionary, for it tells of things
heretofore unimagined and sets a standard of excellence one would
have thought impossible in the treatment of an issue so large,
uncharted and vexed." The next year Boswell won the American
Book Award for History. Since then the book has become a staple
in homosexual literature. For instance, Bruce Bawer's much discussed A Place At The Table: The Gay Individual in American Society (Poseidon Press) devotes page after page to a precis of Boswell,
as though this is the only necessary text in Christian history
dealing with homosexuality. And, of course, Boswell is routinely
invoked in Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and other studies
urging that churches should at last overcome their "homophobia"
and be "accepting" of homosexuals and homosexuality."Boswell
says" also figured prominently also in last falls Colorado
court case in which gay activists sought (successfully, for the
moment) to overthrow Amendment Two, a measure approved by voters
in 1992 and aimed at preventing special legal status for homosexuals
as a class.In sum, Boswell and his book have had quite a run.
Among his fellow historians, however, Boswell has not fared so
well. The scholarly judgement of his argument has ranged from
the sharply critical to the dismissive to the devastating. But
reviews in scholarly journals typically appear two or three years
after a book is published. By that time the Boswell book had already
established itself in many quarters as the definitive word on
Christianity and homosexuality. In the draft statement on sexuality
issued late last year by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
(ELCA), for instance, Boswell's interpretation of New Testament
texts on homosexuality is uncritically accepted.There are not
many NT texts dealing explicitly with homosexuality. Extended
treatment was not necessary as there is no evidence that St. Paul
and other writers dissented from the clear condemnation of such
acts in the Hebrew Scriptures. (Boswell and others make a limp
attempt to mitigate the sharp strictures of the Old Testament
and rabbinic literature, but even some gay partisans recognize
that the effort is not strikingly plausible.) The most often cited
NT passage on the subject is the Romans 1 discussion of "the
wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth."
Such people are "without excuse" says Paul,because they
have rebelled against the eternal power and deity [that] is clearly
perceived in the things have been made." This rebellion finds
also sexual expression: "For this reason God gave them up
to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations
for unnatural. and the men likewise gave up natural relations
with women and were consumed with passion for one another,men
committing shameful acts with men and receiving in their own persons
the due penalty for their error."Another frequently cited
passage is 1 Corinthians: "Do you not know that the unrighteous
will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither
the immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor
thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards,nor revilers, nor robbers,
will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But
you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."
Against those who treat homosexuality as uniquely heinous, it
is rightly pointed out that the Corinthian text makes clear that
it is one of many behaviors incompatible with Christian discipleship.
More important, this passage underscores that for homosexuals,
as for adulterers et al., there is the possibility of forgiveness
and a new life. But none of this changes the clear assertion that
homosexual behavior is wrong. And that has been the Christian
teaching over the centuries.
The revisionists of the Boswell school make several interesting
moves. They suggest, among other things, that the homosexual practices
condemned by Paul were condemned because they were associated
with idolatrous cults and temple prostitution. And it is true
that Romans 1 is concerned with idolatry, but the plain meaning
of the text is that homosexual acts themselves are an evidence
of turning away from God and the natural order that he has ordained.
Put differently, the point is not that some homosexual acts are
wrong because they are associated with idolatry; rather that homosexual
acts are wrong because they themselves are a form of idolatry.
New Testament scholar Richard Hays of Duke Divinity School is
among those who are sharply critical of Boswell's mishandling
of the New Testament material. Boswell's interpretation, says
Hays, "has no support in the text and is a textbook case
of reading into the text what one wants to find there." (The
Journal of Religious Ethics [No. 14, 1986]).Boswell's reading
of early Christian and medieval history also turns up what he
wants to find. Christian history is a multifarious affair, and
it does not take much sniffing around to discover frequent instances
of what is best described as hanky panky.
The discovery process is facilitated if one goes through history
with what is aptly described as a narrow eyed prurience, interpreting
every expression of intense affection between men as proof that
they were "gay." A favored slogan of the contemporary
gay movement is "We are everywhere!" Boswell rummages
through Christian history and triumphantly comes up with the conclusion
"They were everywhere." Probably at all times in Christian
history one can find instances of homosexual behavior. And it
is probably true that some times more than others such behavior
was viewed with "tolerance," in that it was treated
with a wink and a nudge. Certainly that has been true of at least
some Christian communities of the last forty years are so. The
Church has always been composed of sinners and some times are
more lax than others.Despite his assiduous efforts, what Boswell's
historical scavenger hunt does not produce is any evidence whatever
that authoritative Christian teaching ever departed from the recognition
that homosexual acts are morally wrong. In the years, say, before
the fourth century, when Christian orthodoxy more firmly cohered,
there are significant gaps in our knowledge, and numerous sects
and heresies flourished, some of the bizarre also in the moral
practices. This is a rich field for speculation and fantasy, and
Boswell makes the most of it. He has failed, however, to persuade
those who are expert in that period. For example, Dave Wright
of Edinburgh wrote the article on homosexuality in the highly
respected Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. After discussing
the evidence he summarily dismisses the Boswell book as "influential
but highly misleading."Also influential but high misleading
is another move made by the revisionists. What Paul meant by homosexuality
is now what we mean by homosexuality today, they contend. Thus
Boswell says that the people Paul had in mind are "manifestly
not homosexual; what he derogates are homosexual acts committed
by apparently heterosexual persons. The whole point of Romans
1, in fact, is to stigmatize persons who have rejected their calling,
gotten off the true path that they were once on." Paul, Boswell
says, failed to distinguish "gay persons (in the sense of
permanent sexual preference) and heterosexuals who simply engaged
in periodic homosexual behavior."This argument is picked
up in the Lutheran and similar statements to make the argument
that, living as he did in the first century, Paul did not consider
the possibility of "loving, committed, same-sex relationships."
Since the situation of the biblical writers is not ours, what
the bible has to say about homosexuality is not relevant for Christians
today. The logic of the argument goes further: If Paul had known
about people who were not capable of heterosexual relations and
if had known about loving, committed, same-sex relationships,
he would have approved. The whole point of Roman 1, it is suggested,
is that people should be true to who they really are - whether
homosexual or heterosexual. The problem that Paul had was with
heterosexuals who were false to themselves by engaging in homosexual
acts.Like many influential but misleading arguments, this one
contains an element of truth. David Greenberg's The Construction
of Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 1988) is a
standard reference on these matters. Greenberg, who is himself
sympathetic to the homosexual movement, emphasizes that the category
"homosexual" is a late nineteenth century invention.
Prior to that time, people did not speak about the "homosexual"
or about "homosexuals" as a class of people. There were
simply men who did curious things, including engaging in homogenital
acts, that were viewed - in different cultures and to varying
degrees - with puzzlement, tolerance or (usually) strong disapproval.
So the element of truth in the claim of the Boswell revisionists
is that Paul. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, and a host of
others who did not know about a "homosexual community"
in which people are involved in "loving, committed, same
sex relationships."Historical "what ifs" are of
very limited usefulness, but we might ask ourselves, What if Paul
did know about homosexuality in the way that it is commonly presented
today? What if he knew about a significant number of people, constituting
a sizable subculture, who engaged only in homogenital sex and
found heterosexual relations personally repulsive? If he believed
that homosexual sex acts are contrary to nature and to nature's
God (the plain meaning of Romans 1), it would seem not to make
any difference that there are a large number of people who disagree,
who engage in such acts, and whose behavior is supported by a
subculture and its sexual ideology. Nor would what today is called
"sexual orientation" seem to make any difference."
Sexual orientation means that one's desires are strongly (in some
cases exclusively) directed to people of the same sex. This would
likely not surprise Paul, who was no stranger to unruly and disordered
desires. If was Paul who wrote, "I do not understand my own
actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing
I hate...> Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me of this
body of death? .Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
Revisionism taken other interesting twists. Episcopalian bishop
John Spong, a prominent champion of the gay movement, is not alone
in claiming that Paul was a repressed and frustrated homosexual.
Leaving aside the anachronistic use of the term "homosexual,"
one cannot conclusively demonstrate that Paul did not experience
sexual desire for men. (Proving a negative is always a tricky
business.) But, if he did, this would then have been one of the
"orientations" to evil against which he so heroically
contended. Gay advocates who adopt the Spong line should take
care. If Paul was a homosexual in the current meaning of the term,
then it demonstrates precisely the opposite of what they want
to demonstrate. It would demonstrate that Paul knew exactly the
reality experienced by homosexuals and urged upon them the course
he himself follows - resistance, repentance, conversion and prayer
to "lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been
called." (Ephesians 4:1).The revisionism being advanced today
is influential,.misleading and deeply confused. Robert L. Wilken,
the distinguished scholar of early Christianity at the University
of Virginia, describes Boswell's book as "advocacy scholarship."
By that he means "historical learning linked to a cause,
scholarship in the service of a social and political agenda."
Wilken notes that Boswell's subtitle is Gay People in Western
Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the 14th Century.
If, as Boswell insists, there were not 'gay people' (in the contemporary
meaning of the term) in the ancient world, and therefor Paul and
other Christian authorities were only criticizing heterosexuals
who engaged in homosexual acts, how can one write a 'history'
of gay people during that period of history? Wilkens puts it gently:
"Boswell creates historical realities that are self-contradictory
and hence unhistorical." Boswell writes that in antiquity
there were no prejudices against directed to "homosexual
relations as a class."
The reason is obvious, observes Wilken: as Boswell himself elsewhere
recognizes,"the ancients did not think there was a class
of people with sexual 'preferences' for the same sex."Wilken
writes, "The notion that there is a class of people defined
by sexual preference is a very recent idea that has no basis in
Western Tradition. To use it as an interpretive category is confusing
and promotes misunderstanding. Where there were laws or social
attitudes against homosexuals they had not to do with homosexuals
as a class but with homosexual acts. Even where certain homosexual
acts were tolerated by society (as in ancient Greece), there was
no suggestion that sexual preference determined behavior or that
certain people were thought to belong to a distinct group within
society.
Even when tolerated (for example, between an adult male and a
youth), there was no social approval given an adult male who played
the 'passive' role (the role of the boy)." And, as we have
seen, Paul and the early Christians differed from the Greeks in
judging homosexual acts per se to be unnatural and morally disordered."In
some cases," Wilken notes, "Boswell simply inverts the
evidence to suit his argument." For instance, Boswell writes
that in antiquity some Roman citizens "objected to Christianity
precisely because of what they claimed was sexual looseness on
the part of its adherents."
They charged,.among other things, that Christians engaged in "homosexual
acts," and Boswell says that "this belief seem to have
been at least partly rooted in fact." As evidence Boswell
cites Minucius Felix, a third century writer who was answering
charges brought against Christians by their Roman critics. Among
the items mentioned by Minucius Felix, Boswell says, is the charge
that Christians engage in "ceremonial fellatio" (the
text actually says "worshipping the genitals of their pontiff
and priest.") What Boswell fails to say is that this charge,
along with others, such as the claim that Christians sacrificed
children in the Eucharist - was manufactured out of whole cloth
and historians have long dismissed such claims as having nothing
to do with Christian behavior.G.W. Clarke, the most recent commentator
on the passage from Minucius Felix, writes, "This bizarre
story is not found elsewhere among the charges reported against
the Christians." It is, says Clarke, the kind of invention
that the opponents of Christianity "would have felt quite
free to use for effective rhetorical polemic." It is noteworthy,
observes Wilken, that no such charges appear in any of the texts
written by critics of Christianity. They appear only in Christian
writings (such as that of Minucius Felix), perhaps because they
were slanderously passed on the streets or because their obvious
absurdity gave Christian apologetics greater force. The situation,
in short, is entirely the opposite of what Boswell suggests. While
the passage from Minucius Felix gives no information about Christian
behavior, it does undercut the burden of Boswell's argument. Boswell
seems not to have noticed it, but the passage makes it clear that,
for both Romans and Christians, it was assumed that to charge
someone with fellatio was to defame him. Both the Christians and
their critics assumed their behavior was a sign of moral depravity.
This is hardly evidence of early Christian "tolerance"
of homosexual acts.It is the way of advocacy scholarship to seize
upon snips and pieces of "evidence" divorced from their
historical context, and then offer a fanciful interpretation that
serves the argument being advanced. That is the way egregiously
exemplified by Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality.
David Wright, the author of the pertinent encyclopedia article
on homosexuality wrote in 1989: "The conclusion must be that
for all the interest and stimulus Boswell's book provides in the
end of the day NOT ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE that the teaching mind
of the early Church countenanced homosexual activity." Yet
the ideologically determined are not easily deterred by the facts.
As the churches continue to deliberate important questions of
sexual morality, be prepared to encounter invocation, as though
with the voice of authority, "but Boswell says...."
Source.
From: Richard John Neuhaus, In The Case of John Boswell, Institute on Religion and Public Life and Editor-in-Chief, First
Things
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