Pederasty and One Kingdom Theology

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None Of His Benefits:

“For God is the King of all the earth. . . God reigns over the nations, God sits on His holy throne.” –Psalm 47:7,8

Perhaps there has never been a more perverse, godless, and wicked time in which Jesus’ incarnation could have occurred. Pederasty was common in the Roman Empire. Older men routinely sought young boys for sex. Gymnasiums (the Greek word means naked) abounded in Rome and older men frequented the gymnasium to watch young boys compete naked in various athletic events, mainly wrestling, and choose one or two for their own sexual pleasure. While most men waited until their late twenties to marry, they could have a prostitute or slave woman as often as they wanted from the time they reached puberty. This was not considered adultery. Pederasty was not frowned upon at all. In fact most everyone believed women were inferior to men. Therefore real companionship and love could best occur between an older man and a young boy. Women were expected to be virgins when they married. Men, on the other hand, were free to engage in any kind of sex they wished. However to be the “woman” in a homosexual act was a sure recipe for ridicule. As long as men limited their sexual activity to slaves, prostitutes or young boys they could still enter marriage as virgins.

Nero (37 to 68 A.D.) was perhaps the most wicked and vile of all the Roman Emperors. He is the one who had the Apostle Paul executed before his own death. In addition to forcing his first wife to commit suicide and kick his second wife to death during her pregnancy, he forced his third wife’s husband to commit suicide so that he could marry her. Nero also had two male wives (the Romans did not actually legalize same sex marriages) Doryphorus and Sporus, the latter a young boy whom he had castrated.[1]

It is within this historical context that Christianity came to the Roman world. Jews never accepted homosexuality, as is evidenced by Moses’ strong admonitions against any kind of sexual perversion (Leviticus 18), but the Roman world surely did. Every city Paul visited and every letter he wrote was in the context of the Roman world. So when Paul wrote strongly and decisively about the perversion of homosexuality (Rom.1:26,27, 1 Cor.6:9-11, 1 Tim.1:10) he was going against nearly a thousand years of Roman history and tradition. ...

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