Homosexuality and the thorn in the flesh of Saint Paul

Biblical reflections* of the Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong published on the Beliefnet website (United States) in April 2004, freely translated by Giacomo Tessaro

There was nothing moderate in Paolo. Paolo was deeply taken, passionate, emotional, full of a huge contempt for himself, and he tried to manage these feelings with the avit methods of external control, of the asset religious zeal and the most rigid discipline. However, he could not dominate the passions that consumed him. What passions? I think there is no doubt that they were sexual passions, but what kind?
Compulsive once again Paolo's writings begin to emerge some conclusions that surprise and frighten those who read. Paolo's passions seemed not to be able to find relief. Why?

Paolo stesso scrisse che se due persone “non sanno vivere in continenza, si sposino; è meglio sposarsi che ardere” (1 Corinzi 7:9). Ma non abbiamo nessuna fonte che ci dica che Paolo si sia sposato. Invece abbiamo la sua esortazione che dice: “Ai non sposati e alle vedove dico: è cosa buona per loro rimanere come sono io [cioè non sposato]” (1 Corinzi 7:8).
Scopo primario dell’attività sessuale nel matrimonio, secondo Paolo, è impedire a Satana di tentare i coniugi “nei momenti di passione” (1 Corinzi 7:5). Perché, se Paolo sembrava così consumato da una passione che non riusciva a controllare, non seguì il suo stesso consiglio e non alleviò quella passione con il matrimonio? Secondo lui il matrimonio è un modo di vivere accettabile, se non ideale. Tuttavia mai per lui si è profilata la possibilità del matrimonio.

L’Apostolo è stato sempre considerato fondamentalmente ostile alle donne: scrisse che “è cosa buona per l’uomo non toccare donna” (1 Corinzi 7:1). La passione che ardeva profondamente in Paolo non sembra essere il desiderio di unirsi a una donna. E poi perché tale desiderio avrebbe dovuto essere così negativo? Il matrimonio, l’amore e il desiderio sessuale tra coniugi non erano considerati malvagi o ripugnanti.
Le passioni sessuali di Paolo non sono spiegabili con questo schema. E allora? Ovviamente non c’è modo di sapere con certezza la causa delle ansie di Paolo prima del momento della rivelazione finale nel Regno dei Cieli. Ma questo non ferma le speculazioni.
In this case, the value of speculation is based on testing the theory by assuming for a moment that it is correct and then reading Paul in light of that theory. In this way there is sometimes the key that discounts the hidden messages in the text. Once discussed, these messages not only cease to be hidden, but become obvious and jump to the eye, and the reader wonders why these obvious meanings have not been seen before.

Some suggested that Paolo was tormented by homosexual fears. This is not a new idea, yet until recently, when homosexuality began to lose some of its negative connotations, this idea was so repellent for the Christian people that it could not be mentioned in the official circles.
With this I do not mean that the homophobia of our culture has disappeared, indeed it is still lethal and remains at the top of the Christian Church, being a topic on which the ecclesiastics are deeply hypocritical, as in public they speak in one way And privately they behave in another. However, the prejudice is disappearing, slowly but infallibly.
While the homophobic positions soften, we can consider the hypothesis that Paolo was gay. We can test this theory by assuming that it is correct while reading Paolo. When I did it for the first time I was thrilled to see how many things of Paul disappeared and how deeply I could understand the power of the evangel that literally saved his life.
When I suggest the possibility that Paolo was homosexual I do not intend to be vulgar or itching, or imply something that many would consider scandalous.
I have no evidence to suggest that Paul has ever sold to his desires and passions. He lived in an era and among people who covered the way in which perhaps he considered this reality with layers and layers of condemnation. But, for a moment, assume that this theory is correct and reconsidered with me the writings of Paul and, above all, the meaning of Christ, of the Resurrection and the grace in the life of this seminal Christian.

Paul felt a terrible sense of guilt and a great shame, which expressed themselves in contempt for himself. The presence of homosexuality would have created such a reaction among the Jews of that historical period. Nothing, in my opinion, can explain the rhetoric with which he judges himself, the negative vision of his body and his feeling of being controlled by something that did not have the power to change.
The war that was fought between what he wanted with his mind and what he wanted with the body, his obsession with a legalistic religion of control, his fear that this system would be threatened, his attitude towards women, his refusal to Taking into consideration marriage as an outlet for his passion: nothing else makes these data collide as the possibility that Paolo was gay. Clearly Paul's religious tradition would consider aberrant, deviated, wicked and depraved homosexual men. When they were discovered, homosexuals were often and willingly executed.
The law established: "You will not have male relations as you have with woman: it is abomination" (Levitico 18:22). Do not contaminate you with such things, the Torah continued, because God will chase those who contaminate each other.
God will punish them, promised the law, and the country will vomit those who have contaminated themselves (Levitico 18:24 ss.). Carrying out these things means being eliminated by the people of Israel (Levitico 18:29). Further in the Torah, death is invoked as a penalty for homosexuality: “If one has relationships with a man like a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they will have to be put to death "(Levitico 20:13).

Paolo was a scholar of the law. If homosexuality was his condition, he knew well that according to the law he was condemned. His was a body in which death reigned; He lived under a death sentence. What Paul knew they were, the people to whom he belonged and the law they adhered to him called him abominable and he felt that this went beyond redemption.
Is it possible or probable that this was the inner source of his deep contempt and refusal towards himself, of his inner turmoil, of his superhuman zeal for a perfection that he could never reach? Maybe this was his thorn in the flesh of which he speaks so sadly?

Keeping this possibility in mind, we listen once again the words of Paolo: “For not assembling in pride for the greatness of the revelations, I was put in a thorn in the meat, a correspondent for Satan in charge of slapped me, because I don't go to pride . Because of this three times I prayed to the Lord who walked away from me.
And he said to me: «My grace is enough for you; In fact, my power manifests itself fully in weakness "" (2 Corinthians 12: 7-9). On another occasion, perhaps previous, the apostle had written: “You know that it was because of a body disease that I announced the Gospel the first time; And what in my flesh was for you a test you have not despised or rejected, but on the contrary you welcomed me as an angel of God, like Christ Jesus "(Galati 4: 13-14). The word "angel" can also be translated "messenger". Paolo had to deal with a condition that believes to be incurable.
It was a condition because people could disdain or despise it. I listened and read of the commentators to suggest that this physical condition was a kind of chronic vision problem. My suspicion is that this is based on the words of Paolo to the Galatians, to whom he says "I will testify to you that, if it had been possible, you would also be cavated your eyes to give them" (Galatians 4:15).
But chronic vision problems normally do not imply the contempt for others or the desperation of which the apostle speaks, and through the eye, which calls "the body window", make their entry into human experience both life and life Beauty that death and pain.
Paolo in these words to the Galatians says "I too have been like you", one in which Christ was formed, and assures them "you have not offended me in anything" (Galati 4: 12.19). This refers to an internal, non -external healing.

Others suggested that epilepsy was the condition from which it could not free itself. It was thought that epilepsy was a demonic possession, however it was the periodic feeling of being possessed by an alien spirit, not a chronic defect. In biblical narratives, then, the epileptic aroused mercy, sometimes fear, but rarely contempt or disgust.
Epilepsy does not appear to me the right hypothesis to explain the intensity of the feelings that Paul expresses, as the homosexual hypothesis appears to me. It is a hypothesis that realizes data and clues such as tones, fears, passion and behavior.
If this hypothesis is correct, it can also be lightly shed light on his experience of conversion, his concept of Jesus, his vision of the resurrection and his path to universalism.
In addition, it provides us with a means to enter Christ as Paul did and to see the experience of Christ outside the context of limited words and within the context of a universal human experience.
This would thus become a door for us for a universal spirituality inaugurated by Christ, which could remain unlimitedly in the future in a way that the restricted and unstable forms of religiosity of our Christian past no longer seem capable of fulfilling.

* The biblical steps are taken from the Bible of Jerusalem/CEI

Original text: Was the apostle Paul Gay?