Colossae, Gay Sex, and I: A Reading of Colossians 2:16-23
Brandon Smee
Introduction
Can queer people read Pauline literature...queerly? In her book Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics, Linn Tonstad invokes theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid to ask, "What if...one sat down to write theology without wearing underwear? What if theology were about reality?"[i] The discipline of biblical studies deserves this sort of interrogation no less than theology. As an enterprise that exists to establish critical approaches to scriptural exegesis, can biblical studies admit readings that reflect the realities of the diverse people who read the Bible? As Deryn Guest contends in the introduction to her essay "From Gender Reversal to Genderfuck: Reading Jael through a Lesbian Lens," traditional historical-critical scholarship has positioned itself against such lines of questioning, opting instead to pursue the elusive goal of objectivity.[ii] I encountered the limits of such "objectivity" as a gay New Testament student at Baylor University. As my matriculation would indicate, I learned how to craft traditional literary and historical-critical analyses with tasteful nods toward feminist and postcolonial theories. But outside class, fellow students, faculty, and staff came together to wield the Bible and its authority to push me to change my sexual orientation and enforce strict standards against engaging in "homosexual conduct." My exegesis was hermetically sealed from the way scripture functioned in my life.
To survive as a Bible reader, I had to trouble the boundaries between my lived experience and exegesis. Or, in light of Althaus-Reid, I might say that I had to learn to read the Bible in a jockstrap. Regarding my general hermeneutic, I expect God to speak to me from the Bible, even as I seek to hear God's words against what past interpreters and people on the margin have heard. I expect God to speak to my whole, gay person, from any part of the canon, even Paul. To that end, I intend to do a new kind of reading of Colossians 2:16-23, in which the Pauline writer argues against particular ascetic practices in the Colossian church. Taking my cues from Deryn Guest's example of a lesbian reading, I aim to offer a gay interpretation of the passage. First, I will consider how mainstream historical-critical and literary arguments have interpreted this text, paying attention to what they identify as the author's primary aims. Then, I intend to show how the meaning changes if we read it against gay experience, particularly against the lives of gay Christians. When interpreted "traditionally," the selection describes a doctrinal competition between Christians and syncretists. But I contend that when we read its anti-ascetical arguments with a gay lens, the letter becomes a call to reject gay self-abasement and embrace the queerness of our sexuality. In sum, I want to ask what Colossians can tell gay Christians about gay sex.
Syncretic Philosophy and the Controversy at Colossae
Most scholars regard Colossians as pseudepigraphal Pauline literature written by a second or third-generation leader of a Pauline community.[iii] It attempts to correct a new teaching among the Colossians that has led individuals in the community to embrace strict fasting as a means of subduing their bodies for spiritual power. There is an implied fear that without these practices, the community will be vulnerable to hostile supernatural forces. Scholars often divide this letter into four main sections: an opening, an extended Christological thanksgiving, a body comprised of a refutation of the "rival philosophy" and a general moral exhortation, and a closing.[iv] Two sections compose the argument against the competing teaching, situated in 2:8-15 and 2:16-23. In the first half, the author contrasts obedience to the "elemental spirits of the cosmos" with the salvation the Colossian church possesses in Christ. Through the appeasement of Jesus’ crucifixion, the Colossians are free from having to appease other spiritual forces.[v] The initial segment of the argument sets up for the second, in which the author argues against particular ascetic practices the Colossian church has adopted, reasoning that they lack any constructive value: Christ has already fulfilled the demands any spiritual forces could make. In a reversal, it is the practitioners of the anti-body philosophy in their prideful insistence on extraneous asceticism that the author calls fleshly instead of the Pauline camp.[vi]
The site of main scholarly interest and debate regarding this text is the nature of the philosophy that the letter's author opposes. Andrew Lincoln describes the range of identifications of the "competing" movement that scholars have proposed, from Judaizers, Gnostics, or Pythagoreans, to local mystery cults.[vii] Most commentators in the past several decades have gravitated toward the syncretism hypothesis, suggesting that the philosophy combined various degrees of Jewish, magical, and cultic practices. Much of this turn rests on Clinton Arnold's 1995 work on the phrase "threskeia ton aggelon”, “worship of angels” in the Greek.[viii] Concerning its grammar, we can take the phrase either as an objective genitive (the peoples' worship of angels) or a subjective genitive (the angels' worshipping [of God]). If it is a subjective genitive, the members of the Colossian church were likely worshiping angels alongside God or paying undue attention to angelic liturgies. After analyzing grammatical parallels in magic amulets and scrolls from the period, Arnold argued that we should read the phrase as an objective genitive referring to the invocation of angelic worship for protection from spiritual harm. The perfunctory labeling of the words as an objective genitive in Constantine Campbell's 2013 guide to the Greek text demonstrates the broad acceptance of Arnold's argument.[ix]
So, having defined the philosophy the author opposes as a syncretistic religion espousing ascetic practices and recruiting angel worship for spiritual power, the commentators analyze how the Pauline writer argues against this spirituality to defend Paul's gospel from distortion.[x] In almost all cases, scholars frame the letter as an apologetic attempt to shore up the Colossian church against a competing syncretistic philosophy turning their members away from the true gospel. Even though the letter gives no indication that the philosophy arose from outside of the community, many commentators assume this philosophy to be an intrusion from the broader society. Consequently, they turn the focus away from the anti-body substance of the practices that the author writes against, and they set it toward the false doctrine and un-Christian character of the "errorists," as Margaret MacDonald terms them.[xi] Thus, it is not that the author sees rigorous, body-rejecting asceticism as dangerous for the church in itself, but rather that he or she views the syncretism as a "rival worldview" that denies the full deity of Christ.[xii] Somehow, the situation in Colossians begins to mirror contemporary religious debates. Seitz goes so far as to suggest that we should understand the “philosophizers” as people who emphasize high self-regard – coming short of labeling them “snowflakes.”[xiii] Along the lines of these interpretations, the problem with the philosophy that Colossians opposes is that it distorts doctrine and arises from sources outside the Christian community, necessarily sources mired in the flesh. As for harshness to the body, there is no inherent issue.
Harshness to the Body?
Yet, reading the Colossians passage against gay experience, I find it not so easy to subsume the text's arguments against ascetic practices to concerns about doctrinal purity. Gay Christian men often develop a complicated relationship to our own bodies; with their unruly desires, they betray us. In his memoir, My Thinning Years: Starving the Gay Within, Jon Derek Croteau describes his struggle with anorexia in early adulthood. Along with an intensely calorie-restrictive diet, Croteau would subject himself to long runs, seeking to punish and control his body and to achieve asexuality.[xiv] As the commentators note, the language of "self-abasement" and "not tasting" points to practices of ritual fasting used in mystery cults to transcend the limitations of the body and gain spiritual insight. Looking at the text alongside the anti-body sentiments of contemporary gay Christians, obvious connections arise between the tough love we show our deceptive, treacherous, and man-desiring bodies and the Colossians' harsh treatment of their bodies. We do both for the sake of appeasing hostile spiritual realities.
Broadening the lens, we may consider how the church’s alarm at gay sex contributes to the adversarial relationship gay men have with our bodies. For Croteau, denying himself food was likely a stand-in for the denial of sex. In almost all churches, anal sex between men tops the pyramid of non-kosher sex acts. Doctors call it risky; prophets call it demonic; families conceive it as "losing their son;" and sex-ed teachers hardly mention it at all. In my own forays into ex-gay formation, my research informed me that certain Ultra-Orthodox sects of Judaism label anal sex a sin one should "die rather than commit." In light of this kind of homophobia, traditional religious spaces require gay men to organize our lives so to make anal sex an impossibility, setting up fences by denying all gay expressions of sexuality first, and all gay enactments of identity second. The church asks the gay man to "fast" from his queerness. After all, fasting, though about food by denotation, often implies sexual abstention. While Seitz denies this overtone to the Colossians text, MacDonald leans into it.[xv] It comes out especially in the use of the verb thiggano in Colossians 2:21, which 1 Corinthians 7:1 uses to encourage men never to "touch a woman." As regards gay identity and gay sex, the sacred space charges us not to handle, not to taste, not even to touch.[xvi]
What strikes the gay reader then is how summarily the author rejects anti-body asceticism as a means of spiritual advancement. It raises the question: could it be true that my access to sacred space is not predicated on my sexual self-abasement? Of course, the answer from the traditional commentator will be a stark "No"; they need only point to the household code that follows in 3:18-4:1 to argue that the author has in mind the retention of conventional sexual mores as a definitive demonstration of Christian identity.[xvii] But the security of this argument rests on how we prioritize the author's aims. If the writer has in mind the maintenance of correct doctrine and its corresponding moral practice, the case stands. But different options appear stronger if we choose to read the text in its ancient colonial context instead of against contemporary conflicts over doctrine. Doing so speaks to the reality that Colossians was written to a vulnerable religious minority situated in Roman-occupied lands.
Decolonizing the Gay Christian Imagination
To engage Colossians with present-day anti-colonial discourse, I look to bell hooks and Darnell Moore's 2015 panel discussion "Moving from Pain to Power" as a kind of modern anti-colonial epistolary. The ideological and psychological concerns hooks and Moore address bear a striking resemblance to the anxieties the author of Colossians seeks to answer. At one point in the panel, bell hooks suggests that "a culture of domination always wants us to think of power outside ourselves."[xviii] Moore insists that this same sort of culture prompts the marginal never to feel good enough and leaves us in a state of always needing to prove ourselves.[xix] Comparing the discussion to the epistle, the writer is also challenging the ways in which Rome has colonized the Colossian imagination. In the same way the Roman Empire occupies their land, they imagine shadowy authorities to rule the heavens. Just as they placate the Romans by disavowing the appearance of indigenous loyalties, they appease the spirits by rejecting their bodies. From such a vantage, ritual fasting and invocation of angelic forces would be a way to placate the hostile spiritual cosmos (stoicheia tou kosmou). But the writer counters that as members of Christ's body, the people of the church have already overcome the opposing cosmic forces they fear. Like bell hooks, the writer has an overarching hope that his or her audience would decolonize their imaginations, instead anchoring them in the victory of the state-executed messiah.[xx] The author aims to cut off attempts to map the church's political subjugation under the Roman Empire into a spiritual subjugation anchored in the body's susceptibility to hostile spiritual entities. Instead, just as the church's participation in the reign of God destabilizes Roman hegemony over them, their incorporation into the body of Christ undoes the hold of fear over their bodies.
When we read Colossians as an epistle to the margins, the liberating significance for gay men's lives become more evident. The false wisdom of a colonizing way of thinking asks us to eliminate queerness from our bodies, to disallow any mingling of fluids with other men. Yet, "all these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings."[xxi] Sex is bounded in time; like food, the exchanged body fluids enter and exit the body. What remains is the bonds between people. From this perspective, what is "of the flesh" is not gay sex, but adherence to colonial projects in resistance to the reign of God. We gay men often receive the "corrupting outsider" label appended to the philosophy's adherents. But such interpretations unwittingly repeat the pattern of the "errorists", when these readers assume they can discern what is "fleshly" in accord with principles derived from a colonized mind. But taking our cue from Colossians, Christian gay men discover that we can only define what is "fleshly" in opposition to the point of divinity we perceive in Jesus. Gay men, and white gay men most of all, face the temptation to hide or sublimate our sexuality to maintain our space within the church. But abasing our queerness serves to identify us with this-worldly power in a manner that disavows Christ-power. There is no virtue in seeking to appease hostile forces in the heavens by keeping our pants up: no penetration of our bodies can contravene the power that raised Christ's own penetrated body from the grave.
Conclusion
Thus, where the scholarly discussion focuses on how the writer's arguments attempt to correct aberrant practices for doctrine's sake, my gay reading wants to bring its anti-ascetical elements to the fore. Reading the text against gay experiences of religious discrimination, Colossians invites gay men to situate the taboo-izing of gay sex, particularly anal sex, alongside the Colossian schema that projected the realities of the Roman colonial system onto the spiritual cosmos. Interpreted in this way, Colossians 2:16-23 exhorts us instead to conceive ourselves as participating in the rule and body of Christ, not subjecting our bodies to harshness for the sake of human-made doctrines. I aim to demonstrate that gay men can engage in liberating exegesis when we permit ourselves to read the texts according to the realities of our lives. Yet I must concede this is plainly a text that will not yield liberating resources to all communities. The presence of the household code in Colossians 3:18-4:1 with its subjection of wives and enslaved people allows modern interpreters to use the passage for the subjugation of women and people of color. These groups stand to lose from centering Colossians far more directly than white gay men like myself. Additionally, though I have ventured a gay reading according to my own location, this text may speak to bisexual men or other LGBTQ+ people in ways similar and distinct. I do not intend to lay claim to it as a gay text, but rather to demonstrate the possibility of drawing new conclusions through a gay of reading.
In this exegesis, I have attempted to break the seal between life and interpretation in an Althausian manner. I discuss gay sex not primarily for shock or because I believe that sex alone constitutes gay experience. Instead, I bring it up in the spirit of the text itself, to challenge what is acceptable for the Christian exegete to handle, to taste, and to touch. In almost all instances, when biblical studies discusses sex between men, the conversation is about rape, sin, and perversion. Though earlier I described the practices of traditional exegesis in biblical studies as sealed off from Bible-based anti-gay agendas, they relate to each other in significant ways. Nearly every anti-LGBTQ+ Christian apologist cites the "absence of any positive portrayals of gay sex in the Bible" as a ground for the implausibility of gay Christianity. If we cannot discuss gay sex positively in our exegesis, we deny the reality of gay discipleship in the church. My concern for biblical studies mirrors the underlying debate in Colossians: the Christian academy's reticence to speak to the spiritual lives of gays and queer folk may have an appearance of wisdom in maintaining decorum. But it holds no value for restraining the church's most violent impulses against gay bodies. If we as gay men can learn to found our confidence in the penetrated Christ instead of anti-body harshness, we stand to begin the process of decolonizing our imaginations.
Works Cited
Course Materials:
bell hooks and Darnell Moore. “Moving from Pain to Power”. At The New School, 12 Oct. 2015. YouTube. 10:25.
Guest, Deryn. “From Gender Reversal to Genderfuck: Reading Jael through a Lesbian Lens”. In TJ Hornsby and Ken Stone, Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.
Other Resources:
Croteau, Jon Derek. My Thinning Years: Starving the Gay Within. Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2014.
Johnson, E. Elizabeth. “Colossians”. In Women’s Bible Commentary: Revised and Updated. Edited by. Carol A Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.
Lincoln, Andrew T. “The Letter to the Colossians: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 11. Edited by Leander E Keck. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000.
MacDonald, Margaret Y. Colossians and Ephesians. In Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 17. Edited by Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000.
Seitz, Christopher R. Colossians. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2014.
Tonstad, Linn. Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018.
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[i] Linn Tonstad, Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 75.
[ii] Deryn Guest, “From Gender Reversal to Genderfuck: Reading Jael through a Lesbian Lens” in TJ Hornsby and Ken Stone, Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; 2011), 10-11.
[iii] Andrew T. Lincoln, “The Letter to the Colossians: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 11, ed. Leander E Keck (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000), 577-578. For a dissenting view, see Christopher R. Seitz, Colossians (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2014), 47-50.
[iv] Lincoln, 556.
[v] E. Elizabeth Johnson, “Colossians” in Women’s Bible Commentary: Revised and Updated, eds. Carol A Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 585.
[vi] Colossians 2:18.
[vii] Lincoln, 560-561.
[viii] Lincoln, 563 and Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians in Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 17, ed. Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000), 120-121 cite Arnold. For the original work, see C.E. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism WUNT 2/77 (Tubingen: J. C. Mohr, 1995) esp. 8-102.
[ix] Constantine R. Campbell, Colossians and Philemon: A Handbook on the Greek Text, Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament ed. Martin Culy (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013), 44.
[x] Lincoln, 569.
[xi] MacDonald, 119.
[xii] Seitz, 138, 140.
[xiii] Seitz, 138.
[xiv] Jon Derek Croteau, My Thinning Years: Starving the Gay Within (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2014), 136.
[xv] Seitz, 140; Lincoln, 633, MacDonald, 121.
[xvi] Colossians 2:23
[xvii] Johnson, 586.
[xviii] bell hooks and Darnell Moore, “Moving from Pain to Power” at The New School, 12 Oct. 2015. YouTube. 10:25.
[xix] “Pain to Power”, 14:20.
[xx] “Pain to Power”, 7:11.
[xxi] Colossians 3:22, NRSV.