I'm having difficulty understanding as to what is God's law, who decides what is God's law and how do we know it is God's law.

If a homosexual commits a homosexual act, how should they be treated according to God's law?

In ancient Israel they were put to death. During the Spanish Inquisition some were whipped and some were put to death. Were the people carrying out these punishments acting according to God's law or contrary to God's law?

In a country in today's world where it is legal to execute a person found guilty of a homosexual act, would it be in accordance with God's law or contrary to God's law to execute that person?

The thing is, these days, nobody is ever held acountable for any wrong-doing (well, some are, but, anyway).. Look what happens in DC where politicians tell one lie after another, violate US security and they get away with it. Some Congress persons try to hold the bad actors accountable but it seems no one ever is

Neither of those New Advent articles help me in my understanding of what God's law is now, which Forever Faithful said is unchanging.

If people who committed homosexual acts were put to death in Ancient Israel, were the executions in accordance with God's law?

If people who have commited homosexual acts are put to death in a country somewhere in the world today, where the executions are in accordance with the law of the country, are the executions in accordance with God's law?

How do we know what God's law is in today's world?

How do we know what God's law is in regard to how homosexuals, who have committed homosexual acts, should be treated or punished?

You are confusing the law with the punishment. God's law (and man's sins against it) is one thing -- how a violation of that law is handled is another.

For example, murder is a sin. That is God's law, and for the most part it is man's law, too. Whether the punishment is the death penalty, life in prison, or 25 years in prison, it is still a sin and a crime. It is one of the sins that cry out to God for vengeance. It doesn't become less of a sin and a crime simply because capital punishment is less prevalent in some places or at various times in history.

How do we know God's law? God has revealed it to us. In the Old Testament we see how God spoke to mankind through prophets; in the New Testament we see how he spoke to us in the person of Jesus (who is the Second Person of the Triune God, not a different God); and by the authority that he bestowed on them, God spoke through the apostles. Taking what God has revealed to us over thousands of years, we see a continuous pattern or theme about God's desire for our thoughts and behavior.

There are probably several reasons why the ancient Israelites were subjected to (what we consider) harsh punishments for violations of God's law. One reason is very human: Moses was a man, tasked by God to govern a stubborn and rebellious people. When God had Moses lead his people out of Egypt, they were not originally given a host of laws and rules. In fact, when they finally were given a set of laws, there were only ten. That should have been simple enough. The Israelites were supposed to be a light to the nations around them, but instead they kept reverting to the pagan ways that they learned in Egypt, and kept behaving like the pagan nations they were surrounded by. Over and over, a correction had to be dealt. Eventually, the Law of Moses had so many requirements that even partial fidelity to these laws practically guaranteed that it was unlikely that an Israelite would have any close contact or relationship with an outsider.

As for homosexual acts, God has revealed that they are contrary to the natural law, and can never be acceptable. The fact that some societies are okay with homosexual acts and some societies execute people who violate this law, does not change the nature of the violation.

I recommend reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Part Three, Life in Christ, dealing with the Ten Commandments). With regard specifically to homosexuality, if you want further reading on this subject, and how it conflicts with the law of nature and nature's God, try reading Why I Don't Call Myself Gay, by Daniel Mattson. It's contemporary, readable, and faithful to the Catholic vision.

God has made known to us that there are some thoughts and deeds that are an affront to our dignity. The Catholic Church has faithfully received, interpreted and passed on these revelations for 2,000 years.

Is it in accordance with God's law for a state to do today what was done in Ancient Israel, namely put to death people who have committed a homosexual act? Or would an execution for committing a homosexual act be murder, a sin contrary to God's law?

I don't need any more explanations about Ancient Israel in the absence of an answer to the question which is about today, 21st century countries.

DD, if you don’t want further discussion regarding the differences regarding the Law of God (and punishments for violations of the same) between Ancient Israel and today, may I recommend you stop phrasing your questions in that context? We’re beginning to venture into “definition of insanity” territory here - you keep asking the same questions and expecting different results.

Okay since my name in particular was addressed I suppose I should try and elborate.

We need firstly to distinguish two things: natural law and positive law.

Natural law pertains to those things that are good or bad for us on account of our nature. One part of human nature is the reproductive faculty which is directed towards a particular purpose, reproduction, with a secondary purpose, unity of spouses, as well.

Since this law is derived from what is to be a human being, it can not change as long as we are human beings. Since God created human nature, God also imparts to us the natural law, and it can not be changed. Therefore sodomy will always be morally wrong.

Positive law is any legal code put forth in addition to the natural law. God Himself imparted to the ancient Israelites a legal code. Since positive laws, just like the laws of a country, are given in a particular context, they are not in themselves immutable. So the laws God gave about particular punishments do not continue today.

It is also worth noting that in the Old Testament, much like today in the USA, not every capital crime was actually (or even frequently) punished by death (As these Protestant scholars note)

God did command that sodomy be punished as a capital crime in Ancient Israel. That does not mean today sodomy ought to be punished as a capital crime, for a few reasons (1) no nation on earth has the unique relationship to God that the Kingdom or Nation of Israel did, they were meant to be set apart so sin needed to be punished legally very harshly (even if the law itself could not enforce the whole moral weight of the law, as Moses allowed concessions due to weakness)
(2) Perhaps most importantly, it is not necessary to kill people for sodomy. Sodomy and all sexual immorality are public evils that should not be given free license, but there is much that can be done (restricting access to pornography, the public promotion of abstinence and Chasity etc) that do not involve the death penalty. Though it is the case that certain cases of sodomy (such the epidemic of prison sodomy in the USA, the shameful behavior of certain priests) are special cases that do merit actual crime sanction (maybe even especially harsh sanction), it is not reasonable to assume or act as though the death penalty is currently warrant for sodomy in itself.

The case isn't that the death penalty for sodomy is intrinsically evil, but that it is an extrinsic evil, such that it is an unreasonable penalty for today and in consequence immoral (as unreasonableness is a matter of immoral)

Unfortunately, if you're looking for a clear authority to cite on that, you're not going to find one. It's a matter of making an argument not appealing to a clear cut rule or one's sentiments.

Denise, I simply don’t know what to say. Those articles clearly spell out the Old Testament vs. New Testament law difference.....quite clearly I might add.

In addition, the Divine Law is God’s Law. It’s constant and never changing.

I think the question Denise is asking here is:
"Whether capital punishment is an appropriate/proportional/legitimate punishment for homosexual acts today".

It is important to note that the law in the ancient near east was a very flexible thing. Yes, the law code specifies certain punishments for various offenses, but there is absolutely no evidence whatever that these punishments were ever actually carried out.

There is no evidence that anyone in ancient Israel was EVER executed by stoning, for homosexuality or for any other offense.

The law was what we call 'didactic', and the punishments attached were not intended literally. When people were caught in the act of violating these laws, the punishments listed were never actually carried out.

It is a little like, have you ever watched professional wrestling? When they interview the wrestlers, they always make the most ridiculous threats 'I am going to rip off your arm and beat you to death with it', 'I'm gonna tear off your head and spit down your throat', 'I'm going to reach into your chest and tear out your heart and eat it!'

And yet, the actual wrestling matches never have anything even approaching the level of violence and brutality that they always threaten in the pre-match interviews. This is because the threats are not literal, they are, for lack of a better term, 'trash talk', when they say something like 'I'm going to rip off your head and spit down your throat' they don't mean they are literally going to do that, that's just a trash-talky way of saying 'I intend to win this match.'

The law codes in the ancient near east were exactly like that, they were filled with all sorts of horrific threats that WERE NEVER ACTUALLY CARRIED OUT because the threats were not literal, they were just trash talk. These more severe the alleged punishment attached to it was, the more serious the crime is.


Did you know that in the Code of Hammurabi, just about every crime listed was supposedly supposed to be punished by killing the offender and cooking and eating his body? Do you think Hammurabi was a cannibal? Of course not, the threat to kill him, cook his body and eat it, was NEVER A REAL THREAT, it was just trash talk, a way of saying 'we regard this as a very serious offense', but no one was ever killed and eaten as a punishment for any crime.

The legal system in the ancient near east was not prescriptive, like our legal system. In our legal system, when we say that you get 25 years in prison for a certain offense, it means you get 25 years. The legal system in the ancient near east was not like that.

It was an ad hoc system, where offenders were brought before the judge, and the judge would hear the case and decide on a punishment, and as long as no innocent was killed, the punishment was usually pretty lenient. The literal punishment mentioned was
never carried out.


There is absolutely no evidence whatever, that anyone in ancient Israel was ever stoned to death for any reason. When the laws with these punishments were violated, the offender would be brought before the Sanhedrin and the Sanhedrin would decide on a punishment on an ad hoc basis, and the punishment for all crimes except murder were generally treated with leniency.

In fact, a lot of the graphic violence described in the Old Testament is like that. There are graphic descriptions of atrocities that probably never actually took place. Claiming to have 'completely exterminated' a particular enemy probably meant only that they won the battle, not that an actual extermination took place.

It is a little like General Patton who said, during World War II, that he intended to 'tear out their (the Nazis) guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks', which if it actually happened, would have been a horrific atrocity, but it never happened and Patton never actually meant it as a real threat. He just meant that the Americans were going to win the battle decisively.

God's law is how he made things to work.

Yes, and the answer to that is in the article.

What I want to know is how does God want us to treat homosexuals who have committed homosexual acts. Should they be treated as people who deserve to be put death if only the law of the land would allow such a punishment, or should they be treated with love and sensitivity and helped in the best way possible?

If it's the latter, then how and when did God change how we should treat homosexuals?

I've been told God never changes, and God's moral laws never change, so that makes it even more confusing. But there has clearly been a drastic change in how Catholics are supposed to treat homosexuals. So if God hasn't changed, how has this huge change occurred?

When and why did this change occur?

You treat them the same as anyone else. With charity and compassion or whatever.

God's moral laws can't change. You don't drive a fence post with a tack hammer and you don't drive a finish nail with a post driver. It just doesn't work that way. Sleeping with other men's wives sounds like a lot of fun. The sexual function is intended to be used in a certain context.

Prescribed penalties under any particular penal code is a separate matter. Words can mean more than one thing. Law is such a word. The punishments for various offenses in the Old Testament are obviously not part of moral law. If it were Jesus would not have told them let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

No change has ever occurred or will ever occur.

You're glossing over an imporant distinction that has been made multiple times.

Morals do not change, the moral law has not changed.

Judicial laws, cermonial and ritual laws, were for a time and a place. That was there purpose, and it was fulfilled.

It's not a change if God says Israel will wander for 40 years in the desert, and after 40 years, they cease to wander.

Likewise God did not change by fulfilling the Law while on earth.

Don't compare "moral law" with "just punishment."

I think you're getting wrapped up with the fact that homosexual sins called for "death" in the Old Testament, but since Christ that is no longer called for [as a punishment].

As Doom noted, "death" for a sin in the OT wasn't always a literal punishment. The prescribed punishment for the moral offense was to highlight the seriousness of the sin - some called for death, some for banishment, etc.

Given that a great many people committed a great many sins back then, as they do today, if those punishments were applied as written, it would be safe to say we would have had almost no Jews survive until Christ was born.

And that is one of the reasons why scholars are increasingly coming around to the view that a lot of the violence in the Bible is not literal. If you execute for every little crime, you're not gonna have many people left after a generation or two.

There is a lot of evidence to support my claim that a lot of the violence described is not literal. For example, we have discovered inscriptions made by Egyptians which describe the outcome of the battles they fought, and in every single one, it is claimed both that the people were 'completely exterminated' and that the survivors were all enslaved. But wait, how can there be survivors to enslave if the enemy was completely exterminated? That doesn't make any sense.

And there is also the fact that, if the Egyptians really did enslave as many people as they claimed, then the foreign slaves would have outnumbered the native Egyptian freeman by a ratio of about 10,000 to 1. How on Earth could the Egyptians possibly have kept that many slaves and prevented them from revolting? How would they feed and house such a vast population of slaves? It makes no sense. It is implausible on its face.

And by the way, one of the strongest proofs we have that the Egyptian inscriptions about their supposed victories could not possibly be completely literal is that among the peoples that Egypt claimed to have 'completely exterminated' are the Jews. One such inscription describing a victory over Israel says that 'his seed is no more', which sounds like a pretty definitive statement until you read the next inscription right next to it which describes ANOTHER BATTLE with Israel a few years later!


It even seems likely that this kind of language may have been formalized and stereotyped, so that all victories are described using the exact same language. In an oral culture, stereotyped language is really useful to help people remember long lists of information.

The same thing happens in the Hebrew Bible, where it says that entire races of people, such as the Amakelites, were 'completely exterminated' by the Jews, but then after making this claim, there are still casual references hundreds of years later to Amakelites living in Israel.


This makes no sense unless we make the assumption that when orders such as 'exterminate all of them, including the women and the children and do not allow a single one to live' must not have been intended literally but must have been like the rhetoric of General Patton in World War II, intentionally exaggerated for the sake of motivating his troops by stirring up an urge to fight, while still understanding that orders such as 'shoot the enemy in the back when they run away' were not intended to be taken seriously. If you take General Patton's rhetoric seriously, then he was urging those under his command to commit horrific war crimes, war crimes such as slaughtering an entire battalion of German troops that were in the process of trying to surrender, war crimes that never actually took place, despite Patton's supposed 'encouragement.' Precisely no serious World War II historian thinks that General Patton's supposed 'orders' to commit what could only be described as war crimes were ever intended to be taken literally. He knew his troops wouldn't actually do any of the things he said, but he said them because he knew that they were all just a bunch of young kids who were deathly afraid of battle (and they were afraid because being afraid is completely sensible and rational!) and so he used stirring rhetoric about how many Germans they were going to kill and how much damage they were going to inflict to inspire them to fight.

As well as what is stated in the Old Testament, there was a lot of violence perpetrated against homosexuals by the Catholic Church authorities during the Inquisitions. I can see that there has been a drastic change in the attitude of the Catholic Church towards homosexuals in more recent times. I'd like to know why this change came about, but if others don't see this glaringly obvious change, I don't want to argue. What's the point? Believe what you want to believe.