“And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”
In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Men's deviation from natural relations and mutual lust represent the same descent into unnatural desire. Received in themselves the due penalty (antimisthia) suggests that the consequences of these acts are embedded within the acts themselves: physical, emotional, and spiritual corruption.
Church Fathers on Romans 1:27
All these affections then were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored, than the body in diseases. But behold how here too, as in the case of the doctrines, he deprives them of excuse, by saying of the women, that “they changed the natural use.” For no one, he means, can say that it was by being hindered of legitimate intercourse that they came to this pass, or that it was from having no means to fulfil their…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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