You can read your own quote from Plato, and get that out of it?
Since I only posted the one line Paul quoted, and summarized Plato's position, I'll concede that this is a fair question. I did not give you enough to judge for yourself.
So Let me post a little more of what Plato wrote. I will still only post a minimal amount and have to explain around it, though. You can download and read the
entire dialogue for free thanks to the
Gutenberg Project.
The book is written as a dialogue, a conversation among three philosophers, an unnamed Athenian (Plato's main character - generally supposed to be Socrates, but not named so because Socrates was known never to have visited Crete),
Megillus (a Lacedaemonian from Sparta), and their host, Cleinias (a cretan) as they walk from Cleinias' house to the temple of Zeus in Crete. The Athenian's lesson is punctuated with questions and comments by the other two, but I am only quoting two sections of the Athenian's words. (Note this is a different translation than I posted earlier, so I'm indicating the previously quoted line in blue. The bolded sections will be discussed below)
Whether such matters are to be regarded jestingly or seriously, I think that the pleasure is to be deemed natural which arises out of the intercourse between men and women; but that the intercourse of men with men, or of women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was originally due to unbridled lust. The Cretans are always accused of having invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus because they wanted to justify themselves in the enjoyment of unnatural pleasures by the practice of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver.
Leaving the story, we may observe that any speculation about laws turns almost entirely on pleasure and pain, both in states and in individuals: these are two fountains which nature lets flow, and he who draws from them where and when, and as much as he ought, is happy; and this holds of men and animals--of individuals as well as states; and he who indulges in them ignorantly and at the wrong time, is the reverse of happy.
......
Nay, my good friend, do not say that; there have been, as there always will be, flights and pursuits of which no account can be given, and therefore we cannot say that victory or defeat in battle affords more than
a doubtful proof of the goodness or badness of institutions. For when the greater states conquer and enslave the lesser, as the Syracusans have done the Locrians, who appear to be the best-governed people in their part of the world, or as the Athenians have done the Ceans (and there are ten thousand other instances of the same sort of thing), all this is not to the point; let us endeavour rather to form a conclusion about each
institution in itself and say nothing, at present, of victories and defeats. Let us only say that such and such a custom is honourable, and another not. And first permit me to tell you how good and bad are to be estimated in reference to these very matters.
In the first paragraph, at the beginning of the quoted line, the Athenian indicates that he is about to make a little joke (at Clienias' expense, it turns out) in his choice of example. The joke, which immediately follows the example, is in the "fact" that Cretans only worship Zeus because they can use his relationship with Ganymede to justify prolonging the erastes/eromenos relationship themselves, and the athenian's point is that this, whether it is true or just a racial stereotype, is exactly the kind of overdoiing things that the Athenian is talking about.
In the second paragraph we see how the Athenian is using the phrase "against nature." He is not considering the Law as a scientific experiment, to see if this law makes Athens physically stronger than Ceos or that law allows Syracuse to conquer Locria. He is not talking about nature in that sense; he is using the phrase to indicate a moral failing. Almost exactly as was indicated in the sermon by John Piper you quoted.
Let's see what he said. He said that the passions that a man and a woman have when procreating are due to nature, and that contrary to nature (which is just what the Bible says homosexuality also) the passions and due to them wanting pleasure. Becoming slaves to that pleasure.
First, of course it is "just what the Bible says, too" Paul is quoting this passage. "Natural" and "against nature" do not appear anywhere in the Old Testament. It is not a Hebrew concept at all. Paul borrows it from the Greeks.
And yes, it is the pleasure, and the slavery (addiction) that the Athenian calls
para physis. Paul, who does not want to quote the entire chapter of Laws, when the one line was all he needed, still wanted to make sure that the readers understood that he knew that the example condemns wantonness, and not mere homosexuality, so he rephrased it to include the five key words I mentioned in my last post.
Yep it makes it clear that unbridled passion between homosexuals is against nature, meaning that they shouldn't be doing things which are against nature.
According to Plato, unbridled passion is
para physis for anyone. The example he chose to illustrate the point was homosexual for other reasons. But that is correct.
If there were other, more clear teaching against homosexuality in the Bible, then (even though Plato didn't condemn homosexuality in the ooriginal) we could still use Romans 1:26-27 against homosexuality, too. However every other verse used to teach against homosexuality shows greater weaknesses than this verse when used that way.
So are you saying that homosexuals can love eachother as long as they don't have sex or as long as they don't have pleasure while they are having sex? (Since it is against nature)
Close but no cigar, on two counts. It is not what "I" am saying, but what what the people to whom Paul was writing would recognize as Plato's point. And Plato's point is not that one should not have sex, or that one should not enjoy having sex.
It is that Man is more than just an animal, and his Reason should control his instincts. Having sex (or indulging in any pleasure) simply because it is pleasurable is a moral weakness which can lead to the slavery of addiction. It is an error which carries the seed of it's own recompense.
When it came to sex specifically, the consensus was that because it is so pleasurable, it was important that it only be indulged in for good reasons. You had sex with a wife to sire heirs. You had sex with a Temple prostitute to worship the goddess. You had sex with a professional party hostess because it was part of party experience. You had sex with your eromenos to teach him what sex was. But you did not get carried away.
These were the rules for a society that is not our society. Many of these permitted uses of sex we know to be sinful*. But it is the world which the Roman Church was in but not of. They would have known that this is why the actions in verses 24-27 were labelled
para physis, "against nature."
In 1 Corinthians 7, we learn God's solution to the danger of "burning with passion": channel the urges into a loving, married relationship.
*