[Stage directions given by Paul to Phoebe in Corinth, suitably updated: "To be performed with the voice and posture of a pious, highly educated, and extremely wealthy aristocrat—perhaps an Oxford-educated peer or bishop, or some similar high-ranking person. The delivery should be pompous, intellectual, and entitled.”]
18 Now [someone says]:
‘The Deity’s anger will most certainly be unleashed from the heavens
on all the rank godlessness and criminality of people
who are suppressing the truth through their criminality.’
19 ‘I state this thesis because, in the first instance, the truth of the deity is plainly apparent to them because the deity has made it plainly apparent to them; 20 and I state this because his invisible attributes—his invisible omnipotence and divinity—are in fact perspicuous and have been since the creation and founding of our cosmos, being intellectually apprehended by the mind from those things that have been made, so that said people are bereft of all apology. 21 In the second instance I state this because in spite of knowing the deity in this way, they have not ascribed glory to him as deity or offered the appropriate gratitude. They have thereby been rendered foolish in their reasoning, and their puerile hearts—the seat of all their thinking—have become darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise they have been made foolish 23 in that they have exchanged the shining image of the incorruptible deity for a facsimile—whether an image of a corruptible human being, of a bird, of a beast, or of a detestable creeping thing.’
24 ‘Because of this the deity has let them go, delivering them into the grip of the lusts that reside in their hearts, and so ultimately to the pollution that comes from the sullying of their bodies with one another 25—those that is who have exchanged the truth that comes from the deity for a falsehood and who now worship and minister to created things rather than the creator (who is blessed throughout all the ages, amen). 26 Because of all this the deity has let them go, delivering them up to polluting desires. So, on the one hand, their females have exchanged natural procreative sexual relations for those that violate nature; 27 and, on the other hand, in like manner, males, having abandoned any sort of natural reproductive congress with a female, have been inflamed with lustful ardor for one another, males shamefully having sexual congress with other males, and receiving within themselves the appropriate recompense for their depravity [of sterility].’
28 ‘Furthermore, inasmuch as they did not consider it worthwhile to hold on to the divine in their understanding, the deity has let them go, delivering them up to a worthless mind ultimately to do everything improper: 29 they overflow with every sort of wrongdoing, wickedness, greediness, and evil, are filled with mayhem, murder, strife and deceit, 30 are slanderers, atheists, disdainful, arrogant, and boastful, devising evil, despising their parents, 31 senseless, faithless, heartless, and merciless. 32 Such people, knowing the deity‘s judgment that those who practice such things merit death, not only continue to do so themselves but affirm their practice [by others].’