Wesleyan Philosophy 5c -- Gender and Sexual Ethics, Part 2

Last week I attempted to sketch out the general contours of a biblically-based, Wesleyan sense of sexual ethics. This week we dive into even deeper waters. Here are some reflections as part of the ongoing conversation of the church. I am not the church, just a voice in the choir.

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Homosexuality
Truth versus Relationships
I start here where I started the previous post on sexual ethics. There is a distinction between truths regarding LGBTQ questions and our relationships with individuals. This dynamic can cut both ways. 

If something is true, the truth does not change if it troubles someone or even if it causes them problems. I may not like that I am going to go splat when I fall off a tall building, but the concrete doesn't care. There is a distinction between truth and the impact of that truth (no pun intended). Similarly, I can be right on a truth and morally wrong in how I treat others in relation to that truth. It is not Christ-like to berate, beat up, oppress, or mock someone who has a different conclusion than I do or who struggles with something I don't struggle with. There are individuals who love God and the Bible who have sincerely come to differing biblical conclusions. The truth is never an excuse for hate.

The former president of a Wesleyan college used to say that the college "welcomed" gay students while not "affirming" a homosexual lifestyle ("welcoming but not affirming"). Although I believe this is the Wesleyan position, that president understandably got hit from both sides. One side objected to the idea of welcoming sin, while she meant welcoming people. The other side objected to not affirming people, while she meant not affirming sin.

In the end, it is unclear whether most evangelical colleges could actually be welcoming to individuals who are attracted to the same sex. Even if an administration could walk that fine line of welcoming but not affirming, even if you could get all the faculty and staff to walk that fine line, it is unclear that you could get all the students on campus to do so. This is a dilemma for Wesleyan schools. I suspect that we are generally not pleasant environments for Christian young people who are processing these issues at the same time that we presumably want to be.

Activity versus Orientation
We all operate with "paradigms" of which we are generally not aware until we encounter others who operate with different ones. A recent paradigm of "Western" culture is to think of homosexuality in terms of an "orientation." The paradigm divides people into those who are attracted to the same sex ("homosexual") and those who are attracted to the opposite sex ("heterosexual"). I might add that in the 1950s, the psychologist Alfred Kinsey developed a scale from 0 to 6, plotting desire from purely heterosexual to purely homosexual in orientation.

In the last couple of decades, the types have multiplied. A "bisexual" is someone who can experience attraction to both sexes. Then a person may be "transgendered." For example, a biological female may want to identify as a male while being attracted to either males or females. The acronym LGBTQIA+ stands for:

• Lesbian (female attracted to female)
• Gay (older term for someone attracted to the same sex)
• Bisexual (attracted to both sexes)
• Transgender (identifying with a different gender than one's biological sex)
• Queer (generally, different from traditional heterosexual sexuality, not straightforwardly "cisgender" or heterosexual)
• Intersex (someone whose body has both male and female sexual features)
• Asexual (someone who does not really have sexual drives) 
• + (something else)

Suffice it to say, none of these are categories with which the biblical texts operate. Even a hundred years ago, the terms homosexual or gay were not used in these ways in common parlance. A "sodomite" was a pejorative reference to someone who engaged in male homosexual sex. There was really no clear category for a person who was tempted by the same sex but never demonstrated or acted on those desires in any way. 

Similarly, the seven biblical passages that relate directly to homosexual sex seem pretty clearly to be about the act of sex rather than some orientation in the modern sense. Genesis 19 is about an attempted act of rape at Sodom, to which Jude 7 also refers. It would be anachronistic to think of these men as homosexuals in the modern sense. Ancient readers would likely have assumed they had wives and children. They seem like the men of Benjamin in Judges 19 who, after being denied access to do violence to the priest, go on to rape his concubine to death. 

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are about men lying with men as men lie with women. Romans 1:26-27 is about the "use" of the same sex instead of the opposite sex--the only text in the Bible that mentions female homosexual sex. All these passages are about homosexual acts. The "passions" of Romans 1:26 are not temptations but passions expressed in sex acts. James 1:15 indicates that temptation itself in general is not yet sin, which is how Jesus could be tempted without sinning.

The word used in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 (arsenokoites) may actually have been coined from Leviticus, although we have no way to know for certain. It appears for the first time in all Greek literature in 1 Corinthians. Its etymology suggests it refers to "male-bedders." The parallel term in 1 Corinthians 6:9 means "soft." A reasonable hypothesis is that arsenokoites refers to the active role in male homosexual sex and malakos to the passive role. This is presumably why the NIV1984 translated malakos as "male prostitute." In the end, we don't really have enough context or background evidence to say for certain what these terms meant exactly. These are educated guesses.

The Bible thus does not condemn someone who would discipline their thoughts by the power of the Holy Spirit (like a heterosexual must) and who would not act on homosexual temptation mentally or physically. It indicts the homosexual act. Matthew 5:28 presumably would apply not only to heterosexual lust but homosexual lust as well. Wesley Hill is a good example of a Bible-believing Christian who is tempted by the same-sex but is committed neither to lust in his heart nor sin with his body. [1]

These seven passages inevitably leave us with many questions of context. Where was homosexual sex practiced in the ancient world? Was prostitution normally involved? Were pagan temples or gods typically involved? Were those who engaged in such sex normally married? These verses took their precise meaning and connotations from a world about which we do not have complete knowledge. [2]

The Core Principle
Some would argue in effect that there are "hidden variables" in the Bible's indictment of same-sex, context that is not clear in the words removed from their background in history. Some argue that these texts are about same-sex rape or perhaps temple prostitution relating to another god. Some argue that these instances of same-sex prohibition assume that adultery was taking place in the act.  

However, if we assume that there is no hidden context, the core underlying principle against homosexual sex in Scripture would seem to be that it is not "the natural use" of men and women's bodies, as Romans 1:26-27 puts it. In effect, human bodies are designed to function in a heterosexual way. The implicit claim would seem to be that humanity is most fulfilled and thrives the most when it acts sexually in accordance with how its bodies were created. Heterosexual sex can fulfill the command to be fruitful and multiply. It has provided social stability in history by containing sex within marriage and commiment. Homosexual sex would thus reflect a world out of order with its design.

I believe it is possible to abstract a Levitical, priestly "theology of kinds" from Leviticus. The world of clean and unclean things in Leviticus is a world of certain "boxes." Mary Douglas once analyzed the Levitical food laws along these lines. [3] Why are things in the sea without fins and scales unclean (Lev. 11:9-10)? Why are things that go on their belly on the land unclean? 

Her answer in part was that these things do not fit their kind. As she put it, "Dirt is matter out of place." It's ok in the yard but not on the carpet.

We see this theology in Genesis 1, which has sometimes been seen as a priestly introduction to the Pentateuch. God creates all the entities of Genesis 1 "according to its kind" (e.g., Gen. 1:11, 21, 24). The birds that are prohibited also seem to be of the predatory kind or the kind that eat already dead prey (Lev. 11:13-19). Some features of health may be going on here, but it seems that much more than health is going on. [4]

So when we look at the prohibition against male-male sex in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, it is quite possible that something similar is going on at least in part. In these situations, men are not joining with the right kind. The New Testament seems in continuity with this underlying thought. Jude 7 may have angelic "flesh" in mind when it speaks of going after "different flesh," but it could also mean flesh different from its appropriate kind. Paul says something similar in Romans 1:26-27. Both women and men exchange the "natural use" of the other sex. [5] 

The inner logic of Leviticus thus may in part be analogous to not wearing clothing of mixed thread or sowing more than one kind of seed in the same field or breeding two different kinds of animals (19:19). However, the word abomination in 20:13 suggests an intensity that goes beyond these other practices that made something unclean. Similarly, the punishment is death, much more severe than your run of the mill unclean. Admittedly, we do not have enough context to know the full dynamics of what is going on here.

The sense of a world out of its intention seems clear also in Romans 1. This passage, probably drawing on the book of Wisdom 13-14, gives a sequence where 1) failure to recognize God as God (1:20-21) leads to 2) idolatry, mistaking idols for the real God (1:23), which devolves into 3) sexual immorality (1:24) and eventually 4) all manner of wickedness (1:28-31). Gentile humanity seems especially in view. Because (Gentile) humanity did not glorify God as God, God let go. God "gives them up" (1:24) and the world spirals out of control.

In this sequence, homosexual sex is an illustration of what happens when the world is out of order, beginning with a failure to recognize God as the all-powerful Creator. In the thought flow of Romans, Paul is setting up a sting operation. Some Jews might love his argument here. They might be thinking, "Yeah, God is going to fry those wicked Gentiles." But he turns the tables in Romans 2. Jews have sinned too. They are no better than Gentile sinners. In effect, "all have sinned and are lacking the glory of God" (3:23).

The inner logic again would seem to be that homosexual sex is an illustration of a world that is out of order. Theologically, this is presumably a world where the love of God and neighbor are not optimized individually or societally.

Transgenderism
The last five years have brought to the fore questions of individuals who do not identify with their biological sex. A gay man may still identify as a male. A lesbian female may still identify as a female. What would we do if a biological male identifies as a female but is still attracted to females? What would we do if a biological female identifies as a male but is still attracted to males? 

At this point we have entered waters that seem almost completely foreign to anything substantially addressed in Scripture. There is a verse, Deuteronomy 22:5--"The articles of a man will not be upon a woman and a man will not wear the garment of a woman, for an abomination to the LORD your God is everyone doing these things." When I was a boy, people used this verse to say that women should not wear anything but dresses and skirts--no slacks or pants because these things "pertained to a man."

Verses like these are obscure one day, then they become focal. This is a function of paradigm shifts. This verse was very significant in my worldview when I was 17. Should I should date a girl that wore jeans? I almost broke up with a girl for my conscience's sake until she removed the issue by only wearing skirts and dresses. Let's just say she eventually (and wisely) broke up with me.

Then the church largely ignored this verse in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, almost making fun of the old holiness people who made a big deal out of an obscure verse in the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. Now it is once again a central verse in our paradigm because of the issue of transgenderism. We should be self-reflective of how easily we make these shifts without a thought. This is how paradigms work. [6]

In my brief memory, there have always been individuals on the edges of the church who have seemed "not to identify" with their biological sex. I remember in particular from time to time a biological male or two who would come to church or camp meeting in woman's clothing. My sense is that people treated them kindly, not quite knowing what to do. I suspect the fact that they were out of the norm was quite obvious to them.

Someone once confided in me that they did not feel comfortable as a man. Their impulse was to begin dressing and living as a woman. The problem is that this person was married and had children. My advice to him was that his love and commitment to his family was more important than what might make him feel most natural, that it would be selfish for him to throw them away for his own sense of self-satisfaction. After all, he was not a bad husband or father.

I do not claim to be inerrant on that advice, although it makes sense to me within my overall sense of love of neighbor over love of self. I frankly do not understand the psychology of transgender individuals. 

"Intersexuality" seems to have an anatomical component. Such individuals would have likely been considered unclean in the Old Testament (cf. Deut. 23:1), but Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch presumably declares them full participants of the church. Modern science has made possible procedures to remove anatomical ambiguity. "Let each be fully convinced in their own mind" (Rom. 14:5). 

When one's anatomy is not ambiguous, the question of using modern science to change one's sex seems much more serious. I'll confess that this impulse does not seem healthy to me at all. The Wesleyan Church does not consider such procedures appropriate.

If Scripture did more explicitly address these issues, I suspect it would maintain the same train of thought it seems to have in relation to homosexual sex. I suspect it would argue from the "kinds" that correspond to our biological sex. When Scripture is not explicit, our normal instruction is for us to "work out y'alls salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12). The Wesleyan Church has worked out its salvation by deeming transgenderism contrary to God's ideal for human identity and relationships. This position seems to be consistent with our stance on homosexual practice.

God will do what is right. God will sort out the "oughts." My commitment is to love individuals I do not understand. The idea of declaring pronouns is unfamiliar to me. I am simply resolved to be kind to others. God has it all figured out.

[1] Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015).

[2] Some historians have concluded that King James may have engaged in such relationships with two men at his court, even though he had a wife and children.

[3] Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge, 1966).

[4] We naturally seize on a possible health dimension because it fits our modern worldview better.

[5] Paul makes this argument from what seems "natural" in 1 Corinthians 11:14 when he indicates that nature teaches that a man should not have short hair. There thus seems to be a blurring in his language between what we think of as natural and what is also a matter of what may have cultural elements.

[6] On the issue of women in leadership and ministry, 1 Timothy 2:12 is a verse that is actually quite obscure, and yet it is huge in the word cloud of current debates, out of proportion to its place in the whole counsel of Scripture.

Wesleyan philosophy 5b -- Gender and Sexual Ethics, Part 1

And now, where angels fear to tread. Next installment of one Wesleyan perspective on the topics of philosophy.

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Truth and Relationships
We should distinguish carefully between what is true and the impact of truth on real people. This distinction is often lost in an era where postmodernism has given a green light to subjectivity. Truth becomes mostly or only personal. I do not mean this critique in a simplistic or stereotypical way. Our perspective on truth is inevitably subjective. But without the goal of objectivity, everything falls apart.

As we will see a few posts from now, I am a critical realist. There are facts. There is objective truth that God knows. God knows all the data and all the proper interrelationships between all the data. I do not. My view of both the data and their interrelationships is both fantastically finite and skewed. So I believe that objective truth exists, even though I do not have full access to it. Even my understanding of the Bible is inevitably partial and skewed by the cloudiness of the "glasses" I wear.

I therefore affirm strongly the distinction between what is true about ethics and the matter of how we should engage other people in relation to those truths. Let me give a scenario. Let us say that I am diagnosed with an advanced and aggressive stage 4 cancer. Let's say there is no question. Apart from a miracle, I am going to die in days, perhaps hours.

When I speak of the distinction between truth and relationships, truth is something like the prediction that I am going to die in the next few days apart from God's intervention. It is objective truth. Nevertheless, all sorts of subjective factors circle that truth. The doctor could be a jerk about telling me. My family could laugh about it. A stranger could show me kindness.

So with gender and sexual ethics, we can speak of truths revealed either by Scripture or nature. But those truths are distinct from questions of how we should relate to one another in relation to those truths. God has tasked us to love our neighbor and enemy. We thus cannot hide behind truth to satisfy our fleshly urges to hate others. Someone can manifest sin while proclaiming a truth. Perhaps someone enjoys oppressing someone whom they believe is in the wrong. They are also in the wrong in a different way.

Beating up someone who is gay is arguably a worse sin than engaging in a homosexual act. The latter might actually be done with affection for the other. The other clearly is done in hate. The Bible clearly indicates that there are greater and lesser wrongdoings, with love as the standard. Someone who viciously murders someone has committed a greater sin than someone who steals a fellow student's homework. The measure of sin is intentionality, with love as the standard. Paul expels from the Corinthian church the man sleeping with his father's wife. He does not expel those who think they are better than others in the congregation.

The expression "all sin is sin" is thus unbiblical. It probably derives from the sense that whatever sin we have committed before we come to Christ falls away equally at the cross. Perhaps the popular sentiment "all sin is sin" comes from a similar theology of eternal security after coming to Christ. However, the New Testament does not teach anything of the sort, as Wesleyan theology affirms. Take 1 John 5:16-17 for starters: "There is a sin that leads to death... there is sin that does not lead to death." Sin can differ in intensity, depending on the measure of how unloving it is. 

Chances are, the world around us knows well enough our positions on the truth of sexual ethics. But some people draw satisfaction from telling other people off. This is sin, lacking in love. A lack of willingness to understand the struggles of others is also sin. It is easy to make light of people who struggle with something you do not. We can disagree with others and yet show the love of Christ to them.

Holiness
I have witnessed a dynamic where the fact that God is holy is put in conflict with the fact that God is love. God loves the sinner, but his holiness demands he blow them away.

God is no slave. He is no slave to his supposed nature. Everything God does, he does with purpose and intentionality. He is surprised by nothing.

When Uzzah was struck down for touching the ark of the covenant in 2 Samuel 6:7, it looks automatic. But God knew Uzzah would touch the ark before the foundation of the world. There was a reason, a purpose in God doing it. We cannot see fully into God's mind, but we know that the act did not contradict God's love for Uzzah.

I take two lessons from this story. The first is that death in itself is not evil. Is Uzzah being punished, or is Israel being taught a lesson? David's reaction may suggest that it appeared to be an unfair act on God's part (6:8). But it cannot be in contradiction to God's love. This fact may suggest that death in itself is not evil.

It seems to me that the best explanation for why a loving God would bring about the death of someone for touching the ark is to demonstrate the seriousness of serving God in the context of what was an extremely harsh world. It was an object lesson. The God of Israel is serious stuff, more serious that the surrounding gods. His stuff must be recognized as holy. Uzzah's death is an object lesson.

God did not strike down every unholy high priest who touched the ark. Eli's sons did die in battle but those evil-hearted priests touched the ark many times before God finally let them die. There was a reason at this point of Israel's history to remind them who God was.

Similarly, not everyone who lies about what they have given to God is struck dead like Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. There are likely many televangelists who have misappropriated the Lord's money who were not struck down. There was a reason at that point of the early church to make a point.

Let us not fall into the trap of saying, "Homosexual activity defies God's holiness and thus has nothing to do with loving others." Everything about God coheres perfectly with God's love for the world.

The New Testament is also the telos or goal of the Old Testament. The barest of hints of life beyond death in the Old Testament become fully revealed in the New Testament. The human kingship of the line of David in the Old Testament is revealed to be the eternal kingship of Christ in the New. A strong sense of collective and unthinking sin is overtaken later in the Old Testament by a sense of individual guilt (e.g., Ezek. 18:1-4) and a New Testament emphasis on intentionality that we have seen.

The theology of the Old and New Testaments is thus the same but it differs in emphasis and precision. Jesus is God's final word. The New Testament gives a fuller and more precise understanding than the Old, even though they agree. God judges in the New Testament as well as the Old, but the Old Testament in general paints a harsher picture of God than the New. God is holy in both the Old and New Testament, but the New Testament gives a fuller and more precise picture of God's holiness than the Old. The New Testament gives a fuller and more precise picture of God's love than the Old, not least because the New Testament shows us the fullness of Christ.

I mention this principle of biblical theology because there is often a tendency to read the Bible in a "flat" way that does not recognize the growing theological precision from the Old Testament to the New. We should take context and the inner logic of biblical passages into account when we are building a biblical theology of sexual ethics.

The Principles
What then are the fundamental biblical principles underlying a Christian and Wesleyan sexual ethic? The three principles that are candidates are 1) the holiness of God, 2) the love of neighbor, and 3) societal stability (which is a working out of the love of God corporately). Let us start with the more obvious and work to the more uncertain.

Adultery

Adultery is clearly unloving toward one's spouse. It is a violation of relationship and commitment. It is hard to see how it is not a worse sin than homosexual acts, because it is full of disregard for neighbor, for spouse, for children, for the spouse and children of the other. In the justice-by-revenge world of the Ancient Near East, adultery created tremendous social instability.

Rape
Rape is even worse than adultery. In context, this is clearly part of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah that is attempted. This is an act similar to what would later take place in Benjamin (Judges 19:22-29), where after initially threatening to rape the man, in the end they raped his concubine to death. These are violent men, not the modern understanding of a homosexual. It is an act more akin to prison rape than modern homosexuality. In that culture, they likely had wives and children.  

This interpretation is not particularly controversial from an inductive standpoint. The homosexual nature of the proposed act is likely also a component of the vice of these men, but in context it comes behind the sins of violence and mistreatment of the stranger. When Jesus mentions the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, he is focusing on how these men treated the messengers of God (Matt. 11:20-24).

Incest
Incest violates both the love of family and societal stability as well. If rape is evil in itself, incest is the rape of one's family. The compounding of unlovingness is the compounding of the evil. 

Polygamy
The Bible nowhere prohibits polygamy. In fact, the Pentateuchal Law assumes its practice. Deuteronomy 21:15-17 assumes that a man might have two wives. The law of Levirate marriage probably assumes a man will take on the wife of his dead brother as an additional wife (Deut. 25:5-6).

We are thus reading things into Genesis 2:24 when we think it is assuming monogamy. A man became one flesh with each of his wives. Someone who visited a prostitute became one flesh with the prostitute (1 Cor. 6:16). Becoming one flesh is not the same as getting married, although it is supposed to take place in the context of marriage. Becoming one flesh is about having sex with someone.

Marriage between one man and one woman is therefore the trajectory of Scripture but not the explicit teaching of Scripture. Once again, the Old Testament is less precise in this area than the New Testament, which seems more or less to assume monogamy. Even here, though, monogamy is more a description of marriage in the New Testament than an explicit prescription. Overseers in leadership in the church are supposed to be the husbands of one wife, but nothing is said of non-overseers (1 Tim. 3:2). [1]

What therefore is wrong with polygamy? It does not normally give the woman full status and value. In other words, it violates the principle that women are equally created in the image of God. Polygamy is thus less than God's ideal that "in Christ there is not male and female" (Gal. 3:28). Although it contributed to societal stability in the ancient Near East of Israel, it is deficient from the standpoint of the love of neighbor.

Pre-marital Sex
In the Old Testament, having sex with a virgin to whom you were not married upset the stability of society. To resolve the situation, the man either had to marry the girl (if the father wished) or had to pay the bride price (Exod. 22:16-17). In the latter case, she presumably would remain with her family. In both situations, the woman had a secure place in society.

In the New Testament, Paul assumes that random burning with passion is at the very least not desirable (1 Cor. 7:9). At least in the earlier days of his ministry, his preference was for virgins to remain with their families (1 Cor. 7:38). Although he does not give reasons, Paul clearly assumed that the unmarried should not be having sex with each other. We might speculate that sex should always take place in the context of commitment, which preserves the stability of human society.

Prostitution and Pornography
The Old Testament indicates that no Israelite woman should be a prostitute (Lev. 19:29; Deut. 23:17). The apparent reason is that it degrades her. The man is simply using her. Prostitution violates the love of one's neighbor. 

In the new covenant, it is clear that God cares about all men and women, not just the Israelite ones. Men and women of all peoples are created in the image of God. For this reason, no woman or man should be a prostitute because no human being should be devalued as some simple toy or plaything. And, accordingly, no man or woman should visit a prostitute because it violates love of one's neighbor.

We can extend the argument further to pornography. Although no physical contact is made, the man or woman is mentally using the other. Since sin is ultimately a matter of the mind even before the body acts, to lust after another in pornography is to use them and have sex with them in your heart. Meanwhile, the men and women in pornography have been degraded as prostitutes of a sort. It also seems that human trafficking stands behind much pornography. For this reason, to use pornography is to promote the enslavement of others, which clearly violates the love of one's neighbor.

Don't do it.

Conclusion
In the above cases, we have found good reasons for traditional sexual norms both in the love of one's neighbor and in the preservation of society's stability, which is also part of loving one's neighbor. In that sense, the holiness of God is offended because the love of others is offended. It does not seem that the holiness of God is directly offended in these cases but rather that it is offended because others are violated.

[1] It is possible that this passage is saying that a church overseer (probably the role of being one of many elders) should only have one spouse in their lifetime.

ET16. Sex should be kept within a marriage relationship.

This is the sixteenth post on Christian ethics in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. The third set was on sacraments. This final section is on Christian ethics.
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Sex should be kept within a marriage relationship.

1. When Jesus presented a model of marriage in Matthew 19, he looked to Genesis 2 as the model: "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate" (19:4-6).

Becoming "one flesh" here is bigger than sex, but it certainly includes it. Paul prohibits visiting a prostitute by reminding the Corinthians that such an individual becomes one flesh with that prostitute (6:16). Paul is not in any way saying such a person is marrying the prostitute. But he is indicating that sex is an act that has dramatic spiritual implications and that it should only take place within marriage. [1]

Today we focus especially on the relational aspects to sex, the way it involves a special bond between two people. In the biblical world, the social implications and the purity implications would have been even more important. Sex was understood to be an act of particular vulnerability for defilement. And unless it took place within marriage, it threatened the social stability of society.

2. There are not many explicit statements in the Bible insisting on sex only in marriage because it was such a strong assumption of the biblical world. It did not need to be said. Women especially were expected to be virgins when they marry. It was not necessary to argue for it.

The older word fornication was often taken to refer to sex before marriage, but the underlying word porneia had a very broad reference to sexual immorality in general. When 1 Thessalonians 4:3 says to "abstain from fornication," it was not likely singling out pre-marital sex from other forms of sex outside marriage, but it was referring to a variety of improper sexual activity, perhaps including adultery. [2] Paul says not to exploit a brother in this area, quite possibly a comment on adultery (4:6).

3. The Old Testament clearly expected a woman to be a virgin when she married. In Deuteronomy 22, a woman who is not found to be a virgin on her wedding night was to be stoned (22:20-21). If a man sleeps with an engaged woman in the country, he is to be stoned but she is spared on the assumption that she screamed but no one was there to hear (22:25-27). If the same takes place in the city both are to be stoned on the assumption that she could have screamed but did not (22:23-24).

If a man sleeps with a woman who is not engaged, he has to marry her (Deut. 22:28-29). Exodus' version of this law also allows that the father may not want the woman to marry this man (Exod. 22:16-17). Both passages reflect the fact that a woman was expected to be a virgin at the time of marriage.

4. 1 Corinthians 7 gives perhaps the clearest instruction on the subject: "To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion" (78-9). In other words, if you cannot control your sexual urges, it is better to get married than to be having indiscriminate sex outside of marriage. [3]

This is a very practical approach. It does not give us the lofty theology of man and woman becoming one flesh. It simply states that people should get married if they can't control themselves sexually.

5. We shouldn't be surprised that much of the biblical text focuses on the woman. The woman was seen in ancient patriarchal cultures as a point of vulnerability for shame to one's family. But most avenues for a man to have sex outside of marriage were also closed. He could not have sex with someone else's wife or concubine--that was adultery or porneia. He could not have sex with a virgin, for that wronged her and her family. Israelite men and women were not allowed to be prostitutes (Lev. 19:29; Deut. 23:17).

In short, the biblical text insists that women can only have sex within marriage, and the avenues for a man to have sex outside of marriage were prohibited.

6. In current Western culture, defilement has been transformed into sexually transmitted diseases. Social consequence has largely been translated into the difficulties and disadvantages of single parenting. These are of course real possible consequences of sexual activity outside of exclusive sexual relationships that involve commitment. Any teenager or twenty something whose attitude to sex is casual takes the risk of significantly disadvantaging their lives in these ways.

But there is also a potential cheapening of life. One lives for selfish pleasure, the baser and less noble of human impulses. If love of others is virtue, indiscriminate sexuality is on the love of self side of the equation. Sex can be a high expression of love, or it can be an act of pure self-pleasuring at the expense of others. The latter is incompatible with the values of Christ.

The more one values marriage, the more one will restrict sex to the marriage relationship. And the more one has the values of Christ, the more one will view males and females as equal partners in sexual relationships. Paul shockingly declares these values of mutuality in 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 where he urges that husbands and wives should have sex regularly so that they are not tempted to find sex elsewhere. He shockingly suggests that the wife has claim on her husband's body, just as he has claim on hers.

7. In the end, there can be no question where the assumption of Scripture lies. The Bible assumes throughout that sex is to be practiced within marriage and not outside of it.

Next Sunday: ET17: The Bible prohibits homosexual sex and several other types of sexual act.

[1] We can extend the principle and say that a man in the Old Testament with many wives became one flesh with all of his wives.

[2] One might look to Leviticus 18 for a general sense of the kinds of activities to which porneia refers.

[3] Paul's preference for celibacy here probably had a lot to do with an early expectation that Christ would return rather quickly to earth (e.g., 1 Cor. 7:29-31). 1 Timothy would later encourage marriage as the norm (1 Tim. 4:3; 5:14).

Some "That Time" Old Testament Verses

I always enjoy time with the Indy Benjamin MDIV group on Saturdays. They're in their final course of the MDIV praxis sequence. This morning we went through key passages on marriage, polygamy, adultery, divorce, and homosexual sex.

There are some fascinating OT verses on these subjects. They remind us that the world of the OT was quite different from ours. Most of the OT Law, including its civil law, was for "that time" and the people of Israel rather than "all time" and the "new covenant." As N. T. Wright says, "We are not members of Israel" (124).

Here are some examples:

• "If a man has two wives, one of them loved and the other disliked, and if both the loved and the disliked have borne him sons, the firstborn being the son of the one who is disliked, then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he is not permitted to treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the firstborn." (Deut. 21:15-16)
• "Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies); her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that would be abhorrent to the Lord." (Deut. 24:1-4)
• "When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel." (Deut. 25:5-6)
• "When a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged to be married, and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. But if her father refuses to give her to him, he shall pay an amount equal to the bride-price for virgins." (Exod. 22:16-17)