What is a biblical theology of sexuality? Part 2
In the first function of this two-function post, I set out what I perceive as the start four of eight affirmations nigh sexual activity and sexuality in the broad narrative of the Scriptures. Await at this 'big picture' is an essential complement to the discussions about detailed texts, and without it the contend can sometimes get lost in the details.
The first four affirmations were that: sexual practice is a expert gift from good; that we are bodily creatures, non but spirits trapped in bodies or purely textile creatures; that our bodies are sex activity-differentiated into male and female person (sex activity dimorphism); and that God intends us to live lives of integrity, where our outward actions, include our experience of sexual practice, should line up with our life commitments.
The 2nd set of 4 affirmations offer some essential counterpoints to the beginning four, and the theology of sex activity and sexuality nosotros find in scripture lies in the connection and tension between all eight affirmations.
five. Sex activity is potent
Y'all don't demand to read the Bible to know that sex activity is a powerful forcefulness in the earth. In his 1985 book that followed on fromCelebration of Subject field, Richard Foster address the questions ofMoney, Sexual activity and Power. He wrote:
No issues affect usa more greatly or universally; no topics crusade more controversy. No human realities have greater power to bless or curse. No three things accept been more than sought later or are more in need of a Christian response.
Sex has the power to end our loneliness, to bring us into the deepest, most profound and near fulfilling communion with another man existence. Merely, when misused, it has the power to destroy lives, and those who have been harmed past it acquit the deepest of scars.
National destinies are also shaped past issues around sex and childbearing. Historically, we are in a strange identify in the W; with our near-universal adoption of contraception, nosotros accept get a culture where sex is almost seen equally a correct, but childbearing is condign perceived more and more than in cultural narratives as problematic, an obstacle to the fulfilment of our desired lifestyle in terms of earning ability and career progression. The event of this is epidemic-levels of sexually transmitted diseases alongside a birthrate that has, for some time, been beneath the 'replacement level' necessary to maintain a steady population. (Ironically, in both these regards nosotros are moving closer to the pre-Christian reality of the Roman Empire.) In many Western countries, population growth has simply been sustained by immigration (note Angela Merkel's amnesty for around 1 million immigrants in Germany last yr), and the immigrant communities typically have a much higher birth charge per unit than the indigenous population, increasing the ethnic and cultural mix of the population equally a whole.
In some contexts, such differential rates of birth accept serious political consequences. The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) once said that 'the womb of the Arab adult female is my strongest weapon'; he knew that if the refugee Palestinian population continued to grow, then they would be impossible to ignore in earth politics. 750,000 Palestinians left or were expelled from the infant nation of State of israel in 1947–8; there are now 1.8 1000000 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip lonely. In fact, both Israeli Jews and Palestinians are engaged in a demographic state of war of childbearing.
Scripture recognises the power of sex. The starting time commandment of God to humanity is to 'be fruitful and multiply'; having families and raising them is depicted as the primary mode in which humanity is to exercise the ability of God'due south delegated dominion over the earth. The narratives of the One-time Testament are littered with examples of desire and sexual relations that get wrong, wreaking havoc in the lives of individuals and families. David's desire for Bathsheba, as he sees her bathing on her roof when he should take been leading his troops in battle, destroyed the life of her hubby Uriah and about destroyed both David and his kingdom (see 2 Kings 11).
For both Jesus and Paul, sexual immorality, along with other vices like greed and malicious thoughts, has the power to 'defile' (Mark 7.21) and prevent our inheritance of the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6.9).
Come and join usa for the 3rd Festival of Theology on Tuesday 8th October!
A central theme in the Bible's clarification of humanity is that we are 'fallen' in some sense. God created the world adept, just things are now oft far from good; we were fabricated to be in intimate human relationship with God, and at peace with each other and the world, only all these relationships have become distanced and distorted. Scripture sometimes describes this in terms of the deliberate pick of individuals to practice the incorrect affair rather than the right; at other times it describes sin as a ability which spoils and breaks our lives; and at still other times it talks about the whole world existence out of joint, groaning in futility.
In the creation narrative, the land nosotros are in is depicted as the turning of the starting time man and woman, Adam and Eve, away from the command of God, being seduced past the promised of even greater power and knowledge. In God's unfolding of the consequences of this, the impact on sex and childbearing is at the top of the list:
Your desire volition be for your husband, and he will dominion over you (Gen three.16)
The reciprocity of equality-in-difference that was so carefully spelled out in chapter 2 has at present been twisted and distorted, so that there is asymmetry of both want and ability.
In the gospels, Jesus ofttimes teaches near money and its seductive dangers, and he is often opposed past those whose power and influence he threatens. But, every bit John Nolland has demonstrated, he teaches almost sexual activity and sexual morality at least as ofttimes, including reference to sex in all his vice lists. In his exposition of the true meaning of the law in Matt v.27–48 ('Yous have heard it said…but I say to you…'), he begins by expounding the true meaning of sexual morality in relation to adultery and divorce and remarriage.
Paul caption of his understanding of the gospels to Christians in Rome starts by demonstrating (in affiliate i) how Gentiles are convict to sin and, in parallel, how God'southward people the Jews are besides mired in sin—and then that he can conclude that 'all [i.e. both Jew and Gentile] have sinned and fallen short of the celebrity of God' and are therefore all in need of the offer of grace, forgiveness and redemption that is found in Jesus. In the first half, the critique of Gentile life and civilization, he deploys a traditional Jewish argument highlighting Gentile sexual sin: Gentile acceptance of same-sex sexual practice demonstrates how far they are from God, since they reject the actual grade of male and female and in so doing then refuse God's expression of himself in creation.
Paul is not hither merely demonstrating an obsession with sex; he is showing how complete is the effect of human sin and our turning from God, that information technology penetrates to the very heart of man relationships. He locates that at the centre of all the other ways in which sin is manifest ('They have go filled with every kind of wickedness…' Rom 1.29)—and is clear that his Jewish readers, auspicious him on in his Jewish condemnation of Gentiles, are also quickly silenced, since 'you who pass judgment do the aforementioned things' and are affected past sin in just the same way (Rom 2.ane)
seven. Sexual activity is strictly bounded
When I did chemical science at schoolhouse, nosotros used to sit on stools at benches in the chemistry lab, and at the centre of the benches, sitting on glass trays, were intriguing thick glass bottles. The almost intriguing were labelled 'Concentrated Nitric Acrid', 'Concentrated Hydrochoric Acid' and 'Concentrated Sulphuric Acid'. Nosotros could tell that these things were powerful; if the teacher brought out some ammonia, the tops of these bottles smoked with potential for action! Nosotros likewise thought that these things could exercise some good—they were obviously of import in certain kinds of reactions. Only in the hands of teenage boys, they could clearly exercise a lot of damage, which is why they were in thick glass bottles. I suspect that nowadays they would exist placed in securely locked cabinets for that very reason.
This is how we need to read the strict prohibitions on sexual activity in the Bible. Within its various cultural contexts, the different parts of the Bible are quite distinctive in the limits and prohibitions they put around sexual relations. Same-sexual activity sexual relations were allowed in certain contexts in all other parts of the ancient near East; the Old Testament is unique in prohibiting such relations in all forms. Israelite law assorted sharply with the Egyptian context from which it emerged:
To the Egyptians, sexual practice was a life staple, on a par with eating and sleeping and therefore not something to be sniggered at, embarrassed near or avoided. The Egyptian language for example – like modernistic English – had many words for sexual intercourse, with the nearly common being nk. This was used to describe the male agent of the sexual human action and was acceptable in daily parlance.
Incestuous relationships were not uncommon, and gave rise to built malformations and yet births which gave rise to a fascination with grotesque forms and images. Tutankhamen suffered from congenital malformation of his legs, about likely equally a upshot of his incestuous conception; his father and mother were brother and sister, and he went on to marry his half sis.
In a similar way, the Christian sexual ethic set out in the New Testament, which carried forward the restricted Jewish ethic of the Old Attestation, was distinctive in the showtime century in its prohibition of sex outside spousal relationship and in its symmetrical upstanding demands on both men and women. Rodney Stark, inThe Ascension of Christianity, notes the measurable touch of this ethic on the growth of the early church. In chapter five, 'The role of women in Christian growth', he notes how the rejection of female infanticide and ballgame, the lower level of sexual diseases, and the greater care of women through childbirth all contributed to biological numerical growth amongst Christians.
The restrictive sexual ethic in the Bible which is and then manifest in a restrictive ethic in the church is commonly interpreted (both within and without) as either a prudishness or an expression of fear and anxiety about sexual relations—and when it is discrete from the earlier affirmations that sex is a good gift from God, then it can become this.
But when held together with the other things Scripture says about sex, our identity equally bodily creatures fabricated male and female, and God's expert intention in cosmos, these restraints are properly understood as limiting the damage done by a skilful but powerful strength that is subject to man sin.
8. Penultimate
Despite sex beingness a good souvenir of God, and despite sexual intimacy within male person-female spousal relationship being assumed as the norm for almost people, the New Testament offers us a startling challenge to the idea that sexual experience is essential of human happiness—or fifty-fifty a necessary role of life. Both Jesus and Paul were unmarried!
Although non completely universal, information technology would take been normal for a rabbi in first-century Judaism to have been married, not least in order to model what a good Jewish family life might be like. In fact, it would have been normal for any man to be married, and being single would have been unusual though not incommunicable. Despite sick-informed and sensationalist speculative by Dan Brown and others, at that place is no dubiousness that Jesus was not married. And we need to intermission here and consider the enormity of this fact:
The person who lived the perfectly fulfilled life, the one who offered us 'life in all its fulness' (John 10.10), lived out that full and perfect lifewithout experiencing sexual relationships. If he could, then we can too.
This presents a major challenge in at to the lowest degree three directions: communities without and outside the church that present matrimony and having children every bitthe style to live a fulfilled life; contemporary civilization which finds it hard to imagine a satisfying life that does not involve sexual experience; and Jesus' Jewish context which held on to 'be fruitful and multiply' every bit the first and essential commandment.
Paul'due south offers some practical reasons for his own singleness: 'an unmarried man is concerned nearly the Lord's diplomacy—how he can delight the Lord. But a married human is concerned about the affairs of this globe—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided' (1 Cor seven.32–34). There is a danger that nosotros interpret this as mere pragmatism, rather than having theological significance. Just Jesus' reworking of kinship identity around loyalty to him makes the theological upshot quite clear.
"Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the volition of my Father in heaven is my blood brother and sister and mother." (Matt 12.48–50)
In the get-go creation, we do the dominion of God by being fruitful and multiplying—by marrying and having children. And the existential condition of existence alone is addressed by the gift of intimacy with another through sexual union in spousal relationship. Simply in the new creation, which nosotros are stepping into every bit we are baptised into the death and resurrection life of Jesus, all this changes. We see the reign of God now come as we share the good news of new life in Jesus and every bit others receive information technology: information technology is through constructive evangelism that we are fruitful and multiply. And the end of aloneness no longer comes only through marriage and the associated formation of kinship groups; now, our kinship comes through Jesus our brother, and the brothers and sisters we have amongst fellow disciples in the family unit of believers. That, at least, is the vision of the New Testament, even if it is poorly realised in practice in church life. It is striking that, when the believers come together in sharing their possessions in Acts ii.42–47, they are enacting the sharing of possessions between married man and wife that was set out in Gen 2.24.
All this means that sex and sexuality cannot define man identity. Information technology is not that the Scriptures are ignorant of the power of and claims made by sexual desire; in the kickoff century world the whole range of sexual relations and desires were known. Rather, Scripture rejects this way of agreement what information technology is to be human. 'Orientation' is non a fundamental constituent of man existence; it is beingness made bodily, male or female, in the image of God which is primary.
And the reasons for this get clear when we consider where nosotros are heading. The intimacy and union of marriage anticipates the intimacy and spousal relationship that we will one day savor with God. In the New Jerusalem, the behemothic cube that is the holy urban center has become both the location of the people of God and the Holy of Holies where God himself dwells. The infinite inhabited past God and the space inhabited by his people are coterminous, every bit they live in intimate union with him. This is why the coming of the city and the final revelation of the age to come up is described every bit the 'matrimony banquet of the lamb' with his bride (Rev 19.6–nine), the people of God who follow him.
The singleness of Jesus and Paul, and the singleness of any of his followers, points forward to this reality.
These two posts together set up out eight affirmation that I find in Scripture:
- Sexual activity is a practiced souvenir from God
- Humanity is created bodily
- Our bodies are sex dimorphic as male and female
- God intends us to live integrated lives
- Sex is powerful
- Humanity is fallen
- Sexual activeness is bounded
- Sex is of penultimate, not ultimate, importance
My confidence is that we need to hold all viii affirmations together. If nosotros emphasise 1 at the expense of others (for case, thinking sex is a good gift without recognising it is not of ultimate importance, or thinking that we alive out our inner life without recognising the boundaries around sexual activity), and then we go into problems.
And a Christian sexual ethic needs to exist shaped by the wider vision of sex and sexuality in the Bible, and non just past the details—though the details, rightly understood, build together into the whole.
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