Following the voluminous response to my (in?)famous/imaginary interview with Jesus about homosexuality (http://jmm.org.au/articles/2911.htm) I thought I’d try again, on an equally complex/controversial subject. (This is first-draft, and somewhat rambling. Feel free to respond on this newsgroup, but I’d appreciate feedback by email as well, as my newsgroup-reading time is sometimes limited).

Interviewer: Jesus, there’s a rumor that the Judeo-Christian God is out to stop humans having fun. Your Bible has nothing positive to say about adultery/ fornication.

Jesus: Wrong for the first statement, right for the second. God, the Author of sex and marriage gives us laws to protect us. Sex is meant to be an expression of the loving commitment of two people within a covenantal relationship.

I: Wow, the questions fall over each other. But, first, it’s not clear that we know what God’s asking us to do. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (p. 565), says fornication is the ‘carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children. Moreover, it is a grave scandal when there is corruption of the young’. But the Uniting Church of Australia’s recent report says that the traditional Christian stance – ‘faithfulness in marriage and celibacy outside it’ – is just too ‘simplistic’ for Christian moderns. In 1995 Michael McManus (Marriage Savers) claimed that condemnation of premarital sexual behavior on the part of consenting adults has practically vanished from mainline American pulpits – but fundamentalists and Orthodox and most Catholic pulpits inveigh against it, often, in the process, compounding the confusion. Not to mention the hypocrisy of some televangelists who practise what they preach against!

Jesus: It’s the universal dance between law and love: some will be conservative and emphasize law, others liberal and major on ‘love’. At worst, legalism and permissiveness respectively.

I: Back to your statement about sex and commitment/covenant. What is sex? There’s erotic sex, recreational sex, voyeuristic sex (for some of us, watching a hot scene in a movie), even, as Bishop Spong calls it, the possibility of ‘holy sex’ between two unmarried people. And doesn’t ‘commitment/covenant’ vary between cultures, between persons, and at different times in history? Your times and ours are different, Lord. For example, A U.S. News poll shows that while most Americans, 74%, have serious qualms about teens having sex before marriage, more than half believe it is not wrong, or wrong only sometimes. In the fifties, nine out of ten young women who married did not cohabit with their prospective husbands. Today, only one in three marry without having shared a domicile with their husbands-to-be. In the sixties 25 per cent of the young men were not sexually active prior to age 19. Among young women, 45 per cent were virgins prior to their twentieth birthday. By the eighties only 20 per cent of both males and females were virgins at age 19. (U. S. News and World Report, ‘Was it Good for Us?’ May 19, 1997. P. 59). We have seen a substantial increase in trial relationships before marriage over the last thirty years. Unrestricted sexual involvement outside of marriage has become the norm for our society. Your followers don’t walk out of movies (like, say, The Titanic), when young lovers ‘do it’ a few days – or hours or minutes – after meeting. Sex is everywhere – in advertising and the fashion industry, cheer squads at football matches, on the Internet, in magazines kids can peruse at newsagents, and in just about everything out of Hollywood. The pressures on young people these days are enormous. A recent survey conducted by Louis Harris and Associates, found that over 65,000 sexual references are broadcast on all three television networks during prime-time every year. The study also showed that the average American TV viewer watches 14,000 references to sex in the course of a year.

Jesus: Yes, you’ve got problems. In ancient near Eastern cultures they generally married at puberty: today you postpone marriage for a decade, and, sexually, it’s very difficult. But at this point let me say there’s a difference between sexual temptation and sexual sin. Sexual *feelings* are OK: including attraction, excitement, arousal, anticipation, sensitivity, and maybe even fantasy, if it’s not possessive, lustful or addictive. Sexual sin is usually a matter of power and lust, where someone wants the other for their own gratification. Love gives. But lust wants to get. It is basically selfish. Normal sexual intercourse is an interpersonal/emotional – and even spiritual – union between two people, not just two bodies. I was truly human and was also tempted in all these respects…

I: Let me try to summarize the biblical teaching: For Israel, a strong marital unit is essential for societal well-being: controlled and confined within the marital system, sexual attraction reinforced the social order. Sexual passion is ‘mighty as Sheol… a blazing flame’ (Song of Songs 8:6-7). So sexual fidelity is demanded, and the best way to ensure this is to find sexual satisfaction in marriage: ‘Find joy in the wife of your youth… let her breasts satisfy you at all times, be infatuated with love for her always’ (Proverbs 5:18-19). Extra-marital sexuality is condemned. In the Old Testament adultery is sexual intercourse with another man’s wife (Exodus 20:14, Deuteronomy 5:18, Leviticus 20:10). The penalty is death for both parties. The double standard here where males are freer than females, is designed to prevent married women from establishing relationships that would weaken the family unit. In the Old Testament there is no condemnation of sexual relations that do not violate the marriage bond. Opposition to fornication is usually associated with religious prostitution (cf. Leviticus 21:7,9). In Proverbs (7:5-27) men are warned against destructive sexual liaisons. Girls living in their father’s house are expected to be chaste. If a single girl was seduced the man had to marry her (though the father had the right to refuse, Exodus 22:14-16). (The Deuteronomic code, 22:28-29, which deals with rape rather than seduction does not mention the father’s right of refusal). If a bridegroom discovers his new wife is not a virgin, she is to be stoned: to save her the parents had to produce a bloody sheet as evidence (Deuteronomy 22:20ff). Consensual sex between an unmarried man and a woman also carried the penalty of stoning (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). ‘Rape’ is sex without proper arrangements. Forcible rape is punishable by death: it is a crime of violence rather than sex (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). There are strong incest prohibitions in Leviticus 18 and 20 and Deuteronomy 27. God is usually described in the law and prophets as male (but not phallic). God and Israel are to have a faithful relationship as like that of a husband and wife. All hints of sexuality were to be kept away from cultic life and religious experience. The Hebrew words for ‘adultery’ and ‘fornication’ are both used for idolatry (eg. Hosea 1:2, 2:2ff., 9:1, Jeremiah 3, Ezekiel 16,23). There are to be no sacred prostitutes in Israel.

Jesus: Not bad: you’ve done your homework.

I: Thanks. In the New Testament ‘pornei’ is mentioned 25 times – usually translated ‘fornication’ or, sometimes, illicit sexual behavior of other kinds, eg. Matthew 5:22, 19:9, Acts 15:20f., 1 Corinthians 5:1 (incest), Jude 7 (sodomy). In 1 Corinthians 6:13ff. the body is meant to glorify God as a temple of the Holy Spirit. In a Greco-Roman world with its lax sexual mores the early Christian leaders drew a sharp distinction between a life of sexual licence and appropriate Christian behavior. ‘Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral’ (Hebrews 13:4). ‘But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife’ (1 Corinthians 7:2-4). Sexually immoral people – ‘pornoi’ (prostitutes?), adulterers etc. will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). ‘Fornication is a sin against one’s own body’ (1Corinthians 6:18). Those who practice unrepentant sexual immorality (‘porneia’ 1 Corinthians 5:1-2) were to be expelled from the church (1 Corinthians 5:11). Paul grieved over those who had not repented of sexual sin (2 Corinthians 7:21). ‘Acts of the sinful nature’ include ‘porneia’ (‘sexual immorality’) impurity and debauchery (Galatians 5:19-20; cf 1 Corinthians 10:8). Paul pleaded that there not even be a ‘hint of sexual immorality’ (‘porneia’, Ephesians 5:3). The Christians at Colosse were urged to ‘put to death’ such sins as ‘pornei.’ Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, ‘It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God’ (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). It was chiefly in the sexual vices of the Gentile world that Paul discerned God’s judgment (Romans 1:18-27, cf. Revelation 21:8). So there is clearly something wrong in having _both_ an intimate relationship with Christ as a member of his body and also a relationship which is intimate in another sense with a prostitute, especially if she is a temple prostitute (2 Corinthians 11:2). Singleness (and abstinence), says Paul, is a divine gift. (Your servant Martin Luther thought that about one in 100,000 had the gift of celibacy!). For those who lack this gift, it is better to marry than be consumed with sexual desire. And Paul’s implication is that an engaged woman is a virgin until married. For the early church sex is not to be casual or promiscuous.

Jesus: I promised my Holy Spirit to guide the Church, so, yes, I would endorse these teachings…

I: To the cultural issues: if there are separate civil and Church ceremonies in most European countries, which one makes ‘the marriage’ and marks the start of sexual relationships? The ‘traditional wedding’ with its powerful symbol of the white dress and veil, is a relatively recent invention: historians date modern marriage practices from the middle of the 17th century. Even into the nineteenth century, working-class people still usually began sexual intimacy once a promise of marriage had been given. The church played little part in marriages in the first millennium of Western Christianity. Canon law upheld betrothal / mutual consent as the key basis for a valid marriage, rather than consent witnessed by a priest. Until the second half of the nineteenth century the church was not a major player. (Muriel Porter, SEX, MARRIAGE AND THE CHURCH, HarperCollins 1996: see my review –http://jmm.org.au/articles/4898.htm. So does ‘fornication’ apply to betrothed couples?

Jesus: You have to remember that in preindustrial cultures ‘betrothal’ was as legally, socially, and morally binding as marriage is in yours – even more so. Today, engagements are broken, and 50% of marriages come apart. So each couple has to discuss – prayerfully I would hope, and with the help of their Christian community – what ‘commitment’ means for them. Take it from there…

[I have another 100 screens-full of raw material – covering matters like the psychology/spirituality of sex, sex and adult singles, cohabitation, celibacy etc. but that will do for now. The issue of masturbation is treated in a full-length article on our website – http://jmm.org.au/articles/4884.htm. Let’s have your reactions! Thanks. ]