The recent uproar over an Anglican priest’s comments about premarital sex missed a more fundamental point about Christian sexual ethics.
We have to be careful about relying on the Bible literally, indiscriminately and exclusively for an ethic of sexuality.
Although the Bible is a self-revelation of God, there are two aspects to divine revelation: the revealing and the perceiving. While the revealing may be perfect, the perceiving is all too fallible and reflects the assumptions of the time and place.
The people who wrote and edited the books of the Bible lived in patriarchal tribal societies in which women were treated as property. In such societies the rules governing appropriate sexual behaviour were intended mainly to protect the property of men and the ethnic integrity of the tribe.
Marriages were arranged, with the bride usually a child (under 16). Female virginity was prized to ensure that the man’s children would be his.
Even today, in some tribal cultures, girls have their clitorises removed and their vaginas sewn up to allow only for urination and menstruation. Their husbands are thus ensured of their virginity.
Similarly, in some tribal cultures female adultery is punishable by death.
No ethical and sane person today would accept those repugnant cultural practices.
We must therefore see biblical injunctions against certain forms of sexual activity as part of a culture far removed from our own, and should be careful about deriving an ethic of human sexuality from them.
We should constantly interpret the scriptures in the light of scholarship, and since God’s revelation did not cease with the Bible, we should use our God-given reason to help us discern the difference between right and wrong.
While children are well advised for a host of reasons, both ethical and practical, to refrain from sexual activity until they’re adults, a sexual relationship between unmarried adults is not intrinsically immoral any more than sex between husband and wife is inherently moral. In both cases it depends on whether there’s love, mutual respect and responsibility.
It’s not marriage that makes a sexual relationship ethical. Marriage is a consecration in the sight of God, not to be entered into lightly, of an intended lifelong commitment between two people. It confers a special sacramental grace on a relationship. But the lack of consecration does not make a responsible loving relationship any less ethical.
Because sex is the source of life, we should not treat it lightly. Yet we often seem obsessed with sexual morality to the detriment of other social behaviour that offers far greater scope for doing more serious wrong (exploitation, oppression, discrimination, abuse and so on).
Our obsession with sex comes not only from ancient tribal laws, but also from the early church’s unfortunate negative attitude to human sexuality and women.
For example, St Augustine, for all his theological brilliance, considered sexual desire, even between husband and wife, as sinful. He believed it stemmed from Adam and Eve’s original sin of disobedience, which was then erroneously thought to be literally true. For Augustine the only legitimate purpose of sex between wife and husband was passionless procreation.
But sexual desire is a gift of God and not the result of a “fallen” nature predisposed to sin. Indeed, consecrated sexual love, like contemplation of beauty, may lead us mystically closer to God.
The notion of a “fallen” and “sinful” humanity has done untold psychological harm to believers.
Far from being predisposed to sin, we are drawn to the good. But just as an artist has to struggle to realize his vision of beauty, it’s a constant struggle to attain the good. Beauty and goodness, like all worthwhile things in life, require hard work.
Our failure isn’t due to inherited sinfulness, but because we are as God made us: frail humans with free will.
In the quest for God the paths to truth, beauty and goodness converge.
