Sex & The Single Christian
Choices That Can Change Your Life
What The Bible Doesn't Say
Despite what you done heard someplace, what you assume or what your
mother taught you, the bible never says, anywhere, that sex outside of
marriage is wrong. Nowhere in the bible is that concept even modeled. It
was simply understood: sex outside of
marriage could get you killed. Men could defile themselves
simply by touching a woman during her menstrual cycle. Since
they had no way of knowing when a woman was menstruating, Jewish
men tended to never touch women at all under any circumstances.
While I imagine it did, in fact, go on, the notion of a romantic
episode between unmarried people was culturally unthinkable. It
is likely the Levitical code omits a specific, global
declaration on sex between unmarried people simply because it
was presumed to be understood. There is no instruction, after
all, in my car's owners manual that says the right pedal is for
"go" and the left for "stop." It is presumed that, if you are
buying a car, that you know how to drive.
Thus, the word fornication, "sexual impurity," was never used
generically the way we use it—to mean only and exclusively sex
outside of marriage. Taken in proper context, the word is used
in scripture to describe specific behavior. In biblical times,
sex took place outside of marriage all the time. Within the Law,
men could do pretty much what they wanted sexually, while women
were held to a certain standard of purity. Girls married at
around fourteen, their sexual awakening often if not usually
occurring at the hands of some thirty-ish man she met for the
first time on her wedding day. If a girl given in marriage was
discovered to not, in fact, be a virgin (i.e. no bleeding,
broken hymen, which can happen climbing trees and doing chores),
the Law required she be returned to the door of her father's house
and there the men of the town shall stone her—a child of
fourteen or fifteen— to death [Deu 22:13-30]. And, mind you,
this was done solely and completely on the husband's word. It
was quite possible for a man, his lust having been satiated on
his wedding night, to experience buyer's remorse (or believe she
wasn't worth the money he paid in dowry), and return the girl to
her father, claiming she was not a virgin. The groom got his
money back, the girl got killed. This is the bible.
Rape was punishable by a fine of fifty pieces of silver paid to
the girl's father [Deuteronomy 22:28-29]. There are numerous
examples of Israelites forcibly taking virgin daughters
(presumably twelve to fourteen years of age) of slaughtered
peoples as "wives" [Judges 21:10-24], which kept what was
certainly a traumatizing sex act upon a child within the
covenant of marriage—something we'd hang soldiers for doing
today. Moses gave captured Midianite virgins to his men [Only
the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for
yourselves. —Numbers 3:17-18 NLT]. Men practiced polygamy. While
being ceremonially clean, a man could marry as many women as he
could afford. He could take women as concubines, having limited
obligations to them as they existed mainly to perform a sexual
service. These men had religion, and they followed the rules of
that religion precisely. And this nonsense is the law people
today are afraid of, the thing they allow to separate themselves
from God.
Abraham, the father of nations, slept with his maid and God
didn’t condemn him but rather chastised Sarah, Abraham’s wife,
for doubting Him [Genesis 18:13-15]. Lot offered his presumably
early-teen virgin daughters to an angry mob to "do what you like
with them," [Genesis 19:8] and later had sex with them himself
[v.33-38], yet was considered righteous [2 Peter 2:7]. King
David’s sin was not having sex with Bathsheba, but with
committing adultery with another man’s wife. King Solomon had
700 wives and 300 girlfriends (concubines) outside of those
relationships. And he is considered the wisest man who ever
lived, blessed by God. This notion that God will strike us dead
for having sex outside of marriage is completely manufactured:
there simply is no scriptural foundation for it.
The Word of Paul
The commandments given Moses by God dealt mainly with
selfishness. The Apostle Paul does, however, warn us to not have
fornication named among us [Ephesians 5:3], which brings up
areas important to understanding biblical teaching on sex.
First: we must know the difference between the Word of God and
the word of Paul. I have no doubt Paul’s words were inspired by
God, but it is critical to understand Paul’s teachings, while
universal and useful to the body of Christ, were said at
specific times to specific churches concerning matters specific
to those churches. The Ten Commandments, as delivered by Moses,
had an unambiguous authorship and chain of custody: these were
the words of Almighty God. Paul's letters, while certainly
God-breathed, are Paul's words, Paul's teachings, often
transcribed by others and subject to interpretation and debate.
Paul's words cannot and must not be received at face value, but
only in their proper historical and theological context. It is
the brain-dead mainstreaming and universal application of
ancient letters that transform the bible into an oppressive
tome, burying God's people in the opinion of a cranky itinerant
deacon.
Paul is not God. Does not claim to be God. Does not claim to
speak for God. Over and over, Paul claims ownership of his words
and his opinions. And, while he wishes all men were just like
him [I Cor 7:7], he accepts different people are at different
levels of spirituality.
It is the words of Paul, not God, that most oppressed women and,
for centuries, blacks and other minorities. The context is also
vital to understanding what Paul is saying and to whom. In 1
Corinthians 5, he is talking about incest. In Romans and other
places he is talking about sex with prostitutes. It is important
to study, beloved. To not only know what those words say but to
know what those words mean. Too often, in our belief system, we
Church Folk become Quotologists—quoting scripture all over the
place without understanding the context in which those words
were written.
The second thing we need to do is parse what the word
“fornication” means. We find this word mainly in the King James
versions of the bible, the version the majority of black
churches continue to cling to despite there now being a wide
variety of modern translations available. In my experience,
black churches not only eschew translations other than the
Authorized King James, they tend to read the KJV with a literal
sense, misinterpreting the meaning of scripture by applying
modern meaning to archaic phrases (i.e. Abraham knew his
wife...). The KJV was largely translated from the Greek, those
translators routinely using the (at the time) modern word
"fornication" as a kind of universal catchall for a variety of
bad behavior.
This is something I've struggled with for some time because I
don't want to parrot the conservative party line about this, but
saying things like "The bible doesn't say sex outside of
marriage is wrong" can get a pastor beat up. People tend to stop
listening beyond a statement like that, assuming you to be some
kind of nut because they all know the bible surely does say sex
outside of marriage is a sin, and these people—many of whom are
on the celibacy seesaw—would rather cling to stuff they done
heard someplace than spend even a few paragraphs examining it.
The closest the bible comes to speaking on the matter is the
word "fornication," which has become so commonly associated with
sex outside of marriage that the word is almost never defined
anymore. It's just dropped into discussions and definitions,
taken at face value and never examined in any real context. And
the bible's references to fornication are, likewise, not
examined for their context. Which is typical of Christian
instruction on sex: to not look too deeply at scripture but
rather just kind of swallow it without chewing. Limiting the
word fornication to mean only and exclusively sex outside of
marriage is a perversion of scriptural intent:
From Strongs Concordance
#4202, 4203, 4204, & 4205:
Greek4202. porneia, por-ni'-ah; from Grk4203;
harlotry (includ. adultery and incest); fig.
idolatry:-fornication.
Greek4203. porneuo, porn-yoo'-o; from Grk4204;
to act the harlot, i.e. (lit.) indulge unlawful lust (of either
sex), or (fig.) practise idolatry:-commit (fornication)
Greek4204. porne, por'-nay; fem. of Grk4205;
a strumpet; fig. an idolater:-harlot, whore
Greek4205. pornos, por'-nos;
from pernemi (to sell; akin to the base of Grk4097); a (male)
prostitute (as venal), i.e. (by anal.) a debauchee
(libertine):-fornicator, whoremonger
Hebrew2181. zanah, zaw-naw';
a prim. root [highly fed and therefore wanton]; to commit
adultery (usually of the female, and less often of simple
fornication, rarely of involuntary ravishment); fig. to commit
idolatry (the Jewish people being regarded as the spouse of
Jehovah):-(cause to) commit fornication, X continually, X great,
(be an, play the) harlot, (cause to be, play the) whore,
(commit, fall to) whoredom, (cause to) go a-whoring, whorish.
Neither Greek nor Hebrew translations of instances of this word suggest this sin is committed by single persons only. As a result, most modern translations use the phrase “sexual impurity” or “sexual immorality” in place of the less-accurate "fornication."
fornication (Modern Etymology)
c.1300, from O.Fr. fornication, from L.L. fornicationem (nom.
fornicatio), from fornicari "fornicate," from L. fornix (gen.
fornicis) "brothel," originally "arch, vaulted chamber" (Roman
prostitutes commonly solicited from under the arches of certain
buildings), from fornus "oven of arched or domed shape."
Strictly, "voluntary sex between an unmarried man and an
unmarried woman;" extended in the Bible to adultery.
Note, even without parsing the word, there's no global thou
shalt not commit fornication command in scripture. Rather,
there are lists of types of sexual immorality that are
forbidden, something that would not be necessary if there were a
simple law: No Sex With Anyone You Are Not Married To. This is a
law our churches (allegedly) practice and enforce, but it a rule created
during the Middle Ages by
the Catholic church. Christian doctrine of premarital
chastity—which precludes biblical norms like concubines and
multiple wives—is largely a product of Catholicism’s adoption of
The Seven Heavenly Virtues, a kind of counter to the Seven
Deadly Sins. These virtues (chastity, temperance, charity,
diligence, patience, kindness, and humility) were derived from the
Psychomachia
(“Contest of the Soul”), an epic poem written by Aurelius
Clemens Prudentius (c. AD 410, and, hence, the Old French word
prode, from which we derive our modern English word
“prude”) entailing the battle of good virtues and evil vices.
The intense popularity of this work in the Middle Ages helped to
spread the concept of holy virtue throughout Europe. Practicing
these virtues is considered to protect one against temptation
from the seven deadly sins, with each one having its
counterpart. Due to this they are sometimes referred to as The
Contrary Virtues. Each of the seven heavenly virtues matches a
corresponding deadly sin (Wikipedia).
The Seven Heavenly Virtues are derived from a play and should not be confused with scripture,
although, in the New Testament (Post-Roman) era, there is an
unquestionable presumption that sex before marriage is not only
wrong but grievously so. Rightly interpreting the scriptures,
however, there is no smoking gun: no global and unambiguous Thou Shalt Not Hit It. Celibacy before marriage, as we
(allegedly) teach it, is a doctrinal
conclusion. Our church, today,
practices this rule while (to my hearing) almost never preaching
about it or explaining its origin or scriptural context in any
way. Our church tradition largely coasts along on a doctrine of
assumption, assuming Everybody Knows The Rule while never
explicitly teaching it. What little teaching on celibacy goes on
usually involves the teacher using the word "fornication"
incorrectly as a catch-all to mean any and all sex outside of
marriage, and applying that modern re-defining of the word to archaic scripture, which warps the actual
meaning of Paul's letters.
What little I've ever been taught, in 52 years in the black
church, on Christian sexual conduct has been based on giving
Paul's teaching a broad-based generic universality, which is
both ignorant and stupid. As I've mentioned here many times,
Paul was not Moses. Paul's words were not written to the air, to
the general populace, to whosoever will. Moses' words had
universal application. Paul, on the other hand, was always
talking to somebody about something going on at some
specific time when some specific business was happening at a
specific place. Reading the Pauline Epistles is a lot like
walking in during the middle of a movie or opening someone
else's mail; you have to know who he was talking to, where they
were at at the time, and what was going on in that place at that
time. But that's not what we do. Without giving Paul's
words even minimal historical context, we simply take them at
face value and presume he was talking to us. Beloved, write this
down someplace: Paul Was Not Talking To Us. Paul would have no
way of knowing what our specific set of circumstances are. We
learn from and are guided by Paul's writings only when we study
the actual who-what-when-where of his purposes for writing, and
only if we apply the proper meaning to those words--words like
fornication--and not force our 2013 modernism on them.
Teaching people the word "fornication," in the bible, means
"(any and all) premarital sex" is just as bad as interpreting, "And Abraham knew
his wife Sarah..." to mean the two were acquainted. We have, of course, redefined
the word "knew" and thousands of other words, but when
addressing scripture, we apply "knew"
in its proper context, something we do
not do with the word "fornication," to which we universally
apply a modern definition even though we know it was used in
scripture in its original archaic form. This practice is a
selective manipulation of scripture, a doctrine used to define
scripture instead of the other way around. The actual defining
of biblical sexual conduct is much more complex.
Understanding and teaching what the bible
actually has to say on these matters is a lot tougher and more
complex than simply using the inaccurate lie No Sex With Anyone
You Are Not Married To, behavior that was neither practiced nor
modeled in scripture, though, certain prohibitions, limits, and
cultural accretions were in fact recognized and written into the
Law. In the bible, every instance of the use of the word
"fornication" relates to specific practices and specific kinds
of sexual immorality. The word is never used as a generic
catchall.
Beyond that, we’re not talking about screwing or not screwing but giving or
not giving ourselves to God. God does not demand celibacy; He
desires purity, which is impossible to achieve if you’re
giving up the drawers willy-nilly. In our Christian walk, we are
not actually talking about celibacy but chastity—a
rejection of lust and impure thoughts and deeds. Chastity helps
us purify ourselves and moves us closer to God in a way
celibacy, in and of itself, simply cannot. Celibacy is
functional: stop screwing. Chastity is transformational,
born of a desire to see and know and please God.
A Question of Morality: Morality is subjective. God's word is not. Celibacy is not God's standard: Holiness is. The real question is, what do you want out of your relationship with God? How do you integrate your unmarried sex life into that relationship?
Sexual Morality
The term "sexual immorality," substituted in most modern
translations, presents a different problem. Immorality suggests
a moral standard. A moral standard, by definition, is subject to
terms and conditions of the society to which that standard
applies. The only way to judge something immoral is to test it
against a moral standard, which is where this question of sex
becomes even more confused. Sex outside of marriage was
considered immoral in biblical times. It was also, usually,
unnecessary as polygamy was the moral standard of the day.
That's why there's all this emphasis on adultery moreso than
fornication, as men routinely married pubescent virgins as they
wished, made concubines of sexually experienced women, and did
pretty much as they pleased. The more common problems were men
lusting after other men's wives (adultery) or men turning to
prostitutes and other immoral acts (fornication) because they
either didn't want to be married, or couldn't afford to be
married. Paul’s admonition that pastors should be the husband of
one wife [1 Timothy 3:2] was not a moral edict for men to stop
practicing polygamy (or sleeping with concubines) but was rather
a warning against the distraction of too large a familial
obligation on behalf of pastors. Over time, however, we have
muddied those words to suggest the bible teaches against
polygamy (it doesn’t) and that the bible holds up a moral
standard (it doesn’t).
In today's society, premarital and, in some cases, extramarital,
sex is no longer necessarily considered immoral. So, in order
for God's word to be relevant, do we dial back the clock, like
many conservatives do, wishing our way back to the 1950's or
even to biblical times? If the word "fornication" requires a
moral benchmark, what is that benchmark? Folks like to say, the
bible! But the bible itself cannot be used as a moral standard
because the bible was never intended to be used for that
purpose. Different Christians interpret the bible in different
ways, yielding different moral benchmarks. Morality is subject
to the person or persons, to the community and the state. Just
because we are moral does not make us spiritual. Just because we
are spiritual does not mean we're always right morally. This is
my main problem with Christian conservatism, which portends to
impose a moral standard on society and claims the bible as that
standard.
Equating spirituality with morality is entirely wrongheaded.
Morality is dictated by the generally accepted tolerances of a
given society at a given point in time and enforced by the
state. Morality (the quality of being in accord with standards
of right or good conduct) has no external or infallible truth to
it. Theology (rational inquiry into religious questions),
ideally, should be based on eternal truths, which have nothing
to do with morality per se, other than that our adherence to
these eternal truths forms opinions we express as guidelines
governing our moral conduct. Spirituality and morality are
hardly one and the same. A decent and moral idea, rule, or
concept can still, in all its purity, transgress the holiness of
a divine God. As such, our sense of morality is of not much use
to God [Isa 64:6]. Churches relying on their sensibilities of
what is good, right, and moral to dictate their interpretation
of scripture is, in and of itself, faulty exegesis. The Church
should not be in the business of dictating morality, but should
be proclaiming truths both eternal and infallible. We, as
individuals, having been presented with these truths, are a
people at liberty to embrace or reject those truths, and our
sense of morality is the expression of that decision.
Christopher J. Priest
14 September 2008 Original
11 April 2013 Updated
editor@praisenet.org
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Part 3: What The Scriptures Actually Mean
