What Too Many People Call “Sexual Immorality”

January 9, 2024. I’ve been way too belly-punched by our euthanizing our Bouvier Sebastian to continue very much the critique I started of the traditional notion of “sexual immorality.” I still can’t quite muster up the energy to do it today, but I aim to get back into it later. Maybe I can say this much: When you’re setting out to draw lines in the sand in a church, lines that separate insiders from outsiders, you’d do well to be sure that you have a better reason than that you know some Bible verses that draw lines in the sand—because, not only are translators and interpreters of the Bible as fallible as anyone else, even more, the Spirit is wind and wind tends to blow away lines in the sand.

January 10, 2024. A little more on the question of "sexual immorality":

At some point the question of desire will need to be addressed, but for now I think it is best not to think of "sexual immorality" (or "sex," for that matter) in terms of desire. Of course, sexual desire is extremely strong and there are good reasons for a society to regulate it, but I don't think it is the first matter to be addressed here.

Sex is to be thought above all in terms of procreation. The prohibition of "sexual immorality" in the Bible is best thought of in terms of pregnancy. It is akin to the positive command to care for widows and orphans. Having sex without regard for the babies that might result and the position a single mother is put in is appalling. Effectively, it is failing to care that from it may well come "widows" and "orphans." In the first century, that means not caring for beggars, who live a little while and die painfully.

Birth control has made the possibility of pregnancy after sex much less likely. The temptation is to think either that (1) there are no reasons then for a society to regulate sex or (2) there is something about having sex that makes unregulated sex sinful in itself. I am certain that both of these positions are reached overly hastily.

(I'm afraid my low energy right now will make writing several short comments work best right now.)

January 11, 2024. Another post on "sexual immorality," as that term is used in some biblical translations.

1. Sexual desire is one of the few most intense forces in a healthy human life. That's because it is by sex that people make babies and without babies the household, the village, the tribe, the nation, and the human race go extinct.

2. Every society in the history of the world has regulated sexual activity. This is not just a modern phenomenon. It has been found by ethnologists everywhere they've looked.

3. Of course, there is no great consistency in the way sexual activity is regulated among human cultures. Practices that would absolutely appall persons in one culture are freely practiced in others. Nonetheless, every society regulates sexual activity—and they do so in order to preserve human life beyond one person's specific lifetime.

4. Admittedly, regulations get added to the ones that are there to protect species longevity. Some of those are survivals of previous eras, long after the problem they were instituted to address has been resolved; some are associated with a culture's notion of boundary maintenance (see Mary Douglas); some reflect other organizing structures.

5. All of this is reflected in the sexual prohibitions (and positive commands) of Ancient Israel. They are there to honor fathers and mothers, to prolong their heritage. (I might add that it is by means of children, grandchildren, etc., that something like immortality was thought in Ancient Israel to be secured. You live on in your descendants.)

6. An added factor, when considering Ancient Israel, is that life was very hard for everyone and excruciating for those who lived in small, isolated villages. Maintaining the household into the next generation was very, very hard work. Everything worked against it. And pregnancy and childbirth were mortally dangerous, more dangerous than any other event in the life of a village. Sex in that context had to be imagined as solely for making babies.

7. And so, worldwide sexual regulation has been for the sake of well being, Israel's regulation for the sake of Israelite well being (as were the other regulations in the Law, some of which, of course, are that way as symbols of maintaining qualified "integrity").

8. It is into this world that the gospel is announced. The gospel does not deny the importance of well being and longevity. However, it does mightily relativize it. ("Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now I just want to do God's will." Martin Luther King, Jr.)

9. There is certainly precedent for this in the OT, but the gospel so stresses the relativization of well being that it was simply too much for traditional Israelites in the first century (which is what the "stumbling block for the Jews" one-liner means). Since God raised the mutilated body of Jesus from death and damnation—without fixing his death and damnation—well being and longevity are shown to be of no ultimate importance. "You don't have to survive," as my beloved Reuben Welch so well said.

10. For that reason martyrs are especially highlighted by the earliest church (cf. Stephen and Ignatius of Antioch). So also are "virgins," male and female, and not for the sake of "purity." In fact virgins in the earliest church were those who violated ordinary standards of purity, since their resolve not to have children endangered the preservation of the human race.

11. This also means, by implication, that according to the gospel a society's regulation of sex is only of relative importance, as is its regulation of the longevity of one lifetime.

12. When the mutilated body of Jesus is glorified and bathed in a life that has no contrast in death, all the institutions of well being are called into question. When you realize that "you don't have to survive," all standards of human behavior are up for grabs. Suddenly, "all things are lawful," to quote Paul in 1 Corinthians (I read this passage as his agreeing that far with those he is criticizing). And that means *all* things. I have sometimes described this as akin to (not "essentially") nihilism, at least in its devastating impact on psychological and sociological and ideological structures.

13. Still, this disruption (of old wineskins) occurs, again, in the body of Jesus, the body that has lost its integrity, that has had its protective outer boundary, its skin, ripped open by scourging and crucifixion. This is a body that undoes the separation between Jesus and everyone else—and it undoes the separation between the whole fullness of God that is pleased to dwell in this open body and everyone else.

14. That is, since Jesus—and God in him—go out to and let in everyone and everything (radically, past, present, future), it all comes down to (a very non-sentimental) love.

15. "If you love somebody, set them free" (quoting Sting this time; sorry for all the quoting). But all of us still live day after day in these vulnerable bodies. If life were just about getting my own goods, then I would pray that my life would be cut short ("Maranatha!," in one sad sense). "To be absent from the body [that is, to be dead] is to be present with the Lord," and that is glorious (literally). But since we are crucified and raised with Jesus to love and care for others, to help them and guide them and work alongside them and expend energy with and for them, it is best that we not just die. (And fwiw, I will fight to stay alive, even if life is really hard, because I can't imagine what life would be like for Elesha if she didn't have someone with her all the time. I hope that is not tmi.)

16. And so, practices of well being and longevity are still performed, but as massively relativized and for the sake of those who have yet to realize (adequately) that we really and truly don't have to survive, let alone thrive.

17. Consequently, sexual practices that are well-being-and-longevity-promoting are to be preferred. And churchy people like me would be expected to be enraged by people who have indiscriminate sex, that is, without regard for what it might do to a now impregnated mother and a coming newborn.

18. And so, practices that Evangelicals are quick to classify under "sexual immorality" are not the sort of things that immediately violate the gospel and the life of one who lives out into the gospel. They rather violate the patterns of life that promote well being and longevity—and what that might be in particular is to be determined in prayer in, with, and under the space and time where and when it occurs.

January 12, 2024. Another "sexual immorality" status line, this time about sexual desire:

1. At least since Luther (as read, say, by Kierkegaard), quite a lot has been made about the difference between "neighbor love" and "erotic love" (or agape and eros).

2. Anders Nygren's book *Agape and Eros* was hugely important in the mid-20th century and it quickly became the focus of sustained criticism. Tillichians were especially hard on the ideas at the heart of this book.

3, The distinction is between a love that comes as a gift from the outside and a love that has its origin in extant processes. Both are oriented to another, the one loved, but eros is said to be about the other as the one who satisfies one's desire, agape about the other without regard for the question of satisfaction. Agape is said here to be about the other *as* other. Eros is about the other as satisfaction.

4. I tend to agree with this distinction, but with lots of caveats. I don't consider them to be separated as two alternatives incompatible with each other. Thus I'd say that it is quite possible to enjoy the deep satisfaction one finds in a mate and to love them as an-other who is still loved even when, you know, "the feeling's gone." (And almost no advocates of eros want to discard people when they stop being fun.)

5. I should also say that eros is not simply or directly sexual. Its single most important advocate is Plato and the single most important articulation of it is to be found in his book *The Symposium*. This book is certainly contextualized in a sexually charged situation, but what Plato has Socrates say (and it's almost a lecture) is about a deep ontological élan that drives everything that is, that drives it to satisfaction. (It is the precursor to Aristotle's notions of telos and entelechy.) Plato's chief illustration of his point is beauty. Eros is the desire for beauty, he says. And he eventually says that this deep desire longs for a beauty that transcends beautiful objects. He finally calls this ultimate object of desire, The Beautiful. He also calls it The Good.

6. It was an easy step for theologians to commandeer this notion and apply it to God. Augustine is the most revered of theologians who have made this move. I think this is still the most widely accepted way of thinking of God in the West (and in the East, though it's subtler there, I think). In this view God is "The Good," the one most desirable, "The Beautiful," the only one who can truly satisfy your heart's desire. Other things may satisfy for a while, but God satisfies your very being. "Let sing another verse of 'Just As I Am'!"

7. I think this approach to God is massively problematic and separates me, theologically, from most other theologians. Now, I don't think any of this is simple, but I think a decision is to be made very early on in one's theology about whether to operate as if God is a satisfying end of the world's processes or other than the world's processes. My apocalyptic inclinations have to do with my taking the road less traveled by.

8. Of course, where I'm going here is to find a place for speaking of "sexual immorality." And fwiw I think sex and sex acts and orgasms and lots of other sexy stuff are wonderful and to be celebrated. I just don't think God is to be understood in erotic terms, not even if eros is extremely sublimated and spiritualized.

9. I'll have to write more later. Elesha is here and I oughta focus on her a bit. I don't think it's very clear where I'm going with this, but at least there's momentum in it that I can work with. Maybe I can say more later today. If not, I'll try to say more tomorrow.

January 12/13, 2024. I've got a minute, so I'm going to write just a little more on the question of "sexual immorality," still operating at the margins of actual consideration of specific passages of the Bible.

1. I have suspected for a long time that among the reasons why sex has been such a loaded subject in churches is that they have yielded to the temptation to think of God as the satisfaction of deep ontological desires vaguely akin to sexual desires.

2. Those desires have been thought not specifically *as* sexual desires, but as more primal, sublime, and inclined to virtue. Still, the imagination, I think, is that both spiritual desires and sexual desires are the ex-pression of the same subterranean wellspring. That deep energy is expressed more viscerally and problematically and dangerously as sexual desire and more spiritually and satisfyingly and serenely as the desire for God.

3. If I'm right about that, then sex is approached in churches with anxiety because it is thought and imagined as competing with the desire for God. Sex, it is believed, has to be watched very closely or it will win the contest for a person's soul.

4. If, however, the yearning for God is taken as qualitatively different from sexual desire, sex does not and cannot compete with it.

5. There are still good reasons to approach sex with care, since sexual desire is so extremely strong. However, it need not be feared as a threat to a church's or a church member's faithfulness to God.

Okay. Enough for today.

January 13, 2024. Just a little more on "sexual immorality."

1. I'm going to begin as if I was clear enough in my earlier status lines in distinguishing between erotic drives and faithfulness to God.

2.I don't deny that there are erotic drives in a holy life and I actually think they are wonderful things.

3. They are dangerous, of course, especially when energized by frustrations and violence. (Rape may be chiefly violent, not erotic, but the erotic is involved in it, otherwise there is no erection).

4. One of the chief ways individualism has taken over the church is by eroticizing "spirituality." That move is already being made (though not yet very widely) in the 2nd century, as the gospel is appropriated by Hellenistic thinkers, but it is extremely important in the advent of late medieval mysticism. The mystical notion of "ecstasy" illustrates that. Accounts of those mystics of "religious experiences" often are pretty doggone orgasmic.

5. The dynamics of late medieval mysticism make their appearance in early modernity among the Pietists (among others). The Pietists have very much moderated mystical eroticism, but it isn't entirely absent. It shows up in accounts of what we call (again) "religious experiences." Pietists are subtle and I think many of them have in fact (if I may use this now almost useless word) deconstructed it. Still, there is a decidedly erotic Pietism. (Evangelicals currently like to speak of God in erotic ways, even if usually subtly. For example, "the God-shaped hole" is an erotic image, though not always grossly so.)

6. When sex is feared and sexual language forbidden, sexual energies are repressed. Repressed desires may emerge in wonderfully creative and other helpfully constructive ways, but they may also be turned into destruction and (more or less overt) violence. I suspect that much anti-sex talk and legislation in churches is all about the repression of sexual desire. (I think of Elesha's maternal grandmother, but that is another story.)

7. So, what I'm saying is that a church's relationship or a church member's relationship with God is *not* at its heart erotic. Of course, it entails everything humans are about and to that extent it is erotic. But it is also about bone density and sensitivity to neurotoxins in soy products, so its eroticism is not any more crucial.

8. Again, sex is a big deal and sexual desire is very powerful. A local church cannot ignore either, but they are no more important to the gospel and the life of a church (in fact I'd argue that they are way less important) than economic matters. It is not the sex-desire that is the root of all evil, but money-desire.

9. A church's approach to sex better be relativizing, approaching it as far from centrally important. Any move to make it centrally important is to forget that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is likely also to be hard on human beings, especially in a world in which what sex entails is rapidly and radically mutating.

Okay. Enough for now.

January 14, 2024. I'm continuing to write status lines on "sexual immorality." I'll try to remember to get all the ones I've posted so far up on my "blog" (craigkeen.net). I think, unless I realize I've forgotten something else preliminary, that I will start addressing (mostly) NT passages that are or seem to be about whatever it is that we tag "sexual immorality" (a phrase that I wish any theologian would find theologically problematic). The reason I'm not focusing on OT passages is that I believe that the only reason sexual relations are taken more lightly in the NT is because "the new covenant" does not understand discernible human well being as a *sine qua non* of human life. (Sorry about the Latin phrase. It means "without which not," or, in this particular case, that without well being, there is no human being, not really. That is, to decline in well being is to decline in being human. To lose all well being is to be dead.)

1. The OT is, of course, a very complicated collection of texts. They are by no means intellectually consistent.

2. Some OT texts seem to be debating with other OT texts, even within the same type of OT literature (e.g., both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are books of Wisdom Literature, and they don't fit neatly in the same vision of life).

3. Still, it seems to me to be more or less true that the vision in the OT is that God has chosen Israel (among other things) to "bless" all of the world.

4. Consequently, God protects Israel, to keep it safe, (among other things) so that this blessing might spill out to the entire world, when the time is right.

5. God protects Israel by means of the law. God says, "Come unto me! And the way you come unto me is by keeping the law!"

6. The law provides the way that well being ("purity") might be achieved.

7. If purity has been achieved (through purification rituals and the avoidance of defiling objects and actions), then Israelites are in a position to find their way into the ultimate reason for their well being, their purity, viz., God's glory, God's disclosed holiness.

8. Human beings, according to the OT, are here to be pure ("whole") only because purity ("wholeness") is the condition for entry into God's glory. Again, human beings are here to be holy and the only way to come to be holy is to achieve the (penultimate) condition of well being, purity.

9. "The new covenant" makes the dramatic change in this vision that the glory of God is pleased to dwell in the faithful Jesus and to dwell there precisely where it is utterly defiled, impure, devoid of all well being. When the mutilated body of Jesus is glorified (and that means "resurrected") without being fixed, without being made pristine and whole, it becomes the site for the advent of God's glory, God's disclosed holiness.

10. To enter that body (through a faithful liturgical life of prayer) does not require purity, wholeness. If it did, all purity and wholeness would be lost anyway, since a member of a mutilated body is a mutilated member of that body.

11. What is required is faithfulness (to just say it explicitly). That is, the point is to enter the mutilated body of Jesus and be glorified with him.

12. Again, purity, wholeness, well being, is not required as a condition for entry into this body and entry into it does not yield well being in any discernible way, but there does result at least "the first fruits" of a purity, wholeness, well being "that passeth understanding" (sorry that I always use the KJV phrasing of that; I just like it a lot). It is the well being, the purity, that characterizes the resurrected body of Jesus, a body that shines with the light of God's holiness, but which is still mutilated.

13. Okay, now a few points about sex.

14. Sex is closely regulated in the OT because of its importance in the trajectory of Israel's well being. If purity, wholeness, well being, is not thought of simply individually, but also socially and historically, the only way for these people to embody well being is for them to have babies who outlive their parents long enough to have their own babies.

15. In Ancient Israel raising babies to puberty was by no means easy to accomplish. Almost everyone lived in tiny subsistence villages, far removed from other villages or the very few cities. They were vulnerable to all manner of peril and their lives were short and excruciatingly hard. (Indeed, lives were so short that some have argued that an "elder" would have been anyone c. 30-years-old or older.) Pregnancy and childbirth were the most deadly of times in life in these villages, the cause of more deaths than anything else and that in a world with lots of causes of death.

16. Sexual desire is extremely powerful and every society has been careful to regulate it (in various ways).

17. A society that is on the verge of total destruction day in and day out has an acute responsibility to regulate sexual desire and sexual activity. Every drop of sperm (if I may be so crude) must be reserved for impregnation.

18. Further a stranger, passing through the village and shown hospitality, who impregnates a daughter in one of these patriarchal households, has not only endangered the daughter and the babies she might in the future give birth to, but has done so in such a way that the best possible outcome is the appearance of a stranger's progeny in the household instead of the family's.

19. That is, since the regulation of sex in the OT is for the sake of the well being of the household, the village, the tribe, and the nation—and all of that for the sake of "blessing" all "nations"—everything changes when, in the NT, well being is no longer necessary in order for one to enter the holiness of God.

20. That is why there are not only martyrs among the revered in the church, but also virgins, i.e., those who never had a baby.

January 16, 2024 (Revised January 17, 2024). I'm starting today to address specific NT passages that are frequently cited in order to make declarations about "sexual immorality. First, a caveat (scroll down, if you want to go right to what I say about the passage):

I am a systematic theologian. That means that I am (as they say) a jack of all trades and a master of none. My hope is that it is helpful to have folks like that around, but that it's also important to say right out loud that I know I lack particular expertise in biblical studies. I make no claim to authority here and what I say about these passages will undoubtedly need serious correction, at least nuance, maybe out and out dismissal. Still, as with all texts, biblical ones are to be engaged thoughtfully. It is absolutely important to consider the shades of significance of words, the cultural history of the worlds of these texts, the economic conditions under which and vis-a-vis which they were written, etc. However, in the end everyone, even the most devoted inhabitant of the dark corners of libraries and archaeological digs, has to hypothesize, that is, they have to *think*. I refuse to yield to the authoritative word of a renowned Bible scholar anymore than to a renowned expert in the works of Lao-tzu (Laozi), Wesley, St. Teresa of Avila, or Karl Barth. I will listen to them, but I will read (e.g., the translations of) what they wrote and *think*—much more than that. And when I read 1 Corinthians 5, I will do the same. I will listen to "Bible Scholars," more to experts on "Paul" than to New Testament generalists, more to experts on 1 Corinthians 5 than to experts on Paul, etc.

Anecdote: When I had a course from Pannenberg in 1975, he (the smartest person I've ever known) spoke one day in favor of generalists, like systematic theologians. He drew attention to the increasing specialization in academe and said, "Scholars today are coming to know more and more about less and less. One day they will know everything about nothing at all."

.............................

It seems to me that the following passage as paradigmatic for the way "sexual immorality" is to be understood in the context of the gospel:

1 Corinthians 5:1, KJV: "It is reported commonly that there is fornication [porneia] among you, and such fornication [porneia] as is not so much as named [onomazetai] among the Gentiles, that one should have [echein] his father's wife."

NRSV: "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife."

NASB: "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and sexual immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, namely, that someone has his father’s wife."

1. The hypothesis from which I am working is that the gospel declares that achieving discernible (or indiscernible) well being is not a necessary condition for entering into the glory of God, that is, the disclosed holiness of God. You can enter God's glory as a leper, a eunuch, a stranger, or any of the other defiling conditions outlined in the law of Ancient Israel.

2. Nor is achieving "discernible" (a word that is tricky to talk about) well being inevitably consequent to entry into God's glory. Those who have entered God's glory may remain a leper, a eunuch, a stranger, or any of the other defiling conditions outlined in the law of Ancient Israel.

3. The one and only condition for entry into and living in God's glory is faithfulness to the faithfulness of this holy God.

4. Entry into this glory, according to the gospel, is by entering into the mutilated body of Jesus. That is, faithfulness to the faithfulness of the holy God is to live "in Christ."

5. Living in Christ occurs liturgically, that is, in a liturgy that provides the rhythm for a week of work, a liturgy that is prayer (e.g., bodily metanoia, intercession, lament, petition, thanksgiving, and praise).

6. There *is* a strange ("foolish" and "offensive") "well being" that accompanies this faithful journey, however, but it eludes objectifying consciousness, such as, "intentionality." In fact it "passeth understanding." In that sense, it is not discernible. It is a mysterious well being, that need not resemble discernible well being at all.

7. Well being is not only "individual." Even pretty doggone individualistic Aristotle believed that. (For example, he maintained that a person who dies "happy" [that is, with well being] may become "unhappy" [may lose well being, that is, while dead] if their children later fall into significant corruption, "vice.") In Ancient Israel, well being (shalom) was to occur in a single body, a household, a village, a tribe, a nation, and, eventually, as Israel "blesses" all the nations, the entire world.

8. Since the gospel announces the advent of a "salvation" (that is, a hallowing) that is not built of our achieving well being or having been granted well being (other than what eludes the understanding), all discernible well being (such as the purity laid out and prescribed in the law) is relativized. Nobody has to thrive or even survive in order to be among the "saved."

9. That is because "salvation" is what happens to the mutilated body of Jesus. He is "saved" in resurrection despite his being utterly devoid of well being (shalom, in the discernible sense). In fact his "saved" body is still mutilated and thus devoid of all well being.

10. Any promotion of vitality and survival is relativized. It is not necessary because salvation comes by the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. That is, salvation is "according to the S/spirit," it is "spiritual." ("Spirit" is a very important word and does not in an Ancient Israelite mentality mean "disembodied." Thus Paul speaks of "spiritual bodies" and the resurrection appearance narratives in the gospels and in Acts are about bodies, but bodies that behave very oddly, not "according to the flesh.")

11. Even though there is a salvation (liberation, enlivening, freedom, hallowing) that is thus spiritual, our bodies still operate "in the flesh." "Flesh" doesn't mean "body" and it doesn't only mean "muscles and blood and skin and bones." It means, "vulnerability." To be flesh is to be subject to injury and death. All kinds of conditions have to be met in order to operate day in and day out "in the flesh."

12. "Spirit" is contrasted with "flesh" in lots of ways. Among them is that the more "spirit," the less vulnerability. By definition spirit cannot be killed. By definition flesh can and in fact inclines to death. (Please don't think of spirit and flesh as "entities." They are functions, not things.)

13. Since even the most entirely sanctified person you can ever meet still lives "in the flesh," they are vulnerable to injury, disease, and death. What is good or bad has to be considered as we make plans and schemes, even very trivial ones, like walking across a room.

14. Those who have been laid hold of by the gospel might be tempted to think that they would do well to hope that they might die soon and get out of this world of hardship. However, life "in Christ" is a life of love and we stay in the darkness with those we love, to be there for them, to give ourselves to them. (Cue Florence + the Machine, "Cosmic Love.")

15. Sex is to be understood in this complex of ideas. And when it is discussed in the NT (or anywhere else prior to the advent of widespread, effective birth control methods), sex is to be understood bound to the phenomena of pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing.

16. Since a discernibly peaceful world is not necessary as a condition for salvation, in the abstract sexual activity of every imaginable kind is permissible—everything, even the most shocking and disgusting sexual activity. But we don't live in the abstract.

17. We live in the concrete and that means, here and now, "in the flesh." I am vulnerable to injury and death and (even more importantly, for a life of love) *you* are vulnerable to injury and death. Therefore, I do not engage in acts that make your life harder or not possible at all.

18. In a world in which pregnancy and childbirth are the causes of the largest number of fatalities, nobody is to go around impregnating people when they feel like it nor are they wildly and wantonly to risk becoming pregnant themselves. (Add to this the extreme vulnerability of a child, that is, subsequent to being born and until life skill are acquired.)

19. Of course, the sex drive is an impulse to have sex as often and with as many partners as possible, and that because doing so increases the likelihood that the species will survive after I am gone. "According to the flesh" (that is, according to our vulnerability to extinction) sexual activity is indeed to be wild and wanton.

20. The law (whether Mosaic or otherwise) attempts to regulate this flesh, this vulnerability. Every society has done so. But the gospel regulates it for the sake of love, for the sake of saving people from unnecessary hardships, especially in relation to God's grace, God's faithfulness.

21. Now for 1 Corinthians 5: there is an additional dimension to sexual activity in the church, in the liturgy of those who live out into the faithfulness of God. That has to do with the flesh, once more, but this time our fleshy sociality, our relationship to the way the societies/cultures have regulated life (in order to promote the greatest possible well being).

22. This is sometimes called the church's "witness," but that has been so trivialized that I don't want right away to speak of it that way. What I do want to say is that all ecclesial work is linguistic, it says something. Language is performance and performance is language. What the church does (and that means as a particular member of the church does something or a dance team of members) is never non-linguistic. (You don't have to obsess over that, but it is wise to remember it.)

23. What is the church to say (in "word and deed") in its "witness"? Well, it is always to say the same thing, "God has raised this one whom you crucified, Jesus of Nazareth!" And this witness is always spoken by those who live the prayer that they will be faithful toward and through death ("even death on a cross"). The witness of the church is the witness of the martyr and the martyr's witness is always that we don't have to survive.

24. In Rome (and even Corinth was Romanized) what we call marriage was for the sake of producing heirs. A wife was literally owned. Thus the son in this passage "has" his father's wife.

25. Marriage in that world was not out of love or for love, but for the preservation of the line of the father, the immortality of the inseminator. There were opportunities for sex-as-pleasure elsewhere, among them "temple prostitutes." This is also where pederasty fits in. "Loving relationships," at least among the rich and famous, were more or less intimate friendships, for example, via the relationship between an older and a younger man (pederasty).

26. Therefore, it is unwise to imagine that Paul is getting all bothered by some church member getting his kink on. He is not interested in the question of "sexual immorality" here. His focus is on the audacity of this particular mode of securing a future.

27. That is, the "lust of the flesh" is here the "lust to survive."

January 18, 2024. I'm continuing today to address one specific NT passage that is frequently cited in order to make declarations about "sexual immorality. First, a caveat (scroll down, if you want to go right to what I say about the passage):

I am a systematic theologian. That means that I am (as they say) a jack of all trades and a master of none. My hope is that it is helpful to have folks like that around, but that it's also important to say right out loud that I know I lack particular expertise in biblical studies. I make no claim to authority here and what I say about these passages will undoubtedly need serious correction, at least nuance, maybe out and out dismissal. Still, as with all texts, biblical ones are to be engaged thoughtfully. It is absolutely important to consider the shades of significance of words, the cultural history of the worlds of these texts, the economic conditions under which and vis-à-vis which they were written, etc. However, in the end everyone, even the most devoted inhabitant of the dark corners of libraries and archaeological digs, has to hypothesize, that is, they have to *think*. I refuse to yield to the authoritative word of a renowned Bible scholar anymore than to a renowned expert in the works of Lao-tzu (Laozi), Wesley, St. Teresa of Avila, or Karl Barth. I will listen to them, but I will read (e.g., the translations of) what they wrote and *think*—much more than that. And so, when I read 1 Corinthians 5, for example, I will do the same. I will listen to "Bible Scholars," more to experts on "Paul" than to New Testament generalists, more to experts on 1 Corinthians 5 than to experts on Paul, etc.

.............................

This is a continuation of what I began to write on 1 Corinthians 5 a couple of days ago. The chief point of the passage is that one is not to "have" a spouse, as if a human being could ever be someone's property. However, something is also made out of a relationship that we are inclined to call "incest." I'll address the question of incest in this status line. Of course, it is possibly offensive even to name such a relationship, but unless this kind of thing is addressed, the question of "sexual immorality" is not being taken seriously enough. (If you or someone you are close to have been the victim of incest, this status line may be triggering. My point here is not chiefly to address the damage incest does, but please know that I understand something of that and I don't take that kind of abuse lightly.)

So, again, here is this passage that I take to be paradigmatic for any serious consideration of the question of "sexual immorality":

NRSV: "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife."

1. Although Corinth has its own culture/subculture, I am considering it according to the conventions and laws of Rome, the empire that imposed imperial order on the city.

2. The church would be wise not to think of "the family" as the "foundation" of a society. (The American Holiness Movement, by the way, caused no little discord in families as wives underwent revolutionary changes at Holiness "camp meeting" services. Often they relativized the authority of their husbands, having found themselves to have died with Christ, along with all their worldly relationships.) However, Rome imagined all social and political relations as comparable to the relations of a patriarchal household. The pater familias literally owned his household. He may have loved the people in it, but not necessarily. The relationship was between an owner of property and his property—including "wives" and progeny.

3. The Roman pater familias literally owned his wife. It was not until the Late Empire that wives began to be shown significant power over property, say, if a husband died or there was a divorce. (I need to look this stuff up again to get all this nuanced better. I'm operating from memory and am not a specialist in Roman law and society. Still, this is close enough for what I'm saying here.) And so, to think well of a Roman household is to think of the male head of household as a single aspirational individual with absolute power over the members of the household, to the point that they could be treated with terrific violence without legal penalty.

4. I am convinced that the gospel calls all ownership into question. Love is very significantly the crucifixion (and, of course, resurrection, in a certain way) of "property." I do not own anything or anyone. I don't own my "righteousness." I don't even own "myself." All that has died with Christ as I have moved out into (the crucified/resurrected) Christ. And, though property is also raised from the dead, its resurrected actuality (I'm not sure what word to use here) is still in tatters, the way the resurrected body of Jesus is in tatters. (This is why 1 Corinthians 7 speaks of "having" things as if one did not have them and speaks of the structures [schema] of the world, structures that are literally the "having" [from "echo," to have] of the world, as passing away.)

5. And that's why I am stressing (thanks, Nate) Paul's critique of the ownership of a wife in 1 Corinthians 5. What I want also to point out now is that it is especially problematic to Paul that the woman who is owned is the woman whom his (now diceased?) father had previously owned. (Our default language is not quite right. When we think of a "wife," there may be some unconscious remnant of an old order of men owning women, but we'd never admit that right out loud. What we say right out loud is that husbands and wives are more or less equal, even if that "equality" is more than a little iffy, as in "complementarianism").

6. It was illegal under Roman law for a step-son to "marry" his step-mother. It was not only illegal, but also an offensive relationship. You could be taken to court if you "married" your step-mother, say, after your father died.

7. So, what Paul is saying is that, as if it weren't bad enough that a member of the church "has" (owns) a woman, the woman he owns is his step-mother. This man is flaunting his freedom in Christ and in such a way that he is denying both Christ and freedom. That is also why Paul declares in this book that "all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful" (again, quoting from memory, perhaps not entirely accurately).

8. That is, since in the gospel no one need survive, not me, not you, not us, not them, not Rome, not the church, "all things are lawful," nothing is unforgivable. Indeed, in Christ all *is* forgiven. (Although the language is not Paul's, it still works here: the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that is, a refusal of the faithfulness of God.) That means that *in the abstract* even the most overt (are you ready for this?) incest is not beyond the forgiveness of God. In the abstract, that even means the *continuation* of this most overt incest. Of course, that has to be explained and a major qualification has to be articulated.

9. The thing is that no one lives in the abstract. Though God forgives everything and will have forgiven everything, even what shocks and dismays us, even what we cannot place firmly in the bright light of consciousness, the task of living in that forgiveness, that faithfulness, engages us, provokes us, focuses us, so that what we in fact decide to do as a new moment is dawning is not just anything at all, not just what we impulsively desire to do to satisfy a passing urge, say, the urge to acquire property.

10. Under the conditions of "the flesh" (of *our* vulnerability to injury and death *and* *your* vulnerability to injury and death) we decide with care, with love, with the recognition that there is no ultimate difference between me and you, between us and them.

11. To love is to open my own bodily life to your bodily life, to understand that I have no private future, but that my future is not *mine*. (Of course, it is also not *ours*. It is God's. But God in the gospel is a resounding "Yes!" to all that is and was and will have been. That means that as I stand out into the faithfulness of God, I immediately am sent to stand out into your life, your hope, your history, past and future.)

12. Consequently, though God will forgive my claims to ownership, such as the ownership of my father's wife, ownership, especially ownership of another human being, is almost never compatible with God's love of you and me, with the open future that God is all about.

13. The blatancy of the ownership of a Corinthian church member's "father's wife" is so great that it underlines for Paul how little these people love one another and those outside their ecclesial body. "Even pagans refuse to claim this kind of ownership! WTF do you think you're doing?!" (Of course, not long after this chapter, Paul hands the reader that famous chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13.)

14. So, does the gospel tell you not to have sex with your dad or mom? Well, not immediately. Immediately, it says even that is forgiven in Christ. However, it's only a short step from this forgiveness to the implication that you don't love somebody and own them and you certainly don't flaunt your "freedom" by owning someone that even those who are all about owning things and people would never own.

(15. I suppose that this refusal to ignore or repress the idea of incest is triggering to some people, especially those who have been abused by parents. I do not want to hurt anyone by writing this stuff. It's just that sex has been so very poorly considered in the church vis-à-vis a sex-saturated world, that it has not been very helpful. It's "Don't have sex!" message has not been good for anyone, even if the church has subsequently whispered, "Well, you can have sex under these circumstances . . . ." Having babies is a very, very, very big deal. Having sex without the likelihood of babies, not so much. Still, it doesn't take much reading to learn that what we call incest is powerfully destructive in almost every case. That is perhaps why close to 100% of known cultures prohibit incest, even if they define incest variously.)