By Norman E. Anderson
In 1997 a book entitled Personal Stories of "How I Got Into Sex" was published in which various people, including researchers, sex therapists, and clergy, explain how they became involved in the field of human sexuality.1 The report before you falls at least partially within that genre, although really only a light touch is given to personal history. Here I will try to explain to visitors of this Web site my interest in the theory of human sexuality and marriage and to give some indication of the direction of my work in that area.
When I was a teenager, the Christian teachings on human sexuality began to puzzle me. They made no sense existentially, philosophically, hermeneutically, or historically.
For some friends and acquaintances of mine, this realization meant taking one of several courses. It meant:
The possibilities were less than exhausted; and I was one of those who found another way -- in my case, a way of hope and exploration. For me the realization that Christian teachings on human sexuality had serious problems was one of several potential impediments to a full embrace of my own faith, unless there was hope that the problems could be solved. Indeed, it was a matter of faith that they could be.
Thus the mystery of the distinctly human treatment of sexuality is one of several questions that I took up at an early age to research over the course of a lifetime, hoping, if not to solve the mystery, at least to make some contributions in that direction.
I later learned that human sexuality is one of the forefront issues with which the church, speaking ecumenically, has been wrestling internally throughout the Twentieth Century. Some of the foci have been:
Why did the Christian teachings on human sexuality make no sense to me?
Existentially I observed much that was troubling. To give several examples:
Philosophically it was clear to me that the teachings as I encountered them were incoherent. To give four examples:
Hermeneutically it was clear to me that the Twentieth Century Christian construction of sexual morals, in whatever tradition -- Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, whether the liberal or conservative wing of any of those traditions -- was vastly at variance with that reflected in the Bible in terms of attitude, context, system, meaning, principles, specifics, and emphases, and that today's constructions are routinely read back into the Bible. This does not automatically mean that today's constructions are wrong for our time, but it does mean that there is both a serious disconnect for a people of the Book and an inadvertently false representation. A reconstruction of the biblical theology of sexuality and marriage was necessary.
Historically it was clear to me that the present-day statist involvement in marriage and sexuality is a matter of relativity, for the most part a phenomenon of the last half of the second millennium. It can have certain value, since it is our way of affording protection to the parties and expressing how we think a good society should function; but it can have no bearing upon a durable ethic of marriage and sexuality, all the more so one that claims absoluteness and universality. This is a significant point, since Protestantism rejected the Roman Catholic idea of Christian marriage as a sacrament and turned the regulation of marriage over to the state. In other words, not only is the church profoundly divided on the issue, but the statist solution is a foundation of clay, ethically speaking. (This is not to endorse foundationalism, at least not automatically.) A new philosophy of how ethics and politics should each relate to sexuality was needed.
So I undertook a quest to begin development of a more satisfactory theory of human sexuality and marriage. By a theory, I mean a theology, philosophy, ethics, and politics of human sexuality that takes into account all other relevant disciplines, such as biology, psychology, anthropology, and the history of thought, a prominent place being given to the history of thought on human sexuality as reflected in the Bible.
This theory, in order to be adequate, would have to address all issues relating to human sexuality, including such things as abortion and reproductive technology; it would have to be morally compelling; and, since it is a theory self-consciously so, it would have to be open to reassessment on the basis of scientific, scholarly, philosophical, and theological insight.
I struggled for years and years, with one approach collapsing after another in the face of rigorous self-criticism. One day in the 1980s, I stepped back and asked myself how I might tackle the problem afresh. I thought that if I could truly understand just one small piece of the Bible on human sexuality, I might be able to unravel and thereby to understand the rationale for a large chunk of its sexual ethic, which, of course, is key to understanding and assessing much of the Western tradition on human sexuality.
One of the next questions I asked myself was this: What can I be the most disinterested about? Where can I most easily put aside the biases of both desire and distaste? For me, at the time, the answer was with lesbianism.
In the Christian canon of the Bible, according to traditional interpretation, there is but one mention of lesbian activity. That is in the Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Romans 1:26. That mention is an anomaly, since, as a general rule, sexual offenses mentioned in the New Testament are mentioned as such on the basis of Hebrew Law; female-with-female sexual activity had not been addressed in Hebrew Law; and yet such activity received a prominent condemnation in the Epistle. So I set my sights on understanding the whys and wherefores of that verse.
This selection proved fortuitous in terms of my quest, but not at all in the way that I expected. For after doing extensive research, even compiling a book on lesbianism in the ancient world, I came to the controversial conclusion that the verse is not about lesbian activity at all. Rather it is about some other female initiated activity, probably bestiality, serving as a metonym for sexual violations by women "in the same way" that "men with men committing indecent acts" was a metonym in the following verse for sexual violations by men.
(A term that is a metonym is one which is used to evoke the meaning of another term, where the meanings of the two terms are somehow related; for example, "the bench" to mean the judiciary, "the Crown" to mean the monarchy, "the stage" to mean the theatrical profession, or "the sword" to mean deadly force.)
Given this interpretation of Romans 1:26-27, both sets of violation were as defined by ancient Hebrew Law, even though -- significantly, as we shall find out -- Paul was referring not specifically to Jews, but to a wider spectrum of humankind. So the anomaly was removed; and it had became clear that Paul's governing principles were not necessarily shaped by antagonism, whether personal or embedded in the Greco-Roman milieu, but most probably by his engagement with his own Hebrew tradition.
Before leaving this topic, there are two additional points especially worth noting:
First, in the rabbinic tradition a moral teaching regarding lesbian activity was later derived from principles in Hebrew Law, which means that my finding does not let anybody off the hook. That would be to confuse exegesis and application, anyway. It merely means that one piece of the puzzle I had thought was one shape is, in all likelihood, a completely different shape.
Second, the rabbinic teaching regarding lesbian activity did not derive from the biblical prohibition of a male lying with a male as with a female, for the rabbinic rules of interpretation did not allow such an inference.
In about the same time period, I happened upon a long buried scholarly explanation by J. W. Hunkin of the decision of the Council of Jerusalem.2
The Council, whose decision is reported in Acts 15, laid upon Gentile Christians, for reasons of cultic purity, four prohibitions. According to Hunkin, those prohibitions are linked to the "cut off" offenses that are both mentioned in the Holiness Code in Leviticus and applicable to aliens living among the Israelites. In other words, here was a case where Hebrew Law was to apply to others in addition to Jews.
One of those prohibitions is the committing of porneia, which used to be translated as "fornication" and which is typically translated now-a-days as "sexual immorality." Scholars often try to interpret the early Christian use of the word porneia in terms of the Greco-Roman context. But here was a clue that linked its use in the early church directly to a historic Hebrew context, more specifically, to the set of prohibitions given in Leviticus 18 and 20.
(This is not automatically to say that all of the prohibitions were regarded as being applicable to Gentile Christians. For instance, Paul never explicitly condemns intercourse during menstruation, even though he condemns each other category of sexual offense mentioned in Leviticus 18 and 20 -- adultery, incest, a male lying with a male as with a female, and, if my interpretation of Romans 1:26 above is correct, bestiality. Could his thinking have been that the bodies of Christian women are permanently purified and that this fact overrides any prohibition related to menstrual uncleanness?)
Suddenly with this link in place and the anomaly of Romans 1:26 out of the way, almost everything the Apostle Paul wrote on human sexuality began to make sense; for he can be understood as justifying theologically the Council's decision to the churches outside of Palestine.
For instance, 1 Corinthians 5-7, his longest passage on human sexuality, can be read as part rabbinic responsum (legal judgment) rendered for the Corinthian church on the basis of the Council's decision and part midrash (rabbinic commentary) on Leviticus 18-21, with a critical christological twist. Regarding that twist, one likely key to 1 Corinthians 7 is to understand Christ as assuming the holiness of the High Priest of Leviticus 21, since the body of Christ was considered to be the very temple itself.
(There are difficulties: Not only was Jesus not a Levite -- although some of his kin were according to Luke 1:5, 36 -- but the marital regulations for High Priests had nothing to do with "cut off" offenses for aliens; so we must plumb yet deeper. Here you see an example of self-criticism at work!)
With Paul and the Council of Jerusalem both largely deciphered (which entailed deciphering also the relevant sayings of Jesus), the locus of understanding now shifted to Mosaic Law in relation to, first, the significance of cultic purity, which is at least partly eschatological, and, second, the Law given to Noah and his offspring or, in other words, laws presumed to have universal applicability.
From there a host of puzzle pieces have come together in the reconstruction of the biblical theology (some might insist that I say "theologies") of human sexuality. Not all of the pieces yet. There are still some very tough questions I haven't answered to my own satisfaction, which means that further paradigm collapses are still possible. But at least some of the picture seems to be emerging, and a general reconstruction feels close.
I expect that wrestling with the application of that outcome to today's church will prove even more difficult. I have done considerable exploration of issues of application and do intend, eventually to tackle them, a project which I believe must be based upon a deep understanding of principles.
Fortunately, I do not feel obligated to come up with the definitive answers. Ultimately that is the responsibility of the church as a community. Only let the church come to those answers with full awareness, integrity, and compassion.
I indicated earlier that my theorizing about human sexuality is multi-pronged. The reconstruction of the biblical theology of sexuality is but one leg of a large multi-volume series on the theology, philosophy, ethics, and politics of human sexuality. Some volumes are already written, but not published, for instance, one in which I explore the ethics of power, especially state power, in relation to marriage and sexuality. (I have decided that sex and state should be much more separate than they generally are.) Others are in the works, including a detailed index to the Bible on human sexuality, which is now on the front burner.
After nearly three decades of work, there is a sense that at last some serious ground is being broken, and I have made significant inroads in resolving many of the problems mentioned above, one reason being that the Bible itself, once properly understood, would appear to be free of them. However, at the present stage my work is probably most useful for clarifying issues in a way that stands apart from the usual polemics.
I am generally glad to engage in serious conversations on the theory of human sexuality where suggestions are made, questions are raised, clarification is sought, possible trajectories of thought are tendered and valued, or responsa are desired, the last, for instance, by pastors facing situations that raise ethical issues related to marriage, sexuality, reproductive technology, and such. If what is wanted is therapeutic advice or confirmation of a position or justification of a behavior or ammunition for attack, I am probably not the person to seek out. But if you have some insights to offer or are seeking a thoughtful approach to sexual issues, even one where not all the answers are ready to hand, by all means try touching base with me. I will be glad to hear from you.
1. Personal Stories of "How I Got into Sex" ..., [edited by] Bonnie Bullough [and others] (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1997).
2. "The Prohibitions of the Council at Jerusalem (Acts xv 28, 29)," [by] J. W. Hunkin, The Journal of Theological Studies; v. 27, no. 107 (April 1926): pp. 272-283.
Written January 5-7, 1998; posted, February 2, 1998; new url, January 28, 2004; last modification, February 4, 2004
Copyright ©1998-2004 by Norman E. Anderson
Your feedback is welcome!
Go to main page.