The Embrace of Eros

Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity

Margaret Kamitsuka, Margaret D. Kamitsuka

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780800696672
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451413519
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The topic of sexuality intersects directly with the most contested historical, theological, and ethical questions of our day. In this edgy yet profound volume, noted scholars and theologians assay the Christian tradition's classic and contemporary understandings of sex, sexuality, and sexual identity.

The project unfolds in three phases: contemporary assessments of the Christian tradition, new thinking about eros and being human religiously, and new perspectives on classic mysteries in light of eros and embodiment.

PART I

History: Engaging Eros in the Tradition

CHAPTER 1

The Bible and Sex

David H. Jensen

FOR CENTURIES CHRISTIANS have argued about sex. The Bible figures prominently in this history of argument, perhaps more prominently than anything else in Christian traditions. Across the generations, Christians have cited biblical texts to endorse or prohibit various sexual behaviors, argued with those same texts, and attempted to place them within broader theological frameworks. In the history of Christian theology, biblical texts are summoned as truth, dismissed as irrelevant, cited in isolation, and woven together in broad tapestries. “What does the Bible say about sex?” many Christians ask. This seemingly simple question yields anything but a simple answer. The Bible says many sometimes conflicting things about sex, so in some regards this is the wrong question to be asking. Christians ought first ask, “What is the character of the book we call Scripture?” Attention to that question must precede discussion of the often thorny subject of the Bible and sex. With that in mind, this chapter surveys three approaches to the Bible and sex that broadly frame current debates: (1) an approach that focuses on the explicitly “sexual texts” and sees the Bible as a guidebook on sex; (2) an approach that deems the Bible an insufficient, outmoded, and even oppressive text on many issues, including sexuality, in the contemporary age; and (3) an approach, which I advocate, that views Scripture as itself a narrative of desire, situating sexuality as one moment within other expressions of relationship.

THE BIBLE AS A GUIDEBOOK FOR SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

Perhaps the most common way of reading the Bible with regard to sex is to view it as a guide for sexual behavior. The Bible, in this view, offers clear prohibitions of specific sexual behaviors and might be described as a “how-not-to” manual, though it also provides some general principles for conceiving “godly” sex. One assumption about sex in this approach is that sex is a gift in the proper context and dangerous in the wrong context. One of the fundamental guides for godly sex occurs near the beginning of the biblical canon, in the creation stories. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:24–25). Here, “one flesh” is taken both as a metaphor for the nuptial covenant and for the intertwining of bodies in sex as the seal of that covenant. Evangelical theologian Stanley Grenz offers one interpretation of this text, with an eye to sex in marriage: “Whenever the couple engages in sexual intercourse they are reaffirming the pledge made on their wedding day and are giving visual representation of the content of that vow.”¹ The model of Adam and Eve becomes the pattern for rightly ordered sex: without shame, with restraint, shared with one other person (of the opposite sex) in marriage. Whatever departs from this pattern ipso facto is questionable. What is cause for the cry of elation within marriage, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23), is cause for lamentation anywhere else.

Once this norm—marriage between a man and a woman—has been established for godly sex, the sexual prohibitions within the Bible appear to make sense. Sex that occurs outside of marriage must be viewed as suspect, not merely because it undermines the marital covenant but because it also does injury to the body of Christ—that is, the extended Christian community of which the couple is a part. Paul’s vice lists enumerate activities that inflict such injury. In 1 Corinthians, for example, Paul admonishes his readers for abusing the Lord’s Supper in ways that marginalize the poor (11:17–34) and for engaging in power struggles (1:10–17). He also specifically condemns a man for living with his father’s wife (5:1). This specific instance of illicit sex Paul names porneia, generally translated as “fornication” or “sexual immorality” in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, but a term that Paul himself never clearly defines.² Paul often constructs vice lists related to porneia. For readers who assume that Paul offers specific rules for sex in this and other passages, porneia has come to mean nearly any sexual behavior other than penile-vaginal intercourse within marriage: masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, sex practiced with inordinate passion or desire.³ One problem with the understanding of these vice lists as a guide is that it is difficult to discern what Paul is actually condemning. In 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions porneia in reference to prostitution and illicit marriages; in Galatians 5:19 he seems to use it more generally, without connection to specific sexual behaviors. This vagueness has allowed each generation to redefine the meaning of porneia to be whatever departs from the supposedly self-evident mores of each era. Even the common, specific definition of fornication as “sexual intercourse between unmarried persons” admits of exceptions in most contemporary Christian ethics. As Anglican systematic theologian John Macquarrie writes, “the presence of a measure of commitment makes it undesirable to apply the word ‘fornication’ indiscriminately,” particularly to persons in a “stable relationship.”⁴ Yesterday’s fornication, in short, often becomes today’s sexual norm.

The chief prohibition that often comes to the fore in the “guidebook” approach to sex is the condemnation of homosexuality, supposedly another instance of porneia that violates the conditions of godly sex. According to this view, the holiness codes of the Hebrew Bible can be applied to contemporary society. Leviticus 18, for example, is devoted exclusively to sexual holiness, prohibiting various degrees of incest, sex with women during menstruation, adultery, bestiality, and the oft-cited: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (v. 22). In Leviticus 20, this command is reiterated, this time with the stipulation that those who commit such acts shall be put to death (v. 13). These two verses are the only times the phrase, translated more literally as “the lying down of a woman,” occurs in the entire Hebrew Bible. They appear within long lists of prohibitions meant to distinguish Israel’s religious practice from other Near Eastern tribes. Certain behaviors, and the avoidance of certain behaviors, distinguish these people of the covenant from all others: from clothing, to diet, to rules for appropriate sacrifice. Prohibition of specific sexual behaviors occurs in the midst of these various other prohibitions. For the guidebook approach to reading Scripture, this context and concern are of little consequence, as the behaviors prohibited for Israel are taken as valid for our time as well. Hence, conservative Presbyterian theologian Robert Gagnon can write that anal intercourse

constitutes a conscious denial of the complementarity of male and female found not least in the fittedness (anatomical, physiological, and procreative) of the male penis and the female vaginal receptacle by attempting anal intercourse (or other forms of sexual intercourse) with another man. Anal sex not only confuses gender, it confuses the function of the anus as a cavity for expelling excrement, not receiving sperm.… For one man to “lie with” another man in the manner that men normally “lie with” a woman was to defile the latter’s masculine stamp, impressed by God and evident in both the visible sexual complementarity of male and female and in the sacred lore of creation.⁵

The “lying down of a woman,” for Gagnon, means any male-male sexual intercourse, whether in the context of a committed partnership or in the midst of an orgy. Gagnon’s approach, moreover, assumes to know what “the lying down of a woman” means: it means gay sex, which constitutes a violation of the created order. However, such extrapolation avoids the specificity of the text. Strictly speaking, even if one were to accept the correlation between the Levitical prohibition and gay sex, the prohibition would only extend to the partner who penetrates the other in instances of male-male anal intercourse.⁶

Contemporary rule-based understandings of sex, however, do not simply appeal to Levitical holiness codes. They often claim a broader framework for condemning homosexuality in Romans 1–3. Embedded in a sweeping indictment of Jew and Gentile are these phrases: “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error” (Rom. 1:26–27). Among all scriptural references to same-sex acts, this is the only one that includes women. Again, determining what sexual behaviors Paul condemns here is difficult: temple prostitution? ritual sex? pederasty? While scholars have argued incessantly about what kinds of behavior are implied, Paul seems to be rather unconcerned with the specifics. His chief concern is idolatry, exchanging the glory of God for other images, serving “the creature rather than the Creator” (v. 24). Idolatry caused God to give the people up “to degrading passions” (v. 25). Despite the claims of contemporary rule-based theologies of sex, the condemnation is not against same-sex activity but idolatry that brings forth disorder in the body. This focus on idolatry is something that a rule-based approach tends to obscure.

The rule-based approach tends to enumerate extensive prohibitions. In the rightly ordered sexual universe, one simply says “no” to prostitution and homosexuality; extramarital and premarital sex; fornication and too much passion within marriage; bestiality and masturbation. Though most rule-based approaches distinguish between many sexual behaviors, with some practices being more serious violations of rules than others, the norm against which all behaviors are measured is a marriage between one man and one woman. As evangelical theologian Lauren Winner puts it, “Abstinence before marriage, and fidelity within marriage; any other kind of sex is embodied apostasy.”⁷

To summarize the problems with the rule-based approach to the Bible and sex: passages that seem to talk about sex, or have come to mean sexual subjects, are primarily devoted to other matters. Romans 1–2, which routinely gets cited in condemnations of homosexuality, is instead concerned with demonstrating the need for the gospel; Sodom and Gomorrah, another oft-cited text (Gen. 19:1–29), is about hospitality and the denial of hospitality, not sex. Leviticus is concerned with idolatry first and only derivatively with sexual behaviors that are evidence of idolatry. Only recently have the so-called sexual meanings of these texts come to the fore. All these factors have led some to throw up their hands when it comes to the Bible and sex. Mark Jordan, for example, states this frustration baldly: “There are, in short, no self-evident lists of biblical passages about sexual matters.”⁸

THE BIBLE AS INSUFFICIENT, OUTMODED, OR OPPRESSIVE ON SEXUALITY

Not only do some contemporary theologians deny that the Bible gives self-evident rules about sex, they furthermore argue that the Bible has problematic aspects that make it an insufficient, outmoded, or oppressive guide to sexual matters. From this perspective, the Bible must be read with a hermeneutic of suspicion regarding sex and sexuality. One glaring problem is the Bible’s patriarchal assumptions. Take the paradigm of marriage as an example. The commandment against coveting a neighbor’s wife (note the gender)—and by implication, the commandment against adultery—is couched in the language of property. Adultery becomes in this context less an affront to marriage than to the property rights of the male possessor: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exod. 20:17). Scriptural rules of sexual behavior, moreover, tend to implicate women more than men. Some of the Pastoral Epistles are especially evident of this tendency, singling out younger widows as particularly prone to sins of the flesh: “But refuse to put younger widows on the list; for when their sensual desires alienate them from Christ, they want to marry, and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge” (1 Tim. 5:11–12). The author here is urging his audience not to have younger widows make vows of perpetual chastity; instead he urges that they remarry. Women are singled out in this list as if they are more prone to sexual vice than men.

Given this perspective, it is not surprising that the pastoral epistles also suggest that women are more likely to be swayed by false teaching. For example, 2 Timothy refers to “silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (3:6b–7). This correlation of women as more susceptible to sin is by no means restricted to Deutero-Pauline literature.⁹ In 1 Peter, husbands are to “show consideration for your wives in your life together, paying honor to the woman as the weaker sex, since they too are also heirs of the gracious gift of life” (3:7). Texts like these pepper the New Testament and have affected many modern approaches to gender, sexuality, and marriage. In the eyes of some who would use these texts to frame an understanding of theology and sex, the approach is straightforward: be wary of sex, and be particularly wary of women who display their sexuality openly.

The majority voices in Scripture, in other words, assume male privilege and the secondary status of women. Within the broad swath of biblical narrative, women are blamed for sin (Gen. 3:12; 1 Tim. 2:12–15), enjoined to remain silent in assembly (1 Cor. 14:34), and assumed to belong to their husbands in a manner analogous to property (Exod. 20:17). More glaringly, the trope of the loose woman or harlot is used throughout Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to epitomize unfaithfulness, whether the whore of Hosea (chaps. 2–4), who is stripped naked and exposed, or the whore of Baby...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. History: Engaging Eros in the Tradition
• Part II. Culture: Bodies, Desires, and Sexual Identitites
• Part III. Reconstruction: Erotic Theology
• Afterword
• Notes
• Biblical Reference Index
• General Index