Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery

David Scott, Ph.D.

CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN SEXUAL ETHIC

Almost no one today, even the most “progressive” or “liberal, ” argues in favor of adultery as a good moral practice. If adultery is defined as having sexual relations with another person’s spouse, against the will and without their knowledge, no one commends this practice as morally good. Difficult to imagine is someone claiming that a man or woman should intentionally have sexual relations with someone else’s spouse against the will and “behind the back” of the married person’s spouse. That adultery, in that sense, is wrong, almost everyone agrees. Of course adultery, as just defined, occurs often. But almost no one is defending this practice as good, and those who commit adultery in this sense would almost certainly admit that, although they are doing it, adultery is morally wrong, or at least, cannot be commended as a general or universal practice.1

In this narrow sense, one can say that the truth and moral validity of the Decalogue’s Seventh Commandment, prohibiting adultery, is, even in our western, secularized societies, widely affirmed. However, a larger framework of moral analysis and consensus exists in which the Seventh Commandment, and, indeed, the whole traditional Judeo-Christian sexual ethic, is profoundly criticized and pervasively ignored and outright rejected.2 This critique is so thorough, that no aspect of the traditional Christian sexual ethic remains unchallenged. Even the prohibition against adultery, in its Old Testament setting, is criticized, even if adultery as a practice is not commended today.

In this series of essays on the Ten Commandments, my goal is to “receive” them as part of our Christian tradition and make them a vital part of contemporary Christian life. As one living in the twenty-first centurythis goal requires engaging also the massive critique of and the factual abandonment by many modern and postmodern people of traditional Christian sexual norms.

The “traditional sexual moral norms,” assumed to be the “Christian sexual ethic,” so massively criticized today, includes at least the following: sexual acts, and especially the pleasure possible in sexual acts, is suspect and morally tainted; that all sexual acts, therefore, are per se suspicious in their moral status; that the status of virginity is morally superior to that of non-virginity, so that even compared to heterosexual couples sacra mentally married, celibate priests and religious have the “higher” or “better” moral status3; that sexual intercourse should be confined to marriage; that sexual relations should be confined to heterosexual married partners; that all forms of same-sex sexual relations are gravely evil; that masturbation is in se evil, if not actually a mortal sin, more evil than rape (because “an act contrary to nature”); that use of artificial means of birth control is morally equivalent to parents murdering their children,4 that genital sex (including ‘petting below the waist’) is morally wrong. That different Christian churches differ in the formulation and emphasis they place officially on these different moral norms is irrelevant: many modern people perceive these moral norms as “the Christian sexual ethic.” Whatever this or that Protestant or Roman Catholic ethicist might say, one or more of the historic Christian churches has officially taught each of these sexual norms. In that sense, these sexual norms and teachings are rightly identified as the Christian sexual ethic.

This is the sexual ethic that has been subject for at least fifty years to a massive theoretical critique and practical rejection. The contemporary critique of this set of sexual norms and doctrines is, in fact, so comprehensive and so radical that one is hard put to know where to begin in describing it. I try to comprehend this critique under the three headings: an ethic that is pernicious; an ethic that is paltry; and and ethic that is passé.

The Perniciousness of Patriarchy

Even a superficial examination of the Old Testament prohibition of adultery shows that its purpose is not protecting the sanctity of monogamous marriage. In the Old Testament many stories and passages disclose that married Israelite men were permitted to have more than one sexual partner, women captured in war or held as slaves or simply taken as additional wives. The actual basis for prohibiting adultery was economic and patriarchal-social. The prohibition of adultery in Israel was based on the principle that having sexual relations with another man’s wife (or daughter) was an offense against that man’s property rights. In the life-world of Israel, the status of a wife was like the status of a piece of property; a man’s wife belonged to that class of possessions that included the man’s male or female slave, his ox, his donkey or anything else belonging to him.5 Regarding a man’s wife as his property, and therefore prohibiting adultery as a breach of property rights, was but one facet of a more comprehensive patriarchal framework. .

Other aspects of that patriarchal framework were the a husband’s rights to summarily negate a vow his wife had made with which he disagreed; a man’s right to divorce his wife simply by writing a bill of divorce; a brother’s right and duty to take a deceased brother’s widow as a sexual partner to try to sustain the dead husband’s family name and line; the requirement that a wife (but not a husband) submit to trial by poison to prove or disprove a husband’s suspicion about her; the legislation requiring that a wife who, to help her husband, grasped the genitals of her husband’s opponent in a fight should be stoned to death; the provision that a husband can dismiss his wife without giving any reason. Wives belonged to their husbands as property; wives were subordinate to their husbands and women were subordinate to men generally. The prohibition of adultery was but one facet of a patriarchal social organization.6

Today, modern and postmodern people generally accept the principle that men and women, as individuals, are equal in personal dignity and that husbands do not own their wives like they own their family ca. Patriarchal, andocentric and sexist attitudes and practices continue in the present. But at the level of moral principle, the notions of individual equality and personal dignity lead many modern and postmodern people to challenge the prohibition against adultery in the context of the social system shaped by the Decalogue. This challenge is not for the sake of advocating adultery in the sense of having intercourse with a married partner, but for the sake of affirming equality between the sexes and a notion of marriage that excludes the notion of husbands owning their wives. Modem and postmodern people recognize the Seventh Commandment as part of a social/economic construct that threatened women’s health, their inherent human dignity and indeed their physical live. In other words, one basic facet of the critique of the Seventh Commandment today, as of the whole ‘traditional Christian sexual ethic, is the degradation of women implicit in the social matrix of the Commandment.

The Paltriness of the Christian Sexual Ethic

Another line of critique directed against the Christian sexual ethic focuses on its paltriness. This charge is highly ironic. On the one hand, some Christian traditions, both Protestant, but especially Roman Catholic, have so fixated on sexual offenses that in many parts of the churches and in western societies generally, ‘Christian morality’ is equated with sexual morality. To say that a person is “immoral” means to most western people that the person so labeled has violated one or more Christian sexual norms. This fixation on sexual offenses in both Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions strikes many contemporary people as childish, i.e., similar to the fascination with and fixations on sex that typify adolescents. That is one side of the irony.

The other side of the irony and the point of criticism is that the traditional sexual ethic tends to limited morally acceptable sexual relations to sexual acts that are open to conceiving of new life. This is certainly the official Roman Catholic teaching.7 It holds that the only morally right act of sexual intercourse is between sacramentally married spouses who place no artificial barrier to conception. Why do many people think this is a paltry sexual ethic?

One charge is that forcing human sexuality, sexual relations and sexual acts into framework of “purposes” and “aims” eliminates important aspects of human sexuality, sexual relations and sexual acts. A morality that sees sexuality only in the framework of “rightful uses” or “proper ends” undermines the richness and fullness of human sexuality. Roman Catholic, and traditional Anglican moral theology, in fact, deploys the notion of purpose or telos to evaluate sexual actions morally. Human actions, to remain human, must aim at an end or purpose dictated by human reason. For centuries the teaching of western Christianity was that the only sexual act properly ordered by human reason was sexual acts whose goal was procreation.

True, in his 1968 Encyclical Humanae Vitae, Paul VI for the first time in official Roman Catholic teaching, implicitly acknowledged a second, equally valid purpose for sexual intercourse between spouses: the unitive purpose of marital sexual relations. Sexual relations between spouses could legitimately aim at “unitive love” so long as the other aim (earlier, the only legitimate aim), procreation, was not blocked by artificial means of birth control. Thus, official Roman Catholic moral teaching , without publically admitting it, changed its traditional teaching by acknowledging a second rational purpose to sexual relations. A couple could choose to have sexual relations even if their only aim was to express and deepen their spousal love, providing they did not artificially block the possibility of procreation.

While granting that much human action is goal oriented, and granting that some goals are more protective of human welfare than others, many today ask whether human sexuality, in all its richness and mystery, can be fit into this scheme of rightful ends, without losing important aspects of its reality and richness. General human experience shows that an intrinsic aspect of sexual relationships and acts are its fun and spontaneity. Truly humane and human sexuality cannot simply be a matter of rational purposing, even if medieval Roman Catholic celibate monks and priests wanted everyone to regard sex this way. The richness of sexuality includes playfulness, experimentation, variety, pleasure, fun and even a kind of innocence and artlessness. Asking people to regard their sexual relationships as one regards planting a vegetable garden, asks them to deny some important aspects of the reality of sex. Too much calculation, excessive planning and purposing undermine something essential in the nature of sexuality and sexual relations. A young man was asked why he had sexual intercourse so often. He artlessly answered, “Because it feels so good.” The traditional Christian moral theologian would only roll his eyes and shake his head at such a response. But most people today would agree with the young man and shake their head at the traditional Christian moralist’s response.

Finally, the public’s negative attitude that the traditional Christian sexual ethics is paltry is also tied to the negativity of the sanctions that used to be associated with enforcing this ethic. Detection, infection and conception were the fears held up to prevent young people from crossing the line of acceptable sexual norms. The burdens of single parenthood, teen pregnancy, the explosion of sexually transmitted diseases and the embarrassment of unplanned pregnancy still exist. However, negative sanctions, supporting moral norms by fear does not commend an ethic to modern and postmodern people. Traditional negative sanctions, including scaring youngsters with the terror of eternal hell, help convey to modern people the impression of a paltry ethic. 8

The Christian Sex Ethic is Passé

A third type of criticism of the Christian sex ethic is that the great majority of contemporary people simply ignore it, consider it passé, reject it as out of date and therefore irrelevant. Truth is not a matter of polls and majority opinion; therefore, that the majority of people reject traditional Christian sexual norms is no proof those norms are wrong. However, the Christians are deeply affected when the majority in the society affirm, by their practice, moral norms as humane and right, which conflict with traditional Christian norms. One issue is that contemporary Christians are directly affected by how the rest of society lives. Another is whether Christian moral teaching does correspond to the insights of universal moral reason. A third issue is whether Christians should teach all traditional sexual moral norms today. When many modern and postmodern people consider traditional Christian moral norms as irrelevant and passé, therefore, the Christian community should reevaluate.

As a first step in understanding this modern and postmodern judgment about traditional Christian sexual morality, we list again several of the central moral norms of the traditional sex ethic. One is that full sex intimacy should occur only within marriage; that premarital sexual intercourse and sexual self-stimulation for pleasure or to attain orgasm (masturbation) is under all circumstances morally wrong. A second key principle is that marriage should be monogamous; each married partner should have one and only one spouse. Third, marriage should be life-long; “until death do us part.” Fourth, sexual relations should occur only between heterosexual (monogamously, lifelong, married) partners.

Today, all of these moral norms are not just broken by a substantial proportion of the western population but their rejection is often praised as a moral gain as a human advance. In the United States and Western Europe, the divorce rate is moving toward fifty percent of all first marriages. Many divorced persons marry a second or third time.9 For this reason, commentators say that many western people, including many who belong to Christian churches, practice “serial monogamy.” They are married to one partner, after another.

Even more widespread than divorce is the frequency of premarital sex. Surveys show that over 90 % if males masturbate regularly, although, according to surveys, the percentage for females is lower. Child psychologists today hold that stimulating one’s genitals for gratification and orgasm is a natural activity for children and adolescents discovering their sexuality and teach that the practice of adult masturbation in some circumstances is harmless and often a healthy and constructive sexual expression.

Regarding the norm of confining sexual relations to marriage, statistics about young people in western nations report that sexual intercourse is common among teenagers and very common for unmarried people in their twenties and older. Two technical developments have greatly increased the incidence of premarital and non-marital intercourse. One is the highly effective (but by no means total) separation of sexual intercourse and procreation by means of the pre -intercourse pill, the post-intercourse (“morning-after”) pill and the condom. In western societies couples are increasingly waiting until they reach their thirties before they marry and try to have children. When sexual maturity begins at 12 and 13 years old and marriage occurs twenty years later, the expectation that young people, at the height of their sexual energy, will totally refrain from genital sex is unrealistic, and many modern and postmodern people think, inhumane.

In the last fifty years an enormous change has occurred in the public perception and acceptance of same-sex sexual relations. While in many people’ minds homosexual relations and Aids are connected, informed people know that Aids is a viral disease transmitted by human bodily fluids, including blood and not just seminal fluid. Today Aids is spreading more through heterosexual intercourse by infected partners and by infected needles among drug addicts than through homosexual sexual acts. Thus, the link between homosexual sexual relations and Aids is not intrinsic but incidental.10

Study of homosexuality has lead to two convictions very important for people’s attitudes toward homosexual relationships. One is the widespread recognition that same-sex orientation can be based deeply in a person’s sexual-psychological personality structure of a person and is as deeply rooted in their identity, as is a heterosexual’s orientation.11 A second recognition is the distinction between orientation and individual sexual acts. A third is the recognition that pedophilia is not specific to homosexual men but is practiced by heterosexual men as well. Further, modern western culture has a much greater appreciation of the deep-seated fear and hatred of homosexuality and homosexual persons that has marked traditional western moral attitudes. While labeling all persons who refuse to grant homosexual orientation and practice the same moral status as heterosexual orientation and practice as homophobic is inaccurate and itself immoral fundamentalism, neither the widespread fear of homosexuality nor the lethal acts against homosexuals by heterosexuals in past and present history be denied. In any case, modern western people are more ready to tolerate open declaration of homosexual orientation and the existence of homosexual partnerships. Prominent persons in the church, in politics, in business the arts openly acknowledge their homosexual orientation and relationships and are accepted by the general population.

Nowhere is the ignoring and rejection of traditional Christian sexual norms more prominent than in the mass mediated popular culture. Prime time television programs, block buster movies and best selling novels routinely depict persons having sexual relations outside of and before marriage; having same-sex relationships, being divorced and remarried and enjoying “do it yourself” sex. While the mass media display these kinds of sexual patterns for their consumer value, and although some Christians charge the modern mass media with immorality for presenting such patterns of sexual behavior, the great majority of the population accepts these mass mediated portrayals of sexual relationship as truer reflection of how many modern people live and, and therefore think than traditional sexual norms are tainted with hypocrisy.

In this section we have summarized three modern and postmodern attitudes toward the traditional western, Christian sexual ethic. This sexual morality is pervasively criticized, rejected and ignored for institutionalizing patriarchy and subordination of women, for impoverishing the full nature of human sexuality and the possibilities of sexual relationships for play, pleasure and joy, and as passé and irrelevant.

Typically, one response from those still willing and trying to sustain traditional Christian sexual norms in church and society, is insisting that popular rejection of Christian teaching says nothing about the truth and validity of that teaching. Let millions of modern people kneel before the Baal of modern sexual paganism; Christians should remain faithful to “the biblical sexual ethic.” We will address the theme of “the biblical sexual ethic” in later sections of this essay. But an important point should be made first and in preparation.

The modern and postmodern critique of traditional sexual morality is rooted in some important ways in basic Christian and biblical teaching itself. Modern and postmodern sexual norms, practices and attitudes live from a full-throated affirmation of the “goodness” of our creaturely human nature in its fleshly materiality. God is the creator of human being, of Adam, made of the earth. God came with redemptive purpose in the flesh, as a real human being; God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, not as a ghost but in some sense as the same embodied person whom the disciples knew before Jesus died and was buried.12 Christians should affirm the flesh and its desires and needs. Indeed, many Christians today have overcome the suspicion and contempt of the body grounded not in the Bible but in Greek teacdhing that the mind is superior to the body. This Greek “spiritism, ” and the subsequent moral dualism between mind and body, seeped deeply into Christian ethics already in the early Christian centuries. Precisely biblical teaching about the goodness of the flesh has, in its rebellious and critical modern and postmodern forms, helped the church recover biblical truths.

Modern and post-modern sexual norms and attitudes are also grounded in a high respect and appreciation of the individual person, of his or her rights, rights that need to be protected against totalitarian claims. Where does this respect for persons as individuals come from? Certainly, respect for the individual person flows from basic biblical teachings, as much if not more than from ancient Greek and Latin Stoicism. Christian theology and ethics rightly criticize modern and postmodern exaggerated, solipsistic individualism and modernity’s extreme ideal of autonomy. But respect for each individual as created and loved by God is fundamental Christian teaching; this teaching is grounded in the biblical theme of God as Creator, in the biblical theme of God as redeemer and in the biblical theme of the Holy Spirit as sanctifier. The Old Testament’s and Jesus’ teaching to love the neighbor as oneself express this moral principle. Traditional Christianity may not always approve of its children, but contemporary Christians may be surprised at how often the children’s waywardness indirectly expresses their parent’s Christian values.

Therefore, we need to pause before we who think that the Bible should be the basis for Christian sexual ethics scornfully dismiss modern and postmodern critique and modern and postmodern ridicule of what has been handed down as “the Christian sexual ethic. ” We need to ask ourselves how much of this critique expresses, in a post -Christian form, deeply biblical teachings.

The Commandment Against Adultery in the Old Testament

Exploring a bit more fully the Commandment in its setting is long overdue I this essay. To this we now turn.

The Patriarchal Framework

We have already spoken of the patriarchal social and cultural framework of Israelite marriage and sexual norms. This larger framework, we have said, makes specific legislation, such as the Seventh Commandment’s prohibition of adultery unacceptable to many modern persons, who accept the principle that women, in their personal dignity and human status, are equal to men and ought never to be included in the classification of objects which are owned by men.

The Literal and Metaphorical Meaning of Adultery in the Hebrew Bible.

In the Hebrew Bible the term “adultery” has a primary and a secondary, metaphorical, sense. Its primary sense is intended in the Seventh Commandment, prohibiting adultery. By “adultery” is meant the act of one man having sexual intercourse with another man’s wife. As already explained, adultery in this primary sense was morally forbidden as a violation of the Israelite husband’s property right over his wife. The prohibition against adultery did not exclude a married Israelite man having more than one wife13 or having sexual relations with other women while he was married.14 Thus, monogamy, having one and only one wife, was not a moral obligation of Israelite males. And, the legislation regarding a writ of divorce in Deuteronomy 24.1 ff. indicates that life-long marriage was also not a moral expectation for Hebrew men. This same legislation also implies there was no moral prohibition against marrying a divorced woman. There is no legislation in the Hebrew Bible regarding a woman divorcing her husband.

The rights and obligations of Israelite married women were completely different. If an Israelite wife had sexual relations with a man who was not her husband, divine ordinance required that she be stoned to death, for she had violated the property rights of their husband, to whom the wife belonged along with his house, his donkey and his cow.

The second, metaphorical sense of adultery appears often in the Prophets. A typical passage is Ezekiel 23:37 “For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands, with their idols they have committed adultery; and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me.” In this secondary sense, adultery means idolatry, forsaking Yahweh, to whom Israel is “married” and worshiping other gods, the “gods of the nations.” 15

A parallel between these two meanings of “adultery: exists. Just as an Israelite husband “owns” his wife, and having intercourse with her violates his property rights, so Yahweh “owns” Israel, on the basis of God’s election of Israel as covenant partner and on the basis of the covenant Yahweh and Israel have made with each other. When Israelites worship other gods, they violate Yahweh’s property rights over Israel. Thus, idolatry was a Israel’s unfaithfulness. Throughout the book of Deuteronomy, God, through Moses, warns the Israelites not to be seduced into worship of the gods of the lands they are going to occupy. Idolatry is unfaithfulness to Yahweh as a wife’s adultery is an violation of her husband’s ownership rights.

Adultery and Covenant

The metaphorical sense of adultery, as a violation of the covenantal relation between Yahweh and Israel, is very important for understanding Pauline teaching about marriage in the Epistle to the Ephesians. In the Hebrew Bible, considering idolatry a kind of adultery sheds a new kind of light upon the marriage relationship and upon adultery by spouses. As a breach of the covenant, idolatry is a violation of a faithfulness bond between Yahweh and Israel. In this covenantal bond, Yahweh is the superior partner; because Yahweh chose Israel and Yahweh set the terms of the covenant relationship. But the covenant involved Israel’s free decision; Israel, by an act of corporate will, agreed to enter into the covenant with Yahweh, according to the terms of the covenant that Yahweh had set. The whole book of Deuteronomy, containing Moses’ speeches to Israel urging to remain loyal to the covenant and not allow themselves to be “wooed” by the gods of the nations, testifies that the Covenant was a voluntary, and therefore a very personal relationship, from both sides.

In other words, when the metaphorical meaning of adultery (idolatry) developed, the possibility arises of this metaphorical meaning working retroactively upon the literal, patriarchal meaning of adultery. In that case, the physical act of adultery becomes less a violation of male property rights (the Hebrew husband “owns” his wife) than a case of a personal violation of a relationship based on trust and commitment (a covenant). Something like that understanding of the marriage relationship seems to underlie Ephesians, chapter 5, where the author refers to the one-flesh union between marriage partners as a “sign” or metaphor for Christ’s relationship to the church. According to this covenantal view of marriage, the marriage union can be a sign of Christ’s relation to the church (the relation of bridegroom and bride). Adultery would then be morally wrong, not because adultery violates a husband’s property rights, but because adultery defaces a human covenant that that in the church, for the church and in and for the world, images God’s relation to humankind in Jesus Christ. In the Conclusion of this essay we develop this more fully.

The Commandment Against Adultery in the New Testament

The previous paragraphs have indicated the direction we are headed in examining the meaning of the Commandment against adultery in the New Testament. A guiding principle of Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible is that Jesus Christ, as witnessed to in the New Testament, is the framework for all Christian understanding. Simply stated, this basic principle for interpreting the Old Testament is that we read it from the standpoint of the New Testament. We have stated and explained this principle in previous essays in this series on the Ten Commandments; therefore, we will not develop it again here. However, trying to let Jesus Christ, as witnessed to in the New Testament, be the lens through which we read the Old Testament, is a fundamental guiding principle.

Jesus Teaching on Adultery in the Sermon on the Mount.

Reading the New Testament, one immediately discovers that Jesus’ most important statements about adultery occur in that collection of his teaching that we have come to call “The Sermon on the Mount.”16 Since in the Sermon, Jesus comments on several of the Ten Commandments, we have already noted this fact.

As with Jesus’ teaching on other Commandments, we find also with the Commandment against adultery, two aspects of Jesus’ teaching on adultery. The first is that the Sermon on the Mount expresses Jesus’ moral standards for those who would follow him on the way of the Cross, into the full rule of his heavenly Father. The Sermon contains a Kingdom morality; how people will relate to each other when human life is fully under God’s rule. Thus, Jesus teaching on adultery, gathered in the Sermon on the Mount, is profoundly shaped by the center of Jesus’ whole teaching and preaching and actions (e.g., healing miracles), namely that God’s Rule is breaking into human life and history in Jesus’ own words and work, his own life and death.

The second point about all the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is closely connected to this first point about the center of Jesus’ proclamation, the Kingdom of God. Namely Jesus radicalizes (deepens, goes to the root of the matter) the moral teaching inherited from Moses. Jesus shifts the focus of moral concern from the external act to the condition of the heart from which evil acts flow. Surely, the point of Jesus’ teaching is that God’s Rule makes a proper claim not only on our actions but also on our inner selves, on the deepest roots of our actions. We will see this theme again in Jesus call to the Rich Young Man, to sell all he has, (an aspect of his life he is unwilling to give up for God) to follow Jesus. Jesus’ radicalization of the Commandment against adultery expresses Jesus understanding of the scope of God’s claim over human life, namely, that claim reaches through external actions to the center of the self, the heart.

Jesus Equates Lust with Adultery

In this section, we will simply gather together important passages of the New Testament in which Jesus directly speaks about adultery. In the next section, we will try to discern the coherence of this teaching.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus refers directly to the Commandment against adultery, Jesus teaches, “You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you, that everyone who looks at a women with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28). Thus, the Commandment against adultery receives the same refocus as the Commandment against murder or the Commandment against false testimony. In this radicalization, Jesus does not merely repeat the prohibition against the act of adultery, he (as does the Seventh Commandment) but Jesus equates inward, lustful thoughts for a woman with adultery. The man who lusts in his heart has already committed the equivalent of the act of adultery. So, Jesus here teaches a doctrine of ”adultery in one’s heart.” 17

Also contained in the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ equating divorce and remarriage of a divorced person with adultery 18 In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “But I say to you, that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastely, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. In Mark’s Gospel the parallel passage reads, “ Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. In both versions, the immediate context of Jesus’ statements is his teaching about divorce.

Scholars have offered various explanations of what Jesus could mean by saying that divorcing one’s wife causes her to commit adultery. One explanation is that a divorced wife in Israel’s society has no social status and would be more likely to enter into illicit sexual relationships. Also, Jesus’ statement that marrying a divorced woman is equivalent to adultery is not immediately evident.

The Greek text does not make clear against which of the wives in such situations the divorcing man has committed adultery. Does Jesus mean that the man commits adultery against the spouse he divorces or against the previously divorced woman whom he subsequently marries? The text does not allow a conclusion to these questions.

We note that Jesus redefinition of adultery lifts adultery from the specific context of married persons to apply to everyone. Jesus does not say that a married man who lusts for the wife of another has already committed adultery in his heart. Jesus words refer to “everyone” who looks at a women with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

One thing is clear, however, whether or not Jesus did allow divorce in the case if a husband’s wife committed sexual immorality (Gr. porneia), 19 his teaching about divorce and adultery in these verses clearly demonstrates how important he considered the marriage bond. This high status Jesus gives to the marriage bond will be key for our own attempt to offer constructive principles in the conclusion of this essay.

Alongside Jesus’ teaching on adultery in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ action and teaching deal with adultery in two other biblical passages. One is the account of Jesus’ and the women taken in adultery, which is contained only in John’s Gospel.20 The Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman caught in the act of adultery; they tell him that according to the Law of Moses she should be stoned; then, they ask his opinion of what should be done with her. Jesus does not answer their question verbally but gives a directive to the Pharisees: he who is without sin, cast the first stone.” After each of the accusing Pharisees departs, “beginning with the oldest”, Jesus tells the woman that he does not condemn her and that she should go and “sin no more.

A responsible interpretation of this biblical account requires reading it in the light of the whole Fourth Gospel. A major, if not the major, theme of that Gospel is presenting Jesus as the Word, the Life, the Light of God, so that people may “see” Jesus in his true glory and come to believe in him as the true Son of the Father, and believing in Jesus, may have eternal life.21

Accordingly, this story of Jesus’ non-condemning of the woman taken in adultery should be read as another way the author display’s Jesus as the glory of the Father, as the one in and through whose acts and teachings God’s glory, God’s unexpected splendor is shown forth in the world. In this encounter, Jesus display’s God’s readiness to forgive and, indirectly, the insufficiency of the Pharisees understanding of God’s will. However, the story also makes very clear that Jesus regards adultery as a violation of God’s will, as a sin that the woman should not commit again.

Another important New Testament reference to adultery is Jesus’ conversation with “the rich young man.”22 In this exchange, Jesus lists the Commandment against adultery along with other of the Ten Commandments in his response to the young man’s question of what he should do to inherit eternal life. Jesus, in this exchange, goes on to tell the young man, that he can go beyond fulfilling these Commandments by selling all he has and following Jesus.

As we already indicated, this story forms a parallel with the teaching on the Sermon on the Mount. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus radicalizes the Commandment on adultery, and, in his call to discipleship, Jesus tells him that personal renunciation and discipleship is a way of going beyond the Commandments of the Decalogue. This story, therefore, may be a great help in interpreting Jesus’ teaching about adultery in the Sermon on the Mount. In Mathew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says he has come not to abrogate the law but to fulfill it. In his personal call to discipleship to the young man, Jesus tells him that renouncing his wealth and following him is equivalent to and even surpasses the fulfilling of the Commandments. If we use this story of Jesus and the young man as help in interpreting Jesus’ teachings about the Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, we can say that personal discipleship; including “selling all you have and giving to the poor” is the essence of entering the Rule of God.

Understanding Jesus’ Teaching About Adultery of the Heart

Is Jesus actually saying that lust in the heart is as wrong as committing the act of adultery? The text of the Sermon does not say that. What the text does show clearly is that Jesus wants to direct his hearer’s attention to the condition of their heart, from which murderous acts and adulterous acts flow. Jesus is clearly extending the “reach” and scope of the Commandments against murder and adultery from the act to the personal center, the heart, from which good and bad acts flow.23 Therefore, this refocusing, which Jesus teaches both in relation to the Commandment against murder and the prohibition against adultery may be the basic point of Jesus teaching? The full scope of God’s rule over human life is the main point. Jesus reformulation of the Commandments is one way he makes that point. This does not mean that Jesus disagrees with the prohibition against murder or adultery. But it does mean that in trying to understand how lust can be adultery or angry thoughts can be murder, we should not miss the main point of Jesus’ teaching, the total claim over the whole person that characterizes life in the Kingdom of God.

St. Bonaventura on the Seventh Commandment

Having looked at the Biblical framework for the Commandment against adultery, we jump to the thirteenth century and western Catholic theological and ethical teaching. Examining St. Bonaventura’s teaching on the Commandment about adultery serves two purposes. One is providing an example of western, Christian sexual teaching. This is useful, because this is the teaching that many modern and postmodern contemporaries reject. Second, Bonaventura is a creative, Christian theologian. We can learn from him, as from all the great Christian theologians of the past, about the possible ways faithful Christians can understand adultery in the larger framework of Christian faith. The ship of contemporary Christian theology and ethics has a rudder.

Bonaventura’s Scholastic Framework

We have seen in previous essays on the Commandments that St. Bonaventura treats the Decalogue within a scholastic framework that he shares with his for example, with Thomas Aquinas. In this scholastic framework, theologians interpreted the Commandments as an expanded statement of Jesus’ Double Commandment to love God and to love the neighbor. The first three Commandments (in St. Bonaventura’s enumeration of them) spell out more fully what love to God means. The remaining seven Commandments spell out in more detail what love to neighbor entails.

This scholastic framework also sets the Decalogue within the ethical concept of justice. The Decalogue sets forth what the believer owes in justice to God and to neighbor. To God persons should honor and obey God as, the one true God; should not reduce God to a graven image; should observe the Sabbath and should not misuse God’s holy name. To the neighbor is owed, in justice, that he not be murdered, that his marriage not be violated by adultery, that he not be robbed, etc. Thus, the Second Table of the Law states the requirements of justice toward the neighbor.

Finally, this Scholastic framework coordinates two levels of knowledge about God’s will: the revealed and the insights of universal moral reason (the natural law). That God should be alone worshiped, that the Sabbath should be honored, that no graven images of God be made and worshiped and that God’s name not be used in vain are revealed Commandments. The Second Table of the Law state what common moral reason can discern, even though they are also included in God’s special revelation to Moses in the Second Table of the Law.

Thus, Bonaventura, like Thomas Aquinas, was deeply committed to integrating revelation and reason, inherited Graeco-Roman moral norms with biblical norms. He was also committed to relating Christian love to God and duties to the neighbor. Thus, St. Bonaventura shares with his medieval, scholastic colleagues, like Thomas Aquinas, several assumptions that help him order the Decalogue in the framework of the principle of natural moral reason, the virtue of justice and the coordination of biblical revelation and human reason.

What St. Bonaventura Teaches About Adultery

In his treatment of this Commandment in his Lectures on the Decalogue,24 St. Bonaventura begins by stating that this Commandment teaches that no one should violate his neighbor’s wife (quod nemo uorem proximi sui violet) . But, he immediately moves from that statement to a much broader framework, one given by the writings of St. Augustine. In fact, St. Bonaventura’s teaching about sexual morality (like much of his other teaching) accepts basic assumptions of St. Augustine’s theology and ethics.. Bonaventura reminds his hearers that St. Augustine, in his biblical commentary on the book of Exodus, taught that this Commandment actually represents a general prohibition against all illicit use of “one’s generative members.” (Et dicit beatus Augustinus, quod hic prohibetur omnis illicitus usus membrorum generationis) 25 St. Augustine also held that this prohibition against adultery represents all moral teaching that intends to safeguard/manage our sexual desire from attack against chastity. ( qui fit ad procurationem libidinis cum impugnatione castitatis.)

Chastity is attacked, St. Bonaventura, continues, in seven ways. These are: by adultery, fornication, prostitution, rape, sacrilege, incest and sins against nature. (adulterium, fornicationem, meretricium, struptum, sacrilegium, incestum et peccatum contra naturam.) 26 Thus, following St. Augustine’s lead, St. Bonaventura reads the Commandment’s prohibition against adultery as not only prohibiting the specific act of sexual relations with the wife of another but as prohibiting all wrong use of our generative organs, all of which attack chastity. Bonaventura then specifies seven such sexual acts that are the wrong use of human reproductive powers.

Before we follow Bonaventura further, let us note two points quickly. First, note that when Bonaventura speaks of “chastity” he does not mean no sexual relations i.e., continence. By chastity, he means the right use of the human sexual reproductive organs, and sexual intercourse between a man and woman married to each other for the sake of children is a fully chaste, moral approvable sexual act. Chastity, for Bonaventura, and in Christian moral terminology does not mean “no sex.”

Second, note that St. Bonaventura refers to “memborum generationis.” In fact, he seems to reduce human sexuality to human sexual organs and to reduce sexual organs to procreation. When Bonaventura and other scholastic theologians refer to sexual matters they simply assume that sex is only for procreation. That human sexual organs could also be positively viewed as memborum volupturum or memborum conjunctorum (organs of pleasure or organs of intimacy/union), St. Bonaventura would very likely think as a morally pernicious understanding or as a accidental and secondary aspect of sex, useful for moving humans toward their sexual organs’ only real purpose: procreation. For modern and postmodern people, however, pleasure and intimacy are sufficient reasons for having sexual relations; and many modern people think they are more important given economic and social conditions of of modern life than fertilization , which, increasingly can be achieved by other means than marital intercourse.

Third, note that St. Bonaventura’s treatment of the Commandment works in a negative framework. Of course, the Commandment against adultery is a prohibition, and this invites treating sexuality from the standpoint of what forms of sexual relations are against God’s will. But we will see that the rest of Bonaventura’s discussion of this Commandment focuses on forbidden acts. He does not present a positive picture of good sexual relations, which the prohibited acts he lists protect and promote. We will see that all these forbidden acts are wrong because they threaten or violate marital chastity. But the only reason marital sex is morally tolerable is that it is the means of procreation. Such “negative” treatments of human sexual powers led modern and postmodern readers to think that Christian moral teaching denigrates sexual relations, seeing sexual desire as a only a danger and not as an opportunity.

We return now to Bonaventura’s discussion of the seven wrongful uses of our “reproductive members.” 27 St. Bonaventura says that marital chastity (pudicitia28 coniugalis) has both a public (communis) and a privileged (privilegiata) aspect. Common or public chastity refers to the common, public good; the privileged chastity is the physical state of virginity vowed by secular priests, monks and nuns. Given these two-fold aspects of chastity, one can attack chastity by the following acts: Adultery in the specific sense of having genital sex with another’s spouse attacks marital chastity. Fornication and prostitution attack common, social chastity. Privileged virginity can be attacked in two ways, deflowering a virgin, and this occurs by rape, or by an act of sacrilege, i.e., having sexual relations with someone consecrated to God. (defloratio, et sic dicitur sacrilegium, scilicet quando aliquis Domino consecratam violet.) At another level, (fit contra fundamentum omnium istorum) are sins against nature (sic dicitur proprie peccatum contra naturam)29; and these have two forms. One is acts against the natural instinct (aut fit contra instinctum naturae), i.e., incest; or when one sins with oneself. Presumably, Bonaventura here means masturbation or sexual stimulation for pleasure in some other form. Sins against nature are the worst and are to be avoided above all others (Peccatum contra naturam scaelestissimum est et super omnia fugiendum.)

St. Bonaventura adds to this exposition of the Seventh Commandment a story related in the writings of Peter Damian.30 Two men were together in the desert doing penance. One, uneducated in his needs, sinned (quod peccatum suis exigentibus) , was deluded by the devil who told him that peccatum pollutionis (masturbation) was not against nature, and was no more sinful than blowing one’s nose. Having learned this from the devil, the man continued to pollute himself (ille pestifer exerciuit se in illa impudicitia.) When this man died, the devil collected his soul. Another person was amazed at this, because the man who died was known for his vigilance. Then an angel of the Lord explained to him that the sinner had become morally hideous through such a sin (Et tunc astitit angelus Domini, qui narravit ei, quod totum foedaverat per tale pecccatum). Thus, Bonaventura says, in conclusion, every libidinous experience (Omnis igitur actus, qui est in experientia libidinis) except that occurring in the sacrament of marriage (nisi fiat in forma matrimonii Ecclesiae) is sinful. 31

The Value of Bonaventura’s Teaching

St. Bonaventura’s teaching on adultery retains the original intention of the Seventh Commandment, at least in one respect. His teaching on sexual sins of adultery, fornication, rape, and incest have in common that they are wrong because they fall outside of the one allowable form of sexual relations, namely sexual relations between sacramentally married spouses. Granted that Bonaventura makes no defense here of his claim that only married partners may have sexual relations. Probably his argument would be that God ordained that man and women become one flesh in marriage and that this sexual union is the means for fulfilling God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. Still, his teaching is coherent to the extent that if sexual relations are only morally permitted between married partners, all other sexual acts must be morally wrong.

We can also affirm that Bonaventura’s teaching conforms to two positive teachings in the Bible about sexual relations. The Bible, in the second creation account (Genesis 2 18-24), describes the man whom God first created as incomplete without a woman (it is not good that man should be alone, so God created woman of Adam’s own nature. The man’s leaving his mother and father, and being joined to his wife (some form of marital relationship, with sexual union) enables this completion of the individual male with a female partner. Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, especially in his teaching against adultery and divorce, also affirms this goodness of the marriage bond. Thus, St. Bonaventura’s teachings, whatever limitations it might have otherwise, does support a principle teaching, the goodness of the marriage bond and sexual relations in the marriage bond, of the Bible.

We should note, however, that the Genesis passage about God’s providing Adam with a marriage and sexual partner does not link their sexual union with procreation. Only the first creation accounts, in Genesis 1:26-2:3, refers to God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply.” Hence, St. Bonaventura’s determination of sexual organs and sexual union to the sole person of procreation may be a narrowing of the biblical vision.

We can also note in passing that Bonaventura fails to provide a theological underpinning for the goodness of marriage. It would take us away from our major concern in this essay to speculate why. Bonaventura, however, has a very profound Trinitarian orientation and framework for his theology.32 A radical theological basis for marriage would try to relate marriage positively to the uniquely Trinitarian understanding of God. The fifth chapter of Ephesians begins this line of theological reflection on marriage by describing the marriage bond as an icon of God’s covenant love to the Church in Jesus Christ. We will return to this theme in our conclusion.

John Calvin on the Seventh Commandment

In this section we hear from the greatest theologian of the second Reformation generation, John Calvin. Calvin’s theology and Calvinism does not spring to mind when thinking about the “Joys of Sex.” In his widely influential book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (first edition, 1905), Max Weber described the parallels between the modern European’s ‘inner worldly’ asceticism, e.g., his or her saving and self-discipline in work and attitudes of seeking signs of God’s favor fostered by Calvin’s understanding of justification by grace through faith. 33 Thus, one does not expect to find in Calvin the doctrine, “Don’t worry, be happy.”

In fact, however, Calvin’s comments on the Commandment against adultery flow from a positive principle.34 That principle is love of God with the whole heart, mind and strength. “The Lawgiver wishes to possess us completely in his own right, requiring integrity of soul, spirit and body.” 35 God, as sovereign Lord, has a right not just over our thoughts, words and acts, but over our whole embodied selves. Our whole lives belong to God as our Creator, Redeemer and Perfecter. The believer, who trusts, loves and honors God, wants to bring every aspect of his or her life into the sway of God’s will. The Seventh Commandment simply states God’s claims over our sexual desires and needs.

So, when Calvin says at the beginning of his comment on this Commandment, that God loves modesty and purity, his meaning is not that God is a prude and embarrassed about fleshly desires. Rather, God wills that the gifts of the body and its desires be properly related to God’s will. This proper relation is complicated and made more difficult by the Fall, by humanity’s willful turning away from God. Being “fallen” from right relation to God causes our sexual desires to easily degenerate into lust to the deformation of our relation to God and to the injury of our neighbor.

Thus, says Calvin, in this Commandment not just adultery but all wrong uses of our sexual powers are meant, i.e., fornication generally. At this point36 Calvin focuses on marriage. Calvin says that God did not want man, as the individual male, to live alone but to have a partner, a helper. Therefore, God created woman and ordained marriage as a partnership. Marriage is both a provision of divine authority and also a blessing. Marriage also, after the Fall, has a special importance and necessity, given the tendency of fallen sexuality to degenerate into lust. So, Calvin can say that marriage is “a necessary remedy to keep us from plunging into unbridled lust.”

Calvin acknowledges that God can designate some people to dedicate themselves wholly to the church, to “pursue the affairs of the Kingdom of God. “ This is a “special gift for some. “ For most, however, abstinence from sexual relations in marriage should occur only for a time, following St. Paul’s teaching in I Corinthians 7:5. One should not neglect, counsels Calvin, God’s provision for dealing with incontinence.

Calvin also directs his counsel, therefore, to the right use of sexual relations within marriage. Married persons can also misuse sexual relations, letting them be driven “by uncontrolled and dissolute lust.” Married couples should now “wallow in extreme lewdness” and a man should not act as “an adulterer toward his own wife.” And, in public association, a believer should not “seduce the modesty of another with lewd dress, gesture and foul speech.” 37

Like St. Bonaventura, Calvin’s assessment of adultery is governed largely by his understanding of the institution of marriage. Marriage is a divinely authorized institution provided by God for human wholeness, i.e., to remedy the loneliness of the man who has not companion and helper. After the fall of humankind from a right relation to God, marriage has an additional purpose, i.e., channeling human sexual desire, which in a fallen world, tends incessantly to lust and fornication. Calvin’s teaching on marriage, therefore, is not simply that God provided it as a remedy for lust. Lust and fornication are symptoms of fallen humanity and God authorized sexual union and marriage before Adam and Eve’s disobedience. Marriage has a positive purpose, beyond and prior to being a remedy against the tendency of fallen sexuality to become lust and promiscuous. That positive purpose is companionship and partnership.

Conclusion

Modern and Postmodern critique of the Bible’s teaching on adultery and traditional Christian sexual ethics have one common feature. Both view the specific teaching on adultery as part of a larger, more comprehensive sexual ethic. In the first section of this essay we summarized three kinds of critique that secularized modern and postmodern people level at the traditional Christian sexual ethic. This critique refuses to view the prohibition of adultery in isolation; it judges the adultery Commandment as an integral part of a comprehensive patriarchal ethic that assumes that wives belong to their husbands and that women are subordinate to males in all aspects of life. But our brief review of St. Bonaventura and John Calvin on the Seventh Commandment also revealed how they considered this prohibition as an integral part of a larger sexual morality, namely a morality that allowed it alone to be the setting for sexual relations.

Comprehensiveness is a positive feature of both the traditional Christian sexual ethic and its modern critique. A sexual ethic must try to comprehend all aspects of human sexuality (genetic, physiological, evolutionary, psychological, socialization, social norms, etc. ) and specific forms of sexual activity. For human life, either seen by Christians as lived under and for God and neighbor, or seen secularly as a human project of self-construction in nature and history, requires viewing human life, individually and socially, as a whole. This comprehensiveness and coherence, therefore, in part distinguishes an adequate from an inadequate sexual ethic.

When we reviewed St. Bonaventura’s and Calvin’s teaching on the Seventh Commandment we observed how marriage played the central role. Marriage, as a divinely ordained gift and as a remedy against wrong uses of fallen human sexual powers was the central value to be protected. Only sexual relations that express the purposes of marriage (for Bonaventura, probably only procreation and the avoidance of fornication) ; for Calvin, probably companionship, procreation and the avoidance of fornication) are morally good. All other sexual acts are wrong insofar as they attack or undermine sexual union between heterosexual partners married to each other for life and reserving their sexual relations to themselves alone. Marriage is the good that all sexual prohibitions, including the Seventh Commandment should promote and protect.

St. Bonaventura and John Calvin could assume that life-long, monogamous, heterosexual marriage was the norm accepted by both church and the larger society. The privileged status of marriage, as an ordinance and gracious provision of God was, if not always honored in practice, was honored in thought and teaching.38 One important facet of the crisis of sexual teaching in the Christian churches today is that this assumption is losing its basis in the minds and hearts of people generally, including the minds and hearts of churchgoers.

Looking only within the Churches, we already reviewed the many ways life-long, monogamous, heterosexual, procreative marriage, as the normative standard for sexual relations, is dissolving. The Protestant Churches have never accepted the Roman Catholic teaching that using artificial means of birth control is morally wrong, and evidence exists that the majority of Roman Catholic laity, and some Roman Catholic moral theologians, agree. Both lay persons and ordained clergy divorce and suffer little or no ecclesial sanction. Divorced laity and divorced clergy (priests and bishops) remarry, not once but sometimes more than once, with ecclesial sanction. Clergy report that nine in ten couples seeking a church marriage are already living together. Thus, of the traditional sexual norms, only monogamy and heterosexuality still have some hold for marriage in the larger society. Yet, even these norms are weakening. Clergy and laity in good standing enter into same sex relationships, and in some parts of the church are lauded for their honesty, courage and openness to new directions from the Holy Spirit. 39 And, the norm of monogamy is challenged by serial monogamy, practiced in the larger society but also by clergy in but increasing in the Protestant Churches. In short, modern and postmodern norms of self-expression, self-actualization, value relativity and individualism, along with an understanding of Christian love that means that those who break traditional norms should not be ecclesial disciplined increasing hold sway in relation to marriage. And this is so, despite Jesus’ clear teaching that heterosexual, life-long marriage is grounded in God’s creative intention for the creation.

If the tradition of Christian sexual teaching assumed the norms of life-long, heterosexual, monogamous, procreative marriage, we are witnessing in our time the disintegration of Christian conviction that such marital norms should govern members of the Christian church. This conviction is not yet completely gone, but is increasingly weaker.

This requires thoughtful people in the church to raise several basic questions about sexual morality. One of these is what reason the church can give for elevating life-long, monogamous, procreative, heterosexual marriage as the place of normative sexual expression, as the institution from which all other sexual expressions should be assessed. Interestingly, to my knowledge, (and I have taught Christian ethics for 35 years in one of the traditional Christian churches) this central question is seldom addressed.

This essay has already reached alarming proportions, and there is no space for a compressive Christian theology and ethic of marriage. I will end, therefore, with some statements in the forms of “theses”, i.e., ideas that require fuller defense and development.

Thesis I. An adequate Christian ethic of marriage must be grounded in a theology, i.e., in an understanding of God’s nature and purposes. Commending traditional Christian marriage by simply repeating the traditional moral norms of heterosexuality, monogamy, etc. is inadequate. Christian ethics must plausibly demonstrate how and why marriage fits into God’s nature a God’s purposes. An ethical teaching about marriage must be deeply and thoroughly theological.

Thesis II. An adequate theological basis for Christian marriage must be Trinitarian. The distinctive, biblically grounded, historical formulated Christian understanding of God is that God is Three Persons in One Nature. The Deist, Pantheist, Polytheist, Atheist, and Panentheist alternatives are sub-Christian. Any theology of marriage that is not Trinitarian is fatally flawed and will ultimately not be accepted by the Christian community.

Thesis III. A Christian theology and ethic of marriage must be developed in relation to the Christian Gospel, i.e., the Christian affirmation of God’s will as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. God wills re-member human beings in relation to His own life, i.e., to enable human beings to share in His own Life, the life of generativity, communion, self-giving expressed in the language of the Three Persons in mutual relationship and unity.

Thesis IV. The primary perspective for believing Christians to think about their marriages and the marriages of others in the Church is not what can the church (clergy, counselors) do to help their marriage survive the stresses and strains of human nature and modern social conditions. The primary perspective should be how does my marriage and/or that of my fellow Christians contribute to the identity and mission of the Christian community. This perspective requires a 180-degree change in the pervasive, “pastoral” perspective about marriage in the church. Of course the church should nourish, support and help marriages among its members. But the Church is not primarily a service and supply organization to keep marriages together. Its mission is from God and its mission is to serve God, and all aspects of Christian’s lives should be ordered to this mission and service.

Thesis V. The teaching in Ephesians 5, that describes the sexual union between a man and a woman in the marriage bond as an “icon” or sign of God’s relation to the Church in Christ is a promising starting point for a Trinitarian, i.e., a distinctively Christian theology of marriage. This passage sets marriage in relation to the Person of the Father and the Son in their dynamic relationship, which also implies the Holy Spirit.

Thesis VI. The potential of a life-long, heterosexual, sexually exclusive marriage relation for being shaped by, sharing in and showing forth God’s Trinitarian Being is the key to developing a Christian theological ethic for marriage. At least three possibilities, uniquely offered by life-long, heterosexual, sexually exclusive marriage, should be given central place.

Thesis VII. As suggested in Chapter Five of Ephesians, the covenantal bond between spouses can and should, for the church and for the world, be a human symbol of God’s unfailing commitment to his creation, crowned in Christ. The traditional norm of monogamous, life-long marriage protects and promotes this possibility.

Thesis VIII. God is the Creator; God in His eternal life as the Father generating the Son is (as St. Bonaventura says)40 a fecund, generative being. Human creativity, in all its forms, including biological, intellectual, artistic, are ways human beings share in God’s creativity. The procreating and raising of children is a creative act that reaches from the body to the spirit (for heterosexual parents) , an amazingly rich possibility of sharing in and showing forth God’s creativity. Bearing children as believing parents is a rich way of being shaped by God’s creativity in the world and for the world. This possibility warrants Christians privileging heterosexual marriage and not granting heterosexual and homosexual relations equal moral value.

Thesis IX. The Holy Spirit in the Divine Life is the bond of unity. Married couples form a unity, an I-Thou community that has rich possibilities for sharing in, being shaped by and showing forth God’s power for community. However, a family, that is parents and a child or children, is an even richer expression of biological and social community for several reasons.41 The biological child shares the genetic inheritance of both parents. The love of each parent to the child is a kind of love of each spouse for the other. The child is a common responsibility for each spouse. Children in their neediness can evoke capacities of love that parents didn’t know they had.42 The potential for families (spouses who have children) to share in, show forth and be shaped by God, as Christians understand God, is richer than childless couples, or same sex couples who adopt.43

Thesis X. The Constantinian Era is dissolving. The Churches will increasingly have less capacity to determine public legislation, general social practices and social attitudes concerning the meaning of sex, sexual relations and sexual acts. This means the Church needs to return to its distinctive teachings about God as Creator, Redeemed and Unifier, and develops its distinctive teachings about the meaning and possibilities of marriage. The Church must look to itself to renew its marriage teaching; it cannot expect this teaching to be supported by a secularized society.

These distinctively Christian teachings, and especially their moral implications, may, surprisingly, coincide with widely shared insight about what promotes, protects and provides for the welfare of society as a whole.44 The Church may find that demographic, economic and social patterns in a secularized society, rather than just undermining and contradicting Christian teaching and practice, may confirm them. For example, the economic crises in western European nations and in Japan through non-socially sustainable birthrates lend support to the social wholesomeness of the norm of heterosexual, procreative marriage. This is only one of several ways traditional Christian moral norms about marriage find empirical confirmation in demographic and socio-psychological trends. But the Church can exist and thrive even when the cultural context is not supportive. The Church’s country is not defined by the geography of this world.

David Scott, Ph.D.

March, 2006

Murnau, Germany

1 It might be quite easy to find those who commend something close to adultery as defined in this paragraph. In the seventies and eighties, before Aids, “swingers” practiced consensual spouse swapping. . Also discussed, if not actually advocated, was “open marriage,” the practice of one spouse, with the knowledge of another, having sexual relations with someone other than their married partner. Observers of the “gay subculture” report that gay partners, who would define their relationship as “faithful” or “committed, ” more often than not tacitly or explicitly allow each other to have a casual sexual encounter with other partners. My point in the paragraph is that very few or no one, and certainly no author identifying themselves as Christian, argues for adultery in the traditional sense of sexual relations with the spouse of another against the will and knowledge of that partner’s spouse.

2 The debates over sexual ethics in the churches have reached such proportions that, for example, one commentator thinks the unity of the existing churches may well not survive the sexuality wars. See Gerald R. McDermott, in “A Review Essay” in Pro Ecclesia XIV (Fall 2005) : 493. See also in the same issue Harry L. Chronis’ comments at the beginning of his article “Alexandria or Antioch: The Hermeneutical Choice Confronting the American Old-Line” p. 389. Presently the unity of the Anglican Communion is only de jure, not de facto. Only the Archbishop of Canterbury can officially and juridical exclude a province from the Anglican Communion. In fact, however, some provinces of the Anglican Communion refuse to recognize the membership of the Episcopal Church because of that province’s recent consecration of a practicing homosexual bishop and allowing priests in dioceses to bless same-sex unon. .

3 Progressive Roman Catholic moralists will reject this point as properly descriptive of contemporary Catholic moral theology. That may be true, although one must always distinguish in Roman Catholic teaching between official teaching and the teachings of individual theologians and ethicists. My point here, however, is that for centuries Roman Catholic moral theology taught that the celibate state was, in some sense, morally superior to the married state (the vita contemplative was superior to the vita active; the counsels of perfection (including elective celibacy) were morally superior to moral rules applicable to all Christians) , and that this convictions is still held by many traditionalist Roman Catholics and is part of the general public’s perception of “Christian sexual norms.”

4 An Italian bishop promulgated this remarkable moral judgment during debates over birth control. In March 2006, Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) elevated this Italian bishop to Cardinal in the RC Church.

5 See the Commandment against coveting, e.g., Exodus 20:17.

6 The subordinate value of females compared to males is also evident in the legislation of Leviticus 12, according to which a woman who bore a male child was “ceremonially unclean” for only one week but if she bore a female child was “ceremonially unclean” for two weeks. Another “inequalty marker” was the legislation regarding bodily emissions. If a man had a discharge of semen, he was unclean for one day. If a woman had her period, she was unclean for a week.

7 For example the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, 1968.

8 See James Joyce’s horrific description of a priest’s retreat talk to young boys which included a description of the howling soul hurled into hell in A Portrait of the Artist as a Yong Man, toward the opening of Section III.

9 In the western Christian churches that allow marriage for its clergy divorce is not as high as in the general population but is substantial. Furthermore, many Protestant clergy are divorced and remarried. In the Episcopal Church, clergy, including bishops, have been married two and three times in Church ceremonies.

10 However, veracity requires acknowledging that the initial rapid spread of the Aids virus was largely due to gay promiscuity. To my knowledge the so-called “gay community” has not acknowledged this complicity, although individual commentators have acknowledged it.

11 This does not mean that efforts to make a significant reorientation from homosexual to heterosexual orientation and practice are wrong or will always fail. It does mean that the endeavor will not always be successful and even “successful” reorientations may not be as stable as normal heterosexual orientations. Most modern and postmodern people, whose moral norms are grounded in affirmation of individual rights, individual autonomy, tolerance of difference, and justice toward “the other” insist that expecting or requiring a person with a deeply ingrained same- sex orientation to remain celibate or to try to change their orientation to heterosexual orientation violates that person’s humanity. In the Church of England today, homosexual clergy are entering into civil partnerships. Recent Church of England policy requires such persons to inform their bishops that the relationship remains celibate, but press reports say that this requirement is usually ignored.

12 This is the point of such post resurrection stories as account in Luke 24.

13 For divine legislation in cases where a man had two wives, see Deuteronomy 21: 15 ff. Regarding sexual relations with female slaves there is no explicit legislation in the Hebrew Bible, only accounts of instances of it. Numbers 31:32 recounts how 32,000 virgins were taken as booty after an Israelite victory over the Mideanites. To whom these 32,000 virgins were given is not clear from the text, although v. 17 recounts Moses instructing the officers to kill all the women were not virgins but to keep “all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, [kept] alive for yourselves.” However v. 21 speaks of all the booty, including the girls, being divided between the soldiers and “the congregation.” Verse 41 speaks of 32 of these girls being given to Eleazar the priest.

14 The number of King Solomon’s women was legendary, according to I Kings 11:1ff, seven hundred princesses and 300 concubines. The narrative states that God was angry with Solomon, not because he had more than one wife but because Solomon allowed his wives to divert his loyalty from Yahweh to other gods.

15 Jeremiah 3:9 contains a similar description of idolatry (committing adultery with stone and tree) as adultery.

16 Two versions exist in the New Testament: Matthew 5-7 and Luke 6. Matthew’s version is the longer and fuller.

17 Jesus’ linking of adultery and lust, indeed, his equating them, implies that pornography should be included in any discussion of adultery. This would burst the bounds of this essay, if only because pornography has assumed massively new dimension, largely because of the revolution in information technology and changing attitudes toward sexual pleasure.

18 Matthew 5:32.

19 In Matthew’s version of Jesus’ teaching, Jesus allows divorce in the case of the wife’s sexual immorality; in Mark and Luke, Jesus gives no allowing reason for divorce.

20 The Gospel According to St. John, chapter 8.

21 This basic theme is expressly stated in John, 20:30, and 31. However, the theme pervades the Fourth Gospel and is closely connected to the idea that Jesus’ actions are signs which function to evoke faith by showing Jesus in the truth of his being.

22 Matthew 19:16ff.

23 Thus I think we should understand Jesus’ moral teaching in the Sermon on the Mount about murder and adultery in relation his teaching about the heart as the source of sinful works. The key passage here is Mark 7:21f.

24 St. Bonaventura, Sixth Collationes de deem praeceptis; Sextum Praecptum, paragraph 12.

25 St. Bonaventura, Sixth Collationes de decem praeceptis. Ibid.

26 T. Bonaventura, Sixth Collationes de decem praeceptis. Ibid.

27 We present here Bonaventura’s teaching in Collatio 6 of his Lectures on the Decalogue, paragraphs 13-1

28 Pudicitia can be translated by bashfulness, modesty, chastity, virtue, in classical Latin. Pudor, -oris however, is translated as the feeling of shame, as well as bashfulness, modesty, decency. Medieval theology may have been drawn to this word because one of its meanings is chastity and virtue. However, the ling between pudicitia and shame in the expression “pudicitia coniugalis” suggests that even marital is shameful for some reason or to some extent. The link between sex and shame is made in the Bible, i.e., in Genesis 2 and 3, speaking of Adam and Eve being naked yet not ashamed but then as something of which they are ashamed and a cause for hiding from God. However, Greek thought, as taken over by western Catholic theology, associated the sexual drive and desires as threatening the rule of human reason, and , as irrational, as something sub-human. That sexual desire and sexual relations are somehow inherently bad, something we should be ashamed of, lingers as a bad odor around traditional Christian teaching about sexuality. This denigration of sexual desire and pleasure, as we have said, is a basis for the massive critique of traditional Christian sexual moral teaching by modern and postmodern people.

29 The definition of “acts against nature” is determined by the definition of the natural law used by St. Bonaventura wrote. This definition was: “ Ius naturale est quod natura omnia animalia docuit.” The natural law is what all animal nature teaches. Modern and postmodern people object that the sexual behavior of dogs and bulls should define for humans what human sex is and and what sexual acts are morally permitted or forbidden.

30 Saint Peter Damian (1007-72), Doctor of the Church. Born in Ravenna, Italy, he became prior of a hermitage near Gubbio about 1043. During the following years he corresponded with Henry III, Holy Roman emperor, and with Pope Leo IX, attacking abuses practiced by the clergy, particularly simony and the violation of the vow of celibacy, and urging reforms.

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31 Bonaventura also states that a person can suffer a pollution , but this is without cause or guilt. (In somnis patitur homo quandoque pollutions absque culpa et absque causa) We should also note that in this discussion of adultery, Bonaventura does not mention sexual relationships between members of the same sex. Homosexual relations Bonaventura may include in acts against the human sexual instinct and as acts against nature. Or he may have considered such acts as so bad they should not even be mentioned.

32 We explored Bonaventura’s rich Trinitarian theology in our series of essays on St. Bonaventura’s Disputed Questions on the Trinity.

33 This essay on the Commandment against adultery leaves no room for discussing the important differences between Luther and Calvin’s understandings of justification by grace through faith. Both Luther and Calvin affirmed that the sinner is justified by faith, not by good works, and that faith is a gracious gift of God. However, each understood this quite differently. I commend the superb essay by Philip Cary, “Why Luther is not quite Protestant: The Logic of Faith in a Sacramental Promise, ” in Pro Ecclesia XIV (Fall 2005): 447-486. There, Cary convincingly argues that Luther’s notion of faith was patterned after the Catholic notion of sacramental effectiveness. That is, for Luther faith trusts in the truth of God’s forgiving Word, Jesus Christ. Confidence of being saved was grounded in the unquestioned truthfulness of God in Christ, not in a subjective certainty that one believed in Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Savior. For Luther, faith’s object, God, not the believing person, defined faith. For Calvin, by contrast, God saves those who truly trust in Christ. Therefore, the certainty of being saved rests for Calving and later Calvinism, in part on being convinced that one truly believes in Christ as Savior. Assurance that one elected and saved , thus, for Calvin and Calvinism, involved and involves a self-examination and self-assessment about the authenticity of one’s own trust in Christ. Since the degree and quality of one’s trust is a decisive feature in assurance that one is saved, the adult, one-time, dramatic conversion experience became an important Protestant feature. And, since the purity and steadiness of one’s inner trust in Jesus Christ is always questionable, assurance of personal salvation became a constant worry for the Calvinistic stream of Protestant Christianity. If one follows Calvin’s conception of justification by faith, one looks for evidences that one’s subjective trust in Christ (fides qua creditor) is genuine. The secular form, Max Weber argued, is to look for worldly “blessings,” e.g., financial and social achievement, as signs that God is blessing one, and that one is a justified person in God’s eyes.

34 I follow, as in previous essays in this series, Calvin’s commentary on the Decalogue in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter viii, paragraphs 41ff.

35 Institutes, II, viii., 44.

36 Institutes, II, viii. 41.

37 Institute, II, viii. 44.

38 One might object that the medieval, courtly, minnesinger tradition expressed a variant view, one acknowledging that romantic love between a married woman and her admirer was common and accepted. This tradition of courtly love, however, excluded in its theory sexual relations between the lover and his beloved, and in this respect conformed to the dominant tradition. This love without sex gave this tradition its poignancy and tragic aspects.

39 In the ecclesial trial of Episcopal bishop. Ryder, Diocese of Newark, charged with assisting at the blessing of the relationship same-sex partners, the ecclesiastical court found that the Episcopal Church had no normative doctrine of marriage. Lacking normative teaching, Bp. Ryder’s blessing of a same-sex union could not be deemed to violate his church’s teaching.

40 In his work, Breviloquium, for example, Bonaventura attributes to the Divine Triune Nature such attributes as summum fecunditatem, caritatem, liberalitatem, aequalitatem, germanitatem See Breviloquium Part I, Chapter II, paragraph 2.

41 Richard of St. Victor develops this point in his treatise, De Trinitate, Book III, especially where Richard distinguishes between dilectio, the love of one to another, and condilectio, a shared love with a third.

42 A nice point made some decades ago by Stanley Hauerwas in an essay on having children.

43 This statement is meant to indicate a possible Christian argument for procreation. It is not meant to denigrate couples who adopt children or who need, for example, because of infertility problems, to seek the help of laboratory means of conceiving children.