This week we hosted a fun, at times raucous and always wonderful dinner (thanks to the chef). The five guests were Twitter friends and Christians.
Most of them also run in decidedly more liberal theological circles than I do, which brought up the question that I want to start chipping away at today–the question of sex.
But before I do, I want to underscore that this difference between us made the evening challenging and thought provoking in a way that makes me thankful for my friends to my left (i.e., the friends on my Twitter feed!). What ensues is a reflection that I hope will be continuing a conversation among friends–even if friends who disagree.
The person in whose honor this festive gathering was held had been asked something along the lines of, “*gulp* Why are you going to dinner at the house of a Fuller professor?!” And I hope that the ready answer to that for her and the other folks there would be something like, “Because even though we disagree about some important things, he still respects me as a friend and as a fellow traveler trying to find the way in which to faithfully follow Jesus.” That’s definitely what I sense from all of them as well.
So, without further ado, the question. In response to my rather old school view that sexual intercourse should be reserved for marriage, I was asked why.
Why does sex have to take place within marriage to be considered ethically good?
As I start to answer that question, please note that I have circumscribed the issue to sexual intercourse. In response to an earlier post, some folks were concerned that I hadn’t given due attention to the fact that we are still sexual people in numerous ways even when not having sexual intercourse per se. That point is well made, and has some significant implications. But for now, I’m setting that aside.
The person who asked me the question about why sex has to happen within marriage to be ethically good also expressed some frustration with Christians pulling out “biblical” as an adjective to baptize their views on any number of things–including sexuality. And I take her point. If someone wanted to give a “biblical” view of marriage or sex, there are any number of things you could say that most of us would find incongruous with what is “good” or down right reprehensible.
Thus, for example, few Christians look to the great heroes of the Old Testament as providing us with divine sanction to take multiple spouses. What my brother and good friend referred to as “the dispensation of multiple wives” does not strike most of us as carrying normative force in the present. But if you wanted to argue for a “biblical” view of marriage, you could make just this sort of argument.
To take another, not insignificant, example, the marriage law and practices we see reflected in the Bible reflect a view of women as property and/or as under the complete control of their male guardians. Girls had value as potential brides that was significantly diminished by having sex before the wedding night. Fathers were assumed to have the right to keep their daughters from marrying if, for example, they thought that Jesus might come back in a year or so and that there wasn’t much point.
Up against such elements of cultural embeddedness, is there any point in trying to articulate a Christian view of sexuality that somehow looks to scripture as setting the trajectory for loving God with all our sex?
I don’t think it’s a lost cause, but before I start building the case tomorrow and over the weekend, I’d honestly like to hear from you: on what basis do we build a Christian theology of sex? and is there any hope for a biblical theology of sex that makes sense in a 21st-century context?
I think that this basic introductory question is, in the end, where the disagreements over the substance of a Christian theology of sex will have to be engaged.
First – I’d like to follow you on Twitter. I admire your interest and willingness to engage with people “to your left”. I’ve enjoyed following your blog and commenting here on occasion.
Now onto the substance of the post. Yes, there is hope for a Christian theology of sex that makes sense in the 21st century and engages seriously with the Bible. If you haven’t yet, you should look at the work of Margaret Farley “Just Love”, and Marie Fortune “Love Does No Harm”. Both are probably to your left, but both attempt just what you are describing and I think make very good strides in that direction.
Whatever ethic you finally construct for it to be relevant to our context it must in my opinion take seriously several things:
#1 the huge change in the position of women. I would reject out of hand any ethic which demands a return to more patriarchal norms. If women cannot function as equals it is not an ethical sexual ethic.
#2 Changes in the definition of adulthood – age of consent. When marriage occurred by arrangement at puberty it was a very different thing then occurring at 25-30 by choice.
#3 Holistic sexuality. I know for the purposes of argument you have limited yourself here to discussing sexual intercourse. Perhaps for a short while that is an acceptable limitation for the sake of argument, but eventually to construct a sexual ethic that is relevant we must deal with whole people. Sex is not just intercourse. Sex is flirtation, affection, biochemical changes in our bodies. Sex is exploration as children. Sex is a crush on your teacher. Sex is handholding and being comforted in the midst of grief. Sex is part of our identity.
Just a quick observation about point #3:
I’m a bit twitchy about the relatively recent tendency to take nearly anything “human” or “emotional” and identify it as “sex.” Is flirtation really “sex”? Is “affection” or “attraction” sex? Being comforted in the midst of grief is sex? Really?
To put it another way, I doubt anyone will consider a brief “attraction” to someone else “adultery.” So, although we are whole beings and a part of our being as embodied creatures is tied to gender and sex, I’m not sure it is fruitful to consider such things “sex,” especially in a morality discussion.
Rather, my suggestion is that “sex” be limited first to specific behaviors and actions (as opposed to feelings, biochemical changes, attractions, etc.); otherwise, this discussion rather rapidly ceases to have much meaning or potential practical application. In contrast, if “sex” is more or less “identity” (something Foucault, for example, strongly protests), the very concept of “sexual morality” is highly problematic, because any declaration of a sexual activity as “immoral” immediately serves as a blanket condemnation not of a person’s action but of that person’s very identity. This is something we should resist, as it is ultimately de-humanizing.
Jason,
Thanks for replying.
Not all things are equally sexual. Some behaviors are more obviously sexual than others and some behaviors can be sexual or not depending on their context. I don’t mean to make any kind of easy or simplistic 1:1 correlation between everything vaguely sexual and sex.
However, the line is fuzzy not clear and bright and it must include much more than behavior, but also include aspects of identity, development, and relationship. The reasons I insist this is so are several:
Psychology and Neuroscience are in absolute agreement that sexuality is complex and integrative. There are reasons why things like stress at work can make a man impotent. They are biochemically, physically and emotionally connected. Sexual exploration, and discovery at young ages impacts sexual behavior and expression our entire lives. This is partly why abuse is such a serious issue. Sexuality potently and dramatically influences everything from how we get employment to how we interpret an advertisement in a magazine. Avoiding the obvious connections means we will arrive at a truncated ethic that doesn’t address reality.
So I must disagree that we should limit ourselves to discussing specific behaviors. That would be an appropriate deontological approach, which has been the usual mode of the church, but it is failing drastically as evidenced by the constant scandal and the vast majority of the population simply ignoring the church’s advice on this subject. We need a holistic, virtue based, approach that takes the entire subject into consideration and develops practices for sexual ethics that can be applied as much by a teenage girl as an octogenarian widower or a disabled thirty year old and not just when it comes to intercourse, but in the entire rainbow of potential sexual interactions.
Every aspect of existence is pretty much complex and integrative. Regardless, I don’t think we need a theology of flirtation or handholding as much as we do with regards to sexual intercourse. So I would leave #3. out for now as well.
For me:
1. A useful theology about sex would need to be a descriptor and predictor of human behavior and real-world consequences as good as or better than other descriptions that already exist. One of the huge problems with existing theologies is that they require I set aside what I have personally experienced as well as existing descriptions which already accurately portray and predict human sexuality.
So, for example, a theology of sex that relies on gender binaries won’t be useful to me, because I have friends and loved ones who do not fit easily (or at all) into the male/female gender binary. For people who are outside gender binaries (let us say, hypothetically, that we’re dealing with a persons who possesses physical sex characteristics of both genders from birth) typical theological discussions of “male” and “female” aren’t merely alienating — they’re actually useless.
2. Such a theology would need to be honest about how humans actually behave.
3. Such a theology would need to have the Golden Rule as its focus.
4. Such a theology should not really be a litmus test for whether I hold to a particular metanarrative about what kind of thing the Bible is. A lot of American Evangelicals, for example, use one’s views about sex as a means for determining if one is “in the club” with them.
I don’t know if it directly answers your question or not, but I would certainly submit that we need to unpack the term we usually translate in English along the lines of “sexual immorality.” While the Bible does seem to use that term often, I do think that it is a fallacy to assume that “sexual immorality” = “extra-marital sex” as largely interchangeable terms, even if at the end of the discussion we ultimately determine that the Bible indeed requires that sexual intercourse remains within a marriage relationship.
So far the few comments seem to be wanting to work out the definitions of “sex” and gender. Useful explorations, to be sure. Just to add to the mix, I think it will be important to define what you mean by “marriage.”
I think that sexual ethics is an important discussion to be had, especially considering the numerous issues that branch off of this discussion (divorce, remarriage, infertility, dating, LGBT identity, et al. )
Nevertheless, I understand that many in todays envrionment would attempt to see “sex” and “sexual attractedness” as an aspect of one’s identity. This innate identity is a foreign concept to the pages of the New Testament. To put it another way, the New Testament does not discuss concepts of sexual orientation (see Boswell’s work). To be clear, I am not limiting my comment here to a LGBT discussions, but rather orientation in its broader meaning; that is, one’s orientation or innate sexual proclivity towards any other.
Therefore, to talk about one’s identity as innately sexual is to bring a paradigm into the discussion that is foreign to the discussion happening within the NT. As a result, the two paradigms can no longer be dialogue parters since they approach the topic from anthropological differences. I think it is important to glean what the NT is saying about the sexuality in all its forms, without imposing modern conceptions of what sexuality is like on the ancient text — they simply did not think like we do about the topic.
Second, limiting the discussion to a discussion of behavior or actions is Kantian or deontological (if you prefer). If we are going to discuss ethics, I think it is important for consistency to remain in the same “ethical world” of the New Testament and discuss character, self-control, worship, fidelity, and the like. These virtues guide sexuality rather than one’s actions. Moving the discussion from the person to the action is to move the discussion away from the Aristotelian ethic germane to the NT.
Finally, is there hope? Yes, I do think there is hope for a contemporary ethic. The NT’s call to character formation modeled after Christ’s and his Kingdom affects every area of one’s life. The sexual vision of the NT is one of covenant loyalty to one’s spouse and virtue-based sexuality. As such, this atemporal vision functions to provide a vision of a life scripted by kingdom character. Much more could be said here, but I will shut-up now, this is now long enough!
Thanks!
Daniel, I think that the recent post you made about the apostles and the seven from Acts 6 is a good example of how to build a biblical theology on any subject (whether waiting on tables, preaching, or sex). You look to see how any particular section fits with the general flow of the narrative. In the case of Acts 6, you were able to refer back to Luke and ahead in Acts to see a subtle and often overlooked rebuke of the apostles’ unwillingness to serve the Greek widows. That transforms Acts 6 from a simple narrative about the origins of the diaconate (or a normative passage explaining why pastors don’t need to do anything except preach and pray) into a passage that pushes us to imitate Jesus’ humility whenever we encounter unexpectedly trying situations.
With sex, you are dealing with a broader issue and a larger chunk of the Bible. I think that God’s creation is progressive, in the sense that it is (under Christ, and through the Spirit) moving towards a goal (the kingdom of God, personal conformity to the image of Christ, etc. – there are many descriptions of the goal). Revelation has likewise progressed along with creation. The 8th commandment and Leviticus 18 gave Israel certain boundaries for sexual relationships and grounded those in the logic of the covenant, while Proverbs and the Song of Songs later added positive, more “humanistic” motivations for chastity and marital faithfulness. Jesus and the apostles build on this foundation in ways that are appropriate for the dawn of the kingdom and the gift of the Spirit (think Matthew 5 on lust and divorce, or Ephesians 5 and the sacramental understanding of marriage). Ultimately, marriage itself will end (see Luke 20:27-40 – and I am always intrigued with what that implies about sexuality in the resurrection), but we have not yet reached that point. Living when we do, with the Spirit but before the last day, we should expect continual improvement in our understanding and practice of marriage and sexual intimacy, along with the continual presence of those covenantal (and humanistic) boundaries that help preserve marriage and sex as blessings.
One question I have for you concerns the necessity of this. Are we at a point where the church needs to re-ground all of its ethics and practice diachronically? Can scripture (or the teachers of the church) speak simply and forcefully, or should we assume that “nothing can be assumed” nowadays with regard to what discipleship actually involves? If that seems to be a question with an obvious answer, remember that I’m in the suburbs of a medium-sized southern city!
I second Rob’s comment, with the addition of an awareness and sensitivity with the New Testament teaching on ‘desire’ – root causes, how they influence how we think, and the nature of desires that ‘feel natural’ to those that experience them (some good, some bad – and most mixed – and I know I have many that ‘feel natural’ that are ultimately destructive to my true humanness and to my union with God).
Are we assuming that “ethically good” sex demonstrates something to a watching world about who God is?
Here’s why I ask…
It seems to me that ethics (arguably attached to election, covenant, and redemption) are about a watching world discovering the truth about God and experiencing His love. (I cannot separate ethics from mission).
I’m not sure that, as a monogamous, married sexual practitioner, my sex has ever put God on display to a “watching world.”
However…
Perhaps ethically good sex (read “sex within marriage”) is a part of our ongoing formation in that it reminds us of our belovedness in the most intimate of ways. The ethical implications of living secure as the beloved, then, are evident to a watching world.
Continuing my train of thought…
Sex outside of the covenant of marriage would not carry the same formational potential as sex within marriage. That is, sex outside of marriage, while physically satisfying, continues to confuse my sense of belovedness and, therefore, further inhibits my ability to live unencumbered as the beloved.
My only opposition to patriarchal norms is that when you take away someone’s opportunity it breeds inefficiency. In other words, in a patriarchal society where women are cut off from even trying to do what they want there is a lot of wasted potential. That being said I think we all have certain functions to fulfill with the strengths that God has given us. It’s not much of a stretch of the imagination to me to see that resulting in different places for men and women in society with men tending to fall in dominant leadership positions. I hope that’s not too offensive for everybody.
As far as sexual morality goes I would argue that a ban on sex before marriage (being enforced equally for men and women) is a very empowering thing for women, who are often left holding the bag when it comes to the consequences of promiscuity. Even in this day of condoms and birth control women are still constantly getting abandoned with children. Not to mention women are more prone to STDs than men.
I think that while there is no 11th commandment “though shalt not have intercourse until thou art married” the attitude of the Bible authors often shows a sentiment that is sympathetic to this view. One example would be 1 Corinthians 7:9. The impression I get is that the two options are marry or burn with passion. The option of simply having sex without marriage is not factored in. Not being a biblical scholar I might be mistaken but the general impression I get about sex when I read the Bible is that the author is assuming we know we’re only supposed to have sex with our spouses (or concubines if we’re rich or kings). We could probably find examples of people in the Bible having sex outside marriage or concubineage without explicit condemnation of the authors, but generally I think the Bible tradition exposes a sentiment that is sexually conservative.
The property or quality by which organisms are classified as female or male on the basis of their reproductive organs and functions.
Either of the two divisions, designated female and male, of this classification.
Females or males considered as a group.
The condition or character of being female or male; the physiological, functional, and psychological differences that distinguish the female and the male. See Usage Note at gender.
The sexual urge or instinct as it manifests itself in behavior.
Sexual intercourse.
The genitals.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/sex#ixzz1AxRKd4HY
I think that from a biblical perspective the example of a monogamous Adam and Eve, in their pre-fall pre-sin state, demonstrates the intended purpose and context of sexual relations. Genesis portrays marriage as divinely created for the purpose of pro-creation and companionship. This model, not the post-fall actions of Israel’s patriarchs and kings, seem to be the New Testament vision of sexual relations.
Marc – I’d have to agree with you. But then, isn’t the very act of sexual intercourse the point at which Adam and Eve become ‘one flesh’? As far as I know, they didn’t have an official marriage ceremony. Is sexual union the start of their marriage?
Um, I’m not sure?
That is a lot of theological baggage read into a short allegory (“pre-fall” “pre-sin” “post-fall”), not to mention importing things which aren’t present in the passage at all like marriage, which is nowhere mentioned… and then quite a large leap that I don’t think is exegetically sustainable. There is a lot in scripture that I would use for building a sexual ethic. Genesis is not where I would start.
Jesus often goes back to Genesis to discuss sexuality and issues related to marriage and sexuality.
I was expecting someone to say that.
First of all, Jesus doesn’t “often” use Genesis. We have a couple examples of him dealing with matters of sexuality by referring to Genesis.
Secondly, the context of when and how and why he used Genesis in those instances is important. Look at who he was debating. He uses Genesis as a rhetorical technique undermining the arguments of the scribes and pharisees by using their own tactics against them. They quote Torah so he goes to an even earlier part of Torah. It doesn’t mean it forms the foundation of Jesus’ sexual ethics any more than anyone reading these blog comments could be sure they know our full thoughts on the issue from fragments of a conversation.
Much more relevant than the fact that Jesus quoted Genesis is that he did so invariably in ways that countered cultural practices that were degrading to women.
Perhaps more important than that is that Jesus himself, as far as we are able to tell, lived a celibate life as did Paul and several of the apostles. Paul commends celibacy as BETTER than marriage. Marriage, in fact, he rather demeans as a bone for the spiritually weak to prevent destructive expressions of sexuality.
This is hardly the standard conservative reading of the second creation narrative where man & woman are created to become “one flesh” through marriage and commanded to procreate.
“Often” was too much. He does refer to God’s original purposes with creation though, which He obviously feels are portrayed in the text. I suppose almost everything Jesus does in challenge-riposte could be referred to as an “undermining” “rhetorical technique” so this really doesn’t help. This was the social function of the shame game, but says nothing against the legitimacy of the propositions found therein. Paul also uses Genesis on the same issues. It seems that it would be very reasonable for a first century Jew to refer to Genesis for such purposes as it would have been seen as the first instance of God addressing such matters. Further, Jesus does not trump the Pharisees by virtue of an “earlier” reference. He trumps them by virtue of his own authority, elucidating Moses’s accomadation. It seems clear from Mark 10 that Jesus believes Genesis is foundational to an understanding of marriage with regards to unity and fidelity.
Further, if Jesus was merely or mainly concerned with less degredation for women in contemporary practice of divorce, he would’ve simply addressed the inequality directly and pronounced “equal rights” for women on the matter. Rather, it seems obvious that he’s mainly concerned with the dissolution of the bond of marriage which God originally created to be permanent. Your point here, rather than being much more relevant, seems to be very much irrelevant. If anything, it is modern assumption that gender equality is intentionally addressed in any way in this passage.
Regarding Paul, I think its an overstatement/oversimplification to say he thought celibacy was superior to marriage. It was best, *if* it could be sustained, given the eschatological context (“the time is short”). But he states that it is better to marry than to burn with passion, and elsewhere that, *because* there is so much immorality, marriage is perferrable. Far from being a justification for celibacy, Paul makes a good argument for the practicality of marriage (in his day and our day).
I think the starting place is the Trinity and creation. Marriage is a mirror of the perfect coinherent relationality of the Trinity and of the difference of the persons of the Trinity. Thus, while I agree that Marc’s reading of the “Adam and Eve” story is probably too freighted with Reformed theological baggage, I think he’s correct to see something very important in the union of the one man and the one woman in Gen. 2:24.
From a narratival-canonical perspective, I think you also see this echoed throughout scripture in the covenant between God and Israel and the metaphor of the “bride” between Christ and the Church. Richard Hays develops the narratival perspective very well, IMHO, in his book on NT ethics (“The Moral Vision of the New Testament”).
I expect this will be a lengthy conversation, so I’ll just offer this at the outset.
It has already been protested several times here that the ancient world, in general, and the biblical texts, in particular, contain degrading attitudes towards women. I would caution against such a preconception. A few thoughts on this.
1. We are, I believe, blessed to have a set of scriptures that refuse to hide the blemishes of the people of God who occupy the place of lead characters. Certainly, then, even deplorable behaviors take center stage in the narrative with sometimes little explicit or implicit condemnation.
2. I could not count the number of times I thought I knew what an Old Testament (or New, for that matter) text said and meant, only to have another point to something I was not aware. Too often have I assumed the ancient Hebrews to be archaic and primitive, only to find, after more careful study, that they were likely at least as intelligent or “modern” than we think ourselves to be.
We may actually find in this exploration of sexual theology that the Old Testament texts that we assume to be degrading towards women are actually quite empowering for women. Let’s reserve this judgment for (much) later in the conversation.
Finally, if I may, I’ll point everyone to a teaching I’ve found exceptionally helpful (and not at all typical of what I’ve found in the evangelical world) on this topic. It comes from Gordon Hugenberger, senior pastor at Park Street Church in Boston and professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
http://www.rededicate.org/archives/marriage/
Daniel, if dropping links is not OK, please let me know. I benefit in no way by people visiting the above link.
Mike, I couldn’t agree more that it is a blessing to have scriptures which are honest about the foibles of their characters. I do not support anyone coming at the Bible with a pair of scissors. That honesty in the record is crucial for maintaining our own humility. Sure as the sun will rise in 100 years or 1000 our own culture viewed through the lens of hindsight will be riddled with inequity and evil. We could not more write a perfect Bible with only moral exemplars in its pages than the original authors did.
Also, you are correct that often when juxtaposed with the cultural options of its day the scriptures come away looking remarkably progressive. Provisions for marrying female slaves in the Torah are a way of preventing men from just sexually abusing their female slaves. Forced marriage from slavery is probably better than serial rape. That doesn’t make forced marriage from slavery a good thing.
We can recognize the value of scripture and be impressed by the moral trajectory of it without approving of the conclusions. There simply are many many places in scripture where the ethics are repugnant, especially as it concerns women.
For example – a husband may accuse his wife of adultery without witnesses or proof of any kind. (The same is not true in reverse. Adultery is only a crime a woman may commit because it is not about sexual fidelity it is about male property rights over his wife.) The woman so accused must then drink poison. If the poison makes her sick she is guilty and the husband can have her stoned to death.
We can compare this law to worse possibilities and see that it represents something slightly more humane than those options. The husband could have full authority to dispose of his wife how he wishes with no test. And if we subscribe to magical thinking that God will protect the virtue of the innocent woman by preventing the poison from harming her we might at least imagine that many innocent women were acquitted this way. But none of that makes this an acceptable, moral, or empowering procedure for women. We rightly reject this as despicable.
Aric, I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this issue. Thank you.
I’m happy you raised this particular passage (Num 5:11-31). This is exactly the kind of passage to which I’m referring – one that I had originally thought was degrading toward women, but is in fact quite the opposite.
I was recently discussing this passage with a Rabbi friend of mine who assured me that the person who is really on trial here is the husband, who is enraged with unfounded jealousy. Consider that there exists neither evidence nor witness to the woman’s supposed adultery. What, then, makes the husband suspect infidelity? Consider that the word for adultery from the Decalogue (na’aph) is nowhere found in this passage. Consider that the priest is to concoct a magic potion, elsewhere forbidden in the Law (Lev 19:26). Consider that whether guilty or not, the woman would become pregnant and that it is unlikely that anyone in that culture assume that her pregnancy was the product of anyone other than her husband (there had been no proof of infidelity, remember). Consider that if she was “guilty,” she would miscarry, and that it is very bad for the husband in ancient near eastern culture for a husband to have no progeny. Consider, further, that elsewhere in the Law if a woman is caught in adultery, she receives the same punishment as the man (Dt 22:22-24), but if it could be conceived as rape, she is guiltless (Dt 22:25-27).
By all accounts, this is a law that actually demonstrates the absurdity of unfounded male jealousy. What husband in his right mind would consider putting his wife (and himself) through such a display when everyone knows there is no evidence.
So all this to say that we should perhaps reserve judgment to just how “repugnant” the Hebrew scriptures are.
I’m new around here, and obviously out of my league. I hope I’m not presuming on either count by offering a comment.
It seems to me that being faithful to the god who was good enough to think up tangled legs and round bottoms requires a least four considerations.
First (and I’m sure it’s the catholic in me), I think ‘stuff‘- including our bodies- speaks. It ‘means.’ Sex has a grammar. It tells a story. The Christian narrative of ecstasy, the spiraling getting that comes from the physical giving away of ourselves (how can we say where one ends and the other begins) and unfaltering fidelity speak of the eternal perichoretic God in whose image we are made.
It then speaks of Christ and his bride, because of the communion in God’s life that union with him raises us to.
It speaks of the crucifixion in that the cross is the shape that this eternal ‘giving away’ of self (Eternally Begetting, begotten, and proceeding) takes, when placed in opposition to sin.
It seems to me that a Xian sexual ethic requires that our sexual actions be faithful to the larger images in the gospel story that they point to (by being ‘smaller’ instances of the same).
I imagine the idea that sex speaks will seem…silly, but it is a Xian account we’re after, and oughtn’t the sacramental/incarnational twists in the Christian story have something to say about that?
Secondly, we need to be mindful of how our actions form our desires and expectations as human beings. The emphasis is positive and Christward- not some sort of negation.
Third, we need to be ever mindful of how our ‘use’ of another, effects them.
And lastly, we need to be aware of contemporary challenges to Christ’s lordship and the enacted and spoken stories that form people in those competing idolatrous ways. We need to make sure that our sexual telling challenges those cruel versions of humanity (and divinity)- even if it means giving up some of what is consistent with the three points above.
Oh… we need a place in the telling that necessitates a community in which the alternative story (and failings are an inevitable part of that story) can be really lived out.
Aric writes: “And if we subscribe to magical thinking that God will protect the virtue of the innocent woman by preventing the poison from harming her we might at least imagine that many innocent women were acquitted this way. But none of that makes this an acceptable, moral, or empowering procedure for women. We rightly reject this as despicable.”
From my own subjective standpoint, I’m shocked and saddened by such practices. But one of the central points of the law and the prophets is reliance on God, isn’t it? Further, this is a time period, when God is committed to being very active and responsive based on adherence to the commandments. From a secular standpoint, God calling a people, incarnating in Christ, resurrecting Christ from the dead – it is *all* “magical thinking”. So this simply is not a good argument for a Christian to make against the ethical character of the commandment. It is simply not surprising that, from the standpoint of unbelief, divinely endowed community laws that require trust in God at specific places, are repugnant.
Lastly – the point about whether or not we’d do this to our wives in modern times is a non-sequitur. We aren’t commanded to.