Sexuality: Where should the line be drawn?

A discussion starter from Peter Toon

Few would disagree with the observation that the Church in the West in this post-modern culture has a very different estimate of what are right goals and necessary principles of sexuality than did the Church in former times, especially the patristic era, but even the Victorian era.

Few also would disagree with the observation that the approach to sexuality in today’s Church is profoundly affected by the therapeutic culture which is now endemic in western thought and feeling. For most of us a primary purpose of life is to be happy. Happiness is an end in itself, rather than a product of something else (e.g., of doing what is right, or good, or one’s duty and vocation). Self-fulfillment and self-realization are seen as important ends in connection with happiness.

The Early Church and Sex

Few also would disagree with the point that the ideal in the Early Church was that of chastity, and thus the virgin (female and male) was the symbol of purity. People today find it hard to understand why married love was not the symbol for the Early Church. Their difficulty is in part because they live in a therapeutic culture.

The only sure way that the Church in a self-indulgent, immoral society could present the Christian sexual ethic to itself and to the world in a positive and dynamic way was to emphasize, as the ideal of what the Lord loved to see, the way of purity, chastity and virginity. This kept the mind and vision focused and gave moral energy to the resisting of temptation. It did not mean that marriage was sinful but it did mean that those who by grace were enabled to do so should be virgins and be united as it were to the Lord in purity and service. By this ideal and with this standard, the Church could declare with integrity that fornication, sodomy and adultery were sins, which if not repented of, would keep even baptized persons out of the kingdom of heaven. Further, the Church was able to make Christian marriage sacramental as a one flesh union of a man and woman until that union was broken by death. Further, the purpose of holy matrimony was mutual comfort and procreation, as well as the avoiding of fornication.

Of course, there were many failures and there were multiple scandals and there was hypocrisy, for human beings are not only sinners but sinful; BUT there was also the divine offer of forgiveness to those who were penitent. Importantly, forgiveness did not reduce standards but it lifted up those who had fallen. And there was a penitential system in place to deal with this pastoral problem of the weak and the fallen in a way which did not compromise the ideal.

So there was no compromise. The Church preached and asked for the highest of standards and believed the grace of God sufficient to help people reach them. In this context, it made sense to proclaim that adultery, fornication and sodomy were sinful and to deal with them as such in the penitential system.

Contemporary Liberal Denominations

Today, the Church, especially the main-line liberal denominations like the Episcopal, asks for the lowest standards and expects even less then these! Deeply affected by the therapeutic culture, the Church accepts in practice if not in doctrine all sexual unions which claim to be seeking self-fulfillment and based on “love” and “faithfulness’ – e.g., in serial monogamy, opposite sex and same-sex partnerships. The ideal now is not virginity and chastity but rather self-realization, self-fulfillment and happiness therein. Any “love” that leads in this direction is acceptable for is not God as God “Love”? What is wrong and sinful today is “loveless” sexual intimacy and relationships!

The Evangelical Stance

However, there are those within the liberal denominations (e.g., the Network in the ECUSA) who believe that a line can be drawn and maintained in the contemporary churches at homosexual practice (not homosexual orientation as such).

That is, the Church proclaims the ideal of marriage between a woman and a man as a life-long partnership and teaches that all other forms of sexual intimacy are wrong. However, this ideal is not taught as a divine command or real standard but as that to which the faithful should strive and if they reach it, then congratulation! If they fail there is divorce and remarriage, even serial monogamy, for their right to fulfillment of their sexual drive and desires is paramount in a therapeutic culture.

In this system, wherein there is not any kind of penitential system or the hope of one, but only local therapeutic “counseling”, the inevitable result is that it is very difficult to teach against and prevent the widespread living together of men and women in short-term or long –term partnerships either before marriage or as a substitute for marriage. After all, they only seek personal fulfillment and happiness in a loving relationship. It is less difficult to argue against same-sex partnerships for they appear to be contrary to nature and to gut feelings of what is decent and right, not to mention biblical commands. Yet as same-sex unions are increasingly recognized by law and by culture, opposing them, specially when nice people are involved, gets more difficult day by day for the conservative Christian to do.

Conclusion

It would appear that only the Church which has the ideal of Virginity, together with a penitential [not a counseling] system, has any hope in the therapeutic culture of the West of maintaining a Christian doctrine and practice of biblical sexuality and sexual relations! A modern denomination, or part thereof, which has lowered the bar to lifelong marriage as an ideal (but has not made the ideal a true standard and divine requirement) and works with counseling will, like the city of New Orleans, see its walls continually broken by the floodtide of the modern sexual culture.

November 7, 2005 The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon