Sexuality and Relationships
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Genesis 2:24
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
CHRISTIAN TRADITION
Historically, Christian tradition has restricted sexual behaviour to within marital relationships on the basis that a stable and permanent relationship is the best place for bringing up children. This belief is therefore formed on the premise of damage limitation and by restricting sexual relationships to marriage any potential damage is limited.
JEWISH TRADITION
In Judaism, as is the case in Orthodox Judaism today, only men could sue for divorce. This is because women were viewed as a piece of property and a part of the man’s estate. In Middle Eastern cultures, women were barred from owning property and such traditions are still present in the Middle East today.
STOIC TRADITION
Early Christianity was heavily influenced by the Stoic tradition of celibacy. The Stoics believed that the soul was restricted by bodily pleasures and such as lust and were an obstacle to the purity of the soul. Early Christian writers have adopted this tradition that celibacy is the best way to live.
There are two key writers who have influenced the Christian attitude towards sex:
ST. PAUL
St. Paul, one of the earliest Christian writers who brought Christianity to the Roman Empire argued that celibacy was the best course for a Christian, but there may be some circumstances in which marriage is appropriate.
Paul instructed the people of the early church in Corinth to avoid marriage where possible, but that marriage is not a forbidden sin. Paul was primarily concerned with the preparation of the soul for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Paul’s eschatology was such that human states and affairs are less important in the light of the coming of Christ, which at the time people believed to be imminent.
Paul did however subscribe to the belief that marriage makes men and women concerned with the affairs of the world and pleasing one another, whereas the interests of unmarried men and women remain undivided and concerned about the Lord’s affairs. However, since not everyone is capable to manage the level of self-control that is required to remain celibate, marriage should be used as a tool for containing sex rather than to lapse into immorality.
“But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband”
ST AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
In his youth St Augustine claimed to have enjoyed all the pleasures that the Roman Empire offered including a long-term relationship with a woman who bore him a son. However, following his conversion he ended this relationship and returned to Hippo where he was ordained Bishop. It is therefore suggested that Augustine’s negative view of sex is derived from a guilty conscience.
Augustine argued along similar lines to that of St Paul. He reasoned that sex was a ‘necessary evil’ but when confined to marriage saves a man from immorality. His argument runs parallel to the early Christian belief that sex is purely procreative and the lustful element simply ensures the continuation of mankind, and the end aim of marriage is child-bearing.
“The evil of lust does not take away the good of marriage”
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
The Roman Catholic Church adopted the whole of Aquinas’s thinking and today still takes the same approach to religious questions.
ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY
Natural Law is routed in the philosophy of Aristotle. He believed that everything in life serves a purpose and has an efficient and final cause. Efficient causes are the things/processes (the tools used to create a wooden figure) by which things are achieved, and the final cause is the end product (the wooden figure). For Aristotle, everything has a telos or end purpose, and this determines it’s ‘good.’ If we can understand the final cause of an organism we can understand the necessary processes to reach this.
FAITH AND REASON
Thomas Aquinas took Aristotelian Philosophy and applied it to Christian Theology. He argued that the telos of the world can be found in God. The world is the creation of God and thus can reveal his purpose through reason and intellect. For Aquinas, faith and reason together provide the best tools for living.
ABSOLUTE LAWS
There are absolute laws, which govern the way the world works for example the law of gravity. In the same way, Aquinas postulated that right and wrong, good and evil follow a natural law, which we can discover through our reason and observation.
NATURAL LAW AND SEX
Drawing on Aristotle, Natural Law argues that any sexual intercourse that subverts the purpose of pro-creation i.e. masturbation or the use of artificial contraception is wrong.
THE SACRED INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE
The RC church take Augustine’s claim that childbirth and marriage are linked further and argues that only a marital relationship can provide a stable and permanent environment for child-rearing. Any sexual activity outside of the sacred institution of marriage i.e. extra-marital or pre-marital sex is a de-humanising activity and it negates God’s sacred purpose for his people.
Christian Ethics and Homosexual Practice
There are three main contributing factors that have influenced modern attitudes towards homosexuality: - the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and the Natural Law tradition.
OLD TESTAMENT
The ‘Holiness Code’ in Leviticus enforces a death penalty for sexual relations between males:
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman”
It is imperative however that we understand the context within such a commandment was made, alongside prohibitions such as heterosexual activity between a man and a woman while the woman is on her period. Today few people would cast any assertions about the immorality of the latter. Thus, unless one maintains the moral importance of abstaining to the complete Holiness Code, one cannot justify condemnation of homosexual acts on the basis of Old Testament teaching.
It is also important that we understand that the Old Testament makes the assumption that homosexuality is a freely made decision whereas today there is increasing evidence, although not conclusive, that sexual orientation is partly or wholly determined by neuro-physical events in the brain and genetic makeup. It is important to observe that these biblical ideas were conceived in times ignorant of such knowledge.
It is very clear how the ethical system present in Old Testament times has evolved into the ethical system present in New Testament times. For example, the Old Testament acceptance of polygamy is replaced with monogamy before New Testament times. Therefore it is very difficult to justify the transformation of the prohibitions of the Old Testament and the New Testament over such a big time difference.
NEW TESTAMENT
The New Testament rejects the Old Testament concept of purity rules which form the basis of the Old Testament prohibition of homosexual acts.
The New Testament does prohibit homosexual relations, particularly in the writing of St. Paul in his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians. It is essential however that we examine the contextual background from which such views are expressed. The evidence available to us suggests that the modern conception of homosexuality is very different to that of the prevailing conception at the time of the New Testament writings. Roman writers were generally inclined to accept that most people at the time were attracted to members of both sexes. They were not familiar with the idea of a homosexual who might participate in sexual acts exclusively with the same member of sex. Furthermore, exploitative homosexual acts with young boys was a common problem at the time.
On these grounds neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament teachings can bear any direction with regard to the morality of homosexual practice today. Even if Paul was referring to exclusive acts of homosexual relations it is difficult to support this argument in the present day without maintaining that it is equally immoral for a woman to enter a church without wearing a hat, which seems absurd.
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
The Roman Catholic Church adopted the whole of Aquinas’s thinking and today still takes the same approach to religious questions including the issue of homosexual practice.
NATURAL LAW AND HOMOSEXUAL PRACTICE
The physical properties that distinguish the male and female species are very clearly designed with a sexual intercourse as one of the main purposes of our creation. We can determine this using reason and rationality by observing the male and female form. We can also know that the purpose of sex is pro-creation, and can deduce from this that any sexual acts that are not procreative i.e. masturbation or homosexual acts are wrong.
It must however be appreciated that it is only in the last few centuries that we have been able to understand fully the human reproduction process. Prior to this understanding it was generally understood that semen contained the whole of the ‘person’, and wasting semen through homosexual acts or masturbation is essentially the same as abortion since you are killing what has the making of a potential human being. Therefore, the influence of Aquinas and other scholars on the Catholic approach to homosexual acts could be based on an entirely false premise.
It is very important that we draw a distinction between possessing an inclination towards sexual activity with another member of the same sex and actually physically expressing this inclination. The first is essentially a defect in the same way that partial blindness is a defect of eye sight. You would not consider someone with a defected eye sight as morally wrong so you cannot condemn those who have a defect in their sexual orientation. Ultimately, humans are created sexual beings and thus there should be no shame or condemnation in observing each other’s sexual orientation.
SITUATION ETHICS
Situation ethics is primarily associated with Joseph Fletcher whose book was released 1966, ‘the hippie era’, which became very popular because it was very much in keeping with the mood at the time.
Written from a Christian prospective, Fletcher wanted the church to adopt this theory. Methodist did, Roman Catholic rejected it.
OBJECTIVE AGAPE LOVE
Situation ethics has one single maxim, unconditional or agape love (as Fletcher agreed with Augustine). Not a love understood as an emotion but a more objective unconditional what is best for the other person kind of love. Fletcher: ‘Justice is love distributed’
REJECTION OF LEGALISM
Situation Ethics is a strong rejection of Legalism but also Antinomianism; it acts as a compromise between the two but counts as a relative approach. For Fletcher, Legalism leads people to do the ‘right’ thing regardless of the consequences and goes against Jesus’ command to show compassion. Fletcher said there are three approaches to moral decision making – the legalistic way, the antinomian way and the situational way. He advocated the latter.
JESUS AS A SITUATIONIST
Jesus showed mercy to the woman in adultery instead of stoning her, and ate from a cornfield on the Sabbath when it was necessary. The two greatest commandments are based on love – love God and love thy neighbor. Christians aspire to Jesus and it could be argued that Jesus practiced situation ethics.
A situational approach to ethics is therefore more in keeping with the teaching of Jesus than a system formed around tradition and rules. If we follow the ethical system of the New Testament and seek to act out a love for one’s neighbour and equal treatment of everyone, a Christian is forced to accept homosexual practice. It would not be continuous with the New Testament ethic to deny a homosexual their right to express their emotion physically with another member of the same sex.
On this basis, the only grounds on which a Christian can condemn the practice of intimate homosexual activity is if the activity is for a pleasurable or otherwise meaningless purpose, as opposed to an outward expression of a genuine love and commitment for one another. What is more questionable is whether or not it can be ethical for a homosexual couple to bring up children.
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