Though I have written about this issue before, I would like to invite the readers of this brief essay to reconsider it. I do so for two reasons. First, in my previous writings, I addressed a limited number of people, primarily through eblast. Now through this blog site, and the subsequent postings on Facebook, it is possible for a larger number of people to read, and participate, by responding to these postings. Second, because the Church is constantly faced with the temptation to adjust its moral standards to those of secular society, those of us who are members of Christ's Church find ourselves constantly reevaluating our positions on sexuality and in many cases, asking questions which few, if any, would have thought of asking long ago.
We begin, then, by posing the question, what should be the criteria or source for our sexual ethics?
Should our ethics be rooted in Scripture, i.e. be based on "what the Bible says?" Should they be based on the historical traditions of the Church? Should they be based on what is "popular" in today's society? Should they based on what one pastor in the 1960's called a "pragmatic model?"
As a Minister of the Gospel, and as a theologian, I will be the first to admit that this is a very complex subject. It is not as simple of just falling back on the slogan of "the Bible says." Nor is it as simple as engaging in a decontextualized and superficial reading of Scripture. As a Bible teacher of fourty-seven years, I've had to revise my thinking on several issues. The major reason for this, is because further contextual reading of Scripture, along with study of the original languages of the Bible (Hebrew and Greek), have forced me to examine "what the Bible says" in a different light. By this, I do not mean by any stretch of the imagination, that I read the Bible in order to accommodate it to what is popular in today's society. Quite the contrary is true. My own reading of the Bible involves studying the socio-cultural context from which the Scriptures emerged, asking what they meant at the time they were written, and how they can be applied today. My reading has also involved examining the variety of theological perspectives which exist in the body of the text itself.
I propose that sexual ethics, just like the ethics of war and peace, death and life, etc. need to be considered in the light of how Scripture, tradition, experience, and the different branches of human knowledge (humanities, natural sciences, social sciences) interact with each other. To attempt constructing an ethical system, and for that matter, a theological system, which leaves out any of these elements, is to, in essence, set ourselves up for a faulty ethical and theological enterprise. To divorce "what the Bible says" from tradition, experience and the different branches of human knowledge, is to do a grave injustice to the biblical message. The Bible was produced and written in a particular cultural matrix, and therefore should be examined in the light of such. It does not serve any logical purpose to limit ourselves to quoting Scriptures. Anyone, including a child, can do that.
If Scripture, then, is to be used as a source for establishing sexual ethics, we must bear in mind, as I wrote in a recent essay, that the Scripture is not an end in and of itself. The main role of Scripture is to serve as a witness to the Word of God, which is none other than Jesus the Christ. Subsequently, since Jesus is the Word of God, and according to the Christian tradition, the finality of God's revelation to humankind, we need to ask ourselves how would Jesus respond to the various issues and perspectives on human sexuality. If Jesus were living as a human being in the twenty-first century, would His position on matters such as masturbation, pre-marital sex, extra-marital affairs, bi-sexuality, homosexuality, and common-law marriage be identical to the positions which many individual Christians and churches take today? Would He be a Torah-thomping Jew going around condemning people who engage in these things? Would He be a literalist when approaching and reading the Torah? Would He be a Jewish fundamentalist?
Though I cannot say with precision how Jesus would respond to issues of sexuality in our time, I suspect that He would not have the same approach that we have in the churches and other communities of faith in modern times. Given how the institution of marriage in the Middle East (arranged marriages) functioned, and considering that many of the laws governing sexuality in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) favored the man over the woman, and taking into account that even in the community of Israel, slaves were considered the property of their masters, and women the property of their husbands, I do not see a twenty-first century Jesus operating in that mode. When we also consider that sexual relations in those days, by and large, favored physical gratification, especially for the man, and focused very little, if at all, on mutual affirmation between the two partners, that Jesus would be emphasizing the externals of sexuality as opposed to the internal dynamics of commitment, love, and tenderness, as described in the Song of Solomon.
I end this essay by saying that Jesus is the ultimate source of our sexual ethics. In making decisions as to how we are to act and engage in sexual and partnering relationships, we operate with the question of "What would Jesus do?" I now invite you to contribute to this discussion by telling us what you think Jesus would do and how He would approach the various issues regarding sexuality if He were living in the twenty-first century. Share with us how Jesus is the well-spring of your ethical life and moral conduct in both the Church and society.
Grace and peace,
Dr. Juan A. Ayala-Carmona
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