Marriage as Covenant Faithfulness: The Bright Line of Biblical Sexual Ethics
Why only two persons? why not polygamy? If we’re changing the definition of marriage to include formerly disenfranchised classes of gays and lesbians, then surely observant Muslims and originalist Mormons will speak up soon in the courts. We may also encounter people who claim that their bisexual orientation cannot be satisfied in a partnership of two but needs a third—is there an argument from justice that would deny them? If there is one, I do not see it. Therefore I agree with conservative opponents of same sex marriage in foreseeing the possibility of civil marriages becoming no more than contracts among consenting adults. But the Church can insist on a further principle, the biblical principal of exclusive fidelity modeled on the covenant relationship between God and the People (Christ and the Church). This has not only a sacramental dimension, but also an experiential one. Our training in love and faithfulness with another person has implications for our ability to love and keep faith with God.[i] Furthermore I would claim (contra Walter Wink) that there is a clear biblical sexual ethic (and not just a changing set of sexual mores and an overall ethic of love).[ii] This is the line between faithfulness to one spouse and promiscuity, and it explicitly parallels the line between faithfulness to one God and idolatry.
The core covenantal principle is enunciated in Exodus: I will be your God and you shall be my people (Exod 19:5-6; Deut 29:12-15). It is an exclusive covenant: you shall have no other gods but me. Seeking after other gods is consistently likened to seeking after other lovers. The opening chapter of Isaiah makes it clear that this idolatry/harlotry is not only a matter of cultic observance or sexual mores, but injustice: “How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her—but now murderers!” (Isaiah 1:21). Jeremiah chapter two begins with the Lord “remembering the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride…Israel was holy to the Lord”—but proceeds to condemn the priests, who did not know God, the rulers (“shepherds”) who transgressed justice, and the prophets who “prophesied by Baal”; they are all pimps. Again in chapter 4, “as a faithless wife leaves her husband, so you have been faithless to me, O house of Israel, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 3:20). Ezekiel has a blistering denunciation of the harlotry of Jerusalem (chapter 16), while Hosea is commanded “to take for yourself a wife of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” In due time “she conceived and bore a son [whose is unclear]. Then the Lord said, Name him ‘Lo-ammi’, for you are not my people, and I am not your God” (Hosea 1:9). The prophet Malachi makes an explicit connection between cultic unfaithfulness and marital unfaithfulness. The prophet complains that Judah has “been faithless and profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god” (Malachi 2;11). Two verses later the prophet turns to Israel and explains why his offerings are not accepted with favor: “Because the Lord was a witness between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant” (2:14). His idolatry parallels his adultery.
Yet despite all human unfaithfulness and injustice, God is characterized as the one who is always faithful and loving (hesed); though there is just punishment for sin, there is also final restoration. “On that day, says the Lord, you will call me ‘my husband’ and no longer will you call me ‘my Baal’…I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things on the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety, And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:16, 18-20). On that great (and terrible) day the prophet Malachi also sees a restoration of the family, embittered and divided by idolatry, injustice and sin, through the agency of a returning Elijah (we may read, Messiah): “He will turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the hearts of children to their parents” (Malachi 4:6).
God’s covenant with the people of Israel is restored and extended through the New Covenant made through the cross, which establishes Christ’s followers as his Body, given power and led “into all truth” by the Holy Spirit (John 16:13). This relation of the ascended Christ as the Head of the Church, his earthly Body, is also portrayed in Ephesians (5:32) and Revelation (21:2) in terms of Christ as bridegroom and the church as bride. Hence marriage “signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church” (BCP 423). What is of note about this union and partnership is that it is made through Christ’s self-giving (of his body and blood), and therefore calls for a continuing pattern of self-giving love (agape). Paul (or a follower) says that all marriages should be characterized by subjection to each other “out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 4:21)—so that even existing patterns of male headship should be understood in the light of servant leadership not domination. Indeed, in all areas Paul calls for a consistent ethic of self-giving love for the purpose of building up the body of Christ. We see then that Christian marriage is not only a mutual commitment (covenant) but an exchange of selves for life, in all conditions and of “all that I am and all that I have” (it is hard to defend prenuptial agreements as part of a Christian marriage)—and serves as form of training for spiritual love and faithfulness in all spheres of life and faith.
Christian marriage, a true and deep union of two “selves, souls and bodies,” is thus far from a contract for sharing sex, expenses and childcare. By its nature it precludes other “one flesh” commitments. Furthermore, by our union with Christ through faith into his body (the church), we are “temples of the Holy Spirit” and sanctified (set apart) from promiscuity. So Paul writes, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute become one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh’. But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication (porneia)!” (1 Cor 6:15-18). Here we see clearly that “fornication”—sexual immorality, promiscuity—is not only a violation of a covenant between two people but “a sin against the body itself” (6:19), one’s own, one’s partner’s, and Christ’s.
A key text is Jesus teaching on Genesis 1:27 and 2:24: “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? so they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined let no one separate” (Matthew 19:4-8). I agree with the traditional interpretation that this means that God’s intention in creation is for marriage to be a lifelong, monogamous coupling, though this essay is an extended argument that God’s intention is not limited to male and females couples.
Against the objection that this passage clearly means that marriage is intended by God to be between a man and a woman, I would note that such a meaning is not as clear as it may seem from the close proximity of “made them male and female” and “for this reason.” In the passage from Matthew, Jesus is discussing divorce; that is why the argument leads to a “therefore” about the God-joined nature of marriage. To get to and make his point Jesus combines the Genesis 1 account of creation of male and female with another passage from Genesis 2 about the creation of Eve. But it is important to remember the original contexts of the statements: in the Genesis 1 passage the creation of humankind in two genders is followed by the command to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), and this is why this text provides a clear and undisputed basis of our understanding of one of the purposes of marriage, procreation. But the Genesis 2 text is preceded by God’s concern over Adam’s loneliness; this is the antecedent of “for this reason”—not procreation or biological complementarity. The point is that there a number of reasons why marriage is a good and ought to be held in honor and supported by the community (and so divorce ought to be discouraged).
Nobody seeks to deny that one of the primary goods of marriage is to support the procreation and nurture of children; and humans are gendered for this very purpose (the Genesis 1 account). But in addition to creating people as “male and female” with a desire to bear and raise children, God has also created people as gifted with sexual desire for an equal partner (“for this reason” a person leaves his or her family and clings to the partner; so Genesis 2). But not all people are created with the same desires, either for children or for partners. There is a wonderful and mysterious and puzzling diversity of sexual attraction. Some forms of sexual attraction are sinful and pathological; they are, as the Roman Catholic tradition puts it, disordered. A very good analysis of this subject was made in the “Report on Human Sexuality” delivered to the Lambeth Conference 1998. In this report the authors, a broad cross section of theologians and leaders of the Anglican Communion, affirm that there are some forms of sexuality unambiguously good, such as the form that leads to stable monogamous marriage of man and woman and the raising of children. Others are unambiguously bad, such as those that exploit children and the vulnerable—pedophilia and prostitution for example—or demean the dignity of the persons involved. But the authors observed that there are other forms of sexual practice that are neither clearly right nor wrong; such, the report concludes, is faithful same sex partnership. The report recommends tolerance of the diversity of opinion on this contentious subject. But the report’s recommendations were jettisoned in favor of a majority statement of the Lambeth bishops that came out strongly against the possibility that holiness of life could include same sex partnerships. As Resolution I.10 unambiguously put it, “Homosexual practice is incompatible with scripture.” Thus a majority of bishops in the Anglican Communion affirmed their understanding of scripture. Yet, as one of the foundational documents of the Anglican Reformation tradition notes, “councils may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining to God,” (Articles of Religion, XXI, BCP 872).
Main points of this section: 1: We can discern a clear biblical and theological sexual ethic: on one side is covenant faithfulness (hesed) and self-giving love (agape), on the other idolatry and promiscuity (porneia) as a symptom of self-seeking and lack of self-control. Naturally we want to encourage the one and discourage the other. There is no good reason to suppose that all sexual acts between persons of the same sex fall into the category of fornication, any more than all sexual acts of people of the opposite sex do. The crucial test is whether the acts are within a relationship of faithfulness and self-giving love. Such relationships ought to be encouraged and blessed by the church and society—and such indeed is the function of marriage.
2. This clear biblical ethic rules against the extension of marriage into polygamy. By its nature as a covenant of faithfulness and equality (helpers as partners) it cannot be extended to more than two people. Every attempt to do so must fall into the well-observed problems of jealousy, domination and privilege. Together with the basic sin of promiscuity this list goes a fair way to filling what Paul calls “the works of the flesh”: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, envy, drunkenness and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21).
Against the obvious objection that polygamy is part of the Biblical sexual ethic, considering that the Patriarchs had many wives—and this was seen as perfectly normal—it may be observed that although polygamy was certainly practiced, and not condemned, in Old Testament times, it is nowhere proscribed or valorized in Holy Scripture, except in the practice of taking a brother’s childless widow as a wife (levirate marriage), rather than letting her fend for herself or seek a return to her birth family (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). In the Hebrew Scriptures the preferred model is clearly monogamous: Adam and Eve and Abraham and Sarah. The multiple wives of Moses, Jacob, David and Solomon are portrayed as incidental to the story (Moses), accidental (Jacob and Leah) or a positive impediment to righteousness (David and Solomon), with foreign (strategic alliance) wives in particular mistrusted as advocates of idolatry. The tradition had stabilized in favor of monogamy by the time of Jesus, and it seems fair to extend his comment on divorce—that it was allowed in the Mosaic Law on account of the people’s “hardheartedness”--to a similar allowance for polygamy (or serial monogamy) on account of contingent factors (mostly the need to fulfill the commandment “be fruitful and multiply” or to create strategic or economic alliances). In later tradition, Augustine commented on “the mysterious difference in times” that God has ordained, such that, “In those days [speaking of the patriarchs] it was even permissible for husbands who could have children to take other wives in order to produce more numerous progeny, which is something that is certainly not allowed today.” Whereas “today a man who does not marry even one wife does the better thing, unless he cannot remain continent.”[iii]
[i] Marriage not only trains us in faithfulness but teaches us something about God’s love and faithfulness: See Rogers, ibid., 218, “Marriage is peculiarly suited to teaching God’s desire for humans beings because it mirrors God’s choosing of human beings for God’s own.” See also Rowan D. Williams’ celebrated essay, “The Body’s Grace.” (reprinted in the same volume, 209-321).
[ii] Walter Wink, “Homosexuality and the Bible” (available in a pdf file or included in Wink, ed., Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 44, “The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.”
[iv] The standard for a Christian marriage or faithful partnership is set out in Resolution D039 of the 73rd General Convention of the Episcopal Church (2000): The Episcopal Church has called all in relationships of sexual intimacy to the standard of life-long commitment “characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication” and the “holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God.” Cited in To Set Our Hope, 26, para. 2.25.
[v] See for instance To Set Our Hope, 1.4 (Introduction), and 2.0-2.1 (“Discerning Holiness in the Members of Christ’s Body”), 4; 8-9.
No comments:
Post a Comment