when this is a post about rape and virginity, part two

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[Trigger warning: rape, abuse, misogyny]

My apologies that our series on sexual ethics has been on hiatus this past week. As you may know, I decided to pursue a PhD here in St. Andrews and ended up being fully funded to do so---that interrupted my life for a bit. We're back now, continuing the discussion of rape, virginity, and marriage as sexual act begun in this post. (For new readers to this series, my apologies. I am still trying to migrate comments from Disqus to this new space, but it looks like they're still not showing up on that old post. There was hearty discussion, so if you leave a comment that ties into something we've already been hashing out, I may point you toward the old post's comment section.)

Let's reconsider our 'house rules' for this dialogue.

  1. These posts are about creating a holistic sexual ethic. They are not how-tos or in-every-situation-this. They are paradigms by which we navigate daily situations, or, better, vocabulary by which we engage Scripture and our daily lives more completely.
  2. These posts are specific in focus. This post, for instance, is about rape and virginity in light of the New Testament. While other issues are worth discussing and will be discussed in the future, let's try to keep the focus on what the post itself is addressing.
  3. We treat the Bible with respect but not as an excuse. This has more to do with the Old Testament, which we explored last week, but we are essentially agreeing that Scripture is inspired, as God-intended, but nonetheless problematic at times thanks to us now having all of it in one go, 2000 years removed from its latest context. For instance, we see Deuteronomy a bit differently thanks to the Gospels. That's the tension we're willing to engage in these posts: respect without being dismissive.

Let's consider where we've recently been: Deuteronomy 22 and the laws concerning rape.

  • As a consequence of Genesis 3, women were considered property, not people. This was not God's intention from the beginning, but a consequence of the Fall. An extension of that claim to property was female physical virginity as a commodity, owned by fathers and sold to husbands.
  • A large part of Deuteronomy 22 is poorly translated to us, at times, because the internal context of the passage usually speaks about matters of consent, not several instances of varying kinds of rape. This wasn't tidy or perfect, but it helped us understand why, in English, it sounds so strange to our ears that a sexual encounter in a city is different than one in the country, and so on.
  • In cases of rape, however, we had to come to terms with a situation that is pretty daunting: being wed to one's rapist. We determined that this has to do with economic justice, the protection of the wronged woman who was sinned against, and her ultimate wellbeing in the society. This was uncomfortable for us, uneasy, but it did highlight the problem of the Fall, the problem of systemic patriarchy, and the greater hope of what the Gospel would mean for Israel and for the world.

Today, let's look at the radical reevaluation of sexual ethics in the New Testament. We'll be going out of order chronologically, but we'll be going in order ethically, looking at three key passages concerning personhood and consent: Ephesians 5, Matthew 5, and 1 Corinthians 7.

Let's first examine the end of Ephesians 5.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. 'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.' This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

This passage has caused many-the-problem over the years. As poor readers, we have a tendency to extract it from its context, skim through the list like they're simple commands, and decide we have it figured out: women are inferior to men and that's that.

But let's slow down for a moment and look at what's happening more closely.

First, the passage is dealing with an explicit relationship: husbands and wives. It is not, as some has misconstrued, relating to men and women. While I think we can extrapolate certain premises from this portion of the Text, we need to be sure, first and foremost, that we're treating it with the respect it deserves and taking it on its own terms. That said, notice that if we were to count the sentences divided among husbands and wives, wives receive three sentences and husbands receive five.

Moreover, we would do well to consider the unique context of the passage. Ephesians is, unhelpfully, split between chapters 5 and 6 in the midst of talking about husbands and wives, children and slaves. Why is this unhelpful? Because as chapter-driven readers it causes us to miss the larger contextual point that Paul is making.

Notice that in his instructions to husbands, Paul stresses that they are to love their wives as their own bodies. This is a radical overturning of Greco-Roman household codes, which, along with the Jewish narrative of the Old Testament following the Fall, viewed women as property, not people.

Paul is making the subversively beautiful claim that women have the same personhood as men, they are free agents unto themselves, not controlled by their husbands. Further, we see this radical Christian ethic of personhood running into Ephesians 6, in which children, who in the ancient world had no rights, are also recognised as persons. Slaves, too, who had more rights than children but were still considered property, are now told that they and their masters are equal in the sight of God.

This, after Paul spends Ephesians 1-3 reminding the Jewish believers that the Gentiles have been grafted into the covenant inaugurated and summed in Messiah Jesus, marks Ephesians as an epistle that is profoundly revolutionary in its exposition of the personhood and identity of all people within and outside of the Body of Christ.

This is what I mean when I say that we can extrapolate Paul's contentious about personhood beyond husbands and wives, because he has made this claim by first presupposing that because of Christ, something radical in the social and philosophical identification of the other has happened.

We see a similar contextual recognition in other oft-used proof-texts for supposed hierarchy such as 1 Peter 3 and Colossians 3, which are also doing more to revolutionise their first readers understanding of personhood than we can appreciate. We contend in scholarship that the Epistle to the Ephesians was one of Paul's circulated letters, which would have been read in front of men, women, children, and slaves in believing communities in Ephesus and elsewhere.

Imagine hearing, for the first time, that you were seen not only as equally grafted into God's family as His chosen people, but that He had also radically reordered social norms. You were not a bought and sold commodity. You were free. You were equal.

That freedom came contextually and with mutuality, hence the instructions to husbands and wives to reflect a specific aspect of grace to one another, but imperatively that reflection comes first and foremost out of the claim of equality. Deeper than basic rights, deeper than we can really understand: people who had never been considered persons before were being told they had a right to their bodies. They had a right to their thoughts. They had a right to their being.

This is the radical, revolutionary, awesome claim of the New Testament, begun in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, pronounced in His resurrection, and thereafter carried out by His Spirit in His male and female apostles and in the members of His Church.

We can say nothing concerning rape and virginity in light of the New Testament without first showing how the Old Testament, here, has been reevaluated. Deuteronomy 22 no longer has the hold it once did, because women are no longer the property of their fathers or their husbands.

This gets into the issue of financial justice for women who are victims of rape in this first century culture, echoing the concerns we raised with the end of Deuteronomy 22 a few weeks ago. (As an aside, I am pleased and honoured that I get to welcome Danielle from From Two to One this Tuesday to share thoughts about what justice looks like for rape victims in today's context.) As it concerns the first century, I would point out the repeated emphasis in the New Testament for the church to care for the oppressed as strong evidence that, were a woman to come to financial ruin because her physical virginity was stolen from her and the culture outside of the Church still viewed that as her only means of securing stability, it was the Church's responsibility to care for and provide for her.

Even still, this understanding of personhood vastly broadens the narrow understanding of sexuality the Old Testament presents us with, which is concerned primarily with female virginity and its physical sign.

So it's only after we understand the way the New Testament is carrying out the vision of reversing the curse of Genesis 3 will we be equipped to better navigate what we are weighing when we consider virginity and rape.

Let us now turn our attention to the specific topic of rape. If rape in the most rudimentary sense is about the forced sexual exploitation of another person through coercive measures, such as but not limited to violence or authority, than the essential issue underlying the act is consent.

Let us consider Matthew 5 as an example of the New Testament's perspective on consent.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

This passage is sometimes used to shame men into "bouncing their eyes" and to keep themselves from looking at women with sinful intent. (While I want to heartily affirm that lust is sinful, I would suggest that we've at times confused lust for healthy sexual attraction and the Church could work a bit harder at a balance of Scripture and biology.) I would like to focus, however, on the implicit move that Jesus is making in these brief words: He's assigning agency to the offender, not to the offended.

That is, instead of putting forth a conditional proposition---it's only adultery in the heart if the woman was wearing modest dress and then you exploited her in your mind---Jesus makes this pronouncement without any qualification.

If a man lusts after a woman, regardless of her being fully clothed or fully naked, the sin is within himself, not between them. Here, we find another radical notion in the New Testament: consent. (A good resource for this topic in today's Church, in a very simple and direct form, is this post from Dianna.)

If women are people, not objects, than their bodies belong to themselves. They have a right to give them or not give them to whom they please.

Accordingly, physical virginity is now also a woman's own, not the currency by which their fathers secure for them a husband. Yet it stretches even further than that, when we see this echoed, implicitly, in 1 Corinthians 7:

Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. ... I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

Considering what we have already understood about Paul's proclamation of equality, the passage's mutual respect for men and women to have their own husband or wife as they please is no surprise to us. Rather, let's consider Paul's words to the spouseless.

First, it is helpful for us to recall that Paul is writing, we surmise, under the belief that the eschatological realisation of Christ's return is imminent, which explains the strange wish that the single would remain single, echoing similar things he says throughout his correspondence with the Corinthians. If Jesus was to return the next day or the day after or even within the year, it seemed foolish to attach oneself when, according to Jesus, in the coming kingdom marriage would no longer be.

Second, I want to emphasise that Paul does not distinguish here between male and female singles. Rather, as his language was inclusive concerning husbands and wives, it is inclusive again. He recognises that marriage is no longer an arrangement in which a father sells his daughter to another man, but a relationship in which a male and female mutually consent to being united in marriage. Again, personhood is the underlying power that enables this understanding of consent to be realised.

What this means, then, is that while Paul recognises sexual immorality as sinful, giving a clear distinction of what that means by establishing a dichotomy in the passage---speaking to married persons about their bodies being mutually available to one another---he is nonetheless championing a mutual, healthy sexual relationship within the context of marriage.

He is proclaiming the same logic of sex as union as we first explored a few weeks ago, he is proclaiming that true sexual intimacy, that true sexual, sacramental union, occurs in consented sexual relationships and that those are suited exclusively for the context of marriage.

Within this we also have the resources by which to understand what the New Testament is telling us about virginity: it's not only physical.

Whereas the Old Testament, following the Fall, emphasises a narrative in which women are property and do not have agency, the New Testament subverts this. Whereas the Old Testament, following the Fall, emphasises physical virginity as the sign of purity, the New Testament, through Paul's proclamation of personhood and consent has overturned this. It's not about physical virginity, but about the mutually consented giving of oneself to another, that, that, is what is to be held in the context of marriage.

I am left to I conclude that while physical virginity may be stolen through an act of rape, spiritual, sacramental virginity is only given through consensual sex, the act of uniting, an act that Paul continues to hold firmly belongs in the context of marriage.

A woman or man who has been raped is not sexually united in the spiritual sense to their rapist. The language of unity only occurs in mutual, consensual sex.

What viewing virginity and consent in this way does, perhaps, is this:

Perhaps it is the affirmation to anyone who has ever been abused or violated that even if the physical sign of virginity has been stolen from them, their fundamental, sacramental wholeness of being has not been. The unfathomable guilt, shame, imprisonment in doubt that comes out of being so violated is a consequence of the sin perpetrated against the victim, not their own doing. They were never asking for it. They never deserved it. The abused are not, in any way, the guilty ones. Their bodies are not the guilty ones. Their souls are not the guilty ones. They, the whole of them, are not the guilty ones. And that is the freedom of the Gospel.

Simply, the New Testament is powerfully subverting our expectations: we have the right to personhood, we have the right to say no. If those rights are violated, the violators must be brought to justice, because they contribute to this present darkness, against which we struggle. (Ephesians 6)

Though this isn't tidy. This isn't easy. This isn't the fix. We still have yet to do the hard talk about justice, about afters, about the way ahead. On Tuesday, that's what Danielle will be considering. I hope you'll come back and join us as we continue to dialogue justice in light of abuse.

---

If you or someone you know is in need of help, my friend Dianna was gracious in compiling the following links for me:

US-based:

The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) [Dianna notes: can be transphobic depending on who you get, which is really unfortunate]

The National Domestic Violence HotlineNational Sexual Violence Resource Center

Planned Parenthood [Dianna notes: each of the regional PPs has rape/sexual assault counseling hotlines and services - which vary depending on region. Check your local one]

UK-based:

Rape Crisis (England/Wales)

Victim Services (government run)

RAINN also has an international page.

Others:

Others are listed here [Dianna notes: many of these listed (state by state) are trans* and LGB friendly.]

(Image source: Pinterest.)

when this is a post about rape and virginity, part one

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[TRIGGER WARNING: This post is specifically about rape. It may also bring to mind the sensitive topic of sexism. I apologise in advance if this material is disturbing to some readers.]

Please note: due to the length of this post and the sensitivity of the topic, I wanted to exercise serious care in proceeding and decided to split the topic into two posts. Next Sunday, I'll be dealing explicitly with the idea of sexual union as pertaining to a rapist, as well as how virginity is interpreted in those circumstances. Since my argument for such things, however, is dependent on a full reading of Scripture, it's important first to critique and engage the Old Testament's more troubling passage concerning rape, glean from it the tools by which certain elements of the New Testament become more salient, and proceed forward carefully in that study. I hope you understand that I don't mean to overload your RSS reader with text and I have made cuts where I thought they could be made. Apologies, all the same, for post length and for splitting this topic over two weeks.

Last week, we began a series on creating a holistic sexual ethic by considering what exactly happens in sex, considering what sex means for marriage, and why we preach abstinence when no single verse, on its own, seems to make the case, unless the whole of Scripture is considered through a particular approach and lens.

Today, before we proceed, some guidelines to keep in mind:

  • These posts are about creating a holistic sexual ethic. An ethic, like a paradigm, is not a tidy answer to every single situation and every single story. Every situation, every story, is unique. Let's honour that by recognising that we've spent so much time making rules already that we have made the exceptions be the marginalised. An ethic, a paradigm, expands our vocabulary, gives us tools to work with, and hopefully helps us have the conversation well. It gives us enough of the dance steps that we know how to improvise when the music changes---we're painting broad strokes here, not painting anyone into a box.
  • This post concerns only one particular issue: the relationship between rape and virginity as concerning the language of union I addressed in the previous post in this series. This post is not addressing forms of rape outside of that specific parameter, even though I do want to acknowledge its reality. As this series is about sexual ethics, I have a hard time saying much about rape in a broad sense ethically, other than it is always wrong and is always evil and is always the fault of the abuser and there are more kinds of rape than people may know: among them power rape, spousal rape, corrective rape, prison rape, war rape, and on and on. Since my previous post focused on a Scriptural argument about waiting to have sex until pronounced marriage, this post is specifically focusing on rape that takes another person's virginity, so to address questions of What about me? that were rightly and naturally raised by the previous post.
  • Finally, to paraphrase something I heard NT Wright say last Tuesday in seminar: we cannot make the Torah good or bad. Torah is God's particular covenant with a particular people in a particular time and while that does not make it any less inspired, we better be darn careful in how we try to make it fit in light of everything else. We need to accept that the Old Testament, though inspired, comes with the baggage of the imperfect people God is journeying toward the Messiah. For instance, outside of Genesis 19, we have no indication in the Old Testament about the rape of men, though we know it certainly happens today. (Genesis 19 presents the further problem of Lot offering his daughters to be raped instead. Consider Leviticus 20, which refers only to consensual homosexual sex, not matters of rape.) The Old Testament is overwhelmingly heavy on recognising the rape of women, but not of men. Hence, as I proceed in discussing key passages that may inform how we approach this development of an ethic, we must keep in mind that the Old Testament, in light of the New, helps us think Christianly, helps us with those dance steps, but does not, necessarily, give us the exact rules of how things should be done today. We need to be careful with this discernment, but it is crucial in our conversation.

Let's consider one of the most difficult passages in the Old Testament: Deuteronomy 22.

Why focus on Deuteronomy 22?

Because it helps us confront some major issues concerning rape and virginity that will be prudent for our continued discussion next week. In Deuteronomy 22, we have a robust example of the consequence of patriarchy, along with a clear articulation of sexual ethics underpinning Old Testament practices. I believe by focusing here with a close reading, we have better tools as we move forward to engage the radical and revolutionarily sexual ethics of the New Testament.

In Deuteronomy 22, the major criticisms of the passage regarding rape occur near its close:

If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.

If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days. (v. 23-29)

I suggest that in order to understand this passage, we must consider that it, too, is working out a language of paradigms and ethics, not necessarily rules that will be able to be applied in every case, which we shall see by carefully evaluating each of the three scenarios presented above.

First, the taking of a betrothed woman in the city.

Note that I did not call this scenario rape, because the Text does not use the language of rape when considering it. Deuteronomy 22:23 uses the word וְשָׁכַ֥ב or shakab, which throughout the Old Testament is used primarily as either a reference to literally lying down or, euphemistically, to engage in or as an invitation to consensual sex, unless a separate word of force is used as a modifier to clearly indicate rape. (See Genesis 39:7, Leviticus 15:33, 1 Samuel 2:22, 2 Samuel 12:11, Ezekiel 23:8, and, for use of force as a modifier, Genesis 32:2)

Here, the evidence of the case leads us to conclude that the circumstance in question is of the consensual nature. Her lack of a cry for help indicates that she did not try to fight the advance, which presumably would have roused the hearing of her neighbors. (Remember, we are dealing with a very different society than our own, and a cry for help of a woman being violated would have resulted in a response from her neighbors, the lack of this sensitivity being, in-part, one of the many grievances God lists against Israel throughout the minor prophets.)

Therefore, as with any case of adultery, the man and the woman alike are killed. I want to point out that I recognise that this is imperfect and troubling, and we shall return to it below, but for now, for the purposes of exploring what the provisions around rape were, we need to shift our focus to consider the rest of the passage.

Second, the rape of a betrothed woman in the country.

Here, we encounter a use of shakab in which a modifier of force is added. In verse 25, the phrasing is וְהֶחֱזִֽיק־ בָּ֥הּ הָאִ֖ישׁ וְשָׁכַ֣ב, chazaq ish shakab. The action of lying with is modified by force and particularly the force of a man---that is, the Scripture makes a clear claim on culpability resting entirely with the attacker. Hence, the punishment is only placed upon the attacker and he is put to death and God compares the assault to the same violation of His Law as murder, and supposes that the woman actively tried to flee but was unsuccessful.

Let us consider, then, that in light of the scenario of the city, perhaps these two passages are not exactly dealing with city vs. country (which, in the Hebrew, is better translated field), but an ethic of practice. I do not want to overstep into making the Text easier than it is or to fix the passages, like this, which are problematic, but we in the least do have a sense that a betrothed woman who makes an effort, any effort, to stop the assault is not culpable, whereas a woman who chooses to consensually give herself to man other than her betrothed is as guilty as the man she gives herself to. Though this may not mitigate the discomfort we have over the polarities of these passages, it perhaps provides us insight into a sense of consent, a topic that largely is not well discussed in most purity culture environments, which you can read more about here.

Further, as I mentioned above, the Old Testament is not tidy and is responsive to the culture it exists in, which is patriarchal.

Denying this gets us nowhere. Women in leadership positions, in positions where they are recognised as more than property, are the exceptions of the Old Testament, not the norm. Rachel Held Evans and her work in A Year of Biblical Womanhood does an excellent job of laying out this specific tension for a lay audience and gives an excellent primer in reading the curse of the Fall forward into the Old Testament.

While I firmly believe that this system is completely overturned with, by, and through Jesus, I want to stress that we, as New Testament Christians, need to be careful in not trying to make the Old Testament simply work because it's in our Bibles.

It works in its context, in its purpose, and we have to keep that in mind as we move forward.

We need to consider why the language of betrothal is repeatedly stressed in these scenarios, but not in the one that follows. In the Old Testament, betrothal simply means that a vow has been made between a man and a woman's father that he would take her to be his wife at the appointed time---when he had enough money, when the woman's father approved, when her bride price was met. Does this make you uncomfortable? Good! It means you're listening. Please read me carefully here:

patriarchy is not reducible to being problematic because men and women don't have equal voice, while not seeing men and women as equal is problematic, patriarchy, fundamentally, is most problematic because it views women as not people but things and treats them as property of their fathers or husbands. This is how deep the curse of Adam runs. You cannot even begin to discuss a thought of equality if a woman is still considered a commodity.

In his commentary on Deuteronomy, Telford Work notes the language of this passage mirrors those concerning the theft of property, as well as mirroring similar legal articulation of theft in neighboring countries. (Compare with Leviticus 20:10-21, 25:5-10) He further argues that we cannot look at this passage as somehow situated along a spectrum that is moving toward social progress. He cites Genesis 12:10-20; 19:4-9; 20:1-18; 26:6-11; 29:1-31:55; 34:1-31; 35:22; 38:1-26; 39:1-23; 49:3-4; Judges 5:28-30; 11:37-40; 12:8-9; 14:1-16:22; 19:1-21:24; Ruth; 1 Samuel 18:27-29; 2 Samuel 3:12-16; 11:1-12:25; 16:20-23; 20:3; 1 Kings 2:13-25; 20:1-12; 2 Kings 24:13-16; and, Proverbs 6:32-7:27, all as examples of how systemic patriarchy, engrained in the spirit of the people themselves, recurs throughout the Old Testament---through the patriarchs, the judges, and the monarchy.

It is not until the New that there is a radical shift, enabled through the Holy Ghost, because "the powers and principalities themselves must be overcome." (c.f. Ephesians 6:10-13) Again, I want to stress that this is why we must take care in our appropriation of the Old Testament. If what we glean thus far is that consent matters to God, I think we do well, but if we try and apply the Text further, we perhaps do it, its people, and ourselves a disservice.

Finally, we come to the rape of a an unbetrothed woman, which is the most difficult passage.

This brings us to the hard, challenging passage of Deuteronomy 22:28-29. Here, there is no mistaking meaning. The word is וְשָׁכַ֣ וּתְפָשָׂ֖הּ, taphas shakab, a phrasing explicitly referring to rape, because the language is steeped in a connotation of force and even, at times, the act of profaning. (c.f. Ezekiel 14:5, 21:16, 30:21) There is no mistaking that this passage explicitly concerns the rape of a woman who was a virgin but was not betrothed.

Remember, virginity here is a commodity, the property of a father, and a woman who was found not to be a virgin brought shame on her household, could be put to death for lying about it, or could be abandoned, never to be married because of it, putting her into financial ruin. (c.f. Deuteronomy 22:13-21) It is that last point that motivates the command that the rapist is to then marry his victim and to not divorce her.

We cannot gloss over how horrifying this is.

Work, however, provides a framework for us to navigate the tension. Citing Matthew 19:8, [Jesus] said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so, Work points out that this section is an indictment of the culture it is being spoken into. We should not be comfortable with this, we should not excuse it, but we should recognise that one of the tensions of the Old Testament is that it is the story of God journeying an imperfect people toward a perfect salvation. The circumstances of the Old Testament are worked in spite of to bring about God's redemption.

We must be careful. We cannot say that this doesn't matter to God, but we should consider what, perhaps, mattered immediately: the financial stability of the woman who had been violated in the first place.

This does not fix the passage or make it easier to stomach, but it contextualises it for us and gives us, perhaps, the ethic that we are to take from it moving forward, which is an ethic we see repeated throughout Old Testament passages that deal with women being marginalised---they are to be taken care of and provided for because, within the patriarchal system, they have no other recourse of financial defense or claim to personhood. (c.f. Genesis 38, 2 Samuel 11-13, Ruth) It is the same insistence God has when considering the personhood of the foreigner. (c.f. Deuteronomy 10:19, Isaiah 14)

In short: within contexts of oppression, God cares most about the oppressed.

Perhaps then it is appropriate that the Old Testament ends on this note:

For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.

Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Next Sunday, we'll consider how these ethics, like consent and security of person, are appropriated into the New Testament and how these problems, like patriarchy, are radically overcome through Jesus and what this means for understanding sex as union and virginity in light of rape.

---

If you or someone you know is in need of help, my friend Dianna was gracious in compiling the following links for me:

US-based:

The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) [Dianna notes: can be transphobic depending on who you get, which is really unfortunate]

The National Domestic Violence HotlineNational Sexual Violence Resource Center

Planned Parenthood [Dianna notes: each of the regional PPs has rape/sexual assault counseling hotlines and services - which vary depending on region. Check your local one]

UK-based:

Rape Crisis (England/Wales)

Victim Services (government run)

RAINN also has an international page.

Others:

Others are listed here [Dianna notes: many of these listed (state by state) are trans* and LGB friendly.]

---

(Image source: Pinterest.)

when this is a post about marriage and sex

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Today, I begin a series of posts on developing a consistent sexual ethic. Though today this post is appearing on a Sunday, expect these posts to usually run on Mondays. It is my belief that the problem with the way we discuss purity and the reason to wait for marriage is that we take verses that mention sex and then proof-text them to fit our argument.

Here, I attempt to articulate my position and my understanding of sexual ethics.

I do not present this with authority or with presumption, but as explanation of my reasoning concerning sexual ethics.

It is important to note, too that as long as this post is, it does not address everything and subsequent posts will likely not be as adequate in that regard either. The hope is to have a good conversation about these things and to start those conversations well.

The key passages that undergird my understanding of sexual ethics are the two shall become one passages.

The phrasing occurs three times in the Scripture.

First, in Genesis: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Then, in the Gospel of St. Mark, spoken by Jesus: '... and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.

And, finally, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, written by St. Paul: Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”

If we agree that these uses have contexts that are important, but that there are still generalised principles we can gather from them based on their position within the whole of Scripture, I think we can arrive at some significant conclusions about the way God views sex and its relation to marriage.

Consensual sex, the uniting of male and female, is itself the act of marriage.*

Historically, marriage as we encounter it early in the Scripture presents us with problems if we are trying to use our current understanding of the act as our guide.

Consider Genesis 24, in which the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah is consistent with the customs of the time: Rebekah is sent for, accepts the proposal, and is brought to Isaac, then she took her veil and covered herself. ... Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. (v. 65, 67 NRSV)

The ceremonial action, the covering of Rebekah with her veil, signifies her physical virginity. But notice that the narrative leaves out any clues as to more elaborate rituals of uniting. Rather, the narrative briskly brings together Isaac taking Rebekah into the tent---which has a sexual implication---with making Rebekah his wife.

There is nothing illicit or immoral in this, but I want to stress that what has happened, in the most reductive sense, is that the marriage was made known in the action of consensual sexual uniting.

What does Jesus say?

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus quotes the passage of two becoming one as a rebuke to the Pharisees who try to trap Him in an argument about divorce. They note that Moses allowed for divorce, couching it in specifically patriarchal terms, stating that a man could choose to send his wife away.

Jesus overturns the argument, however, by rejecting it outright, stating that this part of the Law of Moses was given because of the hardness of the people's hearts, that rather God has brought two to become one and that this is the fundamental law that was intended from the beginning.

What I glean from this is twofold: one, that Jesus takes seriously the precedent of marriage described in Genesis and, two, that this seriousness helps us contend with some of the more difficult concepts in the Old Testament.

Jesus here is arguing against a practice by which a man could send his wife away and cause her to be financially destitute and the options for a divorced woman were severely limited, prostitution a likely outcome of being without financial support.

Jesus thereby gives a narrative key by which to understand upsetting claims in the Old Testament, like Deuteronomy 22, which says in some cases a man who has raped a virgin shall marry her and is never allowed to divorce her. (More on this next Monday.)

While I do not wish to dismiss the problems that this passage creates, I point out it is consistent with a concept of marriage that is rooted in sexual act, joining, and marriage as responsibility to the other.

A woman who was raped in Israel, her physical virginity stolen, would not likely wed and therefore would not be able to be financially cared for. (c.f. Amnon and Tamar.)

Though it is horrific that she would be wed to her rapist, it holds consistent with the responsibility he now has to financially provide for her and ensure she does not fall into further disgrace. (It's worth noting, too, that in the community life of Israel, knowledge that a man took a woman by force was not treated lightly. It would change the way he was perceived and respected permanently.)

So marriage is not just sex, but marriage is pronounced in sexual uniting.

In his first epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul analyses sexual immorality through the lens of our bodies being the dwelling places of the Holy Ghost. His exclamation that to unite the body we have to the body of a prostitute is to defile ourselves by joining Christ to the same.

Paul is reiterating here the thematic arc that Genesis first introduces and Jesus confirms, that the act of consensual sexual uniting has a dramatic impact.

There is a mystical power in it: we have become the dwelling place of God, if we unite that temple to a foreign body and become one with the foreign body, we defile that temple.

In a legal sense, you have not become married to the prostitute, but in the sacramental sense, you have.

And the problem of prostitution, the problem of illicit sex in general, is that it consummates by way of the marriage act but does not carry with it marriage responsibility.

A mutual exchange of pleasure or an exchange of goods or monies for sex does not carry with it the ultimate responsibility that the Scripture seems to say sexual exchange requires: the two being responsible exclusively to each other, even when the other is sinful. That is financially, emotionally, physically, completely.

And the Scripture attest to sexual uniting requiring consistent responsibility: Judah and Tamar.David and Bathsheba. (Though I note this as an instance of power rape, to be discussed next Monday.) Amnon and Tamar. (Again, rape, but the gravity of the sin is furthered by Amnon's refusal to make restitution to Tamar.) Hosea and Gomer. And many others.

Perhaps, then, the argument for why we should "save ourselves for marriage" is because the very sexual act should be reserved for the pronouncement of marriage.

Not because God will love us less.

Not because it makes us damaged goods.

Not because we're going to have horrible sex the rest of our lives.

But because sex itself is a marriage act, is an action that unites two into one and thereby pronounces them wed.

And this understanding of uniting, of sex being true consummation of marriage, was the historic understanding of the Church up until modern times, and remains so in some denominations.

However, we must also take care in what these passages do not address and do not condone. The passages are inspired, but they also are responding to a historical culture.

Since we now live in a world where a woman is not dependent on a man for income, maintaing an argument that she should stay wed to a man who is abusive is ridiculous.

Since we live in a world where the Church has been charged to care for the oppressed, if a woman needs to flee an abusive marriage, the Church has a responsibility to care for her financially until she is able to make an income of her own.

Since we live in a world where spouses may be unrepentant, may choose to perpetuate a life of adultery, a spouse has every right to a divorce, for one of them has defiled the marriage bed and therefore defiled the unique conjoining of the two to one.

These examples are the natural questions that come from a working sexual ethic. By considering the whole of the Scripture in our conversation about sex, we have a better sense of our reasoning and how we arrive at our conclusions.

Why do we wait?

We wait because God takes sex seriously and God views sex as the sacramental uniting of two to one, bringing with it a singular consequence: the complete giving of oneself to another, permanently, completely.

What about you? What passages of Scripture have shaped your basic sexual ethics?

I want to add a clarification, too, that this is a post in a series of posts. I'm not trying to make everyone's story "fit" perfectly or to provide a tidy response. I am trying to get us to think Christianly and to think in a framework by which we can then answer questions well. This is not the final word, this is not the tidy model, but a paradigm by which we can openly engage and dialogue.

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*I have not hidden in the past that I am very conservative on certain issues, among them homosexuality, but I am also very liberal in my politics. I believe that the term marriage is the property of the Church and that gay marriage is sinful. But, I too believe firmly in the equality of all persons within a State and support without reservation the right for same-sex unions, with full spousal benefits and the recognition that any other heterosexual couple has in the eyes of the State.

(Image source: Pinterest.)