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Abstinence
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10-12-2021 8:35pm#1
This is something not to do so much with Christianity but with religion in general. I have a Muslim friend in her early 20s and she said that she is remaining abstinent until marriage. She's not a deep believer in Islam but stricly adheres to a few things and no sex before marriage is one of those.
It made me wonder about Christians. I know when I was in America my teacher told me that many American Christians regularly have pre-marital sex despite the Bible forbidding it. Secular society has a 180 degree view of it compared to in the past; a person who willingly abstains from sex is viewed as a freak whereas it would be noble back in the day.
I'm wondering how common would it be in Ireland or would it mostly again be confined to religious non-Christians.
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The thing is that in the past people married young.
In America chaperoning and sex segregation ended in a lot of places in the early 1950s then gradually over the decades age of marriage got pushed out.
By going along with secular mores on marrying (relatively) late, its going to lead a lot of sexual frustration for younger Christians who abstain.
Irish Christians are a mix of different groups - sometimes different ethnic groups that don't really mix as well as different denominations, so I don't know if you could get an answer as to Irish Christians as a whole.
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Where does the bible forbid pre-marital sex? Genuine question.
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I was just about to ask the same question. Some people seem to believe this and quote Hebrews 13:4 which I think is wrong as I believe Hebrews is really referring to infidelity or promiscuity. What do others think?
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"Let marriage be honoured among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterers".
The main focus here seems to me to be on marriage, and how married people should behave, with a condemnation of adultery. There's also a condemnation of "the immoral', but not much guidance as to what, exactly, would constitute immorality in this context - we're left to work that out for ourselves. You could certainly argue that honouring marriage involves not having sex before you are married, but there's not much in the text to lend explicit support to that particular interpretation.
The truth is that pre-marital sex doesn't seem to have been much of a preoccupation of the writers of the scriptural texts, either in the Old Testament or in the New. That's not to say that they thought it had no moral content or moral implications; just that they didn't accord it the central importance that later, more sex-obsessed, societies (like our own) tend to. Scriptural morality pays much more attention to the moral implications of wealth versus poverty, say, than it does to those of sexual activity versus abstinence*. The notable exception is Paul, who doesn't have much to say about wealth versus poverty but who regularly condemns sexual immorality. Unhelpfully, though, apart from some very specific condemnations of adultery, he doesn't go into much detail about what behaviour is, or is not, sexually immoral.
[* It's possible that the modern focus on sexual morality is a way of distracting ourselves from what scripture has to say about wealth because, if we judged ourselves by those standards, it might be embarrassing.]
Post edited by Peregrinus on3 -
I would say you would be very hard pressed indeed to find a female in Ireland who hasn't had sex by the age of 21, unless there is something "wrong" with her or she has very strong beliefs. For males, I would say the percentage would be higher, but prob because they are not good at dating.
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In the Irish Sexual Practices Survey in 2006, 15.7% of men aged 18-24, and 18.2% of women, had never had sexual intercourse. Presumably if you reduce the age group to 18-21 those percentages would be higher, since there must be people whose first experience of sex is between age 21 and 24.
OK, that was 15 years ago, but I don't know that the sexual attitudes or behaviours of young people have changed that dramatically since then. So I would imagine that there are still non-trivial numbers of 21 year-olds who have not had sex.
The survey didn't explore the reasons why people hadn't had sex - whether it was lack of desire, or lack of opportunity, or a conviction that it was inappropriate, or some combination of these factors.
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Really, you think so?
Is your claim based on statistics or purely anecdotal?
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I would imagine (which is just as valid as 'I would say') that it reflects more on the kind of circles a person moves in and personal experience. If VT's experience has been that any woman he met was willing to have sex then he is going to be under the impression that this is reflective of all women.
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"OK, that was 15 years ago, but I don't know that the sexual attitudes or behaviours of young people have changed that dramatically since then. "
Very difficult to know how behaviour has changed over the last 15 years. I read an article a while back suggesting the rise of the smartphone had led to reduced social interaction among young people while also rendering pornography freely and readily available to all. At the same time we seeing significantly less sex in American movies by comparison to previous decades, for various reasons, not least profit (18s and R rated movies have a more limited potential audience) though also increased conservatism. We also have very new and different attitudes to sexual identity that weren't really present to the same extent 15 years back. I'd imagine that current sexual attitudes and behaviours are dynamic and exceptionally difficult to predict based on historic data.
While I tend towards a liberal attitude to sex and sexuality, the level of inadvertent and damaging social engineering that is taking place purely for profit of large multinationals here is certainly a concern. One could reasonably argue that many organised religions have similarly used sexual imperatives to further their own causes over the course of history. While we are seeing attempts at promoting a more secular understanding of sexuality within our school curricula (some schools more than others), it does not have the traction that more dogmatic religious approaches have had in the past. To my mind this is something that we need to address as an increasingly diverse society.
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When you say that "Secular society has a 180 degree view of it compared to in the past; a person who willingly abstains from sex is viewed as a freak whereas it would be noble back in the day" is your claim purely anecdotal or can you cite studies that back this up?
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There are certain young ladies brought up in conservative Christian families in the US who regard preserving vaginal virginity until marriage as an imperative - however this does not exclude other forms of sexual intercourse. Apparently.
Scrap the cap!
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The main New Testament word for "sexual immorality" is porneia, and the 1st Century understanding of that would would definitely have included pre-marital sex. I don't think there is a plausible alternative reading of those texts TBH.
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Reading Hebrews 13:4 with modern eyes it doesn't look like it prohibits premarital sex going by the wording.
But in pre contraceptive times it would make sense for premarital sex to be banned if your religion like most believes in the sanctity of the family.
Can't be having loads of unwed parents running round in those circumstances
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Ceremonial marriage wasn't a thing in first century Palestine. Sure, you had a party when you married, but they didn't have the modern concept of a formal rite or ritual that constituted marriage, before which you couldn't have sex and after which you could. For them, having sex was an important part of marrying, as was the exchange of promises, etc, but they could happen in any order, and over time rather than in a single instant. So, this wasn't a binary either/or thing; it was definitely immoral to have sex with somebody marriageable but who you had no intention of marrying, and of course it was immoral to have sex with someone already married to someone else. But in other cases it was not so clear.
Say, two young people having sex with a view to marrying, even though the path to marriage hadn't yet been cleared with their respective families? That might be immoral because it was foolish or risky; the path to marriage might never open up and serious detriment to one or other - especially the girl - might result. But the sex itself wasn't "impure" in the sense that a more puritanical culture would later come to understand it; this might be immoral in the sense that defying your family and taking foolish risks was immoral in a culture that attached a lot of importance to respecting family authority. But the problem was not the sex; it was the lack of commitment, or ability to commit. This behaviour wasn't "sexually immoral" in the sense that adultery or prostitution or rape was.
Bear in mind that, although first-century Jews thought that monogamy was a higher form of marriage and in practice Jewish culture of the time was largely monogamous, the scriptural morality of the Old Testament sanctioned both polygamy (which involved marriage) and concubinage (which didn't) and sex with your own slave (provided you accepted your responsibilities to her and to any offspring). For them, marriage wasn't the only social relationship in which sex might be appropriate. This was a culture with a strong code of purity, but sex wasn't impure in the way that it later came to be seen by Christian puritans.
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Differing cultural ideas of what constitutes a wedding ceremony, or how we determine exactly when two people are married is one thing; granting biblical sanction to sex outside marriage is another. The latter is consistently viewed as immoral, in both the Old Testament and the New, and it discounts the high value scripture consistently places on marriage. The bible sees sex as a good thing, absolutely, but only in the context of a monogamous marriage. I think you are perhaps confusing what the bible actually says about sex and when it should be seen as good and right, and how different cultures have interpreted that for better or worse (whether OT Israel, 1st Century Roman Empire or Palestine, or more recent "Puritan" cultures).
I can understand a desire to set aside a biblical sexual ethic altogether, but it seems a stretch to say that the scriptural text advocates sex outside marriage in any circumstances. Can you point to even one instance where scripture points to sex outside marriage as a good thing?
If that is a given, then your second paragraph descends into absurdity. Imagine applying the same logic to stealing: "The problem isn't that I took this stuff, it's just that I didn't pay!!"
And on polygamy, while it isn't explicitly prohibited in the Old Testament neither is it commanded or even given moral approval. Anecdotally, in the OT narratives we can see that polygamy generally leads to trouble. Moving into the New Testament it is very clear that polygamous marriage is not permitted, as seen in the qualifications for eldership in the church for example. In practice, we also know that it died out in the culture as Christianity spread.
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The point is that scripture has relatively little to say about sex outside marriage, one way or the other. Particular kinds of sex outside marriage - principally adultery - are condemned. Sleeping with a slave is forbidden if she has been promised to another (Lev 19) but not in general. Etc, etc. There is no general statement, one way or the other, about sex outside marriage as such. (Which is not to say that they thought it was just fine and dandy; just that it wasn't condemned as intrinsically immoral - its morality would depend on context and circumstances.)
As for polygamy, it's permitted in the OT, not simply noted as something that happens but is wrong. Ex 21 deals with the duties of a husband with regard to second or subsequent wives; "don't take second or subsequent wives" is not one of the rules offered; Deut 21 deals with a man's obligations towards sons by different wives. It's cleat that polygamy had an accepted place in Israelite society.
I think it's a mistake to say that polygamy "died out in the culture as Christianity spread"; it had largely died out even before the time of Christ. It was always attended by rules and constraints which meant that, in practice, only the very wealthy could ever afford to take more than one wife. And very wealthy families with daughters to offer in marriage could afford to be choosy; they didn't want their daughter's place in her husband's family , and that of her children, to be jeopardised by later wives, so it was common to stipulate in a marriage contract that the husband would not take another wife while the first one lived. By the time of Christ this was a standard provision in marriage contracts. These trends were reinforced by the moral view that, while polygamy wasn't immoral, a monogamous marriage was the ideal. The later Hebrew scriptures regularly draw an analogy between the relationship of husband to wife and that of God to his people. And God, of course, has only one people; he is faithful to Israel, so the ideal marriage was monogamous.
The practice didn't die out entirely - after the exile, Jews tended to practice polygamy (though not very much) if living among cultures that practiced polygamy. This continued, in fact, into the twentieth century. It was exceptional rather than normal but, the point is, it wasn't condemned.
(And I seem to recall that Martin Luther conceded that, if a man wanted to marry two wives, he could not say that scripture forbade it.)
Polygamy is in one sense a bit of a side-issue in this discussion since, whatever we think about sex in a polygamous marriage, it's not sex outside marriage. But it's relevant in that it shows that in the OT sexual morality isn't a simplistic black-and-white issue; monogamy is increasingly discerned as the ideal marriage but other forms of marriage are not immoral, and in some circumstances they are morally commendable. The same is true of sex outside marriage - always morally significant; in some cases outright forbidden (e.g. adultery); in some cases morality is context-dependent; and in some circumstances positively praiseworthy (e.g. if a man died childless, his brother was to have sex with the widow so that she could bear a child. But he didn't marry the widow - she remained a widow, and could marry someone else. And the child was considered to be the son of the deceased husband, not the son of the living brother.)
All of which suggests that, when Paul says porneia, we can't simply translate this into "all forms of sex outside marriage". Neither his Jewish nor his Gentile audiences would have understood it in that way, as Paul would have known. If he had wanted to condemn all forms of sex outside marriage, he would have needed to do that explicitly.
We're left, then, with the position that Paul condemns "sexual immorality", but doesn't offer a comprehensive account of what sexual behaviour is, and what is not, immoral. This doesn't mean that all sexual behaviours not explicitly condemned (like adultery or prostitution are, for example) are morally permissible; it means you're going to have to think about it. Which isn't that surprising really, since Paul comes from a biblical ethical tradition that had been thinking about it for a long time. But they hadn't arrived at the conclusion that "all sex outside marriage is wrong", and we've no reason to think that Paul did either. What Paul essentially says is that sexual morality is very important, but he doesn't offer us simplistic rules for identifying what is moral and what isn't.
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I'm certainly not trying to say that there is a simplistic answer (look, read this chapter and verse), but nonetheless I think that when we read the bible as a whole it provides us with a clear sexual ethic. When marriage is introduced in Genesis we are introduced to the idea of the unique relationship between husband and wife, and also of marriage as the legitimate setting for sex ("the two become one flesh"). Everything that follows builds on and expands that foundation, but never contradicts it. So, when we come to a New Testament word like "porneia" (literally meaning "illicit sexual activity"), of course we then need to ask what is included under that heading. And given the clear biblical teaching on marriage, it's not a stretch to conclude that the NT writers mean any sexual activity outside marriage. Throughout the New Testament, monogomous marriage or chaste singleness are presented as two ways of living that are pleasing to God for the Christian. Paul directly counsels singles to get married rather than burning with lust!!
The above is a really outline and incomplete sketch, but one that I think is consistent with what the bible has to say and with the understanding of the church (Orthodox, Roman and Protestant) from the earliest times until now. Of course you are free to disagree, or to look somewhere outside the bible for guidance on sexual ethics - but I think it's a mistake to assert either that we can't know what the bible has to say about sex, or that its intent is unclear.
Polygamy is a side issue here, but still somewhat relevant given my approach above. Polygamy is most definitely regulated for Old Testament Israel. But to understand the full meaning and significance of that we need to place it in the context of the whole Bible, and the history of salvation both before and after. When we do that then I think we reach the conclusion (much like slavery, also regulated for OT Israel), that polygamy does not reflect God's design for marriage, nor is it something we should see as good, right and honorable for the contemporary Christian. On a similar topic (divorce), the Pharisees ask Jesus why Moses allowed the Israelites to divorce their wives on a whim. Jesus' answer? Moses allowed it because of the hardness of their hearts (Mt 19:8).
So, on your last paragraph I agree that Paul condemns "sexual immorality," and that we need to do a bit of work to understand what he means by that. Where we differ (I think!) is that I think we get a pretty clear answer when we look at the rest of the scriptures. When you say "they hadn't arrived at the conclusion that "all sex outside marriage is wrong", and we've no reason to think that Paul did either," I think you're mistake, both biblically and culturally.
Where do you think we should look to understand what Paul means by these statements, and do you think it's even possible?
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I’m not sure I agree that the Bible presents marriage as “the legitimate setting for sex”; it would be more accurate to say, I think, that it presents sex as the foundation for marriage. But I also think the Jewish concept of marriage evolved over time (as indeed has the Christian concept, in the time since Christ, but let’s put that to one side for a moment). We’ve already noted changing attitudes towards polygamy evident both from a reading of scripture and from what we know from non-scriptural sources about the history of this period. We could also mention changing views on concubinage, and on the question of sex with slaves.
I agree with you that there’s a clear long-term shift here - a growing perception of exclusive, monogamous, committed marriage as the ideal to which we are called. This need not mean that other forms of marriage are immoral or that divorce, when it happens, is immoral; just that these things fall short of the ideal.
By the same token, sex is ideally the foundation for such a marriage, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that sex which is the foundation for some lesser relationship is immoral; it may be immoral, and perhaps often is, but intrinsically it’s just less than ideal. Sex between a man and his deceased brother’s wife is an example of sex that’s not the foundation for a monogamous or committed marriage but is not immoral (on the contrary, in fact, it’s morally obligatory). But there’s nothing in scripture to suggest that this is the only instance where sex outside marriage can be countenanced.
In this context, it’s worth mentioning evolving attitudes to divorce. As we know, divorce is permitted by the Mosaic law. Over time different views evolved about when it was appropriate or moral to divorce - could a man divorce his wife only for grave reasons or could he divorce her because, e.g., she burnt the toast? By the time of Christ there are competing traditions about this within Judaism; the gospels record an attempt to get Jesus to identify with one or other of these positions, and he takes a very high view which is very strongly anti-divorce, bracketing it with adultery, and suggesting that the Mosaic law permits it only because of “hardness of heart”. Depending on which gospel text you are reading, Jesus does go so far as to say that divorce is intrinsically immoral - he compares it to adultery, but he may carve our some kind of exception for divorce as a response to adultery, and Paul carves out an exception where an unbelieving (i.e. non-Christian) spouse will not remain with a believing spouse. And within Christianity there are competing traditions, some of which will not countenance divorce (e.g. the Catholic tradition) or will only countenance it in cases of adultery (the Orthodox) and others of which see it as more or less a failure but accept its reality (the Reformed tradition, mostly). While the Catholic tradition sees divorce as intrinsically immoral, I think it’s fair to say that the Reformed tradition sees it as less than ideal, a falling short, something that calls us to reflection and growth, but not intrinsically and always sinful.
As I think about this, it occurs to me - and this is hardly a novel insight - that the scriptures have a great deal more to say about marriage than they do about sex; most of our moral reflections on sex are inferences from scriptural teaching on marriage. Sex outside marriage is problematic because marriage is so important, and marriage is important because it’s an image and reflection of God’s love for, and fidelity to, his people and because it’s the setting for procreation. But just as the less-than-ideal marriage (e.g. polygamy, or terminable by divorce) isn’t always sinful, so the less-than-ideal sex need not be either.
If sex is the foundation for marriage, well, the foundation usually precedes the rest of the structure. Sex isn’t something a couple do after they marry; sex is part of how they marry. In one sense pre-marital sex is, properly understood, an incomplete marriage. The other elements of marriage - mutual obligations of support; shared decisions; and (if it’s an ideal marriage) commitments to exclusivity and permanence may be present in some degree, or they may not be. They may be intended or desired but not yet realised. If they are not fully present, the attitude of parents or family, rather than any failing of the couple, may be what accounts for this. Etc, etc. A moral judgement about sex between the couple has to take account of all these factors.
You ask:
“Where do you think we should look to understand what Paul means by these statements, and do you think it's even possible?”
I think this may the wrong question. If Paul wanted us to know what he meant by “porneia” (a word which, so far as we know, he coined) he would tell us. He is not behind-hand in plain speaking when he wants us to understand something. Paul’s purpose isn’t to tell us what sexual behaviour is or is not permitted; it’s to tell us that sexual morality matters, but the task of discerning what is sexually moral behaviour is left to us - not each of us individually, but us as a community. And, as already noted, that’s still a work in progress; Christian attitudes to marriage and sexuality continue to evolve.
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Thanks Peregrinus, I think you raise some helpful points here and we certainly want to avoid being overly simplistic. But nevertheless, if we go to the bible with the question "when or in what circumstances does God consider it good and right to have sex" we're only going to come away with the answer "if you are married."
We can look elsewhere for our answer to that question, but I only really came here to answer your question in #3 and I've done that as best I can.
Have a great Christmas!
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Thank you for the exchange.
I'll just add one thing; what really got me going on this is not so much the assumption that Christian sexual morality is simplistic, when I don't think it is, but the underlying assumption that Christian morality is mainly about sex; that people's sexual behaviour is a meaningful measure of their fidelity to the gospel. You and I have had the discussion we just had precisely because Paul actually doesn't say very much about sex, and the same is true of the gospels; if you look at practical moral issues discussed in the gospels there is far more said about justice, about the obligations of wealth, about care for the poor and the socially alienated, than there is about sex. In fact I think the only issue of sexual morality to feature at all is - again - adultery.
Not to say that sex and sexual morality aren't important, but the the central place our society assigns to them reflects contemporary culture's preoccupation with sex more than it does anything in the scriptures. The discussion about whether a female "has had sex by the age of 21" implies that what might be a single sexual act on her part tells us more about her Christian faith than what could be a lifetime of indifference to the poor and the marginalised (or, for that matter, a lifetime of service to them). That's not right, and it's not healthy.
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"the underlying assumption that Christian morality is mainly about sex; that people's sexual behaviour is a meaningful measure of their fidelity to the gospel."
(full disclosure - I am what one might call an evangelical atheist ex-Catholic)
Christian morality might not be such, but it sure did seem that it was the way I was brought up, and, no doubt, many members of the reformed Christian churches were brought up similarly also. One's measure of morality and fidelity to the gospel was absolutely equated with adherence to the strictest code of sexual morality - in Ireland special extra-judicial prisons were constructed for women both Catholic and Protestant deemed to have contravened these morals and whose families could or would not buy their way out of it.
I have read the Gospels (and indeed the whole Bible - while I was still clinging onto faith) and the sex-obsession of the largest and many other Christian denominations does not seem to me to be in accord with the teachings of Christ in general. It seems to me that some have fixated on their areas of particular concern while downplaying the messages of truth, justice, love, et al.
If this seems harsh, I'm sorry, I'm saying it as I see it. We are all flawed beings in our own way and out of a sense of mutual concern should be endeavouring to do better by our fellow beings - it's a nice goal to live up to even if we rarely actually do. Unfortunately from my point of view, organised religion is not a help in this regard and it often acts as a hindrance.
Scrap the cap!
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It may seem harsh, but that doesn’t mean it’s unjustified. The reduction of morality to sexual morality isn’t something that only non-Christians do. I think it’s a feature of our culture that affects the religious and the non-religious alike. And, in so far as our culture is the product of religious influences and religious formation, then this is something that is done by religion as much as it is something that is done to religion.
There’s a view that, as the modern world became wealthier and wealthier with the advent of capitalism, the contrast between scriptural teachings about wealth and the way people actually lived became increasingly embarrassing. A focus on sexual morality provided a handy distraction, and some comforting reassurance — sure, the peasants may be starving at my gate while I grow fat on the profits of my slave-trading, but I live chastely and am faithful to my wife and that’s the main thing, isn’t it? Hence, puritanism.
And, if you take that view, we continue to focus on sexual morality today because the moral challenges raised by greed and by excess wealth haven’t exactly gone away. and we still want to be distracted from them. And you could argue that even in secular societies this dynamic is still at work; we engage in bitter wars over attitudes to gender identity, sexual orientation, access to abortion and so on and so forth while capitalism continues to rape the planet unchecked. Not that these things are unimportant, but they are not the existential threat that our collective greed is. They are not the most urgent moral challenge that faces us.
OK, that’s a very simplistic take on what is a very complex situation. There’s more to it that that. I think myself that Irish Catholic puritanism owes a lot to the famine and to the many decades of economic insecurity that followed it - sex couldn’t be separated from fertility and the consequences of uncontrolled fertility could be literally catastrophic. Sexual irresponsibility was therefore gravely wrong because its consequences could be so far-reaching and so grave. And that of course ties in to a culture which particularly condemns female sexuality - it’s primarily women who suffer if children are borne outside a stable and economically secure family situation, and therefore women are particularly severely punished for transgressing the conventions designed to prevent this happening. So Irish Catholic puritanism wasn’t a top-down thing imposed by sexually frustrated celibate men; it very much arose from, or was a reflection of, communal feelings and sensibilities arising out of widely-shared real-world experience. Take away the church, and we don’t all suddenly develop a healthy and well-integrated sexuality, then or now.
Etc, etc - there’s books written on this, and no doubt many more yet to be written. My point is that it presents a challenge for religious people in particular. On the one hand, sex, sexuality and sexual relationships are central aspects of the human experience, a fundamental part of almost everyone’s lives. They are therefore very important. And the role they can play in bringing about great joy and great grief - and of course the role they play in fertility - means that sexual behaviour has significant moral dimensions that we must address. But you can’t avoid thinking - for the reasons you point out, among others - that we haven’t always addressed them very well, and we still don’t.
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Its in an interesting question, as to where in the Bible does it explicitly forbid sex before marriage? I can't point to a specific verse that says this outright. Its one of those things that is handed down generation after generation(If you are Christian)but honestly its not something I investigated for myself. That said, someone mentioned "Porneia" which is defined as generally "every kind of extramarital, unlawful or unnatural sexual intercourse". So basically any sexual activity outside of marriage is considered Porneia or sexual immorality. And Paul does refer to this a fair few times in his epistles. Also in the book of Wisdom it mentions children born of "forbidden or illicit unions", and how those children are essential cursed and will come to naught. I know couples who waited until marriage before they had sex(with anyone, both being virgins) and those unions are unmistakably blessed, as are their children. Its not something you can prove with facts or figures but from what I've seen, sexual immorality, as Paul mentioned, wreaks havoc in the lives of those engaged in it. In fact Paul said that no other sin so clearly affects the body as sexual immorality. One of my greatest regrets is that I didn't wait til marriage before having sex, I wish I could take that back and If I had to do it all over again I'd be a virgin, not caring in the least what society thought of me.
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SFAIK Paul is the first writer that we know of to use the word porneia and, in fact, he may have coined the word. It comes from a Greek root, itself not much used, that seems to have referred to certain forms of prostitution. (Prostitution wasn't seen as inherently immoral in the classical Greek world, but some kinds of prostitution were.) We infer from this, and from the context in which Paul uses the word, that porneia refers to sexual immorality or illicit sexual acts. But Paul never defines or explains it for us. You say say "it is defined as generally 'every kind of extramarital, unlawful or unnatural sexual intercourse'" — well, it is not so defined by Paul, or by any of the other scriptural writers who use the word after Paul. It seems to me that Paul is telling us that sexual immorality is very important; that sexual sins are grave sins. But what he is not telling us is what sexual behaviour (other than adultery, which he mentions separately) is sinful. He expects us either already to know that, or to work it out for ourselves. It is later commentators who offer definitions of porneia like "every kind of extramarital, unlawful or unnatural sexual intercourse", but they are not finding those definitions in scripture itself.
Moreover, a lot of the definitions offered are a bit circular - the definition you offer here includes "unlawful" sexual intercourse. Other definitions talk about , e.g., "any illicit sexual intercourse", "sexual offences", etc. But while this emphasises that there are rules about when sex is lawful/licit/acceptable and when it is not, it tells us nothing about what those rules are.
Is this a problem? Not necessarily. It's a problem if your approach to morality is to expect scripture to provide simple, clear moral rules to cover all circumstances that you can follow without needing to understand why the particular behaviour forbidden or commanded has the moral significance that it does. This approach is beloved of simplistic biblical literalists and, curiously, quite a lot of atheists — strange bedfellows, but there you go. But the more mainstream Christian tradition (and, earlier, Jewish tradition) is to read through scripture to the underlying revelation. A classic question in scriptural reflection is to ask "why are we commanded to do X?", and in the ensuing discussion to seek to discern the underlying values and principles that make X a good or necessary thing to do. The point of this is that you can then use those values and principles to illuminate how to approach situations not directly addressed in scripture.
So, the fact - if it is a fact - that there is no explicit prohibition on all non-marital sex in scripture does not mean that non-marital sex is morally A-OK. The Christian tradition has generally seen it as immoral, because of an understanding of sexuality and sexual relationships that is the product not of a simplistic reading of scripture, but of thoughtful reflection, illuminated by reason and experience.
That is an ongoing process, since neither reason nor experience ever stop happening. Christian views on sexual morality can and do change. A hundred years ago, for example, nearly all Christian traditions condemned contraception as intrinsically immoral. Now, only the Catholics do and, even there, the view from the pulpit is manifestly not widely shared in the pews. Views about the morality of pre-marital sex have also developed - my observation, for what it's worth, is that it's almost always seen as less gravely wrong than it would have been a couple of generations ago, and the view that it's not always wrong would be not uncommon.
Post edited by Peregrinus on1
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