Reframing Paul on sexual ethics, part I

What if Paul is less that-mean-old-guy-making-rules & more a-pastoral-interpreter-of-the-gospel-of-Jesus?

Gentle reader,

Our Spring quarter classes are wrapping up at Northern Seminary which means that, for me, it’s (almost) officially summer. I have lots of summer writing goals, but I’m also looking forward to a different pace and time outside.

One of the courses I’ve been teaching this quarter is on theological ethics as they relate to sex and the family, and it has me thinking once again about how we tend to talk about Paul’s teachings on sex. We often get him very, very wrong.

Today’s post is the first of (what I expect to be) two posts about ways we might reframe Paul on sexual ethics. Today, I’ll talk about two ways:

First, Jesus and Paul are in continuity on sexual ethics.

Second, Paul is a sensitive pastoral interpreter of Jesus’s teaching.

I’m so tired of hearing Jesus being pitted against Paul on this topic.

You know how this one goes: Supposedly, Jesus is nice and loving, while Paul is a big old meanie who likes to impose prudish rules and hates women. Supposedly, Jesus has nothing to say about sexual ethics; it’s Paul who’s neurotically hung up on such stuff.

Judging by how often it’s repeated, this seems to be a spellbinding narrative, but the thing has little to no basis in the New Testament texts.

Jesus does, in fact, have things to say about sexual ethics, and what Paul has to say on the same topic is fundamentally rooted in Jesus.

In my opinion, Jesus’s most important teaching on sexual ethics is that said ethics are rooted in the goodness of creation and so call for humans to treat one other, not as objects, but as persons, image-bearers beloved of the Father.

The context for this teaching (Matthew 19:1-9) has “some Pharisees” coming to Jesus to ask what counts as a legally valid reason for a man to divorce his wife.

Would Jesus side with the liberal party—who said that any reason was sufficient—or would he line up with the conservatives—who held that only a wife’s sexual immorality was legit grounds for divorce.

Jesus does not align himself with either side.

Both sides assumed that husbands could divorce wives if said wives did something bad; both sides assumed marriage was contingent on good wifely performance, on—to borrow a phrase from the Protestant Reformation— “works righteousness.” The two sides only disagreed over what kind of wifely behavior counted as “bad enough.”

Jesus basically says that no thing so counts.

That is, marriage and sexual partnership are founded in God’s good creative intentions for us as human beings, and Jesus quotes Genesis; “they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matthew 19:6). Marriage is not supposed to be a transactional and conditional relationship, in which a wife may count on her husband only so long as she performs well.

Marriage isn’t works; it’s grace. Marriage is a little bit like God’s relationship with us people. It’s created to be a mutual, covenant partnership between two persons who both hold the dignity of image-bearers.

Jesus refuses to play the game of how-bad-does-a-woman-have-to-be-to-throw-her-over.

Instead, Jesus calls on spouses to be faithful as mutual covenant partners. He calls for sexual fidelity that is not contingent on performance. If we want to, we could call what he’s describing “unconditional love.”

In the patriarchal culture of the ancient world, adultery was understood as a property crime against husbands, who suffered the misuse of their property: their wives.

Not so, according to Jesus.

Adultery is not a property crime. It’s much worse. It’s a violation of what it means to be human, a breach of covenant partnership. Women aren’t property; women are covenant partners. Women aren’t to be used; women are to be loved. And men (gasp!) can commit adultery.

(This is one of the most important things about biblical sexual ethics; they’re not just for women; men are on the hook too.)

Jesus radically elevates the importance of faithfulness in marriage. He also recognizes that we live in a broken, fallen world, and that because of that, marriages will sometimes have to end, because, in our sinful world, we need protections against violation and abuse.

Marriage, from creation, is supposed to be faithful. Marriage, under the condition of sin, will sometimes need to be dissolved. (This is Jesus’s interpretation of hte passage the Pharisees were bringing to him, and he stands in continuity with that when he acknowledges divorce in the case of “sexual immorality,” (Matthew 19:9) which, biblically, includes a broad range of harms against one’s one-flesh covenant partner.¹)

What do we learn from Jesus here?

1. Sexual ethics is about treating humans as humans. Sexual ethics should line up with the high status all humans hold as beloved of the Father, bearers of the divine image. Treating humans as human calls for covenant fidelity, the unconditional cherishing of one’s spouse as one’s own flesh. Treating humans as human undermines patriarchy, which would make some humans (men) more human than others.

2. Sexual ethics is not about getting the rules just right, making legal distinctions that allow us to justify this thing or condemn that thing. We see this same thing from Jesus in John chapter 8, where he forbids the crowd from stoning a woman caught in adultery by making them painfully aware that not one of them is without sin. Sexual ethics isn’t about works; it’s about grace. And it’s about the story of salvation.

3. Sexual ethics makes pastoral provision for life in a sinful world. Following rules does not come before protecting people.

Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery - Copy after Lucas Cranach the Elder, public domain, via Wikimedia commons

“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” — John 8:7

Sexual ethics cannot be about Jesus vs. Paul.

Christian sexual ethics will have to take Jesus and Paul together. For both Jesus and Paul, sexual ethics is framed by their shared fundamental Jewishness about the goodness of creation, holiness, and the royal dignity of every human being. And, for Paul, sexual ethics is framed by his transformative encounter with Jesus Christ and by his commitment to sharing the gospel of Jesus in all that he does, including in his counsel on sexual ethics.

Which brings us to point two:

The so-called “Pauline privilege” is not an invitation to more legalism. It is an instructive example of hermeneutical flexibility and pastoral sensitivity.

What’s the “Pauline privilege?” The phrase refers to interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:12-15, in which Paul says some baffling things about unbelieving husbands being sanctified through their wives but then acknowledges that if “the unbelieving partner separates,” the remaining partner is “not bound” (vs. 15).

The history of interpretation here is a wild ride, but a lot of it comes down to a failure to learn, from Jesus, the three things I just suggested we learn from Jesus. Because he knows how hurt happens in this sinful world, Jesus acknowledges divorce in the case of “sexual immorality,” and now Paul, it seems, adds another reason that a marriage might be dissolved: an unbelieving partner leaving a marriage.

“But wait, that can’t be right!? Surely not?!?!?” cries a rigid interpreter (more concerned with getting the rules right than with treating humans as humans; determined not to go all liberal and allow marriages to break up for reasons he has not judged acceptable).

How can Paul add another reason for divorce to Jesus’s one legitimate reason for divorce?

My interpreter is already wrongly assuming that Jesus’s pastoral provision for the end of marriage in the case of sexual immorality is a neat and tidy rule, something that can be demarcated and canonized and narrowed.

(And the history of interpretation has done just this, insisting that this-thing and that-thing and some-other-thing can’t possibly be counted as what Jesus was talking about and so playing the exact same game Jesus refused to play in this situation. Unbelievably, some have had the audacity to propose that the “immorality” Jesus is talking about here can only be the fault of a woman, as if Jesus had not just made it clear that this way of thinking is untenable!)

(And what if Paul isn’t adding an “extra” “exception” here at all? What if he’s rightly interpreting Jesus as knowing that divorce must be a possibility when someone suffers a grievous violation of one-flesh covenant partnership? What if such violations include a range of things spouses do to hurt their spouses and cannot be codified or reduced to one single act?)

“Impossible,” says my rigid interpreter. Jesus made this one little exception to the rule and we’ve got to police that exception and keep it as narrow as possible. So, if Paul says separation means a married person is “not bound,” that too needs to be interpreted in a narrow, police-able, rigid way. Let’s add as many exceptions to the exception as possible.

Ah, but how about a different kind of interpreter? What if we take Paul, here, as an excuse to parse out obscure layers of canon law that will let the church control marriage—and so control the married—according to the church’s wishes? This has happened too, until interpretation of the “Pauline privilege” becomes something so distant from the text of Corinthians that we can’t begin to make the connection without a church history class and some mental gymnastics.

What if Paul, here, is just acting in continuity with Jesus? What if his continuity with Jesus shows a hermeneutical and pastoral flexibility from which the rest of us should learn?

Caravaggio-The Conversion on the Way to Damascus, public domain, via Wikimedia commons

Jesus didn’t specifically and clearly address the question of what do about a marriage in which a partner has “separated,” abandoning their spouse.

So, Paul has to do what all theologians have to do. He has to imagine what Jesus would do, in this new situation, based on what Jesus did do, in the old situation.

This explains that weird, “I and not the Lord” (vs. 7). Paul is not saying a quick thing that is not authoritative. Everything he says here becomes authoritative canon, because recognized as inspired by the Spirit. And Paul is not saying he disagrees with Jesus. Paul is saying, the Lord Jesus said some things, and now, based on what he said, I’m saying something too, because we’ve got a situation here. People are hurting, and they need wise counsel.

Paul assumes, with Jesus, that sexual ethics is about caring for humans as humans, precious and valuable and beloved of the Father. Paul assumes, with Jesus, that sexual ethics is not about codifying just right rules that will let him perfectly control the situation. Instead, Paul makes provision to care for and protect people—in this case, wives abandoned by their husbands—because, in a sinful world, people need a lot of care and protection.

The weight of the passage, like that of the Jesus passage we looked at first, is on the sacredness of marriage as a one flesh union. The end of the passage, like that of the Jesus passage, acknowledges that people need to be cared for when marriage fails.

Neither Jesus nor Paul is saying that we need to be pure and perfect to come to a marriage. In fact, if we take Jesus seriously, pretty much every one of us comes to marriage as an adulterer and continues to adulterate our marriages (“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28)).

We don’t commit to sexual fidelity for just as long as our partners earn our faithfulness by performing purity. We’re faithful because our partners are precious, dignified, beloved, image-bearers, and our faithfulness can be a sign of Jesus’s faithfulness to the church.

There you have it, folks: two ways we need to reframe Paul on sexual ethics. First, Paul and Jesus stand, here, in unity. Second, Paul is a pastoral interpreter of Jesus, based in Jesus’s care for persons as persons.

In my second post on this topic, we’ll look at Paul’s thing with singleness, his eschatology, and his ethic of bodies as indwelt by the Spirit.

Until next time,

Grace & peace,

BFJ

This piece contains associate links.

If you’ve found this piece helpful, I’m grateful if you’ll forward or share.

---

Love audio books? Try Audible plus.

---

Amazon Fresh offers grocery delivery on tens of thousands of products – from a complete grocery selection to everyday essentials, toys, gifts and more. Try it now.

---

Get a 6 month trial of Amazon Prime for students.

1. See my book Faithful: A Theology of Sex, particularly the chapter on the fall, which discusses the meanings of the word Jesus uses here, porneia.