(Continued from yesterday…)

One of the great strengths of this little book is its insistence on the integrity and goodness of the single life, a theme which comes to the fore in the fifth chapter. The Christian sexual ethic has always proclaimed two ways of bearing radical public witness to the faithfulness of God: celibate singleness, and exclusive, permanent marriage. Both ways, argues Felker Jones, function as a sign of the kingdom, a repudiation of commodified relationships, sexual slavery and selfishness, and cultural mores that enslave and demean.

Early Christianity was bold enough to imagine that all of us have—in Christ—the freedom to bear witness to who God is. The Christian understanding of sex was dramatic in the ways that it ran against Roman sexual morality. Roman women were not free to not marry. Christian women could choose—even insist on—celibacy. For Christians, women aren’t property or baby makers. We’re witnesses to the life of Jesus Christ in our bodies. Including in the ways we choose to have and not have sex. For Christians, men aren’t lust machines or power mongers. They’re witnesses to the life of Jesus Christ in their bodies, including in the ways they choose to have and not have sex. … In Rome, you were either a slave or you were free. In the kingdom of God, we’re all free. As a witness to this, we value singleness and marriage as two routes, two ways of life, in which the Christian may be truly sexual and truly free. (71-72)

Chapter six addresses consent, an issue fraught with difficulty in the present, and almost impossible, especially for the vulnerable, in an unrestrained, anything-goes culture. Yet, if sex is to be freely given and received, consent is essential. Felker Jones suggests that consent is at the heart of a biblical-Christian sexual ethic, and is in fact, one of the most Christian things about the ways in which Christians have—and don’t have—sex (78). True consent must be freely given and mutual, and for Christians this happens in the marriage ceremony in a very public way: “See this man? (or, see this woman?)—I’m having sex with him tonight” (79).

Although deeply committed to values traditional evangelical Christians will affirm, Felker Jones takes aim in her seventh chapter at a prominent movement in recent evangelicalism: the so-called “purity” movement. Since sex belongs in a context of grace and freedom, bodies must never be made commodities, and marriage and sex must never be made a reward for effort; thus “purity” must never be reduced to a pelagian work of self-effort toward holiness. The economy of grace and the market economy are antithetical (91).

If sex is in any way a sign of God’s grace, it can never be commodified. It can never be wrenched out of the framework of free, mutual, consensual relationship and placed on the market floor. If sex is thus free, then sexual holiness cannot—cannot, cannot—mean having a “valuable” kind of body or preserving that “value” against loss of value. But we’ve failed to be clear about that. Instead, we’ve bought into a mistaken set of ideas about what purity looks like. (83)

The purity paradigm turns physical virginity into a possession. This tendency heightens the sense that purity matters most for females and heightens the unbiblical idea that virginity and purity don’t apply to men. The purity paradigm makes virginity into a thing that one needs to cling to in order to retain value. It tells the graceless lie that we are more valuable spouses for someone if we have this thing. It tells the demonic lie that our market value is what makes us precious to God. (91)

While she is careful to note that “there is much that is healthy, holy and happy about the situation in which both spouses can come to a marriage without sexual experience” (108), she insists that purity, marriage and singleness are about discipleship in the kingdom of God and never about our value as persons.

And so we return to the central point: married or single, the body is one hundred percent for the Lord. Our bodies bear witness, our flesh is for mission, for witness, for giving glory to God. Both faithful marriage and celibate singleness may be ways in which we harness all of our life and pour that life out for God (69). “The sexual orthodoxy of our fallen world wants to create a body that is something to be consumed. Christian sexuality recognizes that the body is meant to be a witness. Sex is a witness to what God does in our lives, a witness to the God who is faithful and keeps promises” (104). The faithful body tells a story of God’s faithfulness. It witnesses to the goodness of embodied life as created by God. It does kingdom work in relationship and service to others. It testifies to the longing and consummation of God’s eschatological future. It witnesses to the fact that we already are “bought with a price.” In Christ we have been made free to be truly and fully human, and so truly and fully sexual—in the ways we do—and don’t—have sex (97).

Felker Jones, Beth, Faithful: A Theology of Sex 
(Ordinary Theology Series; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 108pp. 
ISBN 9780310518273

In her new little book on sex, Beth Felker Jones, associate professor of theology at Wheaton College, Illinois, and author of The Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection and Practicing Christian Doctrine: An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically, takes as her primary datum St. Paul’s declaration, “The body is for the Lord” (1 Corinthians 6:13):

Married or single, the body is one hundred percent for the Lord. … My hope is that we might move to a theology of the beautiful body, a theology of the sexual body, in which the body becomes—not an idol—but something like an icon. … Might the process of faithfully living in the body, including sexual discipline, be understood as something like the writing of an icon? (100-101)

In a litany of memorable one-liners scattered throughout the text, Jones declares that sex is (always) real, sex is good—though sex can also be bad, because sex has gone wrong; therefore sex must be freely given and freely received, because ultimately, for the Christian, at least, sex is kingdom work. Although part of Zondervan’s new Ordinary Theology series, this is anything but “ordinary theology.” Rather, it is a radical and often profound theology wonderfully packaged for the everyday reader and addressing an ordinary aspect of everyday reality. Actually, it is counter-cultural theology, robust and biblical, sensitive to the mystery of the wonder and brokenness that comprises human sexuality, deeply aware of the cultural and power dynamics that shape western culture, and attuned to the relational and personal dynamics which so deeply inform our sexuality and sexual practice.

In the first of her eight short chapters Felker Jones introduces her topic by arguing that to be human is to be embodied, and that what we do as embodied creatures, matters. Our existence in a larger reality means we are accountable within that larger reality for how we relate to others and use our bodies. “Sex matters because embodiment goes to the very heart of what it means to be human” (17). Thus, and radically in our cultural age, sex is about God, about who God is and how God relates to his creation. Sex is also about us and what it means to be truly human. Sex, then, is a witness to the faithfulness of God, and sexual ethics remain an essential aspect of Christian life.

Not only is (all) sex “real,” for Felker Jones, sex is also good. “The Christian faith is profoundly for the body and for the joys of the bodily life” (22). Therefore she rejects all forms of dualism and insists that God’s good creation intends our embodiedness and embodied relations, sexual differentiation, and marriage. “The one-flesh union of Eden—marked by commitment and mutuality and partnership and delight—is God’s good, creative, intention for sex” (38).

This created goodness has, however, been drastically impacted by the reality of human sinfulness. Sex has “gone wrong,” having been distorted in life under the conditions of sin. Despite the cultural difficulty of speaking about any kind of sex as “bad sex,” Felker Jones insists that,

We need the tools to discern when sex tells the truth about God and supports human flourishing and when sex denies the reality of God and is harmful to human beings. We must have a way to diagnose the situation we’re in, to know when we’re not embodying the truth of the God who is faithful. We need to be able to recognize when we’re embodying, instead, brokenness and idolatry and sin. (41)

Thus, “good sex” enables, creates, testifies to or delights in the three “goods” of sex: fidelity, fruitfulness, and the relationship of the husband and wife to God, whereas “fallen sex” is selfish, sex contrary to God’s good intentions, sex that exploits or denigrates, that is bought and sold, that preys on the nakedness of others, that is predatory, irresponsible, commodified or abusive (42-50). This is porneia, and the body is not for porneia but for the Lord.

In her fourth chapter Felker Jones applies the logic of death and resurrection to sex such that “pornication” is killed, and desire is reconstituted in ways that are equal, mutual, faithful and covenantal. Although sexual sin is pervasive and intensive it is not the end of the story. Redeemed sex has no place for commodification or exploitation of the other, but flourishes in a covenantal context of friendship and mutuality.

(Continued tomorrow…)