TRISTAN SHERWIN

As I mentioned in my previous post, here are my notes for “Corinth: Sex and Conflict”. I’ve only tidied them up a little, but hopefully they’ll still be legible.

(If you prefer, you can go to our church’s YouTube channel and listen to the message there)

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READING: 1 Corinthians 5: 9 – 7: 6

PAUL AND SEXUAL SLOGANS

We are going to talk about sex this morning.

I’ve started back in chapter 5 and continued into chapter 7, because all of this is one long conversation about sex. And if we really want to get into the nitty-gritty of Paul’s ideas and how they apply to us, then we need to be prepared to wrestle and explore some of the Corinthian attitudes (the Greco-Roman ideas and practices) about sex that Paul is in discussion with. If we don’t, then we’re at risk of making Paul saying something he isn’t

Sadly, because we view him as someone who is unmarried, and especially because of how this conversation on “celibacy” in chp 7 has typically been understood, some have interpreted Paul as being anti-sex. But that’s not the case. This passage is very pro-sex.

As someone with a Jewish background, Paul sees sex in a positive light, as something God has made and as something that God has gifted to us; he recognises that people have a sex-drive, and, like Jesus (who, like Paul does here, also quotes Genesis 2 in Matthew 19:4-5), Paul sees sex as a mystical and powerful union—not a trivial thing.

Paul hasn’t got a problem with sex—but he does have an issue with the Corinthian view and use sex.

And to help us get to grips with the Corinthian viewpoint, there are three Corinthian “slogans” that Paul quotes in this passage (“slogans” that have probably been thrown back at Paul in response to his first letter to the Church at Corinth (1 Cor 5:9)). These slogans are:

“I am allowed to do anything” (6:12)

“Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food, and God will do away with both of them” (6:13) [or, to remove the metaphor and say it as they intend it to be understood; “The body is for sex, and sex is for the body—and it’s meant to be indulged now as God will one day get rid of it”][i]

And the third slogan is: “It’s good for a man not to ‘touch’ a woman” (7:1)

[I’m saying there are three slogans but there’s actually a hidden, fourth slogan that we’ll come back to later]

I’m going to start with the last slogan, not only because it’s the most controversial, but I think it’s a good entrance point into the Corinthian/Roman ideas and how they were affecting the church in Corinth.

CELIBACY

You’ll notice that not all Bible translations treat 1 Cor 7:1 as a “slogan”—they don’t put it in speech marks. Not only that, but a few translations, like the NLT, make it sound like Paul is just agreeing with the Corinthian’s question. And to make matters worse, some translations are confused about what question has actually been  asked: some say “it is good for a man not to touch a women”, others push it further and word the question as, “it’s good not to have sex (to be celibate)?”, and others go to whole hog and phrase it as being, “it’s good not to marry?”.

But as a good number of reputable scholars and other Bible translations point out, the best way to phrase verse 1 would be with Paul echoing/quoting their question (not agreeing with it) and that the verse should be read as, “Now about what you wrote, (open speech marks) ‘It is good for a man to not to touch a woman?’”.[ii]

But even then, this slogan is still very odd; it appears to clash with the ideas expressed in the first two slogans, doesn’t it?

The first two slogans are quiet up for sex—“sex is what the body is for and I can do what I like”—but this slogan seems to be at the opposite end of the scale. And because of this, some commentators have suggested that there are two Greco-Roman views being represented here—those who advocated unrestrained sex, and those who advocated celibacy. And yes, those two views did exist in Greek/Roman thought. But I think there’s a better way to grasp this, a third option which is more natural to the context.

I don’t think these slogans are polar opposites at all—there is a setting within Greco-Roman culture/practice where these two ideals actually sat together; and that setting was within marriage.

Paul makes this connection, too. In 7: 2-3, Paul’s response indicates that the problem of sexual immorality wasn’t separate from this idea of ‘not touching a (particular) woman’—but that it was actually a product of this “no touching rule”. And his solution isn’t to get married (though, he will touch on that within chp 7 as he answers other questions from the church in Corinth), but he actually addresses the married people, and his immediate solution to the promiscuity problem is that you should being having sex with your marriage partner.

To grasp this, we need to see that what we, today, mean by celibacy isn’t how Roman culture thought about celibacy.

Time for a brief history lesson…

Many historians have noted that the Roman Empire had a fertility/reproduction problem.[iii] Roman citizens weren’t reproducing because Roman men refused to sleep with their wives. And for an Empire that planted colony’s to help with it’s spread and control, this was a huge problem for Rome. To change this culture, some Roman Emperors, including Julius Caesar and Augustus, developed financial incentives to persuade men to sleep with their wives (for example: In 59 BC, Julius Caesar offered to give large amounts of land to those who fathered three of more children). Some Roman thinkers, like Cicero, even suggested that “celibacy” (in the marriage context) should be made illegal and considered as an act of treason; a crime against the Roman Empire.

But none of it worked. Men didn’t want to sleep with their wives—they lived by this motif (the third slogan above) that “it is good for a man (a husband) not to touch a woman (his wife)”. But that doesn’t mean that the husbands were “celibate”. On the contrary, they were having plenty of sex.

For a man of noble rank in the Roman culture of Corinth, sex (outside of marriage) and celibacy (within marriage) walked hand and hand.

SEX AND POWER: BACK THEN

Roman culture, not unlike today, had this double standard when it came to the sexual expectations for each gender. Noble women were expected to be chaste. In contrast to that, sexual promiscuity was seen as a masculine virtue.

Apparently, to be a “real” man was to be seen as someone who was never submissive in sex; they were to have authority and penetrate, conquer, subjugate and colonize. Some Roman ideas would go as far as to say, to echo the second slogan, “that the male body was made for that sole purpose”.[iv]

So Roman men were not limited in sexual options—“They were allowed to do anything” (to quote the first slogan we just read), with the one exception/taboo; they couldn’t sleep with another Roman Citizen’s wife or another citizen’s immediate family (as we saw in 1 Cor 5:1—which is important to note). But apart from that exception, men had sexual access to prostitutes (male and female), young boys and girls, and, in particular, to the slaves and servants in their households (and if they were a guest at someone else’s home, they also had sexual access to their hosts slaves as well).

As the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, famously said; “Everything is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power”.

The Apostle Paul wouldn’t agree—as he says in 6:9-10, the Kingdom of God has a different set of characteristics. But Corinthian culture would agree with Jung’s observation. Like everything else in their culture, sex was about authority, power and honour. Sex was a way of demonstrating and exercising your authority over somebody else; especially over your slaves and servants and those who were classified as “weaker” in the Corinthian power structure.

I need you to also remember a few things from when I last spoke on chapter one of 1 Corinthians:

There was a hierarchy of power within Greco-Roman culture; The Strong, the wise and the civilised ruled over the weak, the ignorant and the uncivilised—and sex was a key part of maintaining that power structure.

To subvert this culture, Paul consistently calls the church to exhibit an upside-down alternative to the Roman idea of superiority and status; The Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom, there’s no status differences—no superior/inferior; they’re to view one another as equals, they are to live and treat each other in accordance to their “in Christ” status, not the levels and labels that come from their “in Corinth” culture. And Christianity was very popular among slaves and servants, because of this.

But this inversion of power would also have had an impact on the sexual ethics of the households where Christians would live in and meet in. It used to be seen as a male virtue to sleep with your servants/slaves, and they couldn’t deny you as their master. “In Corinth”, if someone had purchased your body (as a slave or a prostitute), then your body belonged to them, and your body was about honouring who owned you. But that’s all changed in the “in Christ” culture—we’re all equal “in Christ”, no one holds authority, or owns anybody else; we all belong to each other because we are all parts of Christ’s body and family.

Think about it; the “in Christ” culture called those with status to see their servants not as slaves, but as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and therefore, in accordance with Roman custom, they were to be seen as sexually unavailable—they were to be protected like family.

But not everyone in the church is playing ball and practising this alternative way. There are those from the higher ranks of society (specifically men with status) that are resistant to the change that living “in Christ” brings to their “in Corinth” sexual privileges.

So these Roman attitudes about sex were affecting the church in a real way. Most of the church was made up from the “weaker” members of Corinthian culture (male and female slaves and servants, and those who were prostitutes etc…) and, as he writes in 1 Cor 12 (22-27), Paul wants these “weaker” (more vulnerable) members to be protected and honoured—not exploited and used!

So, as Paul indicates within 1 Cor 5:9 and in 6:9-10, when those who want to indulge their “in Corinth” privileges resist the “in Christ” way towards others, they’re actually showing that they’re not participating with what God is wanting; they’re not characterising the Kingdom of God. And this is dangerous for the church, because it was the wealthy who owned the homes that the church met in. So when Paul writes, “don’t eat with such people” (1 Cor 5:11), he’s not on about dinner dates or doing brunch—he’s saying, “Don’t gather for the Lord’s feast in their homes. Don’t do church in their houses, it’s not safe for you.”

So imagine with me for a moment…

Imagine being a noble man, going to be a guest at another noble’s household—maybe to stay for a few days, or maybe to be together as church. You’re both “Christians”, but your hosts have got the “in Christ” culture down to a tee, and you haven’t. Your hosts honour their servants—seeing their servants and slaves as family (and, as such, they’re not to be dishonoured sexually). And so, when you request the normal privilege of being allowed to sleep with one of your host’s slaves, your hosts refuse, and you’re insulted (they’ve chosen to prize and honour a slave more than you, a person with status). Your own honour has been compromised—you feel that you’ve been disgraced. And in a culture where honour is a big thing, what do you do when that happens—what do you do to regain public face and restore your honour?

Well, you take the issue before the Roman public courts, in the local market place.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the passage on lawsuits finds itself embedded between these paragraphs about sex—this whole passage is about sex. I suggest that the lawsuit was also about sexual ethics; I can only guess, but probably one noble has refused to allow another noble (on the grounds of the church family) their sexual perks.

There’s a conflict in the Corinthian church. Both parties claim to be “Christian”, but one wants the power and sexual perks that come from the “in Corinth” status, and the other wants to exhibit the Kingdom of God.

SEX AND POWER: NOW

This may all seem like a thing of the past, but our culture today isn’t that much different than Corinth. After all, Carl Jung’s quote was only from the last century, and he wasn’t endorsing the idea that sex was power—he was merely observing society and noticing what humanity tends to do with sex.

In today’s culture, there still pervades this idea of masculinity and dominance. What I mean by that, is that sex is still weaponised and used as a means of dominating and subjugating others, particularly by men.

And I’m not merely talking about horrible atrocities like rape, sexual violence during war or sex trafficking. But even within the modern West (the UK and US), outside of the sphere of war, sex can still be violent and aggressive.

We only have to look at the revelations that have come out of Hollywood in the past twelve months; about male executives using their authority and status as a means of forcing women to perform sexual acts. The revelations from Hollywood rightly broke a dam of silence, and all over internet, under the #MeToo campaign, women (and some men) are speaking out about the sexual harassment they’ve received from those who held authority over them—which has mostly been men with status. And it wasn’t just Hollywood, but these stories of sexual harassment where coming out of every arena of society, every organisation and institution–including he church. And, as a very important aside, the testimonies of those who have had to endure these degrading, oppressive ways are legitimate and they need to be heard.

But it’s not only Hollywood, or our institutions that speak of this view of Sex and Power; our homes do as well.

As one example (and it’s not the only one), it’s shocking to think that it was only in 1991 that rape within marriage was recognised as a crime. And because the law was still quite ambiguous, it was only last decade (2003) that the law was clarified further under the Sexual Offences Act—although, some would argue that the law is still not listening to those who are victims of rape within Marriage.[v]

But the problem with sex and power doesn’t end there. We have famous, global, political leaders and their infamous “locker room” talk about women. And only this past week, the news has once again been reporting that volunteers of Aid organisations, such as Oxfam, who should have been caring for the weak, needy and the vulnerable in other countries, have actually been involved in sexually abusive behaviour.

Pornography is probably the one of the most poignant examples of sex and aggression in our modern culture.

I know that the issue of sex education within schools is a big debate. But one of the reasons advocates are calling for better sex education—not just within schools, but also in homes and churches—is because if we don’t teach about sex, Pornography will teach a version of sex, and it already is, especially as the internet makes it so easy to access. And the kind of sex that pornography teaches is generally objectifying, abusive, and dehumanising of whoever takes the passive role, which, more often than not, is women.

[On a personal note—I was only nine years old when I saw my first porn film (I didn’t have the internet, and I can still remember the name of the film). Later on, in my teen years, I did develop an addiction to porn. Regardless of what people say, it does taint your view of women and sex. It’s not about sex; it’s about power and male domination]

As one female commentator powerfully expresses the problem of porn, “We create porn that caters to male pleasure while eroticizing female suffering.”[vi]

The journalist, Chris Hedges (Empire of Illusion) writes that; “Porn films are not about sex… none of the women [involved] are permitted to have what amounts to a personality. The one emotion they are allowed to display is an unquenchable desire to satisfy men, especially if that desire involves the woman’s physical and emotional degradation… ‘Increasingly, women in pornography are not people having sex but bodies upon which sexual activities of increasing cruelty are played out’”.[vii]

For me, that underlined sentence encapsulates the Corinthian and modern problem in a nutshell. Sex has been distorted into a power play—sex has become a conflict.

A CRUCIFORM SEX LIFE

So how does Paul challenge all this? For Paul: Sex is not about possessing and using others, but about giving yourself.

Notice, when Paul challenges this idea of masculinity and power, and puts forward a solution to the sex problems (in 7:3), he does not tell men to take possession of their wives bodies (as some have wrongly understood it). He tells them to give their wives authority over their bodies. As many commentators have noticed, this is revolutionary—Paul is defying the social norms and virtues of Roman male authority.

He doesn’t tell the men to exercise authority (in fact, Paul tells no one to exercise authority). The man can’t demand, or call his wife to submit—or vice versa. Paul’s saying—to both partners—submit to one another. In other words, there’s no supremacy in sex: there’s no room for Roman ideas of masculinity, or of one partner being the dominant partner. For Paul, sex is not about being dominant; it’s not about using or possessing another’s body–it’s not a large scale version of masturbation. Sex (for both partners, not just one of them) is about letting go of all power and control and giving ourselves, mutually and consensually, to one another.

As strange as it sounds, even here, Paul is clearly echoing the Cross and character of God—the cruciform, “foolish” pattern that he talked about in the first chapter of this letter. To be Cruciform means: the laying down of one’s personal power, of one’s very life, in servant-hearted, other-oriented, self-sacrificial love.

For Paul, this radical “cross shaped” love constitutes the nature of God’s Kingdom; and the practise of this “cross shaped” love, by those who claim to belong to that kingdom, should revolutionise our lives and overturn our ideas of authority: including our sex lives.

Ergo, sex should be cruciform not abusive.

THE BODY

But like certain men within the Corinthian church, we’ll never grasp this whilst we hold to a distorted view of the human body as being a sex object, or a thing to conquer, or a toy. We need to get a larger, sacred vision of the purpose of the human body, and we can learn a lot from Paul’s response to the Corinthian’s idea that the body is temporal, that it’s something God doesn’t care about, and that it exists solely for its own satisfaction, that we find in chapter 6:12-20.

Firstly (6: 12-14), for Paul, the body doesn’t exist for its self—it was made for God. Not only this—but it’s not a passing thing; God cares for our bodies and God will raise them up, like he did Christ’s (which Paul will explore again in 1 Cor 15). In other words, the human body is not a sex object or a battle ground to be colonised, the human Body is an instrument of eternal worship.

Paul’s not denying that sex is a part of our biological make up, nor is he denying a sex drive, but the chief goal of our humanity, isn’t sex. What is the chief goal of our bodies, what is the best thing we can do with our humanity, or, to word it another way, what is the greatest commandment?: To love God with all our heart, mind, soul and body, and to love our neighbour as ourselves, to quote Jesus. (God and others)

And in case they don’t get this, Paul makes the same point again with a Second defence (6: 15-17): “Don’t forget your physical bodies are actually a part of Christ’s body”. And whenever Paul talks about being parts of Christ’s body, he’s usually got the church community in mind. In other words, your body doesn’t just exhibit your own individuality or self-rule—it represents and is responsible for something greater than self: it represents Christ and it’s responsible for others. And within chapter 12 of this letter, Paul will explore what it means further to be a part of this body of Christ.

But in case they still don’t get it, Paul makes the same point again with a Third defence (6: 19a): “Your body is actually a Temple to God“. In 1 Cor 3:16, Paul had already said that “all of them together were God’s temple”. But here he states that as an individual you also house the Spirit of God. And if I, as an individual, am a permanent residence for God’s Spirit, then the other bodies around me, those bodies that I may wish to objectify, are also Temples to the living God.[viii] In short, humans are not sex objects—we’re holy places; places were God is to be honoured and where God is to be perceived. (God and others)

PURCHASED

But just in case certain members of the Corinthian church still don’t get it, Paul pulls one final, we’ll-aimed defence out of the hat to get the same point through (v.19b-20): “You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body.”

He’s previously used the example of a prostitute—implicating the Corinthian idea that if you’ve purchased/own someone’s body then they have to honour your body with theirs. So can you see the connection here with what Paul’s just written in this passage?

Please don’t misunderstand; Paul’s not agreeing with this way of thinking and he certainly wouldn’t describe us as God’s prostitute (he’s gone to lengths to explain that we are God’s Temple and a part of Christ’s own body). But this last sentence is the fourth, hidden, Corinthian slogan that I mentioned at the start, and what Paul is doing is turning a Corinthian idea back on itself.

It’s as if Paul is saying, “but even if you don’t agree with any of the above reasons, then let’s think of it in the way that you seem to think about it; God has paid for you—your body belongs to God—so honour God with it”.

What does it look like to honour God? Well, Paul has spent most of this letter so far spelling that out: We stop following the power-play and status games and we allow ourselves to be led by the upside-down, “foolish”, wisdom of God’s Kingdom, which doesn’t rule by taking power but through humility and self-sacrifice.

Again, I need us to see that Paul is saying the same thing in each of these statements: That the purpose of the human body is worship: it exists for purposes and dream of God; to love God and to love others—and that sort of love isn’t dominant, or forceful, or controlling, or abusive, or possessive, or aggressive, or selfish; but like the “foolish cross” of Christ, real love is about pouring ourselves out for others.

In sum, there is no conflict in real love, and there is no conflict in real sex.

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ENDNOTES:

[i] I agree with the footnote in the NRSV translation, as it states that this slogan/quotation should extend past the “stomach for food” to the end of the phrase “and God will do away with both”. Seeing this latter part (God will do away with both the body and food) as Paul’s response sends him into a contradiction with his own resurrection theology (1 Cor 15) and his refutation to this “body is for food” sentiment when he states that God is not doing away with the material body, but will one day raise it up (1 Cor 6:14). Seeing the latter part as an extension of the Corinthian slogan removes the contradiction, and makes better sense of Paul’s defence.

[ii] See Cynthia Long Westfall, *Paul and Gender*, p.197 (6.4, Marriage and Singleness); Westfall references Thiselton. Also note, both Wright and Peterson take this approach in their translations. And, for example, so does the CJB, KJV, ESV, NRSV and the NIV (The CEV says, “Is it best for people not to marry”, the GNT presents both).

[iii] See Rodney Stark, *The Rise of Christianity*, p.115, chp “The Role of Women; The Fertility Factor”.

[iv] To quote William Loader (Sexuality in the New Testament): “Roman males were [encouraged] to be the opposite of passive: strong, active, assertive soldiers, and the sexual capacity was one of their weapons of subjugation.” For other explorations on Roman sexual ethics, see: Cynthia Long Westfall, *Paul and Gender (Chapter 6, The Body)*; David J. Mattingly, *Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire* (Chapter 4, Power, Sex, and Empire).

[v] For more information, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7244701.stm

[vi] Emma Lindsay, ‘Porn Makes Men Terrible in Bed’: https://medium.com/@emmalindsay/porn-makes-men-terible-in-bed-6e4df5f73200. [As a head’s up, this artical does contain a lot of explicit language–dont say that I didn’t warn you]

[vii] Chris Hedges, *Empire of Illusion*, Chp 2—The Illusion of Love, p.57 & 61. (second half of quote is Hedges quoting Robert Jenson, author of “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity”)

[viii] And before we think that this permits us to still objectify those who aren’t in Christ, it doesn’t, because they’re potential holy places, places that God longs to dwell in—fellow bodies that God loves, God has made in the divine image, and that God has died for.

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