Questions For Discussion
- To give an account of right and wrong in relation to sexual conduct we need to have some idea of what sex is for. What answers would you give to this question?
- What are the similarities and differences between these three different perspectives ?
- Which ones do you have most sympathy with and why ?
Stanley Grenz William May Rowan Williams
Stanley Grenz, Sexual Ethics: A Biblical Perspective, Chpt 4.
Ideally marriage is inaugurated by means of the private, inward commitment of the two consenting parties as it is expressed in the outward act of the wedding vows, that is, in the declaration of covenant in the presence of witnesses. This forms the context for the consummation of the marital union in the sex act…This act forms the repeated re-enactment of the covenant between the two partners as formalized in the wedding ceremony…Within marriage the sex act serves as a primary means of expressing not only our fundamental sexuality but also the mutual commitment of the marriage partners…
The Christian understanding of human sexuality, cannot condone any reduction of the meaning of sexual intercourse. Rather, this act must be viewed in terms of its deep meaning within the context of marriage as intended by the Creator in accordance with the divine purpose…
Christian theology…asserts that the sex act is meaningful and cannot be dismissed as a "mere" bodily function devoid of meaning…The meaning of any participation in sexual intercourse is dependent on the context in which it occurs and on the intent of the persons involved. The participants pour meaning into the sex act by the intent that motivates them and by the context they create when they engage in the act…As a result of this relationship of act, context, and intent, the sex act cannot be separated from the entire human being who engages in it. Sex is not something that happens "out there", at a distance from the person who participates in the act…
The general meaning of the sex act is that it is an expression of our existence as sexual beings…The Christian ethic maintains that the fundamental meaning of the sex act is derived from its setting within the marriage relationship. Its meaning is constituted by its practice within a proper context, marriage, and with a proper intent, an expression of covenantal love under the lordship of Jesus Christ…The context of the sex act is crucial in giving to it the meaning it is intended to carry. According to the Christian understanding, this act denotes a variety of negative meanings when it is practiced within improper contexts…The divinely intended, positive meaning of this act is found only when it is enjoyed within its divinely given, proper context, namely, marriage…What is the meaning of the act within the context of marriage?
1. The Sex Act as the Sacrament of Marriage – "The enjoyment of sex within the marital bond can become the re-enactment, reaffirmation, and symbolic embodiment of the marriage vow…"
2. The Sex Act as an Expression of Mutual Submission – "The sex act, as a sign of the desire to give completely for the sake of the other…is an appropriate reminder of the spiritual truth that Jesus has given himself completely for his church. The coming together of the marriage partners with the intent to please and satisfy each other in this intensely intimate act speaks of Jesus' act of total self-giving in living and dying for others. As a person's first desire in the sexual act should be to please the other, so also Jesus sought to meet the ultimate human need for spiritual intimacy with God".
3. The Sex Act as an Expression of Openness – "This further dimension is derived from the link between intercourse and procreation…The sex act is an expression of the openness of the spouses individually and jointly to new life as a possible outworking of the marriage bond…Sexual intercourse becomes a declaration of the will of the couple to allow their love to be expansive, to overflow the limits of their two lives and flow out to others…"
William E. May, Catholic Bioethics & the Gift of Human Life, pp68-9.
The marital act is not simply a genital act between men and women who happen to be married. Husbands and wives have the capacity to engage in genital acts because they have genitals. Unmarried men and women have the same capacity. But husbands and wives have the capacity (and the right) to engage in the marital act only because they are married…The marital act, therefore, is more than a simple genital act between people who just happen to be married. As marital, it is an act that inwardly participates in their marital union, in their one-flesh unity, a unity open to the gift of children. The marital act, in short, is an act inwardly participating in the "goods" or "blessings" of marriage, ie the good of steadfast fidelity and exclusive conjugal love, the good of children, and, for Christian spouses, the good of the "sacrament".
The marital act expresses, symbolizes, and manifests the exclusive nature of marital love, and it does so because it is both a communion in being (the unitive meaning of the act) and the sort or kind of an act in and through which the spouses open themselves to the good of human life in its transmission, to the blessing of fertility (its procreative meaning)…
The marital act, therefore, is not, as Pope Pius XII rightly said, "a mere organic function for the transmission of the germ of life". It is rather "a personal action, a simultaneous natural self-giving which, in the words of Holy Writ, effects the union in "one flesh"…[and] implies a personal cooperation [of the spouses with God in giving new human life]".
Archbishop Rowan Williams, "Is there a Christian Sexual Ethic?", Open to Judgement, pp161-7.
Neither legalism nor good intentions will deliver a properly Christian ethic of sexuality. What if we start from somewhere else ?….The gospel is about a man who made his entire life a sign that speaks of God and who left to his followers the promise that they too could be signs of God and make signs of God because of him…In more theological language, Jesus is himself the first and greatest sacrament, and he creates the possibility of things and persons, acts and places, being in some way sacramental in the light of what he has done.
Now, if my life can communicate the "meanings" of God, this must mean that my sexuality too can be sacramental: it can speak of mercy, faithfulness, transfiguration and hope. Whatever the temptation, we are not to give up on this aspect of ourselves, as if it couldn't speak of God…sexual love becomes sacramental when it involves a lasting (not just momentary) resignation of control, a yielding to the other, a putting your own body at the disposal of another for that other's life or joy…the Christian tradition has wanted to talk about fidelity as the thing that makes sexuality meaningful in relation to God, or, at least, most fully meaningful…
Our main question about how we lead our sexual lives should be neither "Am I keeping the rules ?" nor "Am I being sincere and non-hurtful ?" but "How much am I prepared for this to signify ?
It simply makes some difference if, whatever, our subjective struggles, whatever our uncertainties, our discoveries of what we can and can't do, our self-deceptions and disappointments about what we thought was commitment, nonetheless we are still able to look hopefully at our sexuality, and remember that it can speak – more powerfully than practically any other aspect of our embodied lives – of the most fundamental things in the Christian vision of God. Our sexual lives are about making sense of the oddities and uncontrollabilities, tragedies and farces, of bodily existence; a Christian sexual ethic ought to be saying before all else that there is a distinctively Christian sense to be made, the sense God makes in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, where flesh itself carries the meaning of God's Word.
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