By happenstance, last year I discovered Raymond J. Lawrence’s Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom. The title captures the book’s thesis. “Christianity…is the most sex-negative of all the major world religions,” Lawrence contends. A historical account of the relationship between Christianity and sexuality, Sexual Liberation sets forth a vision of Christianity that is “sex positive.” To remain viable as a religion, Lawrence maintains, adherents of traditional sexual ethics must stop “continuing Christianity’s long campaign to inhibit its adherents from experiencing the best of God’s gift to humankind, the pleasure of sex.” My curiosity still piqued, I decided to revisit the book. (I earlier summarized his chapter on Luther, sexuality and the Reformation.)
Judaism at the time of Jesus had a far more positive view of sexual pleasure. The Song of Songs “is unambiguously pornographic”:
O kiss me with the kisses of your mouth.
His left hand is under my head;
His right hand clasps me. (2:5)
Let my love enter his garden;
Let him eat its delectable fruit. (4:16)
Under the apple tree I aroused you.
There your mother conceived you. (8:5)
My love thrust his hand [a euphemism for penis] into the hole
And my inwards seethed for him. (5:4)
Your curving thighs are like ornaments crafted by artist’s hands;
Your vulva a round crater. (7:2)
The scent of your vulva like apples,
Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my perfect one! (7:8)
Your valley [a euphemism for the female pudendum], a rounded bowl
That is not to lack mixed wine. (7:3)
Renowned Old Testament scholar and Catholic priest Roland E. Murphy noted the Song’s depiction of “human sexual fulfillment, fervently sought and consummated in reciprocal love between a woman and a man.” Its provenance may be Babylonian orgiastic rites. First century rabbi Akiba ben Joseph sought to preserve its inclusion in the canon and proclaimed, “The whole world, is not worth the day on which the Song was given to Israel.” This was in stark opposition to the Stoics and Platonists in the Hellenistic world who divorced sexual pleasure from religion. Later traditions obscured its literal sexual meaning through allegorical readings. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, sexual intimacy serves as a metaphor for the covenant relationship between God and Israel.
The Pharisees sought to regulate sexual activity while not denying sexual pleasure. Polygamy was permitted (even occasionally required). Sexual intercourse constituted a de facto marriage. Levirate marriage is contrasted with the Christian understanding of marriage. One of the results of Christian monogamy was the creation of the categories of mistresses and illegitimate children, both of which were unknown in ancient Israel. Prostitution was tolerated. (Rahab is considered an exemplar of faith in the New Testament.) According to the Talmud, we can look forward to sex in heaven. “Of the three Abrahamic faiths, only Christianity has no tradition of sex in heaven.” Novelist Herman Wouk summed up Judaism’s sexual heritage: “What in other cultures has been a deed of shame…has been in Judaism one of the main things God wants man to do. If it turns out to be the keenest pleasure in life, that is no surprise to a people eternally sure God is good.”
Lutheran Guilt 