Naked and Ashamed

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. – Genesis 3:7

My theology is decidedly Augustinian, so the Fall is crucial to my theological thinking. We are told in Genesis that Adam and Eve originally were “both naked and were not ashamed” in the Garden of Eden (2:25). Then after the man and woman ate of the fruit proffered by the serpent, they became aware of their nakedness and sought covering. Their first recorded act after being expelled from the garden was sexual intercourse (4:1). Or as one commentator memorably puts it, “The moment they knew sin, they fucked.”

A Baptist minister and sexologist recently wrote a book entitled Sinless Sex: A Challenge to Religions. The main thrust of the book is that a scientifically-based understanding of human sexuality punctures the traditional sexual doctrines of the Abrahamic religions, which must necessarily reconstruct their teachings to conform with modern sexual science. A further implication of the title, I think, is that the encrustation of sex with notions of sin should be summarily discarded by an enlightened perception of sexuality.

For those of us who have struggled to adhere to the traditional sexual ethic, this sounds like liberating news. But what if sex is not so sinless? Augustine, dour erotophobe that he was, believed that even within the divinely approved conjugal relationship, the element of sinfulness could not be entirely eliminated. The deformed passions of lust brought about by the Fall, he thought, contaminate the whole of human sexuality. The innocence of the prelapsarian Adam and Eve, particularly in the realm of sex, cannot be retrieved. Those who promote a “shameless” sexual ethic, guided by a certain romanticism, believe that if the old irrational taboos are tossed aside and our sexual desires are openly communicated, sexual dysfunction will cease. I’m not so sure. We are condemned to stand naked and ashamed.