PAGAN SEXUALITY AT THE
CENTER
OF
THE
CONTEMPORARY MORAL
CRISIS
Faculty
Lecture
Fall
1999
Daniel R.
Heimbach
Professor of
Christian Ethics
Southeastern
Baptist Theological Seminary
Wake Forest, North
Carolina
Sexual scandals threatening good order and discipline
in the military appear in the news with increasing
regularity.[1]
Cohabitation among unmarried college students is now so normal the
national media is incredulous when students at Yale ask to be exempted from a
campus policy requiring unmarried students to live in housing where men and
women are not only assigned to the same dormitory but must share toilet and
shower facilities as well.[2]
Hollywood entertainment, no longer satisfied with sexual flirtation and
marital infidelity, makes its disdain for traditional lines of sexual restraint
ever more explicit, and its taste for sexual deviancy is pushing past the
normalization of homosexual conduct to explore the entertainment value of
pedophilia, bestiality and sexual dimensions of murder.[3]
The mainstream news media, deadened to what once caused shame and
embarrassment, now brazenly laud the nation's leading purveyor of pornography as
a hero worthy of admiration and respect.[4]
Both the
government of the United States and leaders in the world of business are moving
rapidly toward a radical redefinition of "family" in which a father and mother
with children living together as a social unit is treated merely as one of
numerous options.[5]
No longer a core ideal deserving special respect and protection, the
traditional family is being marginalized as nothing more than a variation
perhaps no worse but certainly no better than any other living arrangement. Ideological feminism pushes past issues
of spouse abuse and equal-pay-for-equal-work to attack the significance of any
gender-based distinction whatsoever and to denigrate the intelligence of women
who make a full-time commitment to raising their own
children.
Finally, the
Church in America is rife with schism nearly all of it driven by contrary moral
agendas having to do with sexual issues of one sort or another. Sexual norms upheld by the Church for
centuries because no one thought to question the obvious reading of scripture
are now treated as uncertain, contentious or even unworthy by a growing number
of Christian scholars, denominational leaders and pastors. Many who hold teaching positions in the
Church--those who bear responsibility for instructing God's people in the paths
of sexual righteousness--now not only blur the margins of those paths, but
actually lead efforts to promote alternative paths once denounced as
wicked.
What is happening
to our culture, and why is it happening now? In an age that so magnifies the
importance of cultural diversity, in an age that so venerates the value of
personal choice and experience, in an age so skeptical of any moral authority
that is above and beyond human control, that is in an age such as the one in
which we live today, is it still possible for Christians to maintain confidence
in lasting moral norms that honor a fixed purpose for human sexuality and that
distinguish enduring moral right from enduring moral wrong in the area of sexual
behavior?
At their core
these questions have to do with whether what the Bible says about sexual
morality and the meaning of human sexuality can be truly known, and whether what
is known still applies in the modern world. I wish to affirm that it can be known
and must be applied. The God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses, Elijah and Daniel, the God of Peter,
Paul and Timothy--as well as the God of Eve, Sarah, Mary and Martha--this God,
who is the only true God over all creation, has spoken. Not only do his words remain true, but
he who has spoken is coming again (Revelation 19:11). And, when he does, he will judge the
world--not by what it feels is right, not by what it likes or enjoys, and
certainly not by whatever moral standards anyone in this world happens to have
chosen. Rather, he will judge the
world by the only moral norms that matter in the end, and these have been, are
and always will be the unchanging norms that are established by and according to
his sovereign moral will, that were built into the order of creation, and that
have been authoritatively revealed in his most holy Word--the Bible. The moral character of God does not
change. Indeed, it cannot. And the intentions God has for human
sexuality and the standards by which he evaluates the moral purity of human
sexual behavior have not been altered.
Yet living a life
of moral purity requires more than acquiring accurate knowledge about norms
revealed in scripture. It also
requires that we detect and understand the ever changing moral currents marking
our own time and place in history.
We must learn to recognize and prepare ourselves to meet the particular
ways in which God's enduring moral norms are right now being challenged or
rejected by trends arising in our own culture. That is, we cannot afford to be like the
religious teachers who prided themselves in their study of scripture but who
were judged by Jesus for failing to "interpret the signs of the times" (Matthew
16:1-3). If we want to avoid the
error into which they fell, then we must examine not only what scripture says
but also what is developing in the culture around us. Both are needed to properly comprehend
the monumental significance of the contemporary
challenge.
As we look for
the signs of our own times, one surely overrides all others and that is the
widespread effort to completely redefine human sexuality and oppose virtually
any fixed connection between moral norms and sexual behavior. Contemporary American culture is
convulsing in the throws of a moral crisis that at its core is driven by
self-conscious rejection of biblically defined norms of human sexuality and
sexual conduct. This is to say that
while the present moral crisis is reaching every dimension of social life, most
if not all aspects of the general crisis are arising largely as a result of
chaos produced by moral conflict having to do with human sexual identity and
norms of sexual behavior.
Richard Land,
President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist
Convention, is one of many who have recognized how chaos in sexual ethics plays
a central role in the wholesale moral decline now taking place in American
culture. He has
said,
The number one battle line now, and for the
next decade, for the soul and conscience of America is the struggle over
sexuality. The issues are clear and
compelling. We must either reassert
Judeo-Christian sexual values or be submerged in a polluted sea of pagan
sexuality.[6]
I believe Land is correct. But, if he is, the implications are
enormous. If sexual ethics has
indeed become the number one battle line for the soul and conscience of America
going into the next millennium, then God's people will not be ready to face the
moral crisis building in our culture unless we better understand what is driving
the crisis and why it has so much to do with human sexual identity and sexual
conduct. The answer to these issues
lies in understanding the reemergence of sexual paganism in Western culture as
it stands on the threshold of a third millennium. It has to do with the reemergence of
ancient religious thinking centered on the exaltation of sexual deviancy and the
conflict engendered by such thinking as it spreads through a society whose
social traditions, institutions and laws were shaped at a time when the culture
was centered upon Judeo-Christian ethical norms.
Francis Schaeffer
in 1970 warned that the evangelical church in America would again fail to
prepare God's people for timely witness if it did not seriously comprehend and
prepare for the fact that society is heading toward a moral and spiritual
"revolution with repression" directly targeting Christian moral
standards.[7]p. 81.
In his mind, the present generation of Christian young people may be the
last generation in America with civilly protected freedom to stand against legal
repression of biblical moral norms.
Schaeffer believed the generation born and raised in the 1960's and
1970's would be the "first full post-Christian generation." That is, it would be a generation with
little or no memory of Reformation religious and moral doctrine. Instead, it would be guided by a version
of morality that no longer believes in any fixed objective foundation. With no place for the one true God, the
moral thinking of this new generation would become entirely subjective, tethered
to nothing except the whims of arbitrary personal desire and checked by nothing
except the power of a 51 percent majority.[8]
And, where would this lead?
Although Schaeffer did not use the word "paganism," he did described its
reemergence well enough to identify the role conflict over sexual ethics would
play in the coming post-Christian culture.
"Modern man," he said,
has no moral imperative for what he
should do, and consequently he is left only with what he can
do. And he is doing what he can do
even though he stands in terror.
And the biggest terror of all is: Who is going to make the babies? . . .
Who is going to shape the human race?[9]
Schaeffer may not
have identified paganism by name, but Carl Henry certainly did when he sounded a
similar warning in a conference message that became the theme of his book,
Twilight of a Great Civilization: The Drift Toward Neo-Paganism.[10]
Beginning in the 1970's Henry warned evangelical Christians of a coming
barbarian invasion that would threaten the very foundations of Western
civilization.[11]
Rejecting fixed truth based upon the God of creation as revealed in the
Bible, Henry said the new barbarians would welcome occult forces along with
other pagan impulses that will
promote self-deification and sexual indulgence as worthy moral goals. Henry said,
modernity deliberately experiences this new
[pagan] morality as an option superior to the inherited Judeo-Christian
alternative. What underlies the
atheistic commitment to novel sexual and marital and political patterns is a
stultification of Biblical conscience, an irreligious redefinition of the good,
a profane will set. . . . A half-generation ago the pagans were still largely
threatening at the gates of Western culture; now the barbarians are plunging
into the . . . mainstream. As they
seek to reverse the inherited intellectual and moral heritage of the Bible, the
Christian world-life view and the secular world-life view engage as never before
in rival conflict for the mind, the conscience, the will, the spirit, the very
selfhood of contemporary man. Not
since the apostolic age has the Christian vanguard faced so formidable a foe in
its claims for the created rationality and morality of mankind.[12]
Like Schaeffer,
Henry warned evangelical Christians of the need to understand and respond while
there is yet opportunity. Writing
in the 1970's, he was concerned that time for an effective evangelical response
to this emerging challenge might, in fact, be running out. Once entrenched, he warned, the
repaganized culture will not rest at merely deriding Christian moral norms. First mocking them as nonsense, a
repaganized culture will soon fear and attack them. Christian moral norms will be viewed as
a positive threat because they are so contrary to the moral foundations upon
which paganism rests.
Of course some
may be skeptical, but these simply are not paying attention to cultural
indicators. For example, the recent
hit movie "Titanic" was billed as a romance dramatizing an historic event. But it conveys a moral message that is
pagan to the core. The viewing
public was told that "Titanic" is not just a cautionary tale. Rather, according to its director, James
Cameron, it is also "a story of faith, courage, sacrifice and, above all else,
love."[13]p. 2E.
But what sort of faith? What
sort of courage? What sort of
love? They are not of the sort
associated with Judeo-Christian morality.
To the contrary, these themes are paganized so that breaking faith with
an unromantic fiancee for a one time experience of passionate fornication is
praised as a moral accomplishment that qualifies participants to enter a higher
dimension. An act of faithlessness
is redefined as an act of faith, of courage and of love because it is redefined
by a new sort of spirituality.
The film's
defining line shows how clearly the writers meant to hook viewer interest with a
religious message that attributes salvific significance to the lead couple's
embrace of forbidden sex. Rose, the
heroine, while reflecting back on her ordeal credits Jack, her partner in
fornication, with doing something more than saving physical life. Referring to their sexual experience she
says "he saved me in every way that a person can be saved." Thus the moral message of "Titanic" is
the promise of salvation accomplished though sexual experience--especially
sexual experience of the sort that violates biblical norms. This is not a minor message Christians
can afford to overlook. James
Cameron's message of salvation is indeed the most titanic element of his film,
and it is titanic precisely because it is self-consciously pagan, not
Christian. The movie rejects the
idea of salvation as a work of God that frees sinners from sin, and completely
redefines it as a work of man achieved by embracing the experience of sexual
sin.
While paganism
takes many forms, all its variations center on a belief system that promises
control of supernatural power through physical experience, and that makes
rejection of fixed distinctions a prerequisite for moral and spiritual
attainment. David Wells explains,
in pagan thinking, the natural is believed to be so permeated with supernatural
power that supernatural forces controlling the universe can be centered and
steered by manipulating natural objects.[14]
Accordingly, paganism seeks truth through subjective experience, feeling,
and intuition. Deep wisdom is
something apprehended experiencially, through acts of the body, and
authenticated by sensation and emotion.
For pagans there is no knowledge of wisdom or truth apart from what
individuals grasp in the body through feeling and sensation. Thus reason and morality always follow,
and can never restrict, what the body experiences.
As a result,
while paganism certainly celebrates the discovery of religious meaning in life,
it does so in a way that is characteristically self-deifying, and pagan morality
is highly sensual. Indeed, because
the pagan mind believes supernatural power can be centered and controlled by
manipulating rhythms of biological life, sexual indulgence is embraced as a
moral ideal. Individuals grow in
spiritual power and moral attainment the more they participate in sex acts that
break away from restrictive expectations.
For this reason, pagan deities tend to be intensely sexual, and pagan
worship often features cult prostitution.[15]
In pagan
thinking, salvation has to do with entering into experiences that enable men and
women to discover, or center, deity in themselves. In their view, God is in us because we
are god, and the obstacle that most hinders us from realizing this truth
is mistaken belief in fixed distinctions--between married and unmarried, between
male and female, between God and man, between supernatural and natural, between
life and death. To realize this
version of salvation, paganism very often, if not always, requires adherents to
reject belief in fixed sexual distinctions. The reality of fixed sexual difference
is denied by engaging sex acts that violate traditional boundaries, and by doing
so participants think they can manipulate the supernatural power that permeates
all natural things but lies beyond all seeming but ultimately unreal
distinctions in the natural realm.[16]
In other words, sexual indulgence is sacralized as a means of salvation,
and what paganism values most highly is what the Bible calls sin--sex that
unites the unmarried, sex that unites persons of the same gender, and sex that
unites human life with animals.
Comparing
biblically based Christian thinking with the pagan view of sex, Jeffery
Satinover identifies the critical issue that sets pagan sexual ethics on a
course diametrically opposed to biblical morality. He says,
from the Judeo-Christian perspective,
sexuality--an aspect of nature--cannot itself be "sacramental." It partakes of sacramental reality and
is thereby elevated (sanctified) only in the context of the "sacrament of
marriage." Sacramental
sexuality, on the other hand, is the very essence of pagan worship.[17]
The distinction Satinover describes is
absolutely key for understanding much that is changing in our culture. By giving sexuality sacramental
significance and turning sexual experience into a means of spiritual salvation,
paganism necessarily turns spirituality into a celebration of sexual
indulgence. Peter Jones puts it
even more succinctly saying, "when beds become altars, altars quickly become
beds."[18]
But pagan
spirituality does not stop at reversing sexual morality, it also opens the door
to human sacrifice. The immediate
attraction of pagan spirituality is the promise of guiltless promiscuity, but it
leads in the end to the shedding of innocent human blood. Paganism not only attacks fixed
distinctions that define moral boundaries in the area of human sexual identity,
it also attacks distinctions that define moral boundaries in the area of human
life. David Wells explains how
ancient pagans did not distinguish between the living and the dead. He says,
The dead were thought to inhabit the same
world as the living, to be as much a part of it as the living, to be present in
it in the same way. . . . The living and the dead, the natural and the
supernatural were all part of a single reality. If the dead could communicate
with the living, the living could affect the gods [or the supernatural powers of
the cosmos], and what was visible could be moved and changed by what was
visible.[19]
In the pagan
mind, death is either a solution, escape or release from problems arising from
the experience of separation which is an inevitable aspect of existence in a
physical world,[20] or it is the most powerful experiential act
by means of which the powers of the cosmos are centered, moved, manipulated or
appeased.[21]
Tragically, the same belief system that justifies sexual sin all too
easily justifies human sacrifice as well.
In the sad logic of paganism, pagan sexuality and pagan sacrifice often
unite as two sides of a single drive that seeks unrestrained cosmic power over
all dimensions of reality. That is,
they end up as complementary sides to a single drive that is aimed at preempting
the power, place and prerogatives of the one true God who rules all dimensions
of human existence.
Pagan thinking
sounds so foreign to evangelical Christians many are still tempted to dismiss it
as irrelevant. But that is a
mistake. Paganism is growing fast
throughout our culture, and it is now even penetrating the bloodstream of the
institutionalized Church. The night
is far spent, and the day of paganism in America is indeed at hand. Outright paganism is emerging
everywhere. Through children's
cartoon entertainment, through popular television programs such as "Hercules,"
"Simbad" and "Xena," and through block buster movies like "Star Wars" and
"Titanic," a new generation is being conditioned to accept notions of pagan
spirituality that are tied to the acceptance of pagan sexual morality and
ultimately to pagan sacrifice as well.
Behind the hints
and assumptions of popular entertainment, celebrities like Shirley MacLaine
zealously promote spiritual and moral conversion to a new level of human
consciousness suitable for a "New Age."
But the "New Age" is not new.
It is, in fact, nothing less than a return back to ancient
paganism.[22]
But, while some hide behind the idea of offering something new, others
are less coy about acknowledging the ancient pagan nature of their agenda. In one example, best selling author
Ginette Paris calls the culture back to the veneration of Artemis, the goddess
in whose name the citizens of Ephesus rioted against the preaching of Paul (Acts
19:23-41). Paris
says,
It is time to
call back the image of Artemis, the wild one, who despite her beauty refuses
marriage and chooses to belong only to herself. . . . When we are constantly
paying attention to another person, to a group, to relatives, colleagues and
friends, how much time, energy and space are left for . . .
being-present-to-one's-self? . . .
When the Artemis
myth manifests itself in our lives, it can be recognized by a sense of no longer
belonging to a group, a couple, or a family; it represents a movement away from
. . . fusion with others, the most extreme example of fusion being the
connection between a mother and her young children. Artemis . . . invites us to retreat from
others, to become autonomous.[23]
Paganism was
anti-Christian in the first century, and American evangelicals must understand
that the paganism now reemerging in our culture is no less antithetical to the
God of scripture. The anti-biblical
agenda of pagan feminism is unmistakable in a book by Jewish feminist Naomi
Goldberg titled Changing of the Gods. In her book Goldberg announces that,
"The new wave of feminism desperately needs to be . . . religious in its
vision." But her religious vision
is pagan, and she rejects the God of the Bible because, she says, he has "stolen
our identity."[24]
To remove any doubt against whom she is aiming her attack, Goldberg goes
on to say, "We women are going to make an end to God."[25]
Along with
outright rejection, the God of the Bible is also being ridiculed by feminists
priestesses of the new pagan sexuality, and their ridicule is every bit as
scornful as that once voiced by pagans in the first century. For example, pagan feminists Monica Sjoo
and Barbara Mor mock the Christian God saying,
Yahweh is called the jealous God. What was Yahweh jealous of? Of the Goddess, and her lover, of their
sacred-sexual relation itself, and of its domination over the minds and hearts
and bodies of generations of Neolithic people. Thatis why the God and religion of the
Bible are identified so clearly from all other preceding gods and religions: The
Bible God and his religion are based on a violently asexual, or antisexual
morality never before seen on earth.
Sex--the source of life and pleasure of love--become the enemy of
God.[26]
Of course, joining sex with sacred worship
makes an explosive combination, and just as Christian spirituality defines
sexual moral norms in terms that always require their separation, so the
reemergence of pagan sexuality is causing a revival of pagan spirituality
because paganism requires their combination.
Because the pagan
mind tries to get beyond distinctions, the denial of gender-roles and the
normalization of homosexuality are as central to the sexual ethics of reemerging
paganism as they were in ancient paganism.
Speaking as a self-conscious pagan today, Shirley MacLaine explains the
logic of the pagan feminist drive to erase gender-role distinctions and to lift
up homosexual sex as a moral ideal.
MacLaine says that since the point of life is to "balance both the
masculine and the feminine in ourselves" and since this will not be achieved
until we "have spiritualized the material and materialized the spiritual," we
must therefore pursue bodily experiences that help us reach the "perfect
balance" of physical as well as spiritual androgyny.[27]
In other words, she is saying homosexual sex is the ultimate experience
by which pagan spirituality is realized in bodily form, and this is because it
so fully embodies rejection of any fixed meaning to differences between male and
female. In the new paganism now
emerging in our culture, homosexuals, both gay men and lesbian women, are the
priests and priestesses of the new pagan sexual ethic. They are leading the way because they
are the ones who have already succeeded in making pagan spirituality real in
their bodies.[28]
But now, what of
the connection we noted earlier between pagan sexuality and pagan
sacrifice? Is this ancient
connection also reemerging in the paganism of today? Indeed it is. In fact it is here already. Sjoo and Mor, explain that pagan
feminism desires total control over life from beginning to end. They say,
all women--on a global scale--have got to
regain our ancient ontological power--and intuitive skill--for making
life-and-death decisions. . . . This is the real challenge presented by feminist
issues, including abortion rights. . . . When women begin to define our own
lives, including being ontologically responsible for each life we choose to
bring--or not bring--into the world, then women will become fully functioning
definers of the world. And
we will be fully responsible for the kind of world, the spiritual and physical
quality of world, into which we bring new life.[29]
That is what
these leaders on the cutting edge of feminist thought seek generally. To put their beliefs in practice, Sjoo
and Mor are in particular urging women planning abortions to treat the new lives
growing in their wombs as preexistent spirit beings who have entered their
bodies from elsewhere in the universe.
Pregnant women, they say, should speak to the one they want to kill "as
one sacred being to another" explaining, "This is not the right time or space
for us to be together. Please leave
now. At the right time, we will
meet again."[30]
Here pagan spirituality offers women a method by which to suppress their
natural, God-given sense of moral guilt while remaining fully aware that the act
they contemplate will take the life of a "sacred being" who is as fully personal
and human as they themselves.
Some feminists
are already practicing religious rituals that sacramentalize a mothers's
participation in acts of abortion.
In a book on this subject, Ginette Paris promises women contemplating
abortion they can cut themselves free from feelings of guilt by participating in
religious rituals that give favorable meaning to their act of shedding innocent
human blood. On this she
says,
Our culture needs
new rituals as well as laws to restore to abortion its sacred dimension. . .
.
. . . I've heard
women address their fetus [sic] directly . . . and explain why it is necessary
to separate now. Others write a
letter of farewell and read it to a friend, a spouse, or indeed to their whole
family. Still others invent their
own farewell ritual, inspired perhaps by rituals from other cultures, like
offering a little doll to a divinity as a symbol of the aborted fetus.[31]
Paris asserts "it is not immoral to choose
abortion; it is simply another kind of morality, a pagan one," and she attacks
those who address the spiritual dimension of human sacrifice "only within
Christian dogma, as if no other form of spirituality existed."[32]
Thus Paris writes with passion as she advocates a cause she calls,
"Abortion as a sacrifice to Artemis.
Abortion as a sacrament."[33]
Christians must
not fail to see how easily pagan feminist leaders like Sjoo, Mor and Paris are
moving to join pagan sexuality with justification of human sacrifice. Pagan sexuality opens the door to pagan
spirituality, and pagan spirituality opens the door to pagan sacrifice. And, as our post-Christian culture
embraces the promise of distinctionless sexual indulgence offered by pagan
sexuality, it is being led to accommodate the idea of pagan sacrifice as
well. Only minds and hearts that
are firmly rooted in scripture will have sufficient foundation to oppose the
influence of pagan thinking as it grows in cultural popularity. No one in the secular culture who finds
pagan sexual values attractive will have strength to resist the influence of
pagan spirituality as it leads toward pagan
sacrifice.
But Christians
must also examine how prepared we are to resist. We cannot dare assume all Christians
will automatically stand against this cultural drift. Christians, including evangelical
Christians, risk being moved along with the culture as it heads towards pagan
sexual values, pagan spirituality, and ultimately to the justification of pagan
sacrifice, unless we work quickly to reaffirm, clarify and restore Christian
commitment to biblical teaching on sexual ethics. Then and only then will Christians in
America be ready to serve effectively as salt and light while the influence of
pagan sexual ethics spreads in the post-Christian culture around
us.
A Concluding Unscientific Postscript for
Evangelicals
Of course, it
should be that Christian theologians, assured by confidence in the inerrant
authority of scripture, will always oppose sexual promiscuity, gender-role
confusion and homosexuality as in fact sinful and destructive. And, indeed, they should do so with as
much conviction and passion as is shown by the priests and priestesses of
paganism now working to oppose heterosexual monogamy and every sort of fixed
sexual distinction. But, in fact,
pagan sexual thinking is making its way into the Church, and pagan spirituality
is not far behind. Pagan sexuality
is not only working against the historic influence Christian sexual ethics has
had upon the culture. It is making
its way into the life and teaching of the institutional Church as well through
the work of scholars who claim they are discovering new, more interesting
interpretations of the ancient biblical text, and through theologians and
preachers who announce they have arrived at some new understanding of Christian
morality they now think superior to the Bible
itself.
But, if pagan
sexuality is marketed as better "Christianity," and if pagan sexual ethics is a
filter through which theologians can "reinterpret" the teaching of scripture,
then what they teach is no longer the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is instead a new and very different
gospel. It is a gospel that in fact
turns biblical morality on its head, so what is holy is made immoral and what is
immoral is redefined as holy. This
being so, it certainly is no surprise to find that as pagan sexuality and pagan
spirituality are injected into the blood steam of mainline seminaries,
denominations and congregations, these Christian bodies are convulsing in
turmoil, division and confusion.
But, while the
injection of paganism through a revolution in sexual ethics is so obviously
straining life within liberal Church denominations, can we safely assume that
evangelicals, as evangelicals, are completely immune to its affects? I really have to wonder? Of course, it could be nothing more than
coincidental that just as the culture is turning toward paganism, and just as
mainline denominations are being traumatized by raw doses of pagan sexual
ethics, that at just this same time many contemporary evangelical scholars are
also suddenly interested in rethinking such things as how the doctrine of the
trinity affects gender-related functional roles, how Christ's relation to the
Church functions as a model for marriage, how the doctrine of creation defines
human sexuality, how to understand male headship in the family, how gender
relates to ordained teaching authority in the Church, and whether inclusive
language should be used in Bible translation. It could just be coincidental. But that is highly unlikely, and we
ought to at least think about the possibility of some
connection.
We should, of
course, try to not overshoot the mark by exaggerating. But, neither can we afford to shrink
from aiming at it for fear of causing offense. I, for one, believe there is indeed a
connection between a sort of moral thinking that opens the mind to reemergent
paganism and the interest some evangelical scholars now have in rethinking and
redefining the interpretation and meaning of sexual norms found in the
Bible. In my view, a connection can
exist even where those involved have no conscious intention of accommodating
pagan thinking. And it may exist
even where those involved still believe they are treating the doctrinal
authority of the Bible with esteem.
In other words, it may be the sort of connection that unwary evangelicals
might miss even if they mean to remain within the fold of evangelical faith and
witness.
While specific
manners of expression may vary, I see a single logical continuum that ultimately
joins reemergent paganism with all efforts to reinterpret biblical doctrine in
ways that modify Christian sexual ethics--even efforts among evangelicals. The process starts with feeling
dissatisfied with some moral distinction within the sexual ethic revealed by God
in his Word. A steady focus on such
feeling cultivates interest in new arguments that promise to soften or erase the
impact made by undesired moral distinctions. Arguments of this kind grow popular
because they offer novel interpretations of scripture--interpretations that
allow changes in Christian moral instruction to seem biblical even as they move
Christian sexual ethics in a direction that more nearly matches prevailing
cultural opinion.
But, moves to
soften or erase moral distinctions found in the Bible, and to better match
Christian sexual ethics to human desire, cannot avoid eroding respect for the
moral teaching authority of the Bible.
As general respect for biblical authority diminishes, the relevance of
the Bible for sexual ethics appears more and more doubtful, and eventually the
moral authority of the Bible is abandoned altogether. The sexual ethic that emerges in its
place is shaped to satisfy sensual desires through a growing range of
options. The new ethic celebrates
indulging human sexual desires without distinctions, and those who do are
praised as having risen to a higher level of moral
attainment.
At this point,
the sexual ethic of the Bible is ridiculed as antisexual, and moral distinctions
essential to biblical morality are rejected as irrational or even
dangerous. Abandoning the moral
authority of the Bible for distinctionless, desire-based sexual morality then
calls for pagan conceptions of cosmic power and deity that better reflect and
affirm the new sexual ethic.
Finally, pagan conceptions of cosmic power and deity that justify
rejection of fixed moral distinctions, and that support desire-based sexual
morality, demand rituals of pagan worship that require worshippers to
participate in acts cementing their embrace of pagan sexual ethics.[34]
What I have
described might seem like a simple progression. But that is not entirely accurate. The reality is anything but simple, and
a deeper look requires further commentary in three areas. First, we ought to acknowledge that in
actual experience specific individuals or institutions at one stage may never
proceed to the next. Factors
opposing further progression may prove stronger for some than the attraction of
factors favoring progression.
Nevertheless, however true this may be for some, we must not fail to
recognize that any exception is indeed exceptional, and a powerful logic links
each stage to the next. Pagan
sexual ethics in raw form may be obvious only at one extreme, but the logic
leading to that end starts when one merely disputes the plain reading of
scripture and starts looking for interpretations that better match prevailing
human desire. In fact, true
exceptions to the trend are rather few.
The progression toward paganized sexual ethics is strong, and the
attraction grows ever more powerful as confidence in the supreme moral authority
of God's Word is allowed to wane.
Second, some may
note the progression described and think it has only to do with sliding away
from less satisfactory older traditions in biblical interpretation, and has
nothing at all to do with feeling positively attracted toward anything close to
paganism. After all, digging into
scripture to improve our understanding of Christian sexual ethics is a highly
worthy enterprise. Should we not
rather praise efforts to make the Bible more accessible to modern men and
women? Of course we should. But we must not confuse making the Bible
more "accessible" with making it more "acceptable" to the current culture. Ideas about the direction of moral
improvement always come from somewhere, and if they are not taken out of the
Bible as originally intended then they are taken from some other source we think
is more reliable than God's written Word.
Starting on such
a project, we may not think the alternative looks like paganism. But Christians, and especially
evangelicals, must understand that looking to any moral reference outside the
Bible, and using it to revise the way we interpret what the Bible teaches about
human sexuality and sexual morality, must inevitably and in every case move
sexual ethics in a pagan direction.
Of course we must not rule out efforts to better understand the original
meaning of a biblical text and to explore the application for which it was
intended. But we must never lose
sight of the fact that Christians who mean to remain under the supreme moral
authority of God are not free to approach what the Bible says on sexual morality
as though it could mean something different for readers today than it did when
it was written. Any step in this
direction is undoubtedly "paganistic"--a step toward pagan sexual
ethics--however attractive, well intended or mild it might seem at the
start.
Third, because
each stage in the progression is already well represented both inside the
American Church and in the surrounding culture, movement along the progression
from one end to the other is never a matter of isolated feelings that stand
completely unrelated to the moving of other parts in the progression. Anyone at all interested in modifying
the plain reading of scripture on sexual matters immediately finds a whole
chorus of advocates offering alternative interpretations complete with arguments
worked out to back them. This means
dissatisfied scholars can be drawn into rethinking sexual ethics by the power of
paganism even when what immediately attracts does not look anything like pagan
sexuality as it appears obviously in raw form.
There is, in
other words, a "drag effect" in the progression by which each little movement
away from biblical sexual ethics is most strongly advocated by those already
vested in the next stage, by those who are in turn being drawn away by advocates
vested in the next stage after that.
And, just as winning a schoolyard game of "tug-o-war" depends more on the
size of the anchorman pulling at the end of the rope than on the size of the
first person one faces in line, so the real power against which one pulls in the
first little step away from sexual norms fixed in the Bible is not so much
whatever power that first step might have of itself, were it standing alone, as
that which empowers it from behind.
Interest in judging the Bible by external moral authority is the line
that joins this tug-o-war, and paganism is the anchorman at the other end of the
rope.
The present
connection between paganism and turmoil in the American Church means that
evangelicals today must remember and heed a warning delivered by Abraham Kuyper,
in 1898, to seminarians at Princeton.
And, although his warning was issued just over a century ago, it could
not be more relevant today. Kuyper
said, "Do not forget that the fundamental contrast has always been, still is,
and always will be until the end: Christianity and Paganism."[35]
In other words, he was saying that left to their own imaginations apart
from Christianity, men and women will become pagan every
time.
Only to the
degree our imaginations are checked by respect for the moral authority of God's
supernaturally revealed Word, only to the degree our hearts are humbly submitted
to the way God at his own initiative has defined human sexuality and assigned
the moral boundaries for sexual conduct, only to the degree we are willing to
accept God's moral will above our own, to that degree and only to that degree
will the understanding and teaching of Christian sexual ethics remain
authentically Christian. Then and
only then can men avoid the lures of paganism and resist the pretensions of a
thoroughly nonbiblical sexual ethic that scorns the only true God who inhabits
our universe.
As our culture
turns ever more rapidly away from fixed sexual norms revealed by God in the
Bible and toward the self-indulgent, self-deifying sexual ethic of paganism, and
as the institutional Church in America writhes from the poison of paganism being
injected into the interpretation, instruction and application of Christian
sexual ethics, it is time we as evangelical Christian scholars, pastors and
teachers work to affirm, to defend, and to restore clear and faithful
instruction concerning all God has revealed in his Word about the meaning of
human sexuality and the boundaries of sexual conduct. Only as we do will the Church in America
at the turn of the new millennium be prepared to meet the coming challenge of
pagan sexuality.
We should do so because it is strategically necessary as we read the signs of our times. But that is not our final motive. In the final analysis, we are obligated because the present need means it is required in order to please God.
[1]For a well researched discussion see Brian
Mitchell, Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster (Washington,
D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1998).
[2]Charles Krauthammer, "God and Sex at Yale,"
The Weekly Standard (September 29, 1997):
11-2.
[3]For example, MGM in "Species I" released in
1995 and "Species II" released in 1998 has been marketing what amount to fantasy
snuff films in which beast-like aliens kill off human beings through sexual
encounters.
[4]For example see Joel Stein, "Larry Flynt, the
Sequel: The Pornographer-Cum-First Amendment Martyr Returns to Challenge
Cincinnati Once Again," Time (April 20, 1998):
64.
[5]For example, an increasing number of
businesses, including major corporate leaders such as IBM, AT&T, Sprint,
Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Time Warner, Microsoft, Eastman Kodak and Walt Disney,
have established employee policies that treat non-married "domestic
partnerships" of any gender combination as morally equivalent to monogamous,
heterosexual marriage.
[6]Brochure for conference on The Family
& Human Sexuality: Reaffirming God's Design (Ethics & Religious
Liberty Commission, Nashville), held in Charleston, South Carolina, 2-4 March,
1998.
[7]Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church at the
End of the 20th Century (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1970),
[8]Ibid., p.
83.
[9]Ibid., p.
88.
[10]Carl F. H. Henry, "The Creator and the
Neo-Pagan Mind," a message to the Pastors Conference of the Southern Baptist
Convention in St. Louis, on June 15, 1987; Carl F. H. Henry, Twilight of a
Great Civilization (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books,
1988).
[11]Interestingly, Henry began to warn
evangelicals against the dangers of emerging paganism at about the same time
Schaeffer was sounding a similar alarm.
[12]Henry, Twilight, p.
27.
[13]Terry Mattingly, "Looking at `Titanic' from a
religious point of view," The News & Observer, Friday, March 27,
1998,
[14]David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: Or
Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), p.
266.
[15]Here I have focused on usual features of
paganism. A more complete review of
pagan morality would need to cover less usual variations that turn to sensual
asceticism, rather than to sensual indulgence, as the preferred means for
collecting moral merit or focusing spiritual
power.
[16]For a more complete discussion of this cf.
Peter Jones, Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America (Mukilteo,
Washington: WinePress Publishing, 1987), chs 12 and
13.
[17]Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the
Politics of Truth (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), p.
241.
[18]Jones, Spirit Wars, pp.
227-8.
[19]Wells, No Place for Truth, p.
267.
[20]For example, the Mandeans, a sect of Gnostic
paganism, referred to death as "the day of escape" or "release." For a complete discussion cf. Kurt
Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, trans. Robert
McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 171. Similar conceptions of death as release
characterize Buddhism and Hinduism.
[21]Such practices were manifest among the
worshipers of Molech in the ancient Middle East and among the Aztecs of Central
America.
[22]For an autobiographical discussion of her
spiritual journey into paganism and pagan sexuality cf. Shirley MacLaine, Out
on a Limb (Des Plains, Illinois: Bantum Books, reissued
1996).
[23]Ginette Paris, The Sacrament of
Abortion (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1992), pp.
72-3.
[24]Naomi Goldberg, Changing of the Gods:
Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979),
p. 41.
[25]Ibid., p.
5.
[26]Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor, The Great
Cosmic Mother: Discovering the Religion of the Earth (San Francisco: Harper,
1987), p. 269.
[27]Shirley MacLaine, Going Within: A Guide
for Inner Transformation (Des Plains, Illinois: Bantum Books, reprint 1995),
p. 197.
[28]Mircea Eliade documents the fact that
androgyny (symbolic or actual erasure of gender differences) and homosexuality
have always played a central role in pagan religious and moral thinking. On this cf. Mircea Eliade, Patterns
of Comparative Religion (New York: New American Library, 1974), pp.
420-1.
[29]Sjoo and Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother,
p. 377.
[30]Ibid., p.
388.
[31]Paris, Sacrament of Abortion, pp. 92,
93-4.
[32]Ibid., pp. 56,
57.
[33]Ibid., p.
107.
[34]Readers will note that although I have
articulated this progression as it is affecting the Church in America, it also
parallels the progression listed in Romans
1:18-32.
[35]Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), p. 199.
