Edmund Storms wrote:
revtec wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Edmund Storms"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: OffTopic: Lust and the bible
I admire your effort to calculate the size of the common flesh pool,
which essentially makes us all brothers and sisters in sex. However,
was
Paul not using this concept as a quaint way to describe making a baby?
Ed
I don't think so. Here is the verse in New King James version: I
Corinthian
6:16
Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with
her?
For "the two" He says, "shall become one flesh."
We all know that we do not become literally one flesh when we have
sex. We do not even join in any spiritual way. The act is simply the
sharing of pleasure, except if a child results. The only time "one
flesh" results is when love is present before the act. Therefore,
this way of describing the sex act must have a nonliteral meaning.
What do you think the nonliteral meaning might be?
Keep in mind that "transubstantiation" of the mass was accepted as real
among the early Christians. Similarly, your 21st century notion that
there is no physical alteration of the flesh of the partners either as
a result of intercourse or as a result of undergoing the marriage
ceremony should be viewed as anachronistic when attempting to interpret
the words of Paul.
Furthermore, you must be a little careful when reading what Paul had to
say about sex. It's been a while since I went through those sections of
the Bible with any care, but as I recall Paul is a big-time prude and
appeared to have some major hangups in the area. I would hesitate a
long time before I'd rule out an interpretation of what he had to say on
the grounds that it doesn't sound reasonable!
Specifically, IIRC, he says (in one of the early, undisputed letters)
that you should avoid sex entirely if possible. But, he goes on, if,
unlike Paul himself (!!), you find that difficult, you should take the
next-best choice and get married so you can have an outlet for your
passions. He's not, as I recall, totally judgmental about it but his
POV doesn't seem quite normal to me.
With that said, I don't think he was telling folks not to fornicate
because it makes illegitimate babies, any more than he was telling men
not to have sex with men for that reason. And as to his statement that
we "become one flesh", he took it as "really symbolically true" AFAICT
which is to say it meant _something_ of importance to him, but what it
means isn't exactly clear! Note well that this same line is quoted
someplace or other in support of the notion that divorce should not be
allowed.
Ed
Jeff
- Re: OffTopic: Lust and the bible Stephen A. Lawrence
-
