The Puzzle of Sex

By Peter Vardy

Almost everyone is directly affected by questions involving sex and sexual ethics - yet few are aware of the background to current views on topics such as sex before and after marriage, sex as procreation and fulfilment, homosexuality, sexual abuse, rape and contraception. This new edition offers added and up-to-date material discussion burning cur

• Language: English
• Publisher: SCM Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9780334048145

Peter Vardy

Peter Vardy is lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at London University’s Heythrop College. Apart from the widely successful ‘Puzzle’ series, he is also author of ‘And If It’s True?’ and ‘Business Morality’. He is editor of the‘Fount Christian Thinkers’ series, the first six of which were published last year.

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The Puzzle of Sex

New Edition

Peter Vardy

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Copyright information

© Peter Vardy 2009

First published in 1997 by Fount Paperbacks, UK

This Second Edition published in 2009 by SCM Press

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, SCM Press.

The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work

Acknowledgement of sources:

Adam Butler, ‘The Wall’, in A. Dodds, The Hospice Book of Poetry, St Helena Hospice, 1992. Used by permission.

Dale Grant Stephens, ‘Eye to Eye’, in Let Your Heart Talk, Heart Talk Publications, 2003. Permission sought.

Raymond Carver, ‘Company’, in All of Us, Harvill, Random House Group Ltd. Used by permission.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

978 0 334 04205 1

Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London

Printed and bound by

CPI Bookmarque, Croydon CR0 4TD

Contents

Introduction: The Sexual Challenge

Part One: The Puzzle of Sex – A Developing Understanding

1. The Creation Stories

2. Women and Sex in the Hebrew Scriptures

3. Jesus – A Scandalous Figure

4. Men, Women and Sex – The Early Christian Tradition

5. East and West – Different Christian Perspectives

6. Reformation Thinkers

7. Old Wine in New Bottles – The Basis for Sexual Ethics Today

Part Two: The Puzzle of Sex Today

8. Psychological Perspectives

9. The Sexual Revolution

10. Contraception and its Social Effects

11. Transactional Sex

12. Love and Marriage

13. The Old Gods Return

14. Sex and Becoming Fully Human

15. Infidelity, Adultery and Betrayal

16. Homosexual Relationships

17. Bringing the Threads Together

Dedication

To Anne Vardy

with grateful thanks

Introduction: The Sexual Challenge

Is underage sex wrong? Much depends on how ‘underage’ is defined. In Britain and the United States the age of consent is 16, in Vietnam 18, in Madagascar 21, in Spain 13 and in some countries in the Arab world a girl may be married and have sex once she has had her first period (which can be at the age of 10). Adultery is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia yet in the West it is common and scarcely raises any public comment. Homosexuality is widely accepted in parts of San Francisco, in Sydney’s Kings Cross area or in Brighton and Hove in England – in other parts of the world it is punishable by death. Sex on the internet is increasingly common and sexually explicit magazines are available on the shelves of all Western newsagents.

Is sex on the internet wrong? Websites such as Second Life have boomed in popularity in recent years and the first divorce has taken place with one partner citing her husband’s adultery through his avatar with a female avatar on the internet. Sex is meant to be one of life’s great pleasures and many magazines and television programmes are devoted to either sex or helping people make themselves sexually attractive. In schools, ‘health’ programmes teach young people how to avoid the risks associated with sex, often divorced from any wider moral or psychological considerations. Implants are now being used by teenage girls to avoid the risk of pregnancy instead of having to ‘bother with’ condoms or ‘the pill’ and a vaccine is being increasingly given to 12-year-olds to avoid infection by the HPV virus during adolescent sexual activity. Meanwhile, the rate of marriage is declining with more couples choosing to live together, yet at the same time the divorce rate is rising.

Sex is at once routine, simple, straightforward and yet complex. It can be both beautiful and devastating. The beauty of a flower is directly related to the need to pass on its genes through the assistance of insects, bees or butterflies. Male animals fight each other in order that their genes can be passed on rather than their competitor’s. They engage in hugely complex and demanding displays to attract females and invest much of their energies in the process, often shortening their lives as a result. Sex is the means by which almost every individual plant and animal reproduces, the very process by which species evolve and by which life on earth continues to exist.

The link between sex and reproduction invests a bodily action with a profound significance, for individuals and for society in general. Sustaining the young requires huge investment both in terms of parental time and of resources. The selection of a sexual partner has, therefore, profound significance. The ability to control the rate and type of reproduction determines the success of an individual and ultimately of a community. From the earliest times individuals have been interested in controlling their own fertility, being discriminating in their choice of partner.

Historically human beings, and particularly those who have an education and/or political power, have liked to play down the importance of ‘base instincts’ like sex in their lives, claiming that human beings are potentially unique in being able to ‘rise above’ animal needs and desires to behave on a ‘higher, rational level’. However, experience teaches that the power of sex can undermine humanity’s idealistic, rational vision of itself. Because of this, sex has often been viewed with suspicion and has been seen in negative terms particularly, it must be said, by religion. Religion has always been aware of the power of sex and, generally, with some exceptions as in parts of Hinduism, it has been looked on negatively, as an unfortunate necessity in perpetuating this temporary and unsatisfactory world. Sex must be directed towards reproduction and then kept firmly under control.

Sex has disrupted and distorted the orderly working of communities when unleashed from its tight bounds. Greece went to war with Troy because of the beauty of Helen and the sexual drive that drove King Priam’s son to steal her away from her Greek husband. The Hebrew Judge, Samson, was overthrown because of consequences arising from his sexual behaviour – he failed to live up to his celibate calling as a Nazirite prophet, was attracted to a foreign prostitute rather than a good Hebrew girl, spent time trying to please her rather than engaging in productive work and ended up humiliated and dead. Choosing the right sexual partner for your son or daughter was a central concern of monarchs in the Middle Ages. It could ensure peace and stability or could foster ambitions in terms of expanding territory or undermining a troublesome neighbour. A bad match could lead to the end of a dynasty and disastrous civil war. The association between sex, sin and suffering was made early in human history. It was the accepted interpretation of the story of the Fall in Genesis well before the time of Jesus which made it all the more significant that he was born of a virgin and remained apparently unmarried. By the time of the renaissance, images of Adam and Eve in the Garden typically showed the serpent in highly sexualized female form suggesting that female beauty aroused the bestial nature of men and thus prevented them from fulfilling their potential as rational beings in the image of God and in harmony with God. In some versions of Islam, women are told to keep their bodies completely covered to avoid providing temptation for men.

Today, the link between sex and reproduction has been largely broken due to modern methods of contraception, particularly the pill which was developed by Dr Gregory Pincus in the early 1950s and which, it is estimated, one hundred million women use today. The impact of the link being broken has been described as a revolution and this is a fair description. The practical and political significance of sex has altered. If large numbers of children and consequent investment do not necessarily result from the sexual act, society (in the form of politicians, the law, religious authorities and families) becomes less concerned with controlling it. However, that vacuum was soon filled by media and advertising agencies who seized on the potential of sex as a means of controlling people, though in a different way and to a new end. Sex is now used overtly to sell every commodity and people are encouraged to enjoy sex in quantity as well as quality from earliest adolescence. The use of sex in this way is legitimized with reference to science, albeit a twisted, distorted and very selective version of science. Sex is said to be ‘natural’, and human beings like other animals are said (in the words of Richard Dawkins) to be ‘the lumbering robots blindly programmed to pass on the selfish molecules known as genes’.¹ All efforts to control fertility and to influence the outcomes for individuals and societies therefore seem futile or insidious. Human beings should enjoy the now, take advantage of contraception which may reduce possibilities and delay the inevitable, allowing everyone to ‘eat and drink for tomorrow we will die’. The ideas that actions and choices may have a long-term significance beyond producing higher or lower amounts of personal happiness, that our lives may have a purpose other than to pass on DNA, is being eroded.

Unfortunately, while sex may not always result in visible, practical consequences, the human psyche has not evolved to accept that sex is so trivial. Freud famously argued for the important role of sexual development in psychological balance and while his insights are unfashionable among therapists today, few would deny that sexual experience has the ability to shape and damage us on a profound level, whether or not it results in children.

Nevertheless, scientists such as James Watson, the discoverer of the DNA double helix, are now calling for a further separation between sex for pleasure and for the more serious business of reproduction, which should be undertaken in the laboratory. The measurable advantages of helping people to make rational choices about the number and type of children that they have, or of controlling who may or may not reproduce, of giving evolution a helping hand, have long been the subject of speculation. Science-fiction writers, such as Andrew Niccol in Gattaca (1995), find it a topic which taps into the public psyche as the story of Frankenstein once did, but eugenics were discussed seriously by the politicians of the Third Reich who wished to ‘purify’ the population, and before that by Victorian British as a way of improving society and avoiding the catastrophic famine predicted by Malthus. While many people may shrink from handing the business of making babies over to doctors and politicians, this future may be closer than is commonly thought.

The reality is that the separation of sex and reproduction has created an unprecedented opportunity for sexually transmitted infections which in turn increase natural infertility and necessitate artificial fertility treatments, many of which enable greater choice and control in reproduction. One in nine 17-year-old girls have Chlamydia or, in the case of boys, are carriers of the virus. If left untreated in girls Chlamydia may lead to infertility in later life. Sperm-counts are falling across the Western world for reasons unknown but possibly connected to diet, lifestyle or the preponderance of female hormones from the contraceptive pill in water supplies. One in seven 30-year-old couples will not be able to have children naturally and IVF or IVM will be needed to help them to reproduce if they want children. Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis is becoming increasingly common for those who have IVF and offers seemingly endless possibilities to reduce the incidence of genetic disease or to ‘improve’ the outcomes of pregnancy in other ways.

Further, overpopulation is the biggest threat that the world faces. It drives the need for energy which in turn drives the consumption of fossil fuels, the release of carbon dioxide and climate change. It drives up the demand for food, which causes prices to rise, the gulf between rich and poor to widen and radicalization, fundamentalism and violence soon follow. The Chinese government took radical action in enforcing a one-child policy. Although regarded as inhumane it could be seen as expedient when the population of China tops 1.3 billion, more than 20% of the world’s population. Since 1979, the policy has succeeded in reducing the fertility rate to 1.7, equating to population growth of -0.4% in real terms, though the population of China is still expected to grow, peaking in 2030, ten years before the Indian population which uncontrolled is running at a fertility rate of 2.8, surpasses it. Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (or cruder forms of selection such as the abortion of female foetuses) is increasingly common in both China and India as a means of controlling the sex of offspring. Individuals would much rather invest resources in income-producing boys than in expensive girls – particularly as boys are expected to support their parents financially when they grow old whereas girls leave the family home and have no responsibility for their parents. The gender-balance in some regions has been seriously affected in many areas, and the social and human side-effects of economic decisions are acutely felt as there will be few women to ‘go round’.

The availability of contraception seems to make purely political preaching about the value of exclusive lifelong marriage hollow and many religious authorities have accepted that sex for unitive and procreative purposes can be separated – the first step to accepting sex outside marriage and to confusion as to how to regard and what to do with children born of acts whose intentions were purely unitive. Those who have not accepted the separation of sex and reproduction preach against the use of contraception, but in a milieu in which marriage is not regarded by many as sacred and where people are encouraged by others to see personal fulfilment in terms of physical gratification the arguments against sex for pleasure seem weak.

None of the issues are straightforward and possibly no subject raises such strong opinions, objections, or sensitivities as sex. Many still consider it in some ways dirty, a subject which should not be discussed at all – while others can talk about little else. Any book that seeks to understand and help the reader think through the puzzle of sex faces a daunting task. It needs to have a clear sense of history, since all intellectual and cultural ideas have their origins in the past, and it needs to understand modern developments in psychology, modern understandings of physiology and the complexity of religious, philosophical and psychological attitudes to sex. Above all, perhaps, any study of the issues needs to be clear and balanced without imposing an agenda. Sex is, above all, intensely personal and relates to the lives of every person – including those in old-age homes where sexual activity is increasing due to the advent of drugs such as Viagra and Cialis.

In order to understand where we are at any moment in history one needs to understand the past that has brought us to this point. Goethe said that ‘Anyone who cannot draw on three thousand years of history is living from hand to mouth; it is the only thing that separates us from a naked ape’. His point is that understanding the historical background to culture, values, ideas and prejudices is essential for anyone to decide how to think seriously and well about contemporary issues or to try to chart a way forward into the future. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of sex, where values and attitudes are passed on from one generation to another without necessarily being examined. Different cultures develop varying attitudes to sexual ethics without necessarily interrogating these or thinking deeply about how these attitudes have developed or whether they are still appropriate. In almost any society religious attitudes to sex have had a profound influence. In order, therefore, to understand the present we must understand the past. The German philosopher Hegel made this clear – he was the first to write a philosophy of history showing how ideas in the past have developed through a tension between dialectically opposed positions to bring us to where we are today. A series of opposing positions form a thesis (a particular view) and an antithesis (an opposed view) which seem irreconcilable and incompatible but, over time, these incompatibilities are resolved and a new unified view emerges which unites the seemingly irreconcilable positions and develops a new thesis which in turns gives rise to an antithesis and so the process continues. Tensions between views, therefore, are creative and out of intellectual tensions time produces new insights. When one looks back in history, one needs to understand these developments in order to make sense of the present. In doing this, it will become clear how many errors have been made and what a devastating effect these have had on countless millions of people – nevertheless there was a real wisdom in some ancient ideas and this needs to be preserved.

In Part One of this book the development of understanding about sex and sexual ethics will be traced. It is this background that modern ideas reacted against and which, for many, still provide the main alternative to the dominant contemporary understandings. In Part Two, the issue of whether the traditional insights into sexual ethics still have any application will be evaluated using the latest understanding of psychology and physiology before moving on to engage with sexual practices, attitudes and ethics in the contemporary world. It is possible to read Part Two without Part One, but this would be to omit the background which has informed and shaped modern culture and not to engage with the mistakes of the past.

Notes

1 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Part One: The Puzzle of Sex – A Developing Understanding

1. The Creation Stories

Within European thought, many attitudes towards sexual relationships depend, even if indirectly, on the Bible. Yet, the Bible was written by human beings. There is no suggestion in Christianity, Judaism or Islam that the books of the Bible were written other than by human beings who were telling their story of God’s interaction with the world. The biblical stories are complex and sophisticated accounts which were given great thought. It is easy to read them far too simplistically.

The same phrases can occur again and again in the biblical accounts, albeit with slight shifts of emphasis in different settings. It is essential, therefore, that the reader of a text should pay attention to the context and should seek to understand what the writer wishes to say. What cannot and must not be done is to take a few words of text out of the context in which they are placed. It is also important to recognize that any reader brings their own presuppositions to bear on the text and these influence interpretation. The idea of anyone having a total lack of presuppositions is nonsense – we are all the products of our experience and our own individual perspectives. We cannot be completely neutral. The biblical accounts have been used in different ways by many groups, often to serve their own interests.

If one is going to try to avoid imposing one’s own prior convictions on the biblical material, it is essential to take the text seriously. The more people wish the Bible to ‘speak’ to them of God, the more they have an obligation to try to understand exactly what the Bible is saying. Nowhere is this more the case than in the area of sexual relations where a few key texts are often quoted out of context and with limited understanding.

The New Testament has surprisingly little to say about sex – and this particularly applies to the gospels. The Hebrew Scriptures speak of sexual matters in more detail although the relevance of these comments today is a matter for debate. However, prior to tackling the specific references to sexual behaviour, a more general theme needs to be dealt with at some length – and that is the relation between men and women. The biblical story of creation is the starting point as it has been highly influential on future relationships between men and women but, also, Jesus is recorded as drawing on the creation story in support of his views on marriage while some epistles recall either the creation of Eve or her sin.

The Genesis accounts of creation

In their opening chapters the Hebrew Scriptures contain two creation stories which are entirely separate. They come from two different traditions and two different authors and were placed together long after the original stories were passed down by word of mouth in an oral tradition that would have extended over many centuries. The first of these stories is contained in Genesis 1.1–2a and the second runs from Genesis 2.4b to 3.24. Both accounts owe a great deal to the creation myths of neighbouring, more developed cultures in Babylon and possibly Egypt. The first story is dated by scholars around the sixth century BC; it was probably written about the time of the exile into Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem. The second account is held to be earlier, possibly from 1000 to 800 BC. Both stories seek to explain not just the existence of physical phenomena but the way things are and both explore the relationship between men and women.

1. The first creation story (Genesis 1.1–2.4a)

The story which appears first in the Bible has men and women being created together on the sixth day, apparently as God’s final act. The crucial passage is:

Then God said ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. (Gen. 1.26–27)

The Hebrew word translated ‘man’ here is adam, a word which elsewhere means earth, creature of the earth or more generally mankind. The word is not necessarily singular and not necessarily specifically gendered – the implications of the translation ‘God created man’ are not necessary to the original text and it might be more helpful to render the passage ‘Let us make human beings in our own image, after our likeness’.

Many misunderstandings have arisen due to a failure to recognize this. Human beings are given dominion over the earth, its plants and its animals – not specifically men. Both man and