David Jensen, a theology professor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, has taken on one of our culture's favorite topics in his new book God, Desire, and a Theology of Human Sexuality. His treatment of sex has many encouraging, even inspiring passages that offer a stark contrast to the popular conceptions of sex in American culture, but his departure from traditional, biblical views of sex will satisfy only the most liberal Christians. Conservative, traditional Christians will find much not to like.
I did like Jensen's sacramentalizing of sex. Sex is a gift and an expression of the desires God instills in us. Jensen writes, "Erotic touch is not where we escape from God and lose ourselves in another, but where we meet God." As an act of hospitality, "in sex one makes room for another . . . ordinary members of the body . . . become gestures of a hospitality that God is continually creating among us in the risen body." Put simply, "Sex, by itself, is not redemptive; but by God's grace it becomes a celebration of grace." By contrast, American culture seems to cheapen and distort sex, calling for more frequency, more pleasure, more partners, reducing sex to a one-dimensional, merely physical act.
If he stopped there, he'd be doing fine. But Jensen extends his arguments far beyond scripture and church history to embrace gay sex and premarital sex. He does rely on scripture, but seems to, at least in part, agree with revisionists who would say that the "use of the Bible alone in constructing a view of sex and marriage is naive and anachronistic at best, and dangerous at worst." He claims a fluid, culture-bound view of sexual mores: "Today's fornication . . . becomes tomorrow's sexual norm," and calls for Christians to get with the times.
Today's times call for the embrace of same-sex marriage, and the condoning of premarital sex. Jensen shows that he is definitely with the times, as he wants to qualify the "traditional sentiment that sex belongs in marriage." In addition to the church's recognition of "celibacy and marriage as Christian vocations," he wants to add "singleness that does not entail sexual abstinence." Of these three, "no one stands normative or preferable in Christian life." Premarital sex, he says, "can be a good part of the way in which couples come to know and be known, to trust and be trusted, to promise and be promised to." He calls for churches to "offer guidelines for discussing responsible sexual behavior in a nonmarital context" and to "recognize how and in what ways it can be a good." The fact that he spends a lot of time arguing that sex should take place within a covenant relationship doesn't seem to match here. I guess single people can have a sort of covenant with their lovers, but without the vows of marriage, it seems like he's opening the door to promiscuity. I found his reluctance to endorse abstinence for adolescents particularly disturbing.
In discussing gay marriage, Jensen's arguments start from a position that gay marriage is a reality, and the church at large just needs to accept it. He finds it strange and disturbing that many churches do not accept and endorse gay marriage. For instance, "the argument against gay marriage that has so often vexed the churches often proceeds from the rather odd assumption that only the opposite sex can complement me." (emphasis added) I will step out on a limb and say that only a very small minority of Christians find that assumption odd.
Jensen rejects "the binary of male/female" which "is unable to address the complexity of sex and gender as it is lived." In the context of the church's standard of ordination, he objects to sexual orientation being "the ultimate marker of a graced life." Gay marriages, according to Jensen, ought to be celebrated to the extent that they express covenant and mutual society. Instead, they expend effort "trying to prohibit gay marriage, in effect keeping people from making promises of commitment to one another, . . . arguing against enduring relationships when the church ought to be fostering the hope that relationships can endure by God's grace."
For Christians who are in favor of gay marriage, Jensen's book can be an valuable and inspiring resource. For the rest of us, for, I dare say, most Christians, there is much here that misstates and misinterprets the witness of scripture, defies traditional teachings of the church, and is offensive and sometimes rather bizarre. I won't be recommending this one.
Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!
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