catapult magazine

To add to this issue’s discussion on sexuality, I recommend Peter Jones’s latest book, God of Sex: How Spirituality Defines Your Sexuality. As the title suggests he gets at a deep connection between your spirituality and your sexuality. The tag line reads, "Sex is spiritual, and pagans know it. How about Christians?"

Has anyone read this book? I have just begun reading it and Jones is making a compelling argument…

Chapter 7, The Birth of Sex. So we are creatures. As such God intends for us to be holy. "The root meaning of holiness is intentional "thereness"—being in a specific place for a partcular function…We, his creatures, also have a distinct, holy, and significant place where we rightfully belong." God intends for everything to be in its right place.

When God created, he "sanctified" the world, in a manner of speaking. The creation account in Genesis is full of God separating things; he puts light and darkness, land and sky, etc, in their proper place according to plan. One separation or distinction God made was humanity—he made them "male and female." God called this final "separation" or distinction, this creation of male and female, very good.

One implication for sex is that each person ought to find and assume their right place in the created order—as either male or female. "The obvious implication is that what God has separated in such varied splendor should not be mixed. This is true on the sexual level. We are sexually holy by observing the original God-ordained distinction of sex and gender."

Jones’s view on God is helpful. Though distinct or "separate" man and woman were created for genuine intimacy. For instance, God is distinct from his creatures and yet has a genuinely intimate relationship with them. And in marriage man and woman were created for an exclusive relationship, just as our relationship to God is to be exclusive. "For the Lord your Maker is your husband." In Scripture, spiritual unfaithfulness (idolatry) is characterized as adultery or prostitution.

What does it mean for two separate people (a man and a woman) to become one? Pagan monism works itself out in such a way that the two become diffused in one another and lose their distinct identities. Loss of distinct identity is the inevitable result of rejecting the Creator-creature distinction. The essence of biblical oneness is to be found, instead, in a joint desire to honor the Creator and conform to his intended created order. It as though husband and wife say, "We are one because we lose our selfish desire to get our way and join together in serving the Lord and doing things his way." It is the Creator who forms the basis for true oneness, a oneness in which personal identities are not lost.

One final note before moving on. Jones in Chapter 6 introduces another major theme, and that is that "God is in the body business." He created us body and soul. Genuine holiness is sometimes considered to be a matter of the soul—not the body. He warns against what the French call angelisme, "the error of thinking that once one becomes a follower of Christ, one becomes an angel. Things concerning the body…no longer matter." I sometimes wonder if we make this mistake when we unduly pit "the letter of the law" against the "spirit." Usually people say this and seem to suggest that God cares more about your heart and soul than what you actually do with your body—he cares more about WHY you do certain things than about WHAT you actually do. He doesn’t care what you do as long as you have a good heart. This denigrates the importance of obeying God with our bodies.

But because God created us body and soul, both have vital significance for honoring God. "The body is the for the Lord…and the Lord is for the body." "You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." It is especially with our bodies that we are holy, and we are holy with our bodies by doing things in accord with God’s created order. Everything—body and soul—in its right place.

Chapter 7, the Death of Sex. Does the Bible support the deep connection between spirituality and sexuality? Is free sexual expression necessarily refusal to obey God?

In Chapter 7 Jones studies Romans 1. I won’t go into great detail here. The passage speaks for itself. When people reject the Creator (Roman 1:23f), they exchange the truth for a lie and worship creation rather than the Creator (1:25) and exchange natural relations for unnatural ones. Rejection of the Creator leads to false worship and corrupt sexual practices.

Jones asks the question of why Paul singles out homosexuality here. Is he a homophobe? Jones answers: "In this text Paul is not talking about individual sinners but about worldview, about the implications of sexuality for theology and vice versa. Implicit here is the argument that heterosexual fornication, while equally sinful, misuses the divinely ordered structure of sexual difference. Homosexuality, on the other hand, treats that order with complete disregard and denies, at a principal level, the significance of the difference and place of the Creator. It is thus an absolute refusal of creational life." Rejection of God and its consquence extreme sexual disorder, homosexuality, produce a "culture of death" when viewed from the perspective of God’s created order and purpose.

Chapter 9, Born Again Sex and the Future. The good news is that there is life and hope after the fall. Passages like John 1 tell us that God the Son created the world and was incarnate to redeem it. So in a sense we can say that Jesus sanctified the world and is/will re-sanctify it. Jesus came to put everything in its right place and restore creation’s divinely appointed orderliness/holiness. This grand redemption includes sex. Jesus died and rose again to set us free from the tyranny of corrupt sexual views and practices and restore each human to his or her rightful place in creation as male/female and the relationship of a man and a woman to its intimate heterosexual exclusivity. In place of a culture of death Jesus brings a culture of life—as God intended it.

Jones is frank about the evils that surround all sexual practice. But there is hope for something better because Jesus re-sanctifying the world, including sex!

Chapter 10, Born Again Sex and the Present. Jones now goes into greater detail about what the gospel means for sexual practice now. He returns to his previous point about how God is in the body business. Christianity is not just talk; embodying the truth is an essential part of the Christian life. The gospel gives the body great dignity and importance.

For much of the rest of the passage Jones talks about gender roles. He begins by challenging his readers to think of holiness as submission. Will we embrace and come under God’s created order? Will men embrace their God-given roles as heads of their family, in the loving self-sacrificial spiritual leadership God ordained? Will women willingly submit to their husbands, even though they are sinful? Will each Christian’s submission to God’s created order be thankful and worshipful? God give us grace!

Chapter 11 gets at motivation. Accepting God’s gender roles is difficult. Why in the world would anyone submit? Two reasons: holy fear and humility. The fear of the Lord ought to drive us to embrace the gospel and desire the grace-motivated obedience God offers. God is good, but he is not safe, and we cannot domesticate him. God is not a respecter of persons (as though he should listen to our lofty opinions on the matter), and he is one who commands our reverential awe and respect. He alone is worthy of our obedience. And though he is so great, he has drawn near in love in Jesus Christ. Something of God’s great character ought to be reflected in our character as we practice sex and gender roles.

The other reason is humility, which is to say that refusal to obey God or to take issue with his created order is hubris. It is pride and arrogance. God blesses those who recognize human weakness relative to God’s eternal power. "The one who has understood biblical sex will "submit" to God’s creational structures and will, with humility and meekness, respect and embrace them." And to understand biblical sex requires humility, to know that God is wiser than we are. It means to listen rather than talk.

Wow, Anton. Pretty impressive summary. Can you do Harry Potter next? I haven’t even read one of them.

It was one of those things where after the first two posts you realize you’ve really dug yourself in deep. Then the momentum carries you deeper. I’m a victim of my own making.

And no on the Harry Potter. Fans would discover a new level of hell for revenge. :wink: