Bible Question (short): Adultery Sexual or Covenant Breaking |
Question (full): Recently I was approached by some people who presented an intriguing argument regarding adultery. These people stated that adultery, more fully understood Biblically is the willful and harmful violation(adulteration) of the primary, the permanence, and the honesty of the marriage. Thus, some extramarital relationships that involve no physical sexual expression whatever can be adultterous. On the other hand, extramarital sexuality with the active participation of both spouses that is marriage enhancing many not be adulteress at all. They state, that the Jews understood, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" very differently than Church tradition. It onely applied to men if they had intercourse with someone else's wife. Bit iwas allowable for a married man to have intercourse with a single woman. Adultery was the sin of "of trespassing" on a man's property. Until marriage, women were the property of their fathers. after marriage they became the property of their husband. In addition, these people state that Christ's laws of love and the golden rule support today's loving, respecting, non-monogamous relationships. The only real difference is that women now have the same rights of sexual enjoyment and variety that men had in the time of Christ Since Christ never condemned the unloving O.T. practices, he certainly wouldn't condemn today's loving, consenting, non-cheating relationships, Cheating adultery is cleary wrong since it involves lying and deception and clearly violates Christ's law of loving one another as ourselves. Therefore, their position is that in a marital-covanent relationship, if both husband and wife agree to these relationships, there is no adultery since the covanent is not broken. These folks are the most committed and caring Christians I have ever known and at the same time they challenge everything that the church has taught and the context of the words pornea, translated as fornication. It does seem to be always tied with temple prostitution when I read the texts. I would greatly appreciate other views as I study and test these thoughts against the orginal languages. Thanks |