PORNEIA: Why It’s ALWAYS About Sex

One Greek word, *PORNEIA*, seems to be the source of much confusion regarding the nature of contemporary righteousness and righteousness-as-purity. Mindful of many conversations on this site regarding sexual piety and focusing on a question raised on this site regarding Acts 15:28, the following commentary may help open up a larger conversation on “Why It’s ALWAYS About Sex”:

PORNEIA:

First, to clarify the word, itself. In OT usage, the general implication of the term refers to the metaphor of the harlotry of an unfaithful people (i.e., Israel) who have broken the intimate covenantal bond with YHWH. Because of this ancient hermeneutic, much of the literal interpretation of scripture has MISTAKENLY focused on the sexual nature of the term and forgotten the larger metaphor. Our contemporary use of the term, fornication to stand in for PORNEIA, reproduces this sexual focus and its very truncated view of what it means to break covenant, (whether in marriage or with God.) In later OT usage the term, PORNEIA, broadens in sexual scope to include a series of specific practices including adultery, incest, sodomy, and unlawful marriage (i.e., marriage outside religio-ethnic boundaries). Thus, it gradually develops over time that a "fornicator" is a person whose sexual practices are at odds with convention rather than the more ancient and, I believe, essential meaning of the term which is the breach of an intimate and life-affirming bond - an indissoluble "marriage" - between God and God's people.

Second, in NT usage, the term denotes unbelief as much as unfaithfulness (e.g., Mt. 15:18-19) This is an important, if subtle, development. Unbelief is the burden of the "last days." Despite the sinfulness of humanity and of individual persons in our last days, Jesus' salvation is radically restorative: God's will of indissoluble relationship is guaranteed in Jesus the Christ. Nevertheless, sin remains a condition both of CHOICE and of alienation for the children of God. To fornicate, then, is to choose against God's will as well as to misuse the physical trust among and between persons.

The simplified prohibitions in Acts 15:28 are an ethical list that preclude: IDOLATRY (with unclean food as the reference), MURDER (with blood as the reference); and from UNFAITHFULNESS (with PORNEIA as the reference). Paul, of course, is the earliest of the canonical scripture writers and he spends much time on the prohibition against PORNEIA. For him, idolatry and licentiousness are linked (1 Cor 6:9), and so, for us, I think, they also are linked but we, unlike Paul at his best, have inherited a very lop-sided (perhaps obsessive?) focus on the sexual nature of idolatry/licentiousness as a characteristic of unfaithfulness. Indeed, we seem to have all but forgotten the prohibition against idolatry in our quest for a workable purity code and have fastened onto sexuality and sexual practice as the reservoir for all our efforts and fears of unfaithfulness-as-impurity. Like the scribes of later Judaism, we have developed complex codes to distinguish entitlements and inclusion/exclusion criteria. We even have established offices to adjudicate these fine distinctions, (i.e., magisterial and inquisitorial bodies existing in law and institution since the 13th century).

Of course, (one hopes that it goes without saying) the physical and sexual abuse of another person is sinful; and the breaking of trust with another person is sinful; and the wanton misuse of one's own body is sinful. But why do we focus on these components of PORNEIA when the other parts of unfaithfulness are perhaps more damning: idolatry, blasphemy, and murder, for example?

PORNEIA is, I believe, a fundamentally important way to understand the breaking of covenant because it involves both intimacy and incarnation. Put another way, we can only keep faith in the very intimate recesses of our hearts and only through the flesh-and-blood reality of our actions in the here and now. Any other dimension of being (e.g., "principle" or "loyalty") is only a shadowy image of how we actually live into faithfulness.

[As an aside and regarding the interesting matter of translation, Greek word-study is an open and creative process requiring several bible translations, a fine examination of the original Greek word, per se, and the use of commentaries, dictionaries, and lexicons. Even at that, the variety of possible interpretations is great. When all is said and done, it is our own intellectually and spiritually informed discovery that opens a space for a Righteous Spirit in our hearts: our own ‘translation’ = conversion.]

In this sense, “right” and “wrong” is a matter of discovering faith and, as such, is as multiplicitous and wonderful as the many ways we all exercise our covenantal bonds with our Gracious Creator.