Some years ago I was invited to participate in a debate about sexuality at a meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature.  One of the opposing parties claimed that the Old Testament’s rules about sex aren’t really moral rules, but merely ritual purity regulations.  In other words, they weren’t about right and wrong, but only dirt.  This would have made them inapplicable to Christians, who are not bound by Old Testament ritual purity rules.

A word about this might be helpful, because in one form or another, a lot of people make the same mistake.

Ritual impurity made a person ineligible to enter the tabernacle or participate in holy rites.  All sorts of conditions could have this result.  Some of them were bodily:  For instance, having leprosy or some other disease.  Some of them pertained to office:  There were things the priest could do which other people could not do.  Some of them concerned ritual errors:  For instance, a person may have offered a sacrifice in an improper way.  Some of them were symbolic:  For instance, among the members of the covenant community it was a grave matter to consume blood, because blood is the principle of life.  But yes, some of them were moral:  A person may have committed adultery, or some other sexual wrong.

To confuse ritual impurity and moral fault is merely sloppy thinking.  The fact that they are different things in no way implies that moral fault cannot be a reason for ritual impurity, and of course it can be.  This is true in Christianity too, for a person in a condition of grave sin must not present himself for holy communion until he has repented and been absolved. 

Besides, from the perspective of natural law, we can give reasons why we should still follow the moral precepts of Torah.  Why shouldn’t I commit adultery?  Because it radically undermines the integrity of the marital bond.  Why do we marry at all?  Because the distinctively human way of turning the wheel of the generations involves a loving covenant between a man and a woman.  As I have often said in these pages, matrimony is the only institution which can give a child a fighting chance of being raised by a mom and a dad.  We are not like the animals who reproduce their kind impersonally and anonymously.  For us, it is cooperation with God’s own act of creation.  That is what sex is for.

 

NEW STUFF

Andrew McDiarmid’s two-part interview with me on the “ID the Future” podcast:

PART 1

“Reclaiming Common Sense in a Pandemic of Lunacy”

Video:  https://youtu.be/CEA7-rvg3rY?si=OTpntRJz5xG1fv1S

Audio: https://idthefuture.com/2211/

PART 2

“How to Restore Sanity to Scientific Debates”

Video: https://youtu.be/YGP3N3C_aHE?si=rMii-c0JW5VXmHxL

Audio: https://idthefuture.com/2212/

ALSO:

A brief review of Pandemic of Lunacy in World magazine: 

https://creedandculture.com/living-in-light-of-biblical-wisdom/.