Sex and the Single Savior

“I firmly believe that Christians should read Scripture and make it relevant to our lives. But I also believe that we need new ways of thinking about how we read Scripture. We need to move beyond the false claims of modernism that looked to the text of the Bible as a reliable and objective ‘source’ for knowledge or as a ‘foundation’ for ethics. We need to think about Scripture more theologically and with fresh imaginations. Far from urging the irrelevance of the Bible, I am advocating a more robust use of the Bible and a more sophisticated and adequate theology of Scripture.” —from the conclusion Probing into numerous questions about gender and sexuality, Dale Martin delves into the biblical texts anew and unearths surprising findings. Avoiding preconceptions about ancient sexuality, he explores the ethics of desire and marriage and pays careful attention to the original meanings of words, especially those used as evidence of Paul’s opposition to homosexuality. For example, after a remarkably faithful reading of the scriptural texts, Martin concludes that our contemporary obsession with marriage—and the whole search for the “right” sexual relationships—is antithetical to the message of the gospel. In all of these essays, however, Martin argues for engaging Scripture in a way that goes beyond the standard historical-critical questions and the assumptions of textual agency in order to find a faith that has no foundations other than Jesus Christ.