What does the holiness code have to say? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
So we all know this passage. What most of us probably know about it is it condemns same-sex behavior. Frost in this section says that terms used in this chapter are euphemisms for having sex. With that, there is no disagreement. Sex is often spoke of in such terms.
When I was growing up, I remember a movie being advertised called Sleeping With The Enemy. Now for me, I thought this was a bizarre title, but I was an elementary schooler. How was I to know any better. Why would you sleep with an enemy like that? For me, sleeping with someone meant going to bed next to them. Now I know far better what it really meant!
Frost does tell us that people still could bathe together in public baths and be out in the nude regularly and says the documentation will come later. That will be accepted for now and I will see what he says when I get there. That being said, Frost still makes the mistake of assuming that the culture in ancient Israel was just like our culture or at least similar enough.
We are very individualistically based and we set the rule for ourselves. You obey the law not so people will think well of you so much as you want to be a good guy and not go to jail. Even if we granted that nudity was far more common in the ancient society, there would have been other controls set in by the group to make sure ogling didn’t take place. It is questionable that such is the case in a pornified society such as our own.
Frost also contends that in our society, we think looking at a naked person, at least of the opposite sex, is sinful. No. That in itself is not sinful. If I walk down the street and a woman suddenly jumps out in front of me completely nude in an attempt to flash me, I have done nothing wrong. I cannot help that. If I chase after her to at least ogle her, or perhaps even more, then yes, I have done something wrong. The looking itself is not a sin.
Frost keeps regularly going with this idea that nudity in itself is sinful when it obviously isn’t. So far, he has not dealt with a distinction between a private and a public sphere and he has not interacted with any scholarship on the topic. If you want to understand the biblical culture, you also need to understand them as an honor-shame culture and not a guilt-innocence culture. The group did what they could to censor unwanted behavior and individualism would have been frowned upon.
So again, that is another day and another post. I walk away once more convinced that Frost hasn’t really done the deep looking that needs to be done on an important topic, and I do not doubt that this is an important topic. The church needs a better understanding of the nature of the body, love, lust, sex, and marriage. So far, I am skeptical I will find it here.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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