Patcher

Okay, so a friend of mine and I were just having a discussion about sex outside of marriage, and I stated that I was raised to believe that the Bible says under no uncertain terms that sex outside of marriage is sin. His response: "Oh, really? Where does it say that?" So, I went and got my Bible and for every passage I pointed out, he was able to find a way around it, saying that the Bible's laws regarding adultery only apply to married people. He said that these rules don't apply to him because he isn't married. Okay, maybe the adultery laws don't apply here... maybe, if my understanding of the word is correct. But, do the Biblical "moral" laws apply here? I guess to sum it all up, my question is this: Does it state in the Bible "Do not have sex unless you are married, or you will be sinning"?

Seeker630

You seem to be confusing adultery and "fornication" in the Bible. Adultery is sexual activity between a person who is married, and another not their spouse----in other words ------cheating on the spouse. Fornication would be sex between two people, neither one of which is married. And fornication is a sin if you read the article below.

Here's a Christian perspective I found on the matter:

http://www.gracecentered.com/biblica...f_adultery.htm

So technically your friend is correct, he would not be guilty of adultery as presented in the Bible. He would only be a fornicator. The article is long, and really goes into other applications of the word "adultery"--including even something called "spiritual" adultery. But the information you want is in the first 3 or 4 paragraphs.

Dean Anderson

"Fornication" is certainly interpreted by modern Christians to include anything other than sex-within-marriage - and historically, some ultra-strict Christian groups have even gone so far as to say that sex within marriage is "fornication" if done for pleasure rather than for procreation.

But what evidence do we have about what the authors of the Bible meant when they used that term? Is the term used in extra-Biblical documents from the same era? Do we know that the authors would or would not have counted as "fornication"?

seebs

The term "fornication" is a coinage that, so far as I can tell, exists to attempt to translate porneia. IMHO, "extramarital sex" is a very poor translation of this. I am fairly confident that rape within a marriage is porneia, even though it's obviously not "extramarital".

Patcher

So, how exactly is fornication defined? What we want to know is this: Does the bible teach that having sex outside of marriage is a sin? Are two christians who are not married and having sex sinning?

S.C.Carlson

That rape can occur within marriage is a modern concept. In 1978, only 4 states prohibited marital rape, but by 1993 all 50 states and the District of Columbia criminalized it (though 33 of the states still have some exemptions for the spouse not available in non-spousal rape).

Stephen

gstafleu

From what I remember, fornication was defined as anything that went against the sexual and marital rules. That could be quite a broad spectrum. In some communities marriage between cousins was not allowed, in which case doing so was fornication (with or without sex, I'd assume). In other communities it was ok to marry your niece/cousin, so it was not fornication.

So if we use a relative definition: fornication is an act against the current sexual mores of a culture, then extra marital sex is these days OK, as the current culture, with some exceptions, no longer condemns it. If we insist on using the rules of the cultures that wrote the bible, then we have to show that extra marital sex in those cultures was against the rules. We'd also have to give a good reason for using 2000+ year old rules.

Gerard Stafleu

Seeker630

You are quite correct, at least as far as Roman Catholics are concerned. I can't speak for any other sects. I was raised Roman Catholic. And at a Catholic website, during a conversation on this very issue, they brought out the doctrine that sex for any purpose other than the possible creation of a baby was a selfish sin. That's why they have the idiotic birth-control dogmas they push all over the world.

Toto

There's a previous thread on this: The Bible and Cohabitation

also The Bible and Sex.

Dean Anderson

That's what I'm asking - how much do we know about the social mores of the first/second century Hellenistic world? What would the writers of the text have had in mind when they wrote "pornoi"?