TheAgitator.com
God, Kurtz, Sex
Thursday, May 1st, 2003Looks like Stanley Kurtz’s silly column is attracting the ridicule it deserves. Here: Amy Phillips, Julian Sanchez, Matthew Yglesias and Arthur Silber.
Also, Alina posted the following quote from Christian icon C.S. Lewis quite a bit ago, but I think it’s pertinent to the debate. On sex and Christianity, Lewis said:
Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body - which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy. Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion: and nearly all the greatest love poetry in the world has been produced by Christians. If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once.
Contrast Lewis’ assertion with Kurtz’s:
Or, to look at the same problem from a slightly different angle, the institution of Western marriage, in its most traditional form, has been protected by a many-sided taboo against all sexuality outside of its confines â and against non-procreative sexuality within it.
Of course, these two assertions need not be exclusive, I guess. It’s possible Lewis meant that Christianity sees the beauty of sexuality strictly when it’s being embraced for procreative purposes — and that if sex is practiced outside those purposes, even within a marriage, it becomes dirty and sinful and, I guess, should be illegal.
But I doubt that’s what Lewis meant.
Seems to me there’s a pretty clear dichotomy between the sodomy laws allegedly borne out of “Judeo-Christian” values, and at least Lewis’ views on the relationship between sexuality and Christianity.
I might add that I’m not sure I entirely agree with the Lewis quote. If I remember back to college and my “Religions of the East” class, Hinduism at least is a pretty sexually-charged faith. I seem to even remember something about sex between Gods and mortals.
But that was eight years ago, so perhaps I’m not remembering correctly. Wow. That was eight years ago.
If you doubt that’s what Lewis meant, you doubt it using only the assumptions you bring to Lewis - not what you find there.
It has been bash libertarian week. Did anyone see the Daily Show last night with the “libertarian” in NYC that is running the Guns for Tots program. I actually yelled at the TV, “You not helping.” I mean he is totally Daily Show material, but when they gave him the tag, libertarian (with a little “L”) I was crushed.
I’m a big fan of Lewis, but he was adamantly against sex outside of heterosexual marriage. He also believed that wives should submit to their husbands along the lines of 1 Timothy. He’d agree with that Kurtz quote wholeheartedly, from what I’ve read.
I don’t doubt that he’d disapprove of sex outside of heterosexual marriage. But what about non-procreative sexuality within a marriage?
Seems odd that someone could deliver the quote above, but then find all sexulaity outside the sole purpose of babymaking to be undesirable.
But I’m far from an expert on Lewis.
I am not an expert on Lewis, though I have read most of his books.
It would be diffucult to accurately read much into something that CS Lewis did not say (he never wrote that non-procreationary sex was dirty or sinful).
My impression from both Lewis and Biblical poetry, was that sex was an expression of love when the pleasure of another was the goal.
Which is much in contrast with alot of what we see in the way of intimacy, releaitionships, and ‘love’ these days.
Lewis’ position would (if I remember) that not only is sex outside of marriage ilicit, sex inside marriage was no good if it wasn’t *open* to the possibility of children, it wasn’t as powerful as it could be. The whole total communion thing.
Religions of the east - Hinduism has this concept of the ten incarnations AKA avatars of Vishnu where he assumes a corporeal body & walks among humans doing heroic things; i think around eight of the incarnations were human. One of tthe ten, Krishna, spelled Krsna by snobs and sanskrit classicists, has more girlfriends than the Hef.
So Lewis got his timelines wrong by maybe a few centuries. He may also be wrong about the erotic poetry; hinduism has tons of erotic poetry. As for contention that the greatest love poetry was created by Christians, who does he have in miind - Byron, Keats, Baudelaire, Ronsard, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Pushkin ? I doubt any of them would have thought of themselves as Christians as Lewis understood the term.
But who cares what C.S Lewis thought. He was a Fantasy writer - E.R Burroughs wrote much superior nonsense. Now, Clarke or Heinlein …
Back
… after a bit of a break. Been busy doing work; but look for some new Tech postings about some things I’ve learned. I have still had time to see what other bloggers have been up to. We celebrated Loyality…
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