Sex and love in the Old Testament

Abstract

When the title for this lecture was announced some people were intrigued by it, and wondered what I meant by it and why I made this distinction. It is a sympton of what is the current idea at the present about sex and love. I insist on this distinction, because it is precisely here where the origin of the confusion that exists in the connexion lies. In rejecting the non-Christian, but rather 'manichaean accretions, to genuine Christian interpretation of sex and the morality stemming therefrorn" modern man has jettisoned the fundamental concept of sex as an expression of that genuine love which binds two intelligent and free individuals in the bond of marriage; reducing thus sex to a commodity to be traded as any other commodity on the market of entertainment to the satisfaction of man's, or for that matter woman's egoism, with all the well-known consequences for individual, domestic and social life.