A defence of excommunication [I Cor 5]

The ancients were perverted. Sex with slaves was unexceptional, the idea in Southern hospirality of leaving a wench du nuit in guests rooms came from somewhere. But a Roman paterfamilias could crucify any slave and at times did. On the behest of their spouse.

Homosexuality was tolerated. Marriages were fungible: dissolved and remade for family advantage. Sons and daughters, for the elite, were pawns in a game that led to the curial throne.

And for the knightly castes and merchents, there was Corinth, where the temple of Aphrodite included fornication with a temple priestess or five.

However, the ancients will rise up and damn us. For they considered being sexually obsessed as effeminate: a stronger man could get on with his duty. Tiberius was roundly damned for chasing bottoms that were like peaches. Although love and desire may be for the young, the male, catamites were seen as a Greek Vice. Much more, men had a duty. To wed, to have children: the term proletarian was a term of praise, for a man without propery could raise up sons for the legions. The idea that one should not procreate was foreign, strange, and celibacy seen as weird. One was aiming for moderation, not abstinence.

But in Christ, people thought liberty led to vice. It does not. In love, we should lay down our lives for each other, holding their interests as above us. And when that happens, we need to cleanse this from us.

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

(1 Corinthians 5:1-8 ESV)

Let us consider the case. A man has blown up the parental marriage, perhaps he has slept with his step-mother, perhaps they are the same age. Regardless, he has cuckolded his father. There is a lack of love here. And Paul says this man needs to be excommunicated, in the hope he will repent.

Not tolerated, not loved, not included. Expelled. To encourage the others.

As I said, the ancients would rise up against us. They tolerated infidelity, bisexuality and more perversions than we have now. The sexual exploitation of the powerless was seen as normal and natural, as was infanticide. But they did not accept incest. They demanded men marry. They wanted duty done: and mistrusted desire and love. They would damn us for letting our desires rule us.

And they would be correct, for we have many like this man and this women within our congregations. Called faithful. While the one betrayed is expelled.

And, when the law is against any semblance of Christian marriage, we must take the issue of Church discipline more seriously than ever. We can expect that we will be sued. We can expect that we will be called bigots.

But being called names is nothing. Far better that we, each day, pray that we hold fast. And not move to cohabitation until marriage, among the young and old.

We need to rediscover church discipline, and we need to do this now. Or we will allow our selfish lusts the congregation to destroy. Most of the time those desires are not homosexual, for same sex attraction is rare. And most of us here are tempted. Let is not assume we are angels. Let us instead assume we are, as the British comedians charmingly put it, very naughty boys (and girls).

And let us organize our congregations so that we leave not a trace of scandal. We should visit in pairs, we should keep women’s and men’s ministries separate, and we should keep the social welfare agencies, who have an agenda of making people dependent on them, far, far away.

Too many of my generation, me included, have scars relating to the destruction of their marriage and the consequences on their children. We have erred. May the following generation not do so.