A key issue that was faced by the New Testament Church Essay Example for Free

A winder issue that was faced by the New Testament Church EssayExamine a place issue that was faced by the New Testament Church (Prostitution). Could these arguments used in the first degree centigrade be used by the Church of today for this problem?Prostitution is the performance of familiar acts solo for the purpose of material gain. Persons vilify themselves when they grant favours to others in exchange for money, gifts or other payments and in so doing use their bodies as commodities. In legal terms, the word prostitute refers nonwithstanding to those who engage overtly in such(prenominal) sexual-economic transactions, usually for a specific sum of money. Prostitutes may be of either sex, hardly end-to-end history, the majority have been women, reflecting twain the traditional socio-economic dependence of women and the tendency to exploit female person sexuality.Although prostitution has a great deal been characterised as the worlds oldest profession, the concept of women as position, which prevailed in approximately centuries until the end of the nineteenth century, meant that the profits of the profession most often ended up in the hands of the men who controlled it. Men have traditionally been characterised as procurers and customers, unless during the latter half of the twentieth century, they are increasingly being identified as prostitutes themselves, who more than often than non serve male customers and sometimes impersonate women.The Torah (Law) had unforesightful to say on the subject of secular prostitution. It prohibited parents from dedicating their children as sacred prostitutes, but there is nonhing to tell us whether its authors would have objected equally to the ideas of a master making his slave-woman a secular prostitute or even a father doing so with his daughter.There are two references to secular prostitution in the Old Testament, which offer any enlarge as to how it was regarded. In both cases, an individual women is understood to have chosen this course of action on her own and thereby brought disgrace on her father. In one passage, a priests daughter who plays the harlot is condemned to be burned for having profaned her father (Leviticus 219). One may think that she is part of her fathers household, either as not yet married or as a divorced or widowed woman. Her occupation threatens the state of purity vital to the household, since its food comes largely from the altar of the temple.In Deuteronomy (2213-21) a man charges that his wife was not found to be a virgin on her wedding night. If this were true, she would be stoned for having contend the harlot in her fathers house. In other words, she has engaged in sexual intercourse when she ought to have been guarding her virginity carefully in order to be a suitable bride.In the process, she has exposed her father to shame of having reprobate her state in negotiating her marriage. It is not clear from the passage that she actually receives payment for her services the point take cares to be, rather, that she has deprived her father and her cycloramaive husband of their rights in her. What was wrong with prostitution, from the perspective of ancient Israel, was not so oftentimes the giving or receiving of payment for sexual intercourse as it was the removal of sexual intercourse from the poser of property and hierarchy which normally contained it and ensured that it was placed at the service of the family.Such an interpretation is made hardcore in a more extensive critique of prostitution found in Proverbs. After process of monition the reader against the wiles of the loose woman, the author contrasts the positive ideal of possessing a wife with a negative prospect of wasting ones resources on a courtesan (Proverbs 515-23).Having said that, one cannot treat wisdom writings as if it were the same genre as legislation. It is clear that Proverbs agrees with the Torah in understanding prostitution, as viola tion to Gods will, not merely as something to be avoided for prudential reasons. Still, the justification offered for the prohibition is intrusive as to the ethical exemplar in which the prohibition itself belonged. Prostitution was wrong because it stood outside the normal patriarchal system in which the male head of the household owned one or more women as sexual partners. As such, it imperil the interests of the family. The man might feel that he had received full value for his expense, but the family gained nothing at all from his patronising of the prostitute. His action, therefore was a betrayal of his responsibilities, since he existed not to gratify his own desires but to maintain and enhance the fortunes of his fathers house.What the Torah and Proverbs agree upon then is the condemnation of those who place personal gratification ahead of family duty. The Torah condemns the unmarried woman who prefers sexual pleasure above her obligations as a good daughter of the househo ld who must(prenominal) preserve her marriageability, which is, indeed the familys investment in her. Proverbs condemns the man who spends family resources on private pleasure. He should marry a woman and be content with the sexual pleasure he receives from her. Proverbs was concerned to patch up the prostitute telephone set as unscrupulous and unattractive as possible. The Torah was speaking to the woman who was trying to behave as an unconnected individual in pursuit of pleasure while still remaining under the protection of her father. accord to the Torah, prostitution, though a slightly less serious crime than adultery, was wrong insofar as it represented the triumph of individual gratification over against the principle of subordination to the family.The matter of prostitution receives very little attention from the Gospel writers, but it appears in a significant pronouncement of Jesus. The tax income collectors and the prostitutes, he said, were entrance the Kingdom of G od ahead of respectable religious leaders (chief priests and elders) because they believed the preaching of tail the Baptist (Matt 2123-32). Since John preached repentance (Matt 32) one may suspect that prostitutes ceased to be such when they came to believe the message. It proves grueling, however, to be certain. The tax collectors presumably did not cease to be tax collectors (In Luke 191-10, the tax collector Zacchaeus, upon his conversion, gave half of his property to the poor and made amends to those he has defrauded). A prostitute would have found it singularly difficult to emerge from her low place in the community.We know little about them in Jewish times. In the contemporary Gentile world, however, most of them were slaves, who could not legally abandon their status. Even free prostitutes, if poor, would have had only the most limited of options, since they would not have been acceptable as wives. Our own presuppositions, then, may perhaps tell whether we think of these women as giving up prostitution or not. Luke 736-50 sees Jesus anointed by a public sinner. While she is not labelled as a prostitute, it is one conclusion that could be perchance said about her.Jesus accepts her intentions, contrasts them favourably with those of her host, the Pharisee, and finally says, Her sins, many as they are, are forgiven because she has loved more than (747). This does not tell us what Jesus preferred prostitutes to do, but it does suggest that he did not make grace conditional on prostitutes escaping her place in society. The most significant thing is that Jesus held them up to the religious leadership as a model of repentance for them to follow, thus implying that the respectable are not un exchangeable the prostitutes in respect to sin. Since Jesus held them up as a religious example, we may injection that although he took prostitution to be ethically wrong, he followed the example of Proverbs in appointing blame to the man who visited the prostitute m ore than to the prostitute herself.capital of Minnesota has little to say about sexual ethics in his main doctrinal statement, the Epistle to the Romans, except the forceful identification of sexual immorality with humanities alienation from God (Romans 124-27). However, in his letters to the other churches he is forced to address the topic because of the behaviour of certain individuals in those churches, particularly at Corinth.The Christians at Corinth produced highly divergent interpretations of what the Gospel demanded in the way of sexual ethics, ranging from libertinism to a complete rejection of both marriage and sexual intercourse. It is probable that the libertine party at Corinth had adopted slogans such as All things are permitted and Food is for the belly and the belly for food (implying that sexual intercourse is as uncomplicated an expression of natural desire as eating is). Paul argues that the body of a Christian belongs to Christ. Therefore, all sexual expression, then, must take Christs ownership into account. sexual urge with a prostitute might seem to establish no relationship at all beyond the brief one required for the sanctification of desire. Paul claims that every sexual act between man and woman established a union of flesh, like that of marriage. In other words, the prostitute and the man, who has used her, actually belong to each other for the duration of their sexual intercourse, though not beyond. In Pauls own terminology, the relationship thus established is one body but in the terminology of Genesis, it is a relationship of one flesh. Paul insisted that the man who had intercourse with the prostitute was not unchanged by that act. However, it was destructive of ones spirit the relation to Christ and to GodEvery sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the man who uses harlots is sinning against his own body. (1 Corinthians 18-20)It is evident that where Proverbs discourages a man from utilise prostitutes because he b elonged to his family, Paul discouraged it because he belonged to God. The body, the person as a whole, is the spirits temple, into which other forms of righteousness must not be introduced. One might well ask, then, whether the implication of this line of reasoning is not, finally, to interdict sexual intercourse altogether.1From whichever interpretation or opinion one adopts, as a Christian, or more to the point, as human beings, it should be understood that the use of prostitutes or the actual act of prostitution is both morally and ethically wrong. It is a sin against God, in that it undervalues the gift of love, through intercourse, given to us by God, and moreover, it shows a lack of respect for the body and minds of others.BIBLIOGRAPHYCave, S The Christian Way, Nisbet and Company Limited, 1963Countryman, L.W Dirt, Greed and Sex, Fortress Press, 1988Hays, R.B The lesson Vision of the New Testament, Harper Collins Publishers, 1996Manson, T.W Ethics and the Gospel, SCM Press Limited, 19601 Countryman, L Dirt, Greed and Sex p205