The Gospel Coalition Says – in Sex Won’t Save You Essay – that (Married) Sex is a “Salvation Icon” that Supposedly “Points People to God” -TGC Making Christianity Irrelevant to Single, Celibate Adults
I first began composing this on or around March 1 (or 2?), I have it set to be auto-published on March 4, and as of today, March 3, there’s been a lot more commentary on Twitter about this awful TGC marital sex article, to the point, TGC removed the original tweet linking to it, and I learned that one guy I quote-tweeted about it, a Brent McCracken, deleted his tweet that I quote tweeted (but I have a screen capture of it), and I was informed McCracken is head editor of TGC.
NOTE: I will edit this post after publication to add any more links or new content pertinent, so you may want to periodically re-visit this page and scroll down and skim over to find new links / videos, etc
I may be writing a follow up to this post later – a part two, if you will.
Un-freaking-believable. I’ve been blogging here for over ten years, and during that time, have I not been pointing out that not only do most Christians now, even the conservatives, attack sexual purity, sexual abstinence, virginity-until-marriage, but they have also turned sex (and marriage, parenthood, the nuclear family) into idols that they worship, to the point they act distressed when they hear that fornication among singles has declined? (I have a few examples under “Related Posts” towards the bottom of this page.)
There’s more of this nonsense, courtesy of The Gospel Coalition.
It starts off well enough by recognizing that many in secular society have turned sex and relationships into idols, and seek to find love and purpose in romance and sex, but then it goes on to make the very distasteful point that sex can, or does, point people to God.
Also… if such a book begins by acknowledging that singleness is fine in a page or two (or paragraph or two) but then never-the-less 99% of the book remains focused on a Jesus-marriage-sex analogy, it’s undercutting any “it’s okay to be single” or “you don’t have to be married and having sex to have a relationship with God” message.
This is no different from the idiot pastors who make every other sermon in church about “how to have smokin’ hot sex with your spouse” but who thinks it’s okay to overly focus on marriage constantly, if they merely toss in the token, “Hey, you may be single, but this marital sermon can be applicable to you too.”
I’m sorry, but evangelical Protestants or Baptists making the majority of the non-stop deluge of comments, sermons, or books about marriage and married sex, while only offering passing lip service, to adult singleness and celibacy, is still elevating marriage (and sex) to an unhealthy, bizarre, un-Biblical degree that still marginalizes singleness.
While it is true for a long time that many in American culture have turned sex and romantic relationships into idols, or seek to find identity or purpose in such, it’s also true that for the past several years, many news headlines and studies have been published showing that a larger number of adults are declining to have sex, date, and/or marry.
If you’re trying to titillate a secular public into giving Jesus a try by using sex-God analogies or metaphors, in a society where having sex, dating, or marrying are no longer the norm and not very popular, it’s not going to work.
I mean, while Butler is writing his book comparing knowing the Trinity to marital sexual intercourse and pro-creation, other conservative outlets have been in pearl-clutching, severe worry mode, that marriage is on the decline, and they’re shaming women for not choosing motherhood, and some conservatives are even upset that single adults are not having as much sex prior to marriage as they used to.
(Link): Sex Won’t Save You (But It Points to the One Who Will)
Excerpts (citing free use):
by Josh Butler
March 1, 2023
…Our culture looks to sex for salvation too. We want romance to free us from solitary confinement, to deliver us into a welcome embrace. But idolizing sex results in slavery.
Sex wasn’t designed to be your salvation but to point you to the One who is.
Union with Christ
Sex is an icon of Christ and the church. …
[The author then goes on to refer to a Bible verses which seem to refer to marriage, such as a man leaving his family and cleaving to his wife, etc]
… A husband and wife’s life of faithful love is designed to point to greater things, but so is their sexual union! This is a gospel bombshell: sex is an icon of salvation.
…Generosity and hospitality are both embodied in the sexual act. Think about it. Generosity involves giving extravagantly to someone.
…At a deeper level, generosity is giving not just your resources but your very self. And what deeper form of self-giving is there than sexual union where the husband pours out his very presence not only upon but within his wife?
…Obviously, a man and woman both give to each other and receive from each other in the sexual act. Sex is mutual self-giving.
[Butler refers to a man having sexual intercourse with his wife as ‘entering the sanctuary of his spouse,’ where he ‘bestows a … gift … of his pilgrimage’ that has a ‘potential to grow new life’ inside her – seriously, that is his phrasing]
…This is a picture of the gospel. Christ arrives in salvation to be not only with his church but within his church. …Christ penetrates his church with the generative seed of his Word …
…She [the bride] gladly receives the warmth of his presence and accepts the sacrificial offering he bestows upon the altar within her Most Holy Place.
…Similarly, the church embraces Christ in salvation, celebrating his arrival with joy and delight.
[At the bottom of the essay was this:]
Editors’ note:
Josh Butler—a fellow at the newly launched Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics—will be leading a seven-week online cohort this spring on “The Beauty of the Christian Sexual Ethic,” based on his forthcoming book Beautiful Union (Multnomah, 2023). …
This article was adapted from Beautiful Union: How God’s Vision for Sex Points Us to the Good, Unlocks the True, and (Sort of) Explains Everything (Multnomah, April 2023) by Joshua Ryan Butler.
— end excerpts —
Where Butler writes, “Generosity and hospitality are both embodied in the sexual act. Think about it. Generosity involves giving extravagantly to someone ….Obviously, a man and woman both give to each other and receive from each other in the sexual act. Sex is mutual self-giving,” all I can do is laugh, because I remember misogynistic Doug Wilson’s (I think it was Wilson, or one of those other patriarchal, male headship ass clowns) who stated that sex is NOT an “egalitarian pleasuring party,” which suggested it was only about male sexual pleasure, not about what the woman wants or prefers in the bedroom.
Butler writes:
And what deeper form of self-giving is there than sexual union where the husband pours out his very presence not only upon but within his wife?
— end excerpt —
Look, I don’t mean to be crass here, but where Butler talks about “within his wife,” is he referring to ejaculation? That is just gross, dude.
This:
He is not only with his beloved but within his beloved. He enters the sanctuary of his spouse, where he pours out his deepest presence and bestows an offering, a gift, a sign of his pilgrimage, that has the potential to grow within her into new life.
— end excerpt —
-Reads like Mark Driscoll’s rant under a fake name years ago, where he told young, randy men to think of women as “penis homes.” Also: please stop with all the weird, flowery euphemisms for sperm.
And how are single, celibate adults supposed to relate to this sex-obsessed clown show? All these references to marriage and sex and marital metaphors are empty to single and celibate adults.
Jesus is not my actual, literal boyfriend or husband. I don’t want to have sex with Jesus, and yet this Butler guy keeps asking that I visualize myself having literal sex with God or Jesus – just no, gross.
I’m sure even the Holy Spirit was at at times whispering into this guy’s ear as he was composing this tacky weirdness, “Just stop. No. Please don’t.”
Do you know what else the Bible has to say about marriage? Aside from Paul writing in 1 Corinthians 7 that marriage brings one many troubles in this life, and that marriage is a distraction from service to God, it also says this:
At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. (Jesus speaking, Matthew 22:30)
Yeah. You’re not going to be married to an earthly spouse in the great here-after, and there apparently will be no sex, either. So stop using sexual and marital metaphors, as you’re not being quite biblical, you’re grossing readers out, and you’re alienating single and/or sexually abstinent adults.
I never see these jokers comparing single, adult celibacy to being married to Jesus, in a sense. A single adult is now a picture of what a married Christian will be upon death. If you’re married now, you’re not going to be married in the afterlife. A singleness metaphor is a little bit more pertinent in some ways.
The Bible teaches that God the Father doesn’t have a physical body, and Jesus of Nazareth never married, never had sex, and never had biological children. For Christian authors to keep sexualizing God the Father or Jesus is just gross – and unbiblical.
Anyway. I am so over Christians obsessing over marriage and sex and comparing almost any and all relationships to God, since for one reason of several, it excludes chaste single adults.
March 4, 2023 (and beyond) Update(s)
Rod Dreher
The Rod Dreher Attempted Defense of Butler Shows a Misunderstanding of the Situation and an Ignorance of the Long Time, Deeply Entrenched Sexism and Weird Views about Women and Sex Among Complementarians
I’m afraid that Rod Dreher (rod@amconmag dot com) over at American Conservative magazine doesn’t fully understand what is going on.
Dreher unfortunately jumped to Butler’s defense a few days ago with this essay: (Link): The, Um, Joy Of Evangelical Sex
Dreher has since edited that piece to add additional observations or input from his readers, and so on.
I can tell based upon some of the things Dreher has written that he doesn’t understand the long history of sexism (under gender complementarianism) that goes on with Baptists and Protestants, and how those Baptist, Reformed, and Protestant complementarian men (and some of their women accomplices) have in fact “porn-i-fied” God, marital sex, women, and Jesus.
Dreher seems to wrongly assume that any and all critics who take issue with the views of the TGC sponsored Butler piece are “abuse survivor” advocates or are all woke, progressive, anti-Christianity, which is false. I tweeted some corrections at him today about this, but I’ve no idea if he saw them or not.
I don’t believe the Bible ever uses sexual intercourse as an analogy for people’s or the church’s relationship to God – the Bible may use marriage as an analogy, but never sex, that I can recall, and certainly not overt references or comparisons to a man ejaculating or to sperm.
It’s mind boggling to me that Dreher would defend the gross, unbiblical, weird, undergirded-by-sexism perspective of TGC and Josh Butler’s essay.
Not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally or as one- to- one comparison.
I don’t agree with Orthodox or Roman Catholic views on transubstantiation; I don’t believe that the grape juice or wine turns into the blood of Christ literally, okay? You can fall into danger when you over-spiritualize, or over-literalize anything and everything in life or in the Bible.
Adult singleness and celibacy can also be said to point us to God – but I never see Christians, at least not in the last 40, 50 years within Protestant Evangelical or Baptist world, teach this point.
Jesus says in the Gospels that there will be no marriage in the afterlife. One wouldn’t know that from the Mormon-like obsession with marriage, married sex, and natalism that so many Protestants, Baptists, Catholics, and I guess, per Dreher, the Orthodox have.
Dreher writes in his piece:
Wendell Berry has written, “sexual love is the heart of community life. Sexual love is the force that in our bodily life connects us most intimately to the Creation, to the fertility of the world, to farming and the care of animals. It brings us into the dance that holds the community together and joins it to its place.”
This is more important to the survival of Christianity than most of us understand. When people decide that historically normative Christianity is wrong about sex, they typically don’t find a church that endorses their liberal views. They quit going to church altogether.
— end excerpts —
I’m sorry, but no. The Bible does not teach that “sexual love is the heart of community life.”
To teach as such is to teach that Christianity and community has no place for virgin adults.
Jesus, who himself never had sex nor ever married, said who ever did the will of God was his mother or brother – one does not have to have sex or be married to participate in that community.
Dreher makes it sound as though Christians never discuss sex during church services, or not from a “liberal” perspective.
However, as someone who grew up Baptist, I can tell you with full assurance that Baptist and Protestant Christians NEVER SHUT UP about marriage and marital sex, and when they discuss it, they don’t sound very conservative about it.
Spend some time googling for information about pastor Mark “penis homes” Driscoll (who says Queen Esther was a slut, depicts her as a slut, and Driscoll argues that the Bible insists that wives give their husbands blow jobs, and IIRC, even if they don’t want to do that),
and google for information on Doug Wilson, who has said all sorts of sexist, debased things about women and sex (just one example here; more can be found online, but I don’t want to invest more time conducting web searches for more).
One reason so many celibate / virgin single adults like myself stop going to church is precisely because we are constantly overlooked, forgotten about. Churches focus on sex, marriage, and parenthood constantly.
Only marriage and married sex are discussed from the pulpit, and by conservatives in a very liberal sounding way, to the degree that even marital sex sounds very porn-like and salacious.
See Julia Duin’s book “Quitting Church” for more on that topic, of how continual dismissal of singleness and celibacy by Christians and churches in favor of bloviating all the time on marriage and married sex, among other reasons, is why so many celibate, single adults drop out of church.
(Link): TGC, Josh Butler, and Complementarianism – by Scot McKnight
Excerpts:
I agree with the many that the book goes well beyond the line in connecting the (favored expression for some) husband’s penetration of his wife with God, with Christ, with the church, and with the gospel. The Song of Solomon, however much it has been read allegorically, was a collection of erotic-love songs between a man and a woman. The church’s use of this Song in its history has not always been wise.
I am of an age to remember that a book by Craig Glickman, at least for many of us, changed the direction of evangelical readings of the Song. Many of us shifted from reading the Song of Solomon from allegory about Christ and the church to a love song between a man and a woman. It’s graphic enough, but it does not go where Josh Butler goes. Nor do I believe an allegorical reading does what that text was designed to do.
Furthermore, ever since I read John Piper’s book on marriage, where he sees it as a “parable,” I found myself in disagreement with his idea that the sex act itself is symbolic. Any man or woman engaging in sexual activities with their minds on the supposed symbolism is, well, disengaged from what is happening.
And for a man to see himself as Christ in the sex act and the woman as the church … that’s idolatrous if not blasphemous. Ephesians 5 does not go there. Instead it speaks about sacrifice for the other in a loving relationship. I will leave the critique of the book to what’s already out there, and what will be out there. The best critique can be found at Church Blogmatics.
My considerations, then, are these:
First, this book only makes sense within and is affirmed by a complementarian worldview. Masculinism and muscular Christianity and manly men, as articulated by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, form central elements of the culture of complementarianism in evangelicalism.
(Link): Protestant bodies, Protestant bedrooms, & our furious need for a theology thereof
Excerpts:
On sex, marriage, the gospel, & a truly bad thing on the internet that’s going to sell a lot of truly bad books
by Beth Felker Jones
…The second problem is this; reading the analogy in this crude way turns Jesus into a pagan God, a mythological and unholy character akin to Zeus.
It understands God as sexually male and not as the I-AM-WHO-I-AM: the holy, transcendent one, Father-Son-and-Holy-Spirit, beyond all creation and imagining. A friend told me that reading the article made her feel “violated by God.” She felt that way, because the article violated the truth about God.
…8 reasons this is truly bad theology:
1. Pornography and the Christian imagination
My husband was reading me bits of the article, when our teen son popped into our room.
“What are you reading?” said he.
“Ugh. Just a very bad article,” said me.
“Sounds like it belongs on some smut site on the internet.”
Out of the mouths of half grown babes.
In fact, my husband had just commented on how much the thing is inflected by pornography. It’s a euphoric ode to the glories of ejaculation, which the article characterizes as “gift” and “sacrificial offering.”
(Link): The Gospel Coalition takes down ‘Sex Won’t Save You’ article; Rick Warren calls for apology
TGC editor’s note says adapted book excerpt ‘lacked sufficient context’
By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter
March 4, 2023
The Gospel Coalition faced calls for an apology Friday over a now-deleted post on its website in which the author discusses salvation and the Church in the context of sexual intercourse that some critics say approaches erotic literature.
Authored by Arizona Pastor Josh Butler, the article published on Wednesday, originally titled “Sex Won’t Save You (But It Points to the One Who Will),” is an excerpt from Butler’s book, Beautiful Union released last month.
In the excerpt, Butler, who pastors Redemption Church Tempe, starts out by confessing that he used to “look to sex for salvation” before realizing that “idolizing sex results in slavery.” As he recounts a series of failed romantic adventures, Butler then quotes Taylor Swift and asserts that “sex is an icon of Christ and the church.”
…In what he termed a “gospel bombshell,” Butler then states “sex is an icon of salvation” and uses the sexual act to describe our relationship to Christ: “Generosity and hospitality are both embodied in the sexual act. Think about it. Generosity involves giving extravagantly to someone. You give the best you’ve got to give, lavishly pouring out your time, energy, or money.
…Neither Butler nor The Gospel Coalition returned a request Friday for comment from The Christian Post. A spokesman for Redemption Church Tempe told CP Butler was out of town and would respond when he returns.
The article is no longer on The Gospel Coalition website, but the link is still active with a new headline that reads “Beautiful Union Book” and this brief statement: “We recognize that the adapted excerpt from Josh Butler’s forthcoming book Beautiful Union lacked sufficient context to be helpful in this format.” The statement also included a link to a preview sample of the book.
…Rick Warren, the former pastor of Saddleback Church and author of the bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life, called for TGC to apologize for the article.
“I’m glad TGC removed yesterday’s article that was both offensive and erroneous theology. But no apology?” he wrote.
Rich Villodas, pastor of New Life Fellowship in New York, issued a statement retracting his initial endorsement of Beautiful Union and said Butler’s “exegesis of Ephesians 5 is not just problematic, it’s dangerous. … I was wrong to write an endorsement for something I didn’t fully read.”
On the TGC website, Butler was listed as a fellow with The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, which was launched in February to help pastors, young people and other Christian leaders adapt to a “post-Christendom culture.”
As of Friday afternoon, however, Butler’s bio no longer appeared on the page. He is still listed as a fellow with The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics on his personal website. It’s unclear whether any change to his status was made. …
Additional material (commentary and/or rebuttals on other people’s sites):
(Please note: my linking to this material doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with every view these people hold in this material itself or in other material they’ve released – also, as I find more content, I may edit this post to add it):
35 minute long pod cast on Apple (free to listen to):
(Link): A Response to Josh ButlerKingdom Roots with Scot McKnight
In this podcast episode, we brought together three professors from Northern Seminary to talk about the recent Gospel Coalition article by Josh Butler.
Dr. Beth Felker Jones has written a book called Faithful: A Theology of Sex and as a systematic theologian, she is able to help us understand human sexuality from a theological perspective. Beth recently wrote a piece on her Substack that gave us eight reasons why Butler’s piece was bad theology.
Dr. Lynn Cohick is a New Testament scholar and has written a commentary on Ephesians. She is well-suited to address the Ephesians 5 text Butler’s article was based upon.
Dr. Scot McKnight has written extensively about the culture of the church in his book, A Church Called Tov, which looks closely at themes of abuse. Scot recently responded in his own Substack to Butler’s article by giving three considerations about the culture that produced it.
(Link): We don’t need more ‘context’ to understand Josh Butler’s article on sex and the church
Excerpts:
by Rick Pidcock
March 6, 2023
…Butler’s controversial article — it was removed less than 24 hours after it was posted — was an adapted excerpt from his forthcoming book, Beautiful Union. Readers who had found or shared the link to the excerpt were instead greeted Thursday night with a message from Kim, who thanked readers for their feedback and patience as TGC considered how to respond.
…A history of sacralizing male sexual hierarchy
This isn’t the first time TGC has used the gospel to sacralize male sexual hierarchy over women. In 2012, they published an article where Jared Wilson quoted Douglas Wilson saying, “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage.”
…In her final post on the topic, Evans said TGC dismissed the pain and perspective of women and concluded: “The Gospel Coalition’s response to this matter has spoken more loudly than the original post.” Evans noted how TGC’s follow-ups “said a lot about what they don’t mean, but nothing about what they do mean.”
She was left with no answer to the question, “How is complementarian sex supposed to be different than egalitarian sex?”
…On one level, the content of Butler’s “magnum opus” about sex fits that desired profile. His theology of sex is rooted in the image of God as an angry male demanding justice for the sins of humanity.
Rather than apologizing for that bad theology, Kim said in response to controversy about Butler’s book and article that TGC simply needs to improve its review systems.
(Link): MY V@GINA IS NOT MY “MOST HOLY PLACE”: A RESPONSE TO THE GOSPEL COALITION
Excerpts:
I could say so, so much, but let’s condense:
-
- A man’s orgasm is not a “sacrificial offering.” It is not a sacrifice to reach orgasm.
- Once again, we’re centering men’s experience of sex. She lies there and takes it; he does something to her.
- Calling the vagina the “Most Holy Place” fetishizes the female body, seeing it as only being about sex and receiving semen. The vagina is a part of the body. It bleeds. It needs medical exams. It can hurt, can tear, can sting. Ignoring women’s daily, physical experiences like this is deeply flawed.
…It did sound like the same old message: Sex is intercourse; sex is about a man’s pleasure; sex is centered on the guy. And they use all this flowery language to still erase women’s experiences.
(Link): The Spermeneutics of Spread Your Legs Theology– from Under Much Grace, blog post
(Link): The Gospel Coalition Disaster! Sex won’t save you but it points to the one who will article TGC (Video: 17minutes long)
(Link): Gospel Coalition’s Pastor Josh Butler Publishes WARPED Interpretation Of Christ’s Bride 2nd Mar 2023 (Video: 10 minutes long)
Screen cap below of the original tweet, which was (Link): located here, now since deleted. The ratio on this weird, tacky thing must have been incredible.
Way below these “Related Posts” links are more embedded Tweets about this.
Related Posts:
(Link): The Sexualization of God and Jesus
(Link): Addison Rae Faces Backlash for Wearing Religious-Themed ‘Holy Trinity’ Bikini: ‘Blasphemous’
(Link): Women, Stop Listening to Sexist Relationship ‘Experts’ by D. L. D’Oyley
(Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Is Not
(Link): Marketing Companies Offering ‘Sexy Jesus’ Calendar, Selfies With Jesus
(Link): Prof Says There is Something Homo-Erotic About Christian Men Who Say They Love Jesus
(Link): Church’s Woke Advert Featuring a Bearded Jesus with Women’s Breasts and Make-Up Sparks Outrage
(Link): Say Hello to Trans Jesus by Michael Warren Davis
(Link): Patriarchy tends to sexualize all male/female relationships
(Link): Mom and Dad ‘Fantasized About Raping Their Own Unborn Baby’ by D. White
(Link): People Have Been Having Less Sex—whether They’re Teenagers or 40-Somethings
(Link): Single Men Just Don’t Care About Sex Anymore, Study Says
(Link): Young Adults Are Having Less Casual Sex. A New Study Found 3 Reasons Why by Ross Pomeroy
(Link): Americans Having Less Sex Now, Says 2017 Study
(Link): Study: Americans Having Less Sex; Video Streaming May Be To Blame
(Link): Young, Attractive, and Totally Not Into Having Sex by K McGowan
(Link): Why Aren’t Millennials Having Sex Anymore? via Relevant Magazine
(Link): The Many Reasons That People Are Having Less Sex (2017 article via BBC News)
(Link): False Christian Teaching: “Only A Few Are Called to Singleness and Celibacy”
(Link): Why Are Christian Guys Silent About Abstinence? by C. Hill
(Link): CDC Report: Virgin Teens Much Healthier Than Their Sexually Active Peers (2016 Report)
(Link): Are You Ashamed of Biblical [Sexual] Purity? by J. Slattery
(Link): When Adult Virginity and Adult Celibacy Are Viewed As Inconvenient or As Impediments
(Link): Living Myths About Virginity (via The Atlantic)
(Link): More Than 40 Per Cent of Japan’s Adult Singles are Virgins, Says Study
(Link): Mother says in interview: ‘I wish I’d aborted the son I’ve spent 47 years caring for’
(Link): Fewer Americans Think Marriage is Needed To Create Strong Families, New Poll Suggest
(Link): I’m in My 40s, Child-Free and Happy. Why Won’t Anyone Believe Me? By Glynnis MacNicol
(Link): Woman Sold Her Baby for Sex Multiple Times, Man Took Porn Images of Child
(Link): Mother Suffocates Her New Born and Shoves It In Toilet
https://twitter.com/TGC/status/1630932151444160513
https://twitter.com/sheilagregoire/status/1631333415206232065
https://twitter.com/ErinNewtonTX/status/1631041866610122753
This guy, McCracken, deleted his tweet for whatever reason (link), but I have a screen cap (this was in my bookmarks):
This guy also has a screen capture of the McCracken tweet:
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Christian Pundit 