Emphasis Preaching Journal

The culture around us can well be described as neo-Corinthian. The sexual wilderness is here. The new Gnosticism provides the ideology for causal and irresponsible sexual encounters. Paul did not hesitate to relate the faith to sexual issues. Here he writes about male consent to and participation in a complex human relationship that involves dehumanization, coercion, exploitation, addiction, and peril; the body of death. This world of death gets glamourized in our culture via films like The World of Susy Wong, Never On A Sunday, Pretty Woman, and books like The Happy Hooker. Paul does not condemn either the johns or the hookers here but covets for both a liberation into the body of life. For a provocative discussion of Gnosticism in its contemporary manifestations see Against the Protestant Gnostics, authored by Philip J. Lee and published in 1987 by the Oxford University Press. -- Kolsti