Each week my neighbors and I engage in a curious ethical ritual. On Wednesday morning before we leave for work we set outside our doors an artifact which expresses our obligation to the welfare of future generations. We call these objects “recycling bins.”
Recycling is one example of an action that we take in the present to benefit a group in the future. The earth has enough space and resources that all current generations could be extremely wasteful without having a detrimental effect on the global population. Future generations, however, would likely suffer if we were careless in our use of resources. For this reason the recycling of waste products is viewed as an important, albeit minor, act of virtue.
Although reasonable people do not need to be persuaded that we have moral obligations to future generations, it would be useful to examine what form the argument would take. Philosopher Jim Nolt outlines the argument as follows:
1. We have obligations to all currently living people.
2 . Future people are in no morally relevant respect different from currently living people.
3. We have obligations to all future people.
Nolt believes the argument is sound and adds:
The moral irrelevance of time of birth is perhaps best understood by the realization that we are future people—to our predecessors. The distinction between past and future is, after all, not ultimate and absolute, but relative to temporal perspective. In that respect, it is like the designation, “foreigner,” which is relative to geographical perspective. Who counts as a foreigner depends on the country we inhabit. Likewise, who counts as a future person depends on the time we inhabit. All people are foreigners to people of countries other than their own. Likewise, all people belong to the future generations of their predecessors. [emphasis in original]
Obviously we have generic obligations (i.e., don’t despoil the planet) to future generic groups (e.g., people living in 2056 A.D.). However, I contend that we also have specific obligations to specific individuals in the future. For example, I believe that Christian men and women who are unmarried (and are not called to a life of chastity) have certain present obligations to their future spouse.
Regardless of whether they come from a secular or religious worldview, people in the West generally share the idea that there is one specific person—the “true love”, soul mate, etc.,-- for each of us. Whether chosen by God or fate, this is the person we are supposed to share the rest of our lives with in a state of marital bliss.
If there truly is one person, one true love, for each of us then there is much that we owe this person. When we find and recognize them as our “soul mate” our obligations become quite obvious. But what about before then, before they come into our lives?
I contend that certain obligations that are recognized after we marry are binding on us even before we meet our future spouses. Although we are separated “relative to temporal perspective” this person exists now and is not in any morally relevant respect different from the person we will wed. The duties of a husband, therefore, would extend not just from the present (when we marry our spouse) and future (throughout our marriage) but also backward into the past (the time prior to our marriage, or even before we meet).
Of the specific obligations that spouses owe, some are shared by other people (e.g., parents) throughout a person’s life while others are unique to the matrimonial bond. For example, a husband has the obligations to financially support and to remain sexually faithful to his wife. The financial obligation is one that is first met by the parents, and perhaps later by the woman herself. The future husband is not expected to provide for her materially before they have even met. The fidelity obligation, however, is a unique duty that is not shared by any other person. It is specific to the marital relationship and is therefore binding even before the two “soul mates” have found each other.
Consider this thought experiment. Imagine a man is to be married on February 14th and has sexual relations with a woman who is not his fiancé on:
(a) The night before his wedding.
(b) The day of his wedding.
(c) The day after his wedding.
The action in each instance is the same but the term we’d use to describe the man would depend on when the event occurred: (a) would make the man a cheating cad, (c) and adulterer, and (b) either a cheating cad or an adulterer, depending on the time of day. Regardless of what we choose to call it, the consequence of the action is the same – the man has been unfaithful to the woman. Notice that though the “temporal perspective” changes the semantics, it doesn’t change the morality of the action.
Under this view, pre-marital sexual relations become a form of “pre-marital adultery.” We are, in essence, being unfaithful to the one we will eventually pledge emotional and sexual allegiance. Why then do we not honor this obligation? As with most things in life, what we claim to believe is betrayed by our actions. Although unmarried people often claim to believe that they are waiting for their “soul mate” their actions show that they don’t really believe that to be true. If they truly believed that their true love existed then how could they be sexually unfaithful to the one person who God has chosen for them?
My recycling bin is a symbol of the obligation I feel I owe future generations. Unfortunately, I have no such token to give my wife that shows the obligation I owed her. Instead, I had only a string of sexual sins that showed that before we met I treated the concept of “soul mate” as a useful fiction. I offer this confession to young people who have not yet lost one of the most valuable gifts God gives man: the ability to give oneself completely to the person you love. If you want to show true love to your future spouse, then start now by keeping the Seventh Commandment.
Note: I address this post to Christians because non-believers would not share my understanding of the role and nature of sex. While there may be some overlap of agreement, the presuppositional attitude of most non-Christians would be so foreign to my view (that God created sexual relations with a specific form and for a particular range of purposes) it would be impossible to offer suggestions for a general audience, though I believe this post is as relevant and true for non-believers as it is for Christians.
Joe,
You wrote: "Imagine a man is to be married on February 14th and has sexual relations with a woman who is not his finance on..."
I can't even imagine what that might look like. : )
Seriously, a few questions.
Premise two says: "Future people are in no morally
Since you are approaching this from a Christian perspective and the ontological status of people in the past is the same (or more full, if I can call it that?) than people in the future, does that entail obligations to specific people in the past? How would we know what those are?
Also, it's not at all clear to me that you needed to bring the loaded concept "soul mate" into the argument to makrelevant respect different from currently living people." e it fly. The whole concept is, well, probably pagan and destructive. Regardless, if we only marry one person and have obligations in the present to them, regardless of whether we know them or not, then it doesn't matter whether that person is Girl A, Girl B, or Girl C. The obligations in the present are the same. The notion of the "soul-mate" just detracts from the main point of your post. But then, I've been known to quibble about details now and then, too. Interesting thoughts, as always.
Matthew Since you are approaching this from a Christian perspective and the ontological status of people in the past is the same (or more full, if I can call it that?) than people in the future, does that entail obligations to specific people in the past? How would we know what those are?
I would think that it does entail obligations to specific people in the past, though they would be vastly different than what we owe the present and the future generations. For example, I would say that we have an obligation to protect the great works of art and literature—indeed to preserve the best that has ever been thought and said from previous generations. The obligations we owe to Plato, though, would be much different and I suspect fewer in number than what we owe to our grandchildren. That is certainly an interesting question to explore.
Also, it's not at all clear to me that you needed to bring the loaded concept "soul mate" into the argument…
I’d agree with that. It is definitely a loaded-term. I included it only because I had originally intended to write this post for non-Christians too and was too lazy to edit it out. As a good Calvinist I believe that God is sovereign over such matters, so for the purposes of this post let’s say the term stands in for the idea of “the person God intends me to marry.”
Joe,
Then what of pre-marital consumation? How does your argument work if he has sexual relations with the person he intends to marry the night prior to the wedding? What about a month prior, a year, and so on?
Don't you think that our obligations to others, present and future, are subjected to our obligations to God, thus making your whole point mute?
Enjoy your writing! :)
There is a huge difference between saying that God is sovereign over whom I marry and the "soul mate" concept.
The soul mate concept says that there is one person that God has picked out for me to marry, it's my job to figure out which one, and woe unto me if I get it wrong, because I'm going to spend the rest of my life out of the center of God's will.
The Reformed position, built on the doctrine of providence, says that God works through any number of "second causes" -- e.g., circumstances and desires and upbringing and culture -- to accomplish his sovereign will. From a human perspective, a couple meets somehow, then considers marriage based on some criteria that are important to them. From a divine perspective, the circumstances of their meeting and the background that informs their criteria for choosing a mate are all formed and shaped by circumstances under God's sovereign control. They can know that it was God's sovereign will that they should be married the moment
the preacher says, "I now pronounce you man and wife."
The "soul mate" idea is pernicious, and it can encourage Christians to delay marriage waiting for the perfect one to come along or to bail out of marriage thinking that they got it wrong the first time. From that notion, you could argue that, if a young man gets impatient waiting for his soul mate to show up and proposes to and marries someone who is acceptable but doesn't excite him all that much, that he has committed bigamy against God's chosen mate for him?
I urge you to make the edits, Joe. Not everyone is going to bother reading the comments, and it's a distinction that matters.
I don't have any particular comment on premarital sex except to note that atheists value monogamy just like everybody else does. It's the love and care you feel for the person, and the categorical imperative, that make this so. No punishment from on high required.
My recycling bin is a symbol of the obligation I feel I owe future generations.
No, this quote was the interesting one. This suggestion that recycling is a kind of noble, feel-good thing to do, with no impact on the current generation is an exceedingly misguided view. Take my word for it: less energy is required to recycle metal, glass, and paper than is needed to fabricate them from scratch.
There's a conservative myth out there that holds different, that says we'll never run out of anything, that energy is infinite, and there's no such thing as pollution - any suggestion to the contrary is tree-hugging foolishness! Well, renewable energy and recycling can go a long way toward making that a reality.
Finally, Carter, you've written something I can unreservedly agree with. About pre-marital chastity, that is. Being a child of the Age of Rubbish (i.e., the late 60's and early 70's), I made every possible effort to test and re-test the validity of the chastity hypothesis. Fortunately, I didn't get any diseases that will haunt me and my spouse for the duration of life, but I still wish I had waited.
Raven helpfully cites a "conservative myth" but doesn't cite the source. It would be even more helpful if a source (quote, etc.) were provided. Regarding recycling, I used to recycle until I saw recycled decking lumber at the home store. I think the old pop bottles looked better, frankly. I know they sell a lot of that stuff, and the very existence of recycled decking and NASCAR vanity plates testify to the legality of bad taste. And recycled toilet paper is not even good enough for camping. I shall leave the reasons to your own imagination.
But hey, the world will end sooner or later, so Goreistas are eventually bound to be right. I'm sure that's comforting. "Someday, I shall have been right!"
Take my word for it: less energy is required to recycle metal, glass, and paper than is needed to fabricate them from scratch.
You really need to offer some evidence for this assertion. For some things (metals), recycling makes sense, for most things (plastic, paper, etc.) the evidence is less compelling.
There's a conservative myth out there that holds different, that says we'll never run out of anything, that energy is infinite, and there's no such thing as pollution - any suggestion to the contrary is tree-hugging foolishness!
Can we please retire this tired old straw man? He's been set up and knocked down more times that Vince and Larry. Just as an aside, energy is virtually infinite; it is some sources of energy that are finite, coal and oil for example; though in the case of oil, I am not convinced that we have a really good handle on how much we really have. What we are running out of is oil that can be extracted for $5.00/barrel; there's huge quantities of oil that can be extracted at $50+/barrel.
Joe,
You assume that I have a duty of loyalty now to those to whom I will at a later time pledge my loyalty. In particular, you assume that unmarried adults who will later marry have a duty now to their future mate to have sex with no one else.
This principle (call it Fides) is open to refutation by counter-example.
Let us say that Curtis will marry twice in the future. First he will marry Margaret, and next he will marry Peggy.
Let us assume, moreover, that both marriages are, from the moral point of view, permissible for him. Perhaps Margaret will die, and a year later Curtis will marry Peggy.
On Fides, at present and while still single, Curtis has a duty to Margaret to have sex with no one else and he has a duty to Peggy to have sex with no one else.
Moreover, once he marries Margaret (and before she dies), Fides has the consequence that he has a duty to Peggy not to have sex with Margaret.
But this is clearly absurd. The pleasures of the marriage bed are not closed to Curtis and Margaret simply because, at a later time, she will die and Curtis will marry another.
What your principle seems not to take into account is that one can have different loyalties at different times.
Now perhaps Fides can be fixed up. I don't know. But it seems to me more likely that, with all loyalties, the duties entailed by that loyalty do not begin until the loyalty is pledged. Do I have a duty of loyalty to the Marine Corps before I join up? Surely it would be strange to say Yes. (Indeed if the answer were Yes, it seems the Corps could come and haul me away before I signed up. But surely that's absurd.)
This of course is perfectly consistent with the assetion that, before marriage, it might well be wise to remain celibate. But your argument seems not to show that.
The action in each instance is the same but the term we’d use to describe the man would depend on when the event occurred: (a) would make the man a cheating cad, (c) and adulterer, and (b) either a cheating cad or an adulterer, depending on the time of day. Regardless of what we choose to call it, the consequence of the action is the same – the man has been unfaithful to the woman. Notice that though the “temporal perspective” changes the semantics, it doesn’t change the morality of the action.
The failure in this thought experiment is that the man has meet and formed an obligation to his fiancé before the wedding hence by having an affair the night before he is being unfaithful. Unless you are talking about a Brittany Spears type situation where the couple takes less than a day to hook up and tie the knot!
More importantly:
I contend that certain obligations that are recognized after we marry are binding on us even before we meet our future spouses. Although we are separated “relative to temporal perspective” this person exists now and is not in any morally relevant respect different from the person we will wed. The duties of a husband, therefore, would extend not just from the present (when we marry our spouse) and future (throughout our marriage) but also backward into the past (the time prior to our marriage, or even before we meet).
I think you have a lot of interesting ideas but often you're philosophy ends up being a massive train wreck. This wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that you seem totally oblivious to it. You remind me a bit of Mr. Magoo, that lovable cartoon old man who was as blind as a bat and wrecked havoc because of it but was blissfully unaware he was causing any trouble at all.
Anyway, it hasn't even been less than two weeks since you railed against determinism. You declared anyone who doubted that free will exists to be an idiot. Now guess what, you're telling me there's no real choice in getting married. My spouse already exists and I might as well consider the contract binding even before I enter it!!! (I suppose my future mortgage company also exists today...should I start making payments to them even though I haven't brought the house yet?)
Your motives are probably good. You're giving a nice romantic spin to abstinance in a way that doesn't sound like a shrill 1950's Church lady telling girls to save themselves for their husbands but as an exercise in logic I think your being as loose as any street walker!
Pretty weak this time, Joe. I give you an A+ for intentions, but a D- for logic. I'm really surprised that you would allow the concept of a "soul mate" to hold any water for you. After all, you've been married 3 times (not throwing stones, just making an observation, I'm on my second, and hopefully last marriage myself), and I imagine each time you thought she was "the one", only to be proven wrong. This post is a great example of hope over experience.
Obligations between generations:
I would think that it does entail obligations to specific people in the past, though they would be vastly different than what we owe the present and the future generations. For example, I would say that we have an obligation to protect the great works of art and literature—indeed to preserve the best that has ever been thought and said from previous generations. The obligations we owe to Plato, though, would be much different and I suspect fewer in number than what we owe to our grandchildren. That is certainly an interesting question to explore.
Suppose we unearth some biographies of our beloved Plato. Suppose they reveal that Plato was a child molestor, a man who cheated old widows out of their life savings, a man who liked to kick sick dogs and when his little band wasn't working out philosophy were terrorizing their fellow Greeks. Upon discovering that Plato was pretty much scum would we then start chucking all of his works? After all we certainly wouldn't have an obligation to him because he was a nice guy? (Needless to say what about all the other good people who have died long ago without ever leaving us with great art or literature? It seems pretty cold to say 'screw you guys' simply because they didn't leave us with any great books or paintings.)
No we preserve Plato not for his sake (he is no less dead because we keep reprinting his books and reading the Cliff Notes to them) but for ours. Likewise with other things we preserve for the past.
Likewise the interests of future generations are introduced in economics through the use of discount rates. Basically interest serves as a sort of time machine, rewarding you today whenever you do something for the future. You decide not to blow $100 on dinner and movies today and put it in your savings account. You are rewarded each year with a few dollars of interest. Even a 90 year old man may therefore buy a 30 year bond knowing he will never live to cash it it. Why? Because today the bond will generate a stream of income for him and tomorrow it will be part of his estate.
Now as for recycling, since my father-in-law happens to own a garbage company in New Jersey I know a bit about the topic. Sorry to say most recycling efforts are more of an exercise in feel-good waste than they are in actually helping future or current generations. What makes sense to recycle is metals and heavy cardboard and that's about it. Newspaper is a big maybe and plastics end up costing more to recycle than simply making from scratch. The reason you are putting out your recyclables is that your town probably pays something like $80 per ton to dump at landfills but recyclers will charge much less for paper, plastics and metals. Even then it's doubtful whether it makes economic sense for your town to go after this savings when you consider the cost of having to run two different fleets of trucks out to collect garbage on one day and recyclables on the next. As for saving resources for the next generations, ever have a contractor at your house who had to take out copper pipes? Ever notice that there is never a problem getting rid of that?
Anyway, probably the best thing you could do for future people is doing good for yourself today. Having $300,000 in your IRA when you are 78 years old will do more for the generation after your grandchildren than spending 50 years picking plastic bottles out of landfills and giving them to the recycling company. Of course this would also be the same advice you'd give to someone who wanted to be totally selfish and only cared about themselves.... Sorry to go Ayn Randish on you all but the old girl did have a point.
Regarding obligations to the future:
I think we can only have obligations to that which we reasonably expect, not the thousand other things that may occur. Most of us do not expect to marry twice (or we'd be hypocrites out of the box when we said "'til death..."), so there is (at present) no obligation to that second wife. Besides, contra Franklin, the second wife has no reasonable expectation of chastity before that second marriage (at least if the man is honest and a good husband to his first wife).
Most of us in our youth reasonably expect marriage, and that can and should impose a form of obligation to that future partner.
Regarding obligations to the past:
I am reminded of Chesterton's words: "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors." It is one form taken by the command to honor father and mother. We have an obligation to the past not to simply discard traditions because they are old.
Regarding Boonton's example of Plato - all of us know the feeling of having someone public we respect turn out to be less than perfect, even hypocritical. Does that negate their body of work? In some cases, not really - I can still like Sinatra's music despite his serial monogamy, because there is a degree of separation between recorded music and personal life.
But other kinds of hypocrisy damp or destroy my ability to appreciate certain kinds of work. Consider a pastor who writes a series of books about marital faithfulness, then is found to have committed adultery. Or an end-times "prophet" who predicts the end of the world in a couple of years, and is found to be investing his book earnings in real estate. Although I might agree with some of what either of those authors said, I would view their contributions through a much different set of lenses - or even toss them out altogether.
Of course, we could just as easily chalk that up to them ignoring their obligations to the future...
"Having $300,000 in your IRA when you are 78 years old will do more for the generation after your grandchildren than spending 50 years picking plastic bottles out of landfills and giving them to the recycling company."
You da man, Boon! I must say, I am impressed. Now if we could only get people to understand that making a 1% return on investments in which one holds no property right is lunacy, we'll get somewhere. I swear, they couldn't get people to do that without the threat of jail. Given an inflation rate of 2% one doesn't do that much worse at Bally's. But I digress...
Personally, I think the whole idea of a "soul mate" is romantic claptrap. Being married is a matter of love growing through shared times (good and bad), shared committments, and shared respect. I've "loved" several women (in more than the sexual sense) and , in a sense, I still love them. They are great people in their own right. I love my best friend (male) in Chicago. I love my sisters. But what I have with my wife is more than that, and I sincerely wish I had been chaste until we got married.
We seem to have an obsession with stimulating our sensory neurons in this country. Trouble is, as soon as they stop firing they're nagging us to stimulate them again.
Agree with Michael - The idea of a 'soul mate' is not backed up by scripture. The only example is Adam and Eve. And of course they didn't really have other options. :)
I believe that there are a number of potential mates that a Christian could marry, and still be within God's plan. The only real biblical restriction is marrying a non-believer (where Paul talks about being 'unequally yoked'). Certain marriages will require more work to succeed, but I firmly believe that once a believing couple takes the vows, God will work in their lives and in their marriage regardless of how imprudent the match might seem. We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.
Having said that - Joe's argument still holds water. Even if we do not have a set-in-stone soul mate, we still have a responsibility to be faithful to whoever we could eventually marry. In addition, sex outside of marriage is damaging to ourselves and whoever else we're involved with. So the standard is threefold - to ourself, to the non-married person we could have sex with, and to whoever we eventually marry.
Addressing Frankin's comment on the hypothetical Margaret and Peggy: There is no conflict for the Christian. Jesus addresses this somewhat in Matthew 22 dealing with marriage and the resurrection. Marriage is not for the dead, but for the living. Responsibility to our spouse ends after death - for both the one who is still alive, and for the one who has died. And there is no damage to the second spouse if we kept God's commandments by honoring the first one - in fact this would indicate to the second spouse that the person is trustworthy.
Pizzaman and Mkar,
I do not dispute that, as a matter of fact, there is no real dispute about our duties to our first and second wives (if more than one we have). My point, rather, was that what Joe claimed entails something absurd about our obligations to a pair of future wives. My argument was a reductio ad absurdum of Joe's conclusion: that conclusion entails something absurd and thus must be rejected (or perhaps amended).
Mkar,
Joe's claim wasn't about what we could reasonably expect (or even hope for). Rather it was about the actual obligations we have to future mates. For Joe, the mere fact that we will have multiple wives (not at a time, mind you, but one after another) entails contradictory obligations no matter what our expectations might have been before marriage.
Regarding Boonton's example of Plato - all of us know the feeling of having someone public we respect turn out to be less than perfect, even hypocritical. Does that negate their body of work? In some cases, not really - I can still like Sinatra's music despite his serial monogamy, because there is a degree of separation between recorded music and personal life.
Indeed because you are benefiting from the work, not the person who produced it. Sinatra never did anything for you, his music did. Likewise the guy down the street may be a horrible singer but he may be your best friend. You owe him for being your friend and after he is gone you can say you are obligated to respect him for that...but you are free to forget his music (in fact you may be obligated to to protect his good name!).
Plato as a man, whoever he was, did not do anything for anyone now living. His work is respected on its own.
But other kinds of hypocrisy damp or destroy my ability to appreciate certain kinds of work. Consider a pastor who writes a series of books about marital faithfulness, then is found to have committed adultery. Or an end-times "prophet" who predicts the end of the world in a couple of years, and is found to be investing his book earnings in real estate.
Here I would say what you are getting from these people is a mix of their work and themselves as a person. You admire the pastor and his books so when you discover the pastor is a fraud the 'package' is less appealing to you. That's a bit like getting a Value Meal and discovering the fries are stale. It doesn't make the burger bad but it does make for a disappointment. So here I would say its possible the pastor might have written such a great book that it overshadows him as a man. In that case he would be a bit like Plato in that you admire the work so much that it more than makes up for his failings to you as a fellow human beign.
This is probably why time is such a good judge of works. People can listen to Sinatra now and focus only on his work since that is all we have left and judge it according to only its merits. Back then, Sinatra's fellows could have judged him as a man better because they had access to him as a living person. During life it is hard to judge both the man and the work at the same time because it isn't keep the two things seperate.
I think we can only have obligations to that which we reasonably expect, not the thousand other things that may occur.
Joe seems to have constructed a contract that you are bound to before you even enter it! This is bizaar from the point of view of a free will advocate. It's like saying you have an obligation to the future owner of your house to keep up on repairs. No you don't. If you don't fix your roof then 10 years from now when you go to sell your house the buyer is just going to offer less for it. He isn't forced to pay you top dollar when you let your house go to the dogs. Likewise if you let yourself become a wreck by 27...well that 'special woman' is going to be a lot less likely to say yes when you propose.
There are other reasons you can use to advocate not engaging in premarital sex aside from simple religious prohibition. You can say, for example, that it's more rewarding to discover sex together with the person you will be with for life....just like it's more fun to see a movie when both of you don't know the ending. But to say that the marriage contract binds before you actually enter into it turns a lot of things upside down.
There is an interesting loophole here that no one seems to have picked up on yet. If the marriage contract prohibits you from having sex with others before marriage then it seems like it should entitle you to have sex with the person you will eventually marry before marriage! Those of us who took Contracts 101 know that a contract requires consideration to be legitimate. If a party gives something up they must get something in return otherwise it isn't a contract!
Most of us in our youth reasonably expect marriage, and that can and should impose a form of obligation to that future partner.
Even better statistically it is more reasonable for a youth to expect to have several marriages over his or her lifetime. Put this together with the loophole above and you'll have a very interesting Sunday school discussion.
I don't advocate that people go around having sex before marriage, but this is the most bizarre reasoning I've heard in quite a while.
You say that a married man should not become romantically and emotionally attached to someone other than his spouse. True. So does this also apply to his premarital relationships? Would you argue that he cannot ever become emotionally attached to anyone other than his "soulmate" (a concept I reject). This same reasoning could be applied to hand-holding, kissing, going on dates, emailing, calling on the phone, etc. Are you going to say that an unmarried person can do none of those things since he wouldn't do them while married?
Good luck with your whole campaign here, as a recent study revealed that 90% of married people have sex before marriage.
Just when you thought it was hard enough getting a good date to the prom!
To follow up on what Ex-Preacher has written --
Joe's argument is limited. Here is my own thought experiment: Let us say that tonight, as a married man, I went out on a date with a woman other than my wife. We had a romantic dinner and a walk by the lake in moonlight. Would that be adultery? Yes. I would be violating the emotional boundaries of my marriage.
Now, let us say that this event did not take place tonight, but eight years ago, long before I had met my wife. Would that be adultery? No, at least under any definition that I can understand. I was under no obligation to refrain from dating this hypothetical woman to honor an even more hypothetical future bride. In fact, if I viewed dating as adultery against a hypothetical bride, then I would never have gone on a first date with my wife at all.
So Joe is incorrect: the temporal perspective does change the morality of an action. His example only seems correct because he has limited the time frame to immediately preceding and after a planned wedding.
Suppose my wife dies tomorrow, and then ten years from now I meet someone ten years from now and marry her. By doing so, I would be making it true all these years that I've been committing adultery by having sex with my now-current wife.
What's worse is that Jesus now gave the wrong answer to the Sadducees when they tried to puzzle him about the Levirate marriage laws. What he should have said is that the woman should never have been having sex to begin with except for her final marriage, since the later marriages make each earlier one count as adultery.
Another consequence of this is that, if I promise to write a blog post every day from now on, I have been committing a violation of my promise for every day prior to this moment when I haven't written a blog post. After all, if promises count for the whole time before they're made in addition to the whole time after they're made, then I should have been writing posts every day of my life, even before blogs existed. I should have invented the blog just to meet the obligation that my later promise incurred on my earlier self.
Whatever else is true, it cannot be that we have a moral obligation to have sex with one and only one person in our lifetime. No biblically-thinking Christian should say so, anyway. But that's what this argument implies. This doesn't undermine the immorality of extra-marital sex while you're married or while you're not. What it undermines is the view that there's only one person you can ever rightly have sex with during your life, because the principle is that it's wrong to have sex with someone you're not at the time married to. It's not that it's wrong to have sex with someone on the grounds that you will someday marry someone else.
Well said, Joe.
This ranks as one of the most prudish posts I've ever seen on a blog.
Beyond that, the notion that the actually exists a "soulmate" or a single person we are meant to spend our life with is so ludicrous, so completely without merit, so completely backed up with no logic or evidence as to defy imagination.
What I don't find hard to believe is that this theory is offered in the context of christian theology.
ucfengr After all, you've been married 3 times (not throwing stones, just making an observation, I'm on my second, and hopefully last marriage myself),
Three?! You’re giving me credit for one more wife than I have lawfully had. ; )
…and I imagine each time you thought she was "the one", only to be proven wrong.
Actually, I can’t honestly say that my first wife was “the one.” She is a dear, sweet woman and a good friend but I never would have considered her what some people would call a “soul mate.”
John Let us say that tonight, as a married man, I went out on a date with a woman other than my wife. We had a romantic dinner and a walk by the lake in moonlight. Would that be adultery? Yes.
No, it would not be adultery (Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse). Having emotional attachments are not forbidden nor would a person be (necessarily) morally obligated to refrain from forming such bonds.
Jeremy Suppose my wife dies tomorrow, and then ten years from now I meet someone ten years from now and marry her. By doing so, I would be making it true all these years that I've been committing adultery by having sex with my now-current wife.
That’s not a conclusion that can be drawn from my argument. Notice that I said “this person exists now and is not in any morally relevant respect different from the person we will wed.” A wife who has died not only does not have a bodily existence but differs in morally relevant ways. A widower could choose to remain sexually faithful to his dead wife and never marry again. But he is under no moral obligation to do so.
Whatever else is true, it cannot be that we have a moral obligation to have sex with one and only one person in our lifetime. No biblically-thinking Christian should say so, anyway.
I completely agree. But I still contend that a man has a moral obligation to be sexually faithful to one woman until such time as (a) she commits adultery or (b) she dies. After that the obligations are reset for the next wife.
Errr, still seems like you have a problem combining this with your defense of free will. If you have free will then the decision to marry someone is very relevant. The obligations of the marriage contract are created when you agree. Contractual obligations cannot exist before the actual contract is formed.
Presuming neither party is using dishonesty there's no issue of 'damaged goods' here. If the woman agrees to marry you knowing you have had plenty of sleeping around she knows what she is 'buying'. That's different than selling her a faithful husband and then after the wedding destroying that with a string of affairs.
I also notice that you avoided the point that this equality between people of different time periods idea seems to serve as a nice loophole for premarital sex provided it's with someone you expect to eventually marry.
Joe, I wasn't assuming that a dead wife "exists now and is not in any morally relevant respect different from the person we will wed". My argument relies on the fact that the future wife "exists now and is not in any morally relevant respect different from the person we will wed".
If my current wife is going to die tomorrow, and I'm going to get married to someone else as far off as ten years from now, your conditions do apply. Unless I marry a minor, who doesn't yet exist, the woman I will marry "exists now and is not in any morally relevant respect different from the person [I] will wed". So your argument does apply to this case.
No one seems to have raised up another interesting loophole in the argument, which is what if one does not ever intend to marry, and, in fact, intends not to marry? I'm thinking, for example, of Lucy Swindoll, who early on in life made a decision to remain single. If she never intends to marry, and she meets someone else who never intends to marry, and they agree to have sex, then reliance on this rule alone would not be binding upon them. I am not advocating premarital sex here; I am merely stating that this theory would not prevent the permanently and deliberately single person from engaging in premarital sex.
The main object of fidelity in the whole equation has not been mentioned: God. I think it gets a bit abstract when one talks about obligation to people past and future; the question is really, to whom does one owe one's sexuality? With whom is one obligated to be sexual, and with whom is one obligated not to be sexual?
I think most people think of their sexuality as being their own, to do with as they wish, as opposed to being a capacity given for a purpose by Someone else to Whom one is obligated to use it for its given purpose.
I asked God about some of the matters under discussion here and he suggested I read Jared Diamond's recent book, "The Third Chimpanzee." It provided convincing answers regarding soul-mates, pre-marital and extra-marital sex, and many other related matters. Mr. Diamond is a highly respected student of God's natural world and the evidence he presents of God's intricate plan is fascinating and virtually unassailable. I recommend the book highly, and I think I can say that God does also. ──Thorngod