Are Commandments Against Fornication Directed At Pedophilia? (November 13, 2005)

More from my son’s letter from college:

"The professor challenged many traditional Christian beliefs about sex. For instance, he said that the restriction against fornication was not strictly applicable because, at the time, women were married as soon as they hit puberty, and thus a restriction against fornication was really a restriction against pedophilia. If you could illuminate the truth on why a Biblical ban on fornication is not merely a ban on pedophilia that would be helpful."

I responded:

This is an easy one!

The Greek word translated "fornication" (now more commonly "sexual immorality"), porneia, has never meant "pedophilia." Instead it is a general term for any kind of sexual impurity. That would presumably include pedophilia, but my search has not yielded a single instance where pedophilia is implied, and many instances where it clearly cannot mean that.

Look at the following passages.

Matthew 19:9: I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness (porneia), and marries another woman commits adultery.

Jesus did not mean that a man could divorce his wife only if she was messing around with an underage boy.

John 8:41: “We are not illegitimate children," they protested. (Literally, "We were not born of fornication (porneia).”

What a nail in the coffin of the "fornication=pedophilia" theory this is! All the Jewish leaders were saying was that they were not bastards - they were not born out of wedlock. They weren't claiming not to be the products of men mating with pre-pubescent children, which clearly could not produce babies at all.

1 Corinthians 5:1: It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality (porneia) among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans. A man has his father's wife.

This cannot be a case of pedophilia. The reason that this "man" (Greek is indefinite about his age) is clearly not a boy sleeping with his step-mom is because in the next few verses Paul regards him as the guilty party and insists that the church discipline him and all such evildoers. Read verses 2-13 and you will see it is obvious that Paul is not talking about a minor. Nor is the woman a minor - she is his
father's wife!

1 Corinthians 7:2: But since there is so much immorality (porneia), each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.

Paul is not recommending marriage because men are chasing little girls and women are chasing little boys. The problem that marriage addresses is promiscuity, not pedophilia.

Revelation 17:2: With her the kings of the earth committed adultery (porneia) and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries (porneia).

The whore of Babylon was not underage, nor were her regal consorts.

Summary:

"Fornication" (porneia) is the general word for sexual immorality and includes such things as adultery (Matthew 19:9), out-of-wedlock sex (John 8:41), incest (1 Corinthians 5:1) and flagrant promiscuity (Revelation 17:2). When you see a commandment condemning fornication (e.g. Colossians 3:5: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: fornication [porneia]…) it is not speaking about pedophilia except in that pedophilia is a subset of immorality in general.

The professor who equated fornication with pedophilia does not know Greek, has not read the Bible, and has not spent five minutes investigating this ridiculous claim.

Postscript: my son responded, "I think I didn't quite word my question correctly in this regard. The professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. Thus, he would argue that adultery and incest do not fall under the heading of what he deems excusable by Biblical standards - only that fornication had a different definition since women were not single past menstruation. Still, the passage in John answers that objection."

I answered,

Now I'm confused. You say that the professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. But the whole point here is that "fornication" is an English word used to translate Greek porneia. In order to understand precisely what the Bible does or does not condemn, it is pointless to plumb the meaning of an English word and base any conclusions off that.

In English, the Bible says, "Don't fornicate." Now if someone (a professor, say) comes along and declares, "When it says, 'Don't fornicate,' what that really means in our terms is, 'Don't have sex with the underaged,' then it is legitimate to respond, "But strictly speaking the Bible doesn't say 'Don't fornicate'; it says 'Don't porneia.'" The question really is, "What exactly does porneia mean?" And we find very quickly that it refers to a variety of things, among them, clearly, sex out of wedlock regardless of the age of the participants.

It may be that the professor was referring to some other Greek or Hebrew word, or some particular passage that he felt could be construed as a ban against pedophilia. Even if that is the case - and, for argument's sake, I will grant that point in its entirety - it is irrelevant to the question of whether the Bible forbids non-marital
sex even when that sex is neither adulterous, incestuous nor pedophilic. The answer to that question is, "Of course it does. It forbids it every time it says 'Don't porneia.'"