If you are looking for a single woman wrestling with her singleness from a decisively conservative Christian ethic then you may be interested in this book published by NavPress, Celibate Sex by Abbie Smith.
Smith holds
firmly to an ethic which includes no sex before marriage and no close cross-sex
friendships for women before or after they are married. She clearly
holds a distrust or suspicion about friendship between the sexes.
I was taken by surprise that a book written on this subject in the twenty-first century would devote so little space to male-female friendship. Although she references several books after 2009, she never engages Singled Out by Christine Colón and Bonnie Field. I mention this book because it is written by two evangelical single women who seriously explore the possibility of cross-sex friendships.
I respect those who hold such a conservative view for their own personal boundaries.
But is this all there is?
I wished Smith would have been more rigorous in her wrestling with "union” and “communion.”
As my book argues, there is more than one sacred “union” in the scriptures. Marital union is distinctive and important. But it is not the only important union in the Bible.
Smith says we start in union and we end in union. She says were designed for “intimate, committed union” (which is marriage). She writes, “All of life is a training ground toward the life to come — eternal life in a restored creation, eternal union and communion with God and the communion of saints.”
She claims that understanding sexuality begins with the triune community, “the three-in-one Godhead who is mutually indwelling and relationally interpenetrating. All of creation’s relationships are positioned to mimic those of the divine, repeating interactions of and between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
She then quotes John 17:11-26.
Okay, but John 17 is not about marriage or sexual union. Marital union is no doubt included in that passage but the unity/communion Jesus prays for is for all relationships to mimic the “mutually indwelling and relationally interpenetrating” of the Godhead.
This had unavoidable implications for male-female relationships within marriage and beyond. What if Christian men and women started to seriously submit their sexuality to the intimate partnership of Love known as the Trinity?
Late theologian Catherine LaCugna believed that the very nature of the Trinity means that God seeks out “deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature” (God for Us).
"Spousal union is a profound unity, a sign of other unities. But it is not the only unity; there are others."
Jean Vanier
If we are to mirror and embody the Trinity and live out the prayer of Jesus for us in John 17, doesn’t this mean that we are to seek out “deepest possible communion and friendships” within marriage and in male-female friendships, also?
I am waiting for an evangelical to quote me chapter and verse that states marital unity forbids men and women from embodying Jesus’ prayer for deep communion between men and women who are not married to each other.
We cannot appeal to the Trinity (and John 17) as a model for love between husbands and wives as deep communion (like Smith does) but then turn around and say the Trinity (and John 17) is irrelevant for deep friendships between men and women who are not married to each other.
LaCugna believes that a trinitarian sexuality compels us to see that “sexuality is a vital path of holiness, creativity, friendship, inclusivity, delight, and pleasure.”
This is missing in Smith’s book when it comes to male-female relationships and union.
Indeed, as the late Stanley Grenz observed, “Sexuality therefore, is the dynamic that draws human beings out of their individual isolation into relationships with others.” He adds that maleness and femaleness made in the image of the Trinity, “impels persons to come together in many relationships that characterize human community.”
