John 8:1-11 -- The Woman Caught in Adultery

   

Detail from Rembrandt's "The Woman Taken in Adultery" 

It amazes me the extent to which Leftist and worldly philosophies have penetrated into the Church. This was exemplified to me during the class discussion about the Sunday School lesson for this past Sunday, which topics included a discussion of John 8:1-11, which is the story of the woman taken in adultery.

    As you may remember, the Pharisees, attempting to entrap Jesus, brought an adulteress before him, and pointed out that the law of Moses required that such a woman be stoned as punishment, and then asked Jesus: "What sayest thou?" This was an obvious trap to get Christ to advise some action that would violate Roman law, since Rome retained to itself the authority to execute criminals.

      Rather than address the question directly, Christ instead shamed the Pharisees by directing that the one among them without sin cast the first stone. Ashamed, the crowd left, and seeing that no one remained to condemn the woman, Christ told the woman that he also didn't condemn her, but to go and sin no more.

     Almost immediately after having a class member read the story, a sycophantic man that had drunk deep at the well of feminist philosophy decided to offer his insights to the story which went far beyond what is in the scripture. Following on a comment about why the man caught in adultery was not also there, this class member waxed on about how unfairly women had been treated throughout history, how little control they had over their lives, and that it was not unusual for women to be coerced into sex, and so on. In sum, the class member seemingly was arguing that the reason that Christ so readily forgave the woman was because she had not had a choice in her actions. To my disgust, the teacher seemed to be really eating this up. I decided to throw some cold water on the whole thing by pointing out that it was dangerous to make assumptions about details we are not provided; and that by telling her to "sin no more," Jesus obviously agreed that she had sinned. 

     As the blogger, Dalrock, has discussed at length on his blog, and as I have pointed out previously here as well, one of the disquieting aspects of modern feminism is that it puts women on a pedestal where they are held to be inherently moral (or, at least, considered to be inherently more moral than men). Dalrock links this to the concept of Chivalry. I think it's ultimate source is in the veneration of Mary, the mother of Christ. The consequence, however, is that women are believed to be naturally incapable of sexual sin--that if they engage in sexually immoral behavior, it is because of the action(s) of a man or men; women are to be held blameless. When this philosophy is applied to this lesson from the scripture, it completely upends some key points about the story.

     I think it is a matter of consequence that the story related by John does not include any background on the woman other than she was caught in the act of committing adultery. We do not know if she was a prostitute, the mistress of someone, or a woman simply cheating on her husband. We do not know if it was an act of desperation, pleasure or greed. Nevertheless, we know that she had sinned: she does not challenge the allegation laid against her and, as noted earlier, Christ told her to "sin no more," which indicates that he believed that she must have, indeed, committed adultery. Nevertheless, no motive or explanation for her sin is provided. This is important because it indicates that the gift of repentance is open to all; it isn't dependent on having a good excuse or justification. In other words, it wasn't important how she fell into sin, only that she sacrifice her sins (i.e., the Lord seeks the sacrifice of a broken heart and contrite spirit) and then follow the Lord's path.

     And while Christ was in no way condoning the woman's sin, he was allowing her time to repent: "time that would have been denied by those who wanted to stone her.” The current belief that women shouldn't be held responsible for sexual indiscretions has the same effect as would stoning. Rather than taking away the opportunity to repent by taking the woman's life, the modern belief takes away the opportunity to repent by telling women that they do not need to repent.

     As for the lack of the man involved in the incident, it isn't really all that complicated. Most likely, the man with whom she was caught was not subject to Jewish law--a Roman citizen, perhaps, or someone else falling outside Jewish jurisdiction. Alternatively, he may have had an affirmative defense, such as he was unmarried and believed the woman to also be unmarried and, therefore, he shouldn't be subject to the penalty for adultery.