Anyone who reads the Bible more closely will discover a surprisingly different picture. There is kissing, desire, touching, and even talk of breasts that are meant to intoxicate. Biblical texts are in places so erotic that some verses today cause almost more blushing than they did in their readers 2,000 years ago. The Bible knows sex as reproduction, but equally as pleasure, intimacy, and joy in one another. In some places, sexual desire is even described in decidedly positive terms, without any mention of children whatsoever. Perhaps it is therefore time to clear up an old misconception: sex in the Bible is not merely a means to an end. It is also simply allowed to be beautiful.
Already in the first book of Moses, we encounter two different aspects. On the one hand, it says: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Fruitfulness appears here clearly as God’s blessing and mandate. Yet in the very next chapter we read: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and...
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