Is the Biblical View of Sex and Marriage Realistic? | Prof. Michael Dauphinais

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Prof. Michael Dauphinais explores the realism of the biblical view of sex and marriage, analyzing cultural challenges, scriptural diagnoses, and the transformative power of radical trust in God’s plan for relationships.

This lecture was given on February 10th, 2025, at Ohio State University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speaker:

Michael A. Dauphinais, Ph.D., serves as the Fr. Matthew Lamb Professor of Catholic Theology and the co-director of the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, Florida. He has co-authored with Matthew Levering Knowing the Love of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of Thomas Aquinas; Holy People, Holy Land: A Theological Introduction to the Bible; and The Wisdom of the Word: Biblical Answers to Ten Questions about Catholicism. He specializes in C.S. Lewis, the Bible, and St. Thomas Aquinas. He speaks frequently in both academic and popular settings, and particularly enjoys visiting Thomistic Institute student chapters. Dr. Dauphinais hosts The Catholic Theology Show podcast to help a wide audience discover the richness of coming to know and love God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.

Keywords: Acceptance, Aristotelianism, Book of Tobit, Chastity, Culture, Genesis, Incarnation, Marriage, Radical Trust, Sexual Ethics

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Timistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.7	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.3	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:22.4	to mystic institute.org. I prepared this talk in part based upon a book I wrote, the wisdom
0:29.9	of the word, biblical answers to 10 pressing questions about Catholicism, originally wrote a chapter
0:34.8	on there called Why is the Church so strict about sex?
0:38.3	And as we were working on that, we began kind of with the vision of creation and then kind of told the rest of the story.
0:47.3	But as I've been working with this and talking to students and working with students and just trying to understand things
0:54.2	more, I realized I think we started in the wrong order.
0:58.7	I think what we really need is to start not with the order of things as they go well, because
1:06.0	then the Bible's message seems idealistic.
1:09.9	We really need to recognize how the Bible tells the story of our own world,
1:16.1	a world in which almost everything that could have gone wrong has, in fact, gone wrong.
1:24.1	So what I wanted to do then was try to rediscover how is it that we can encounter the Bible as true?
1:32.3	How can we recognize that the Bible speaks a language that we can understand?
1:37.3	And that the Bible, biblical language is not idealistic really at all, but it's, if anything, all too realistic.
1:47.0	I know that many of you tonight could probably share your own wisdom. There are seats up front.
1:55.0	Come on up. But I'm sure that many of you could share your own wisdom and experience about sexual relationships, successes, mistakes, and resets.
2:08.3	But hopefully some of the things that I will share tonight will benefit you and ring true with your experience and perhaps open up renewed paths for recovering how the biblical theology of sex and marriage
2:20.3	is not only not unrealistic but hopeful and meaningful. Before we start, I want to just suggest a couple ideas for thinking about things.
2:30.3	So the first thing is when you hear, don't compare, but rather identify.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.