what if a young person raised to believe sex outside of marriage is a sin also picks up the thought that therefore any experience of premarital sex would make him feel empty and unfulfilled? What if, instead, the experience makes him feel wonderful and alive? When the tacit belief is found to be wrong through new lived experience, it undermines the plausibility of the whole Christian sex ethic. Are any of these “preunderstanding” background beliefs actually part of the historical Christian faith? No, they aren’t, yet they are part of Polanyi’s “subsidiary awareness,” the loss of which, if it
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