Adultery – from the adjective, adulterate; to make impure by adding extraneous, improper, or inferior ingredients; to pollute.
Religious indoctrination and Presumed Public Knowledge generally limit the usage of this term to marriage.
Adultery is the pollution of a covenant relationship. If you pollute your covenant with a business partner, employer, coworker … anyone that you have a contract with … you have committed adultery. It is the pollution of a covenant relationship without abandoning that relationship, which distinguishes it from fornication.
Ezekiel 23:37 That they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands, and with their idols have they committed adultery, and have also caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire, to devour them.
II Peter 2:14-15 Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children: [15] Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;
It may be the pollution of the covenant relationship of marriage (wherein lies the overwhelming usage of the term in Scripture), but it is not limited to the pollution of marriage. If a married person engages in intimacy, covert or overt, with a person to whom they are not married it constitutes adultery; the act may be, but is not limited to sexual involvement. If you are married and have a business lunch with a person to whom you are not married, it is not adultery. However, going on a lunch date with someone to whom you are not married is adultery; sex is not required. The question being, whether the activity being planned or contemplated is intended to promote or establish an intimate personal relationship with someone outside of the marriage covenant, or with someone who is married but not to you.
The act becomes complete when you begin to scheme or imagine it; at the point of intent or motive; whether by idle thought or conscious mental process, both of which always precedes the action.
Because of this fact, voyeurism, of which pornography is paramount, is in-and-of-itself a completed action of adultery, bestiality, homosexuality, etc. To act on your plan is not a required element of the offence.
Matthew 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
To have sexual intercourse, which is the physical act in-and-of-itself, is a neutral statement of fact. If combined with other elements it may constitute a violation such as adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, etc. The committing of adultery is the pollution of a covenant or commitment, which can be sexual, but is usually non-sexual; it may also include sexual or non-sexual whoring, or prostitution. If existing covenant relationships are habitually betrayed in order to establish a new relationship, the offence is not adultery, it is fornication; none of which need to be consummated by a sexual or physical act.
From the adjective, adulterate; to make impure by adding extraneous, improper, or inferior ingredients; to pollute.
Adultery is not strictly sexual, or confined to the tenants of marriage. You can commit adultery in any contractual agreement, relationship, and business dealing. The required elements are a Contract and Pollution.
Adultery is the destruction of the purity of a contract through the addition of extraneous, improper, and/or inferior elements.
Religion confines their focus and application strictly to the contract of marriage, while committing adultery in every other contractual arena.
See also Fornication, Perversion, Prostitution, Whore