Does It Make a Difference?

OK, re the discussion going on here (scroll down a bit to the Mary and Mariology posts),* I'd like to ask a question that's been on my mind a long time. This should be pretty short on my part, but I hope will generate some discussion, and even thought.

There are number of differences between Christianity and Islam. Many of them center around the lives of their founders and around the different conception of heaven.

Jesus was, we confess, a life-long virgin. Muhammad married several times and had a healthy enjoyment of the sex act.

In the resurrection, Christians believe there will be neither male nor female, no marrying or giving in marriage, in short, no sex. Muslims, on the other hand, believe that sexual intercourse is an integral part of the experience of paradise. (As a pretty good non-sensationalist account of the religious significance of sex in Islam, I enjoyed this book.)

So here are my questions:

Does the perpetual virginity of Jesus diminish the incarnation or cast doubt on the goodness of sex? Is Jesus a model for our lives as well as a savior? If so does this difference between Jesus and Muhammad make any difference to our lives?

Does the resurrection life we are aiming for have some kind of connection to our view of the ideal life? If so does it make any difference to us now that in our view the ideal life to which we are tending has no sex?

*Thanks to John H for giving me the archive link!

1 Corinthians 7 on marriage (I)

As Luther noted in his 1523 pamphlet on this chapter, 1 Corinthians 7 is the charter text for monasticism. As Christopher Parks claimed on a previous thread that any fundamental criticism of the Catholic and Orthodox tradition of monasticism (as opposed to isolated abuses) is in effect a criticism of Paul, so I have set forth my understanding of what the text actually says. In preparing this, I used Luther’s essay on 1 Corinthian 7, Tertullian’s works against remarriage (the first extended argument on the issue of celibacy/chastity in church history), and Dale Martin’s study The Corinthian Body (a secular study). I have checked modern Catholic and Protestant translations; when I talk about modern consensus, I mean that shared by both Protestant and Catholic Bible translators. Here are my seven basic conclusions about what Paul is teaching in this chapter.

1) Desire for sex is, like worldly joys or sorrows generally, a distraction from prayer and spiritual life. Hence a normal Christian married life contains periods of abstention from sex, just as it normally contains fasting. Such periods of abstention when over-prolonged, let alone through celibacy, generally create both distracting lusts ("burning with passion") and the temptation to immoral activity. For these the normal remedy (i.e. the way to get your mind off sex) is sex relations within marriage (vv. 2-5, esp. 5, 9, 29-31).

2) The decision to marry is in no sense a sin, nor can the decision of one who has dedicated himself to virginity (within or without marriage) to renounce that be a sin (vv. 8, 36-38). Nor is the desire to have sexual relations, even for those engaged in periods of sexual continence, in itself a temptation of Satan (since in v. 5 the performance of marital duty by those conducting a period of continence is seen as a remedy against temptations of Satan).

3) In what Chris Parks believes to be the heart of the passage, Paul writes "Indeed, I wish everyone to be as I am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another." Thus Paul identifies himself as the possessor of a gift. This gift cannot be seen as "the gift to remain celibate, fighting off sexual temptation through sheer force of will" but rather "the gift of being relatively untouched by sexual urges and temptations even when celibate." (I will call this gift sexlessness). As a gift, sexlessness follows Paul’s general theology of gifts. Gifts are indeed ranked and one should eagerly desire the greater gifts (1 Cor. 12:31, 14:1, cf. 14:39). But what makes one gift great and another less is solely utility to the church (see esp. 14:5), since their purpose is to build up the church (1 Cor. 12 passim; Romans 12:6-8). Gifts like sexlessness are separate from what Paul case the "way"of love in 1 Cor. 12:31-14:1 (cf. the "fruits of the spirit" in Gal. 5:22-23, etc.) in that the "way" has eternal significance, while gifts do not (13:8). The gifts in themselves are worthless, apart from building up the church. Exactly how Paul’s gift helps the church will be detailed below. To put it in modern theological language, gifts, including Paul’s gift of sexlessness, are not only no part of justification, but also no part of sanctification. Their significance is solely ecclesiastical/pastoral.

4) Marriage is a situation, like being circumcised or not circumcised, slave or free, that is irrelevant to sanctification. Sanctification is concerned solely with obeying the commands of God (v. 19; cf. Romans 2:27, 13:8-14, etc.) and Paul’s counsels to consider non-marriage he explicitly says are not such commands. While not explicitly stated, v. 17 links this principle, enunciated with regard to circumcision and slavery in v. 19, to the discussion of marriage in vv. 12-16. This principle of situations like marriage, sex, circumcision, etc. being irrelevant not just to justification, but to sanctification is mandatory for all churches (v. 17; Gal. 6:15-16, 5:6, etc.).

5) But marriage can limit one’s utility to the church (vv. 32-35). This explains why Paul’s gift of sexlessness would be one that he might desire everyone to have, although in his sober mind, he knows God did not will it so.

6) There is a further consideration that the tribulation at the end of the world is very near, which will make marriage and childrearing very painful (vv. 26, 28-29, 40; cf. Lk 21:23). For this reason that Paul discusses marriage and never once (except peripherally) in the whole passage even mentions children, let alone speak of procreation as the purpose of marriage.

7) Paul believed his gift of sexlessness to be very rare. Much as he might wish it otherwise, he expects pretty much every man and woman in the Corinthian church to marry (v. 2). He does not list sexlessness (or celibacy) as a gift in the list of essential gifts that every church is expected to have in 1 Cor. 12:7-11, 28, and Romans 12:4-8; evidently he believes those churches can (and most likely will) get along without it. If Christ tarried for any stretch of time, it was pretty much impossible to expect it of young women (1 Tim. 5:11-15). Even among the apostles only he and Barnabas appear to have it (1 Cor. 9:5-6), nor was it normal among bishops of the church (1 Tim. 3:2); evidently it was not expected of leadership in the church, except as an occasional gift of God.

Originally posted at Here We Stand

1 Corinthians 7 on Marriage (II)

Below are some ways in which modern scholarship (again I count only those cases where Catholic and Protestant translations are the same) has emended the Patristic reading of 1 Corinthians 7. (The numbers are keyed to the points above) These new understandings render make the case for Paul as ascetic very problematic, although he is also not the advocate of "healthy married living" that some Protestant exegetes make him to be either.

1a) . Patristic authors starting with Tertullian misunderstood "it is better to marry than to burn" (i.e. with passion) as "those who are unmarried might engage in fornication and so burn in hell." The implication is that those who through dint of sheer will can fight sexual thoughts and remain be celibate without engaging in fornication can still rightly claim to have a superior status to the married, because they have been celibate and yet not actually committed fornication/masturbation. Jerome for example fought, by his own account, weeks of fierce attacks from lust with extreme fasting and frantic tears of guilt. When however, Paul is correctly interpreted as saying "It is better to marry than to burn with passion/be on fire" the implication is quite opposite. If you are "on fire" (i.e. afflicted by sexual thoughts), then Paul states clearly it would be better to marry. Thus the wrestlings of monks like Jerome fighting powerful sexual temptations have no spiritual value at all and are the result of attempting to force a gift which so many never had in the first place. Col. 2:20-23 and 1 Tim. 5:11-15 make this point.

2a) The phrase "It is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman" was understood from Tertullian’s time on to be Paul’s phrase, but is now acknowledged to be Paul’s quotation from a letter written by his opponents in Corinth. Hence far from establishing that Paul thought sexual relations as fundamentally undesirable, it is closer to arguing the opposite, since Paul responds by saying everyone should be married and have regular sexual relations.

2a) I also follow the modern consensus that vv. 36-38 are referring to men who are engaged in spiritual (i.e. unconsummated) marriage with a woman and who now wonder whether or not to consummate it. Patristic authors and classic Protestant exegetes both preferred this to be talking about a father deciding to marry off or not his unmarried daughter: Protestant exegetes because the whole idea of spiritual marriage seemed outlandish, and Patristic authors because the idea that one having once decided on celibacy could leave that state without sin seemed far too lax. 1 Tim. 5: 11-15 speaks of widows receiving judgement from breaking their pledge of non-remarriage, but presumably widows in return for support from the church had to pledge chastity and this was seen as dishonest (like a widow today still collecting Social Security payments after remarrying).

6a) Of the church fathers, only Tertullian had the same apocalyptic consciousness as Paul, saying that the time is short and the command to "be fruitful and multiply" died with the old law. He claimed that the pagans are right that no one in his right mind would want to have children, although they are wrong in how they go about preventing it, by abortion, rather than by virginity. Later Patristic sources downplayed or eliminated the apocalyptic element of Paul’s preaching, although Jerome also thought of "be fruitful and multiply" as abrogated. Indeed Paul himself in 1 Timothy 5 downplayed both the apocalyptic element and his previous skepticism about contracting marriage in the last days. Now, what we are to make of this apocalyptic expectation is a whole separate issue, but note that exalting celibacy, making marriage solely for procreation, and avoiding talk of the last days (as Augustine famously did all three) is a constellation of positions that is bears little resemblance to the mood and counsel of 1 Cor. 7.

Originally posted at Here We Stand

More Monkery

I am going to cite a few precepts from Jerome’s letters here in the space below, but before I do I would like to clarify why I am doing this. It is important for those who honor celibacy and virginity to understand what it was the repulsed Luther about monasticism. How can you refute the charge if you don’t know what it is? Likewise, fairness to Luther means demonstrating what the problems he had with it were.

From Jerome’s letter XXII to a young virgin:Instructing her avoid the company of married women, he writes, Why should you, who are God’s bride, hasten to visit the wife of a mortal man? In this regard you must learn a holy pride (superbiam sanctam); know that you are better than they (p. 85).

Rejecting the charge that he disparages wedlock, he writes It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil. Let married women take pride in coming next after virgins (p. 91).

I praise wedlock, I praise marriage; but it is because they produce me virgins. I gather the rose from the thorn, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the oyster (p. 95).

Letter XIV is addressed to a young Italian man who had pledged virginity and was now the sole support of his family and would not come out to the desert of Palestine with Jerome:

But, you will say, the Scripture bids us to obey our parents. Nay, whosoever loves his parents more than Christ loses his own soul. . . . Shall I desert from my army because of my father, to whom in Christ’s cause I owe no rites of burial, although in Christ’s cause I owe them to all men? . . . The battering-ram of affection must be beaten back by the wall of the Gospel: 'My mother and my brethren are these, whosoever do the will of my father which is in heaven' (pp. 33-35).

Jerome pictures the temptations Heliodorus will have to face in selling his property and leaving for Palestine, assuring him he had gone through the same:

Your widowed sister clings to you today with loving arms; the house slaves in whose company you grew to manhood, cry 'To what master are you leaving us?' [Who knew ‘selling all your property’ could include putting all your slaves on the auction block?] Your old nurse and her husband, who have the next claim to your affection after your own father, exclaim, 'Wait for a few months till we die and then give us burial.' . . . The love of Christ and the fear of hell easily break such bonds as these (p. 33).

Why are you such a timid Christian? Consider him who left his father and his nets, and how the publican rising from the receipt of custom became at once an apostle. 'The Son of man hath not where to lay his head,' and are you planning wide colonnades and spacious halls? Are you looking for an inheritance in this world, you who are joint-heir with Christ? (p. 39).

Addressing his feeling that he can serve the Lord just as well in Italy, Jerome rhetorically concedes, Perhaps you can do so in your own country, although the Lord could do no signs in His. He then explains that in your own country you will be despised which will create bad feelings in you that will be a distraction. Zeal will be lessened and when a thing is lessened it cannot be made perfect. We may sum up our account by saying that a monk cannot be perfect in his own country; and not to wish to be perfect is a sin (p. 43).

And this obsession with discipline influenced his whole understanding of Christian life. As an example, in letter CVII (as elsewhere), he demands teetotaling and vegetarianism for adult monks in this way: What Jewish superstition does in part, solemnly rejecting certain animals and certain products as food, what the Brahmans in India and the Gymnosophists in Egypt observe on their diet of only porridge, rice, and fruit, why should not Christ’s virgin do altogether? If a glass bead is worth so much, surely a pearl must have a higher value (p. 357). In other words, Jews and Hindus have food laws, so perfect Christian should have more and stricter food laws! If this is not what Paul denounces in Colossians 2-3 and 1 Timothy 4, then what is?

Why do people become monks and why do people admire monasticism? My overwhelming impression is that protest against Constantinianism or worldliness in the church, or even differing gifts of different people is not the core issue. Rather people (certainly Jerome, certainly Theodosius) become monks to literally fulfill the words of the Gospel as they understand them and so (they think) save their souls from hell:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

. . . every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

But if these commands are taken literally, as the monastic writers do, then they establish monasticism as an ideal for everyone, not a gift for a few. Those who give up all they have, those who abandon father and mother, are thus clearly more truly Christ’s disciples than those who don’t. And while modern defenders of monasticism may demur, the claim that monasticism is better is the natural result of this "monastic hermeneutic."

Jerome is reputed the third great Latin father, after Augustine and Ambrose, and one most closely associated with monasticism. When Luther decided monasticism was rotten to the core, this was the point of view he meant. If you think Jerome’s views are correct, then do not say monasticism is simply "another path" but go ahead and say it is the only perfect Christian path. On the other hand, if you believe monasticism is indeed simply another path, then admit that many of the most respected fathers would vehemently oppose that view, and their whole legacy needs to be looked at anew, and that part of that "looking anew" will involve paying serious attention to the Protestant, Lutheran critique.

Originally posted at Here We Stand

Marriage and Virginity or Marriage vs. Virginity?

A recent post that Chris Williams’s "beardy weirdy Orthodox guy" Fr. Karl Thienes linked to brought out some issues about sex and sin that I have been wondering about. In brief, an EO monk, Archimandrite Luke, denounces a few recent EO books for having a carnal approach to sex and marriage. He accuses them of seeking to confuse human eros with divine love in a way that imports our sinful lusts into the Godhead. Along the way he vigorously restates a traditional view that sexual desire even within marriage is (translating Greek patristic vocabulary into Catholic vocabulary) a venial sin. This struck me because Augustine says the exact same thing in an advent sermon I read this advent season. Sexual relations between Adam and Eve occurred only after the Fall, and were not part of God’s plan to "increase and multiply."

In response, Fr. Thienes cites on the contrary the third century Roman liturgist Hippolytus’s statement that sexual relations do not obstruct prayers because Christ has sanctified the marriage bed. Yet the sixth-century Pope Gregory (cited as Gregory the Dialogist by Archimandrite Luke) says that after marital relations a couple should briefly refrain from entering sacred buildings.

Now I personally think Archimandrite Luke has the better of the Patristic argument. The broad stream of the later Fathers do seem to associate any sexual desires with sin (venial within marriage, mortal outside of marriage) and clearly believe unfallen men and women would not have sexual desires. Just as clearly however, opinions changed over the centuries after Christ; Hippolytus’s third-century opinion and Gregory’s sixth-century opinion seem to be flatly contradictory. Moreover, I feel that Biblically as well the contortions into which Patristic Bible commentary goes to avoid the plain sense of "Simon’s mother-in-law" or "a bishop/overseer should be a man of one wife" show clearly that the patristic exaltation of celibacy is something that developed over the centuries, and was not part of the original apostolic heritage, at least not to the same extent as developed later.

Here’s my problem. Can one have any sort of practice of virginity (such as Christ envisions in Mat. 19:12 and Paul recommends in 1 Corinthians 7; cf. Acts 21:9) without forbidding to marry (1 Tim. 4:13) or treating sexual desire within marriage as a venial sin? And if one treats virginity and marriage as equally blessed (as seems correct to me), why is it that virginity as a spiritual practice essentially disappears? (We could have the same discussion about fasting, where both the EO and RC's rigid requirement of fasting and the Lutheran lack of practice of it seem contradictory to the New Testament practice).

Original posting and comments at Here We Stand