Historical Information Concerning The Church:
One of the problems modern Christians have is the dichotomy between what Scripture actually says about marriage and the doctrines that are commonly taught about marriage. The immediate question is "if this is what Scripture says, why do we have the doctrines that we do?"
The simple answer is after Christianity became the defacto religion of Rome, there followed a general period of persecution of the pagans. Many of these pagans joined the church and two of them Augustine and Jerome (previously Manechean and Stoic) were extremely influential in the development of Christian doctrine about sex and marriage. In a nutshell, they hated sex and the idea of sex because they believed sexual pleasure was inherently evil in and of itself. Whether it took place within marriage or without, it was evil. Out of that, a number of other doctrines were formed.
The idea that men and women were to held to the same sexual norms.
The idea that marriage is formed by consent and not by that evil sex stuff.
These quotes represent the organizational mindset of the people in charge of collecting, preserving, conserving, reproducing and translating all the early and original copies of Scripture. As several Catholic priests have explained it to me
"We decided what Scripture was and We decide what it means."
If one looks at the disparity between what Scripture says and what the "Teachings and Traditions" of the church are, I think that says it all.
All quotes taken from chapter 3
Sex and the Law in the Christian Empire, From Constantine to Justinian contained in
"Law, Sex and Christian Society In Medieval Europe" by James A Brundage. The page numbers are at the end of each quote and the footnotes are cited within the text in parenthesis and below each quote. Each quote and accompanying notes is separated by a line.
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During Constantine's reign and those of his sons and successors, Christians secured numerous social and political advantages.
By the end of the fourth century the Roman government, with the enthusiastic cooperation of Church authorities, was beginning to persecute pagans and other non-Christians, as well as Christians whose beliefs differed from the norms of an orthodoxy that was continuously engaged in defining itself. Early in the fifth century, Christianity became in law what it had for several generations been in fact: the official religion of the Roman state (1).
(page 77)
1. On Constantine's life and religious policies see generally Andras Alfoldi,
The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948); Jakob Burckhardt,
The Age of Constantine the Great, trans. Moses Hadas (New York: Pantheon Books, 1949); Hermann Dorries,
Vas Selbstzeugnis Kaiser Konstantins, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, phil.-hist. Kl., ser. 3, vol. 34 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1954), and Liebschuetz,
Continuity and Change, esp. pp. 277-89. On the relationship of paganism to Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries see also James J. O'Donnell, “The Demise of Paganism,"
Traditio 35 (1979) 45-88, as well as Charles Norris Cochrane,
Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study in Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine (London: Oxford University Press, 1944)•
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Up to the beginning of the fourth century Christians had not yet created a systematic theology; now they felt the need to devise coherent and sophisticated justifications for their religious teachings in terms of current scientific and philosophical thought.
The Church Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries took up this task with zest and vigor. They were determined not only to justify the teachings of their religion to others, but also to demonstrate to their own satisfaction that Christian beliefs accounted for the world and mankind's place in it more adequately than alternative explanatory systems. Out of the writings of such teachers as Sts. Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-ca. 395) and John Chrysostom (ca. 344-407) in the Greek-speaking East and Sts. Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the Latin-speaking West, there would emerge by the sixth century a Christian world view that was far more systematic and rigorous than anything that had gone before. The theologizing of Christianity began in earnest during this period. This process required Christian intellectuals, among other things, to account for the place of sex in the scheme of creation and to define the role that sexual relations ought to play in the Christian life.
(page 79)
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The Church Fathers' views of sex were dominated by ascetic values, for most of the Fathers were, at one time or another in their careers, monks or hermits.
The most important patristic authority on sexual matters, the one whose views have most fundamentally influenced subsequent ideas about sexuality in the West, was St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Augustine held strong, deep seated convictions about sexual relationships and the role of sex in human history, convictions that flowed from his own experience and his reflections upon it, convictions that brooked neither denial nor dissent(3).
Sexual desire, Augustine believed, was the most foul and unclean of human wickednesses, the most pervasive manifestation of man's disobedience to God's designs (4). Other bodily desires and pleasures, Augustine felt, did not overwhelm reason and disarm the will: one can be sensible while enjoying a good meal, one can discuss matters reasonably over a bottle of wine. But sex, Augustine argued, was more powerful than other sensual attractions; it could overcome reason and free will altogether. Married people, who ought to have sex only in order to beget children, can be overwhelmed by lubricious desires that blot out reason and restraint; they tumble into bed together simply in order to enjoy the pleasure of each other's body. This, Augustine thought, was not only irrational but sinful (5).
Augustine's underlying belief in the intrinsic sinfulness of carnal desire and the sensual delight that accompanied sexual union became a standard premise of Western beliefs about sexuality during the Middle Ages and beyond (6).
Not only was sexual desire a basic and pervasive evil, according to Augustine, but it was also a vice that no one could be sure of mastering. We are born with it and it lasts as long as we live. No one, whatever his age or position in life, can confidently claim to have conquered it (7). "As I was writing this," Augustine noted in his polemic against Julian, "we were told that a man of eighty-four, who had lived a life of continence under religious observance with a pious wife for twenty-five years, has just bought himself a music-girl for his pleasure."
(page 80)
3. Peter Brown,
Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 390-91; Edward A. Synan, "Augustine of Hippo, Saint," in
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer et al., 13 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982- ; cited hereafter as DMA) 1: 646- 59. See also Bailey,
Sexual Relation, pp. 58-59; Kosnik et al.,
Human Sexuality, p. 36.
4. Augustine,
Contra Julianum 4.5.35, in PL 44: 756: "In quibus [cupiditatibus malis] libido prae caeteris est, cui nisi resistatur, horrenda immunda committit."
5. Augustine,
Contra Julianum 4.14.71, in PL 44: 773-74.
6. Miiller,
Lehre, pp. 22-23; Lecky,
Hist. of European Morals 2:281-82.
7. Augustine,
Sermo 151. 5, in PL 38: 817: "Ergo semper pugnandum est, quia ipsa concupiscentia, cum qua nati sumus, finiri non potest quamdiu vivimus: quotidie minui potest, finiri non potest." See also St. John Cassian,
Conlationes 4.11.2 and 4.15.1, in CSEL 13: 105, 110, as well as his Institutiones 6.1, in CSEL 17: 115.
8. Augustine,
Contra Julianum 3.11.22, in PL 44: 713: "Nam cum hoc opus in minibus haberem, nunciatus est nobis senex octaginta et quatuor agens annos, qui religiose cum conjuge religiosa jam viginti quinque annos vixerat continenter, ad libidinem sibi emisse Lyristriam." Brown,
Augustine of Hippo, p. 405.
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Sex, Augustine believed, was a shameful, sordid business. For this reason, he observed, people always try to carry out their sex functions in seclusion. Even brothels, he noted, provide privacy so that whores and their customers can do their dirty business in the dark. Likewise married couples seek seclusion when they make love: what they do may be perfectly legal, but it is also shameful. The shame of sex resulted from the ritual pollution that accompanied all sexual activity. Augustine and other Fathers argued that the Old Testament requirements for purification after marital intercourse or nocturnal emission meant that Christians, too, must cleanse themselves of sexual defilement before they could participate in religious services. The Fathers were careful to point out that this did not mean that sex was always sinful, but it did mean that sex left a stain of moral contamination that must be removed before entering holy places or participating in sacred rites. The genital organs themselves were both ritually and morally unclean, according to Augustine. Sexual passion was rooted in the genitals, and our very anatomy proclaimed that the physical sources of human life and reproduction were also the physical sources of sin and pollution (10).
(page 81)
10. Augustine,
De civ. Dei 14.18-20, in CCL 48: 440-43;
De bono coniugali 20.23, ed. Joseph Zycha, in CSEL 41 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1900), pp. 217-18;
Serm. 151.5, in PL 38: 817; Daniel Callam, "Clerical Continence in the Fourth Century: Three Papal Decretals,"
Theological Studies 41 (1980) 49-50; Brown,
Augustine of Hippo, p. 388.
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Augustine wrote eloquently on the theology of sex, but he was by no means the only patristic writer to deal with the subject. His contemporaries by and large shared Augustine's negative attitudes toward the role of sex in Christian life. A few were even more certain than he that sex was a root cause of sin and corruption. St. Jerome (
ca. 347-419/20), for example, maintained that sex and salvation were contradictions.
Even in marriage, coitus was evil and unclean, Jerome thought, and married Christians should avoid sexual contact whenever possible. St. Gregory of Nyssa was still more emphatic: he taught that only those who renounced sex completely and led lives of unblemished virginity could attain spiritual perfection (13).
Such views as these owed as much to philosophy, particularly to Stoicism, as to religious teaching, and St. Jerome explicitly acknowledged in his treatise against Jovinian that he was drawing upon Stoic sources (14). But
although fourth-hand fifth-century patristic writers borrowed heavily from pagan sexual ethics, they nevertheless sought to legitimize their borrowings by finding support for their conclusions in the Scriptures. This sometimes required ingenious feats of imaginative interpretation, but a Scriptural foundation for their ideas about sexuality seemed essential. (page 82)
13. Jerome,
Adversus Jovinianum 1.13, 1.26, 1.28, in PL 23: 229-30, 246, 249; Gregory of Nyssa,
De virginitate 2, in PG 46: 323-24; Bailey,
Sexual Relation, pp. 45-46; JoAnn McNamara, "Cornelia's Daughters: Paula and Eustocium/'
Women's Studies 11 (1984) 12- 13.
14. Jerome,
Adv. Jov. 1.49, in PL 23:280-81; Aries, "L'amour dans Ie mariage," pp. 118-19; Philippe Delhaye, "Le dossier antimatrimonial de
L’Adversus Jovinianum et son influence sur quelques ecrits latins du Xlle siecle,"
Mediaeval Studies 13 (1951) 68. Jerome found some strands of Stoic ethics so congenial that he numbered Seneca among the saints;
De viris illustribus 12, in PL 23: 662. But his use of the Stoics was highly selective; Colish,
Stoic Tradition 2: 70-81.
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If fourth- and fifth-century patristic writing about sexuality was almost exclusively negative, the Church Fathers were emphatically positive in their praise of virginity. The notion that virginity possessed singularly powerful, almost magical, virtues was, like deprecation of sexual pleasure, a belief with pagan antecedents. Patristic writers diligently searched the Scriptures in quest of support for their exaltation of virginity. Not surprisingly they found what they were searching for, especially in certain remarks of St. Paul. Relying on Paul's authority, patristic authors created a theology of virginity that portrayed the asexual life as the summit of Christian perfection (17).
But patristic sexual theories also owed more to heterodox teachings than orthodox writers cared to acknowledge. Gnostics and Manichaeans deeply influenced patristic theories of sexuality. The Manichaeans, whose beliefs Augustine had embraced as a youth, held that Adam and Eve knew no sexual desire, nor did they engage in intercourse, while they lived in Paradise. Human sexual organs are capable of coitus only when aroused by lust, they argued, and lust is a product of sin. Before the first sin, therefore, either there had been no sexual intercourse at all, or else arrangements for conceiving children must have been different than after the Fall from Grace (18). Jerome and many other patristic writers agreed with this analysis.
Jerome understood the "innocence" of Adam and Eve primarily in sexual terms. Before the first sin there was no sex. The human race's first experience of sexual pleasure took place after expulsion from the Garden of Delights.
(pages 83-84)
17. 1 Cor. 7: 1: "Bonum est homini mulierem non tangere," as well as 1 Cor. 7: 6-9, 25-27, and 29-36; also Gal. 5: 16-21 and Eph. 5: 3-4. See also Jerome,
Adv. Jov. 1.41, in PL 23: 282; Bugge,
Virginitas, pp. 68-69; Joyce E. Salisbury, "Fruitful in Singleness," JMH 8 (1982) 97. The only early Christian writer who dealt with marriage in an entirely positive and approving way was the obscure third-century poet, Commodianus; Colish,
Stoic Tradition 2: 102.
18. Augustine,
De Genesi ad litteram 9.4.8, in PL 34:395-96;
De nupt. et concup. 1.22.24,2.13.26,2.32.54, in CSEL 42:237,279,311-12; De civ. Dei 14.21,23, in CCL 48: 443-46; Bugge, Virginitas, p. 26; Miiller,
Lehre, p. 22; Brown,
Augustine of Hippo, pp. 388- 89; Cesar Vaca, "La sexualidad en San Agustin," in
Augustinus magister, 3 vols. (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1955) 2: 728; Rene Nelli, "La continence Cathare," in
Mystique et continence, pp. 139-51.
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The Stoics presented special difficulties for patristic defenders of Christian orthodoxy, for while the Fathers certainly adopted some of their most dearly held beliefs from the Stoics, and were conscious that they did so, they also felt compelled to reject other Stoic teachings, such as the contention that all sins are equally serious.
Conversely, the Jovinians agreed with the Stoics in considering all moral faults equally grievous, but also denied that the ascetic life had any special claim to be the preeminent Christian path to salvation. The Jovinians thus denied that monks and other ascetics were more virtuous and deserving than ordinary married Christians who had frequent sexual intercourse and even enjoyed it (23). Jovinian's doctrine called forth one of the most blistering denunciations in all of patristic literature, the
Adversus Jovinianum, in which St. Jerome savagely attacked Jovinian's beliefs. Indeed Jerome defended the celibate life so vigorously that he came close to condemning marriage. He also furnished generations of misogynist writers with a battery of elegant vituperation and ferocious mockery directed against the foibles and follies of women (24).
Patristic discussions of the place of sex in the Christian life are shot through with a fundamental ambivalence about the place of women in the scheme of salvation (25).
Augustine agreed clearly and emphatically with other patristic writers in requiring that men observe the same norms of sexual conduct as women (26). At the same time, however, Augustine, like other patristic authors, considered women frankly inferior to men, both physically and morally.
(pages 84-85)
23. Augustine,
Epist. 167.4, in CSEL 44:591-92, and
De haeresibus 82, in PL 42: 45-46; Delhaye, "Dossier antimatrimonial," p. 66.
24. Delhaye, "Dossier antimatrimonial," pp. 71-86; Colish,
Stoic Tradition 2:79-81.
25. This ambivalence appears to be based upon the distinction between body and soul that was central to Augustine's concept of human nature. See esp. Kari Elisabeth Borrensen,
Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and Role of Women in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (Washington: University Press of America, 1981), p. 339; Rosambert,
Veuve, pp. 94-95; and see generally Margaret R. Miles,
Augustine on the Body, American Academy of Religion Dissertation Series, no. 31 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979)•
26. Ambrose,
De Abraham 1.4.25, in PL 14: 431; Jerome,
Epist. 77.3, in PL 22: 691; Caesarius of ArIes,
Sermones 32.4, 142.3, ed. Germain Morin, 2 vols., CCL 103-4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953) 103: 142, 186-87; John Chrysostom,
De verbis propter fornicationes 4, in PG 51: 214; Augustine,
Serm. 9•4, 392.4-5, in PL 38: 78 and 39: 1711- 12; Brown,
Augustine of Hippo, p. 248.
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Marriage, Augustine observed, was not morally wrong; indeed it even had certain positive values in the Christian scheme of things, for marriage produced children, it promoted mutual fidelity between the spouses, and it brought them together in a bond of love (44). Two of these praiseworthy objectives of marriage, Augustine was careful to note, could be attained despite, not because of, the sexual element in marriage.
Marriage, he wrote, might even be glorified because it made something good out of the evil of sex (45). Sexual relations within marriage were a good use of an evil thing. Virginity, to be sure, was better, since that was a good use of a good thing. While marital relations were also good, they constituted a lesser order of good, because they employed the intrinsic wickedness of sex to achieve a morally valuable goal (46).
Augustine judged the morality of marital sex in terms of the intentions of the parties. When married persons had sex for the sole purpose of procreation, they committed no sin. If they had sexual relations for mutual pleasure and enjoyment, they sinned-but only slightly. If they had sexual relations in some way calculated to avoid procreation, however, they sinned gravely (47).
Married couples, he thought, should cease having sex as soon as they had produced a child or two. The sooner they stopped marital relations, the better for their moral health (48). They would have been even more virtuous, of course, had they remained virgins; but once married, the less they yielded to sexual desire, the better. (page 89)
44. Augustine,
De nupt. et concup. 1.17.19, in CSEL 42: 231.
45. Augustine,
De nupt. et concup. 1.7.8, in CSEL 42: 219-20;
De bono coniugali 3.3, in CSEL 41: 190-91.
46. Augustine,
De peccatorum mentis 1.29.57, in PL 44: 142;
De sancta virginitate 20.19, in CSEL 41: 253; Marie-Francois Berrouard, "Saint Augustin et l'indissolubilite du mariage: evolution de sa pensee,"
Recherches augustiniennes 5 (1968) 143.
47. Augustine,
De nupt. et concup. 1.15.17, in CSEL 42: 229-30.
48. Augustine,
De bono coniugali 3.3, in CSEL 41: 191.
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Since sex was a usual (and, in his view, a regrettable) feature of most marriages,
Jerome and like-minded writers argued that couples had a moral obligation to limit marital relations to an absolute minimum. Jerome was bitterly critical of married men who loved their wives excessively. This was a "deformity," Jerome believed, and he cited with approval the Stoic writers Seneca and Sextus, who had declared that "A man who loves his wife too much is an adulterer." There can be little doubt in this context that Jerome identified love with sexual relations and that what he attacked so fiercely was immoderate indulgence in sex by married persons. Marital sex, Jerome thought, should be indulged in only very infrequently and then with sober calculation, not with hot desire. "Nothing," he asserted at one point, "is filthier than to have sex with your wife as you might do with another woman (51)."
In this remarkable statement, which was to attract so much attention from so many medieval writers on marriage, Jerome had in mind qualitative as well as quantitative criteria for determining when marital sex was "excessive." He was denouncing not only too frequent marital intercourse, but also coital techniques and postures of which he disapproved (52). Up to a point Augustine agreed with Jerome's strictures against "excessive" marital sex. Certainly he believed that married folk should curb their carnal desires; they ought to avoid arousing one another sexually; they ought to limit their lovemaking to proper times and places (53). Intercourse during pregnancy, for example, he considered shameful in the extreme. But, he added, however immodest, shameful, and sordid the sex acts that married persons committed with each other, these were faults of the individuals, not blemishes attached to the institution of marriage (54). (pages 90-91)
51. Jerome,
Adv. Jov. 1.49, in PL 23: 281, relying on Sextus,
Sententiae 231, ed. Chadwick, pp. 38-39; Fulgentius,
Epist. 1.4, in CCL gl: 190; Jean-Louis Flandrin,
Families: parente, maison, sexualite dans rancienne societe (Paris: Hachette, 1976), p. 157.
52. James A. Brundage, "Let Me Count the Ways: Canonists and Theologians Contemplate Coital Positions," JMH 10 (lg84) 82; Jean-Louis Flandrin,
Le sexe et roccident (Paris: Seuil, 1981), pp. 11g-20.
53. Augustine,
Contra Julianum 3.14.28, in PL 44: 716-17.
54. Augustine,
De bono coniugali 6.5, in CSEL 41: 194;
De nupt. et concup. 1.24.27, in CSEL 42 :239-4°'
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Patristic writers assumed, as Roman law did, that consent made marriage. They rejected the notion that consummation was an essential part of marriage. It made no difference whether a couple ever went to bed together; so long as they consented to marry one another, that was what counted (63). If consummation was not essential, it might follow that sexual impotence constituted no reason for holding a marriage invalid, and Augustine at any rate seems to have subscribed to this view (64).
(page 92)
63. Augustine,
De consensu evangelistarum 2.1.2, in CSEL 43: 82;
De nupt. et concup.1.11.12, in CSEL 42: 224; Ambrose,
De institutione virginis 6.41, in PL 16: 316; D'ErcoIe, "Consenso," p. 28; Jean Gaudemet, "Indissolubilite et consommation du marriage: rapport d'Hincmar de Reims," RDC 30 (1980) 29; William Joseph Dooley,
Marriage according to St. Ambrose, Studies in Christian Antiquity, no. 11 (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1948), pp. 1-2.
64. Augustine,
De bono coniugali 7.7, 15.17, in CSEL 41: 196-97, 209-10; Josef Lamer,
Die Storingen des geschlechtlichen Vermogens in der Literatur der auctoritativen Theologie des Mittelalters: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Impotenz und des medizinischen Sachverstiindigenbeweises im kanonischen Impotenzprozess, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Mainz, Literatur, geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse (1958), no. 6 (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1958), p. 300.
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The marital debt created a parity of rights and obligations between the spouses. Each had an equal right to demand that it be paid; each had an equal obligation to comply with the other's demands. Equality of the sexes in marriage meant equality in the marriage bed, but not outside of it (69). Just as each spouse was entitled to sexual service from the other on demand, so each was entitled to require sexual fidelity from the other. Neither had a right to seek sexual fulfillment outside of marriage, even if the other party was, for example, absent or ill and thus sexually unavailable (70). Cessation of marital relations did not break the bond of marriage, just as the beginning of sexual relations was irrelevant to the contracting of marriage (71).
The evident aim of patristic matrimonial theory was to separate marriage as far as possible from its sexual component, defining it as a contractual union, separate and distinct from the sexual union of the married persons. (page 93)
69. Augustine,
Epist. 262, in CSEL 57: 621-31; Borresen,
Subordination and Equivalence, p. 104; Berrouard, "Saint Augustin et L'indissolubilite," p. 141.
70. Caesarius of ArIes,
Serm. 43.7, in CCL 103: 193-94.
71. Augustine,
De nupt. et concup. 1.11.12, in CSEL 42: 224.
