Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Chastity within Marriage Paul taught that By Bart Ehrman in my previous post, I summarized the legendary account of Paul and his most famous female disciple Thecla, and ended by quoting the Gospel message that he preaches in the tale. And it's not at all what you'd expect.
[00:00:20] He says no word about believing in Christ's death and resurrection. It's all about remaining sexually chaste, even when married. No sex.
[00:00:28] That's what God is most interested in. So here are some snippets by way of reminders.
[00:00:34] Blessed are those who have kept the flesh chaste, for they will become a temple of God. Blessed are those who are self controlled, for God will speak to them. Blessed are those who have renounced this world, for they will be pleasing to God. Blessed are those who have wives as if they did not have them, for they will be the heirs of God. And blessed are the bodies of virgins, for these will be pleasing to God and will not lose the reward for their chastity.
[00:01:02] If or indeed since this is not the main Gospel message of the apostle himself historically, where did it come from?
[00:01:10] As it turns out, there is actually a precedent for this view of sexual chastity in the writings of Paul himself.
[00:01:17] For Paul had to deal with the problem of sexual relations in his lifetime, especially when it came to the church in, you guessed it, Corinth.
[00:01:26] As has happened in a lot of Christian congregations, ancient and modern, there was a wide range of opinion about sexual matters in the Corinthian church of Paul's day. I've already mentioned in earlier posts that some members of the church did not think the body mattered much to God, so that for them it didn't matter what one did with the body. And so some men were visiting prostitutes and bragging about it in church afterwards, and one fellow was living with his stepmother.
[00:01:53] But there were other people in Corinth who took the opposite view, thinking that since the human spirit is all that mattered, one should ignore all bodily concerns and live only the spiritual life.
[00:02:03] Some of these people had written Paul a letter in which they asked whether it wasn't in fact better for a man not to touch a woman, that is not to have sexual relations of any kind. See for that 1 Corinthians 7:1 one problem with this approach to sex, not the biggest problem you might think, is that if there are no avenues for licit sexual activities, things can blow up in one's face, leading to illicit sexual activities.
[00:02:31] These spiritual Corinthians are, after all, human, and so Paul had to address this and a whole range of related issues. As you might expect, he condemns visiting prostitutes and shacking up with stepmothers. But his response to those who think sexual activity of any kind is out of the question is rather interesting, in part because it's so nuanced to the point that some interpreters think that Paul doesn't actually give a consistent answer to the Corinthians question. In 1 Corinthians 7, his basic reply is that because of sexual immorality, that is the possibility of illicit sexual activity, every man and woman should be married.
[00:03:13] Moreover, when married, they should grant one another their conjugal rights, that is they should have sex.
[00:03:19] But then Paul admits that he's giving these guidelines as a concession because, in fact he wishes that everyone could be as I myself am, meaning that if he had his own way, everyone would be like him, single and celibate.
[00:03:33] But he concedes that this requires a special gift from God, and not everyone has it.
[00:03:40] So it's better to go ahead and marry if you're unable to control your sexual desires otherwise.
[00:03:45] Even so, Paul then goes on to say that it's better to remain unmarried if possible.
[00:03:51] This is where he seems to some interpreters to contradict himself.
[00:03:55] In fact, he argues, it's always better to remain in whatever state you find yourself when you became a Christian.
[00:04:02] Those who are married should stay married.
[00:04:04] Those who are unmarried should stay single.
[00:04:07] Those who are slaves should not seek to be set free, and so on.
[00:04:13] So why is that? It all comes down to Paul's fundamental conviction that he was living at the very end of the age and that the end was to come soon.
[00:04:22] Why change your social status when what matters is not your present life, which is soon to be overturned when Jesus comes from heaven, but your future life in the kingdom?
[00:04:33] And so he says, the time has grown short for what is left of it. Let those who have wise live as if they do not, and let those who mourn live as not mourning, and those who rejoice as if not rejoicing, and those who deal with the world as if they are not dealing with it. For the form of this world is passing away, and that's 1 Corinthians 7:29 31.
[00:04:58] Because the world is passing away. It's better for people to remain unmarried if possible, for anyone who is married needs to be concerned for the welfare of their spouse. But the unmarried can be devoted completely to the kingdom that is coming. See chapter 7, verses 32 to 35.
[00:05:15] Still, for those who can't control one's sexual urges, I.e. most people, it's better to get married and have a sanctioned outlet for them.
[00:05:24] Paul's own emphasis on the value of chastity, then, makes sense only within the context of his apocalyptic vision that the world as we know it was soon to change radically with the return of Jesus.
[00:05:35] What happens though, when Jesus never does return?
[00:05:38] What happens when the expected apocalypse never materializes? What happens when the world continues on year after year, just as it always did before?
[00:05:49] One thing that happens is that Paul's teaching of celibacy comes to be transformed.
[00:05:54] For as Christianity developed, it shifted away from an apocalyptic expectation that there would be a future utopian life here on earth to the sense that there would be a future utopian life in heaven. The doctrine of the afterlife, that souls would go to heaven or to hell, developed as a kind of de apocalypticized understanding of an originally apocalyptic gospel.
[00:06:16] When Christians no longer expected Jesus to be returning sometime next week, the emphasis shifted from the kingdom that will arrive in the future to the kingdom that's above. The apocalyptic dualism that proclaimed a dividing line between this current evil age and the future utopian age mutates into a non apocalyptic dualism between this evil world and the world of God.
[00:06:39] In other words, a horizontal dualism that's sketched in time. This age and the age to come is transformed into a vertical dualism sketched in space, this world and the world above.
[00:06:53] What happens then to an emphasis on chastity once this transformation has taken place?
[00:06:59] The reason for chastity is no longer that the end is near and we need to be able to devote ourselves to its coming.
[00:07:05] It is instead that we need to prepare ourselves for the world above.
[00:07:10] And how better to prepare ourselves for that world than to deny any allegiance to this one.
[00:07:17] The proclamation of renunciation is a doctrine that insists that we should not be tied to this world if we want to experience the joys of eternal life in heaven.
[00:07:26] All the pleasures of this world are therefore to be renounced if we are to enter into the kingdom of God. When we die, salvation will come to those who lead the ascetic life of renunciation. So that means no fine food, no high quality wine, no frivolous entertainment, and most especially no sex.
[00:07:45] Or at least according to the legendary act of Paul and Thecla, and as it turns out, lots of other legendary tales of the missionary preachings of Jesus followers after his death. And for more of that, see the apocryphal acts of the Apostles.
