Let’s Make Love. The Meaning of Sexual Intercourse.   By Jack Dominian

Part I   A Brief History of Christianity and Sex

Chapter 1

The Judeo-Christian Background

This book is dedicated to the history and meaning of sexual inter­course. It traces the origin from the Hebrew tradition in Genesis and brings it up to date in our contemporary period. It is a study which reflects the vicissitudes or changes of circumstances of sexu­ality and summarises how one religious tradition has treated this most intimate of personal subjects. The story begins with the two accounts in Genesis. The second is the older of the two, traditionally known as the Yahwistic, and dates from about the tenth century BC.

Yahweh God said, ‘It is not right that man should be alone. I shall make him a helper.’ So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild animals. But no helper suitable for man was found for him. So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. The man exclaimed:

This at last is bone from my bones,

And flesh from my flesh!

This is to be called woman,

For this was taken from man.

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body.

Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame before each other. (Gen. 2:18-25)

In the most comprehensive, theological commentary on the body,(1) John Paul II uses the two passages in Genesis – particularly the one above – to proclaim the physical, social and spiritual equa­lity of the sexes. The woman is intrinsically related to the man in that it was one of his ribs that formed the basis of her creation.

He goes on to describe in detail the created readiness of the male and female bodies for sexual intercourse. He labels this as ‘nuptial’.

John Paul II sets his exegesis against a background of Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees, when they asked him whether it was lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause. Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?” So they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder’ (Matt. 19:3ff). The Pope pays particular attention to Jesus’ reference to the ‘beginning’. For him, this implies a basic constitutive state of nuptuality and, as we shall see below, of innocence.

Sexual intercourse and nakedness are completely free from shame or embarrassment in the setting of coitus within the context of marriage. The Pope, of course, acknowledges the fall and original sin, but he sees in Christ a resumption with that link of innocence.

Genesis 2:18-25 doesn’t refer to procreation, rather it focuses on the significance of intercourse for the sake of the union of the couple. It is interesting that the oldest account of sexual intercourse should concentrate on the relational meaning of the act. It is the body that transacts this union through which the couple donate the whole of themselves to each other. Through the body there is an encounter of persons and in this meeting the genitals transmit the whole richness of each to the other.

It could be argued that the text as it stands does not concentrate on the relational aspect of the act, but on the need for the provision of a helper suitable for man. In this sense the woman could be defined as a helper, a subordinate to the man to meet his sexual and other needs. But the passage starts with Yahweh God’s comment that it is not right for man to be alone. John Paul II comments that this reference is a response to the initial state of mankind moving from original solitude to unity. From what has been said, it is not unreasonable to assume that the creation of woman is an act of mutual communion between equals. In this communion of persons, sexual intercourse is a focus of communication. John Paul II argues extensively in favour of this interpretation: ‘In sexual self-donation the couple indeed speak a “language of the body”, expressing in a manner far more profound than words, the totality of the gift of each other.’ However, one would need to read The Theology of the Body to follow his closely argued case.

Beyond Genesis, I believe that the whole Bible suggests a psycho-somatic-spiritual unity of man and woman, of which sexual intercourse can be said to be a focal point. It would require a scriptural scholar to analyse in detail the evidence in favour of this view in the Scriptures, but an outline of the case can be made from Genesis 2:18-25.

In the course of history this insight into the mutual donation of self became overshadowed by the emphasis on transmission of life and childbearing through sexual intercourse. It is only in our own day that coitus has become detached from the intimate link with childbearing so as to free it to return to its original meaning, the communication of life in its widest personal sense.

Genesis 1:26-31, the so-called priestly narrative, written some five centuries later, supplements the first account with distinctive additions.

God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth.’

God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

God blessed them, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on the earth.’

God also said, ‘See I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this shall be your food. To all the wild beasts, all birds of heaven and all living reptiles on the earth I give all the foliage of plants for food.’ And so it was. God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. (Gen. 1:26-31)

In this second and later passage, God confirms the creation of man and woman and the author here adds that the couple reflected the image of God in them. We can inescapably conclude that sexuality is to be found in the Godhead. Critics would say that if this con­clusion was inescapable, it should have been drawn a long time ago and it was not. My reply would be that if the couple reflect the image of God in them then this would also include sexuality, but that the traditional hostility to sexuality made this interpretation difficult.

In this passage, sexuality is focused on procreation, on children, and this interpretation of its meaning was held steadfastly for 3,000 years. Procreation within the context of marriage was the primary meaning given to sexuality. Yet this is not what the passage pro­claims. It states that God saw all he had made and found it very good, and that includes sexuality. The interpretation that Christ­ianity found in the course of time was that only marriage makes intercourse good. Whilst the two texts suggest that marriage is the context for sexual intercourse, as procreation needs parents to nurture children, traditional Christian interpretation has tended to dismiss the value that sexual intercourse has in itself as part of what God saw and found very good. In other words the value of sexual intercourse in its own right was not recognised and appreciated until our own time. This book is devoted to an exposition of the intrinsic value of coitus.

In the Old Testament the increase of the chosen people was of great importance and childbearing received much praise. As Rebekah leaves her family to marry Isaac, she is bidden ‘Sister of ours, from you may there spring many thousands and tens of thousands’ (Gen. 24:60). Both Abraham and Isaac are promised that their posterity would be as countless as the stars in the sky (Gen. 15:5; 22:17). ‘The crown of the aged is their children’s children’ (Prov. 17:6). ‘Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them’ (Ps. 127:3-5). Infertility, on the other hand, was seen as a disgrace, a punishment from God. Just as Yahweh rewards sexuality by giving children, so he punishes aspects of sexual conduct. If we confine ourselves to heterosexual behaviour, then the prime condemnation was focused on incest, adultery and prostitution. Why were these patterns of behaviour condemned and on what basis?

In his fascinating book, Dirt, Greed and Sex,(2) L. W. Countryman suggests that the grounds for sexual condemnation in ancient Israel were based on purity and property. Based on the work of Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger,(3) Countryman postulates that sexual impurity is found in the difference between cleanliness and uncleanliness. One of the easiest of the purity principles to under­stand is the concern about menstruating women. In Israel, during her menstruation, a woman was unclean for seven days and her uncleanness was contagious, so that others became infected if they touched any furniture on which the menstruating women had lain. The uncleanness extends to a woman who has a haemorrhage. In this respect we see the extent to which Jesus overcame the purity laws about cleanliness, not only in his teaching of the apostles, but also in the fact that he allowed his garment to be touched by a woman who had an issue of blood (Mark 5:34). Summing up the idea of dirt emanating from purity principles, Countryman has this to say: ‘What is consistent from one culture to another is that purity rules relate to the boundaries of the human body, especially to its orifices. This means that whatever passes these boundaries has particular importance for purity laws: foods, waste products, shed blood, menstrual blood, sexual emissions, sexual acts, birth, death.’ Countryman makes it very clear that purity laws were one source for dictating sexual conduct in Israel. Thus incest, adultery and prostitution were all considered defiling.

As mentioned above, Jesus went beyond the purity laws. In an important passage in Matthew, Jesus called the people to him and said, ‘Listen, and understand. What goes into the mouth does not make a man unclean; it is what comes out of the mouth that makes him unclean’ (Matt. 15:10-11). The apostles, steeped in Jewish purity mentality, did not appreciate what Jesus was saying and asked him to explain. At their request, he gave his famous reply, ‘Can’t you see that whatever goes into the mouth passes through the stomach and is discharged into the sewer? But what comes out from the mouth comes from the heart, and it is this that makes someone unclean. For from the heart come evil intentions: murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, slander. These are the things that make a person unclean. But eating with unwashed hands does not make anyone unclean’ (Matt. 15:17-20). In a profound psychological shift, Jesus put the emphasis of sexual sin not on physical purity, but on feelings, motivation and the will, all emanating from the inner world of human beings. This move from physical dirt to purity of heart did not stop Christianity from casting women in general – and menstruating ones in particular – as objects of uncleanliness to be avoided. The long history of looking at women in terms of danger, and experiencing their bodies as a threat, stems from the purity laws. In its history, Christianity was to deviate far from the directness and clarity of the original description of the body and the two sexes in the passages in Genesis.

Countryman puts forward a second principle responsible for sexual conduct, namely that of property. Israel was based on the principle of patriarchy. The husband was the head of the household and his wife, children, slaves and animals were his property. Children, like wives, were foremost possessions. Once again Countryman shows that incest, adultery and prostitution contra­vened property principles. Thus adultery was a violation of the property of another and was punishable by stoning. Indeed, in John’s gospel the scribes and Pharisees brought such a woman to Jesus (John 8:3-11). It is no exaggeration to assert that in Jesus’ handling of the woman he not only reasserted the principles of compassion, forgiveness and love, but he also attacked the context of sexual sin in terms of property.

Indeed we know that Jesus set a much higher standard. ‘You have heard how it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say this to you, if a man looks at a woman lustfully he has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matt. 5:27-28). In The Theology of the Body, John Paul II devotes a whole section to this passage of Jesus. A superficial reading of the passage might imply that it is wrong to disrupt another marriage and thus commit adultery, but the Pope comments extensively on this. He stresses that the adultery of a lustful look is in the heart. By lust is meant an experience of sexual desire devoid of a loving relationship. According to the Pope, lust is a break of the nuptial unity, of the communion between man and woman. The nuptial unity of the body stressed by Jesus in the ‘beginning’ is a unity of the physical, social, psychological and cognitive aspects of man and woman offered mutually in an exclu­sive relationship of love. The lustful look that Jesus refers to in the heart as adultery, is a solely physical sexual attraction which enjoys the other person as an object, but which has no mutuality of per­sonal gift. Jesus assumed that a woman is not primarily a piece of property who is violated by being taken from the rightful possession of another. She is a person who deserves love, and anyone who treats her with sexual desire devoid of love has offended against her. Thus as we move from the Old to the New Testament, we see that the two pillars on which sexual transgression were based, namely purity (dirt) and possession, were modified by Jesus. In one form or another they were to remain in force until our day, although Jesus put love, intention and will in their place.

Moving to the New Testament, there is not much written specifi­cally about sexual intercourse. There are three features related to it. The first is the virgin birth of Jesus. In my book, One Like Us(4) I deal with the nurturing aspects of the parenting of Jesus rather than emphasising virginity per se. The important thing from Jesus’ point of view was that he had a set of parents who made it possible for him to develop his loving side to the point where he was love and God’s nature of love could coexist easily with his human nature.

The second point made in the New Testament is Jesus’ introduc­tion of the single state dedicated to God. After Jesus forbade divorce (Matt. 19:1-9), the apostles said to him, ‘If that is how things are between husband and wife, it is advisable not to marry.’ But he replied, ‘It is not everyone who can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is granted. There are eunuchs born so from their mother’s womb. There are eunuchs made so by human agency and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can’ (Matt. 19:10-12). This concept of continence, or exercising self-control, for the sake of the kingdom of God is a new one introduced by Jesus. Those who have made it a basis for affirming the single state have often failed to notice how clear Jesus was to show that it is a gift, a rare gift, granted to the few chosen by God. Compulsion has no place in its ranks. Nevertheless, combined with the virgin birth, it brought a new vision away from sexual intercourse to continence.

The third point that needs to be made is that we have no evidence that Jesus married or had sexual intercourse. In my book I point out that, although he neither married nor, as far as we know, had sexual intercourse, there is no reason to suggest that he did not have ordinary sexual feelings. But marriage, sexual intercourse, children and family would have been too restrictive for the man who came to serve the whole world, to be open to all mankind throughout the ages.

Thus from Jesus himself we associate virginity in his parents, the pursuit of continence for the kingdom and the absence of marriage in himself. What about marriage and sexual intercourse in the New Testament? For the fullest treatment of this we must turn to Paul and in particular to his first letter to the Corinthians. It would appear that the Corinthians, as all the early Christians, were waiting for an early return of Jesus. Paul makes it clear that they should live as if they were living in the last days. But does this mean they should abandon marriage and sexual intercourse? Not at all. ‘Now for the questions about which you wrote, yes it is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman; yet to avoid immorality every man should have his own wife and every woman her own husband’ (1 Cor. 7:1-3).

Paul approves of the single state. He adds, ‘To the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay as they are, like me. But if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry, since it is better to be married than to be burnt up’ (1 Cor. 7:8-9). Paul is pragmatic. He appreciates that men and women have sexual drives which most of them need to express. He would prefer that they remain unmarried, but he does not make impossible demands and prefers marriage to fornication and adultery.

Regarding frequency of intercourse, he says: ‘The husband must give to his wife what she has a right to expect and so the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and in the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. You must not deprive each other, except by mutual consent for a limited time, to leave yourself free for prayer and to come together again afterwards; otherwise Satan may take advantage of any lack of self- control to put you to the test’ (1 Cor. 7:3-6).

In these few lines Paul shows himself a master of sexual under­standing. Spouses are to have access to one another, a model of equality. He says that they should not deprive each other, except for prayer. Paul is not counselling continence for the married. He accepts sexual desire and encourages its free expression. Later on in the same letter he repeats the same points: although time is short, everyone should remain in the state they were called to. ‘If you are joined to a wife, do not seek to be released; if you are freed of a wife, do not look for a wife. However, if you do get married, that is not a sin, and it is not sinful for a virgin to enter upon marriage’ (1 Cor. 7:27-28).

From this letter to the Corinthians, we get a picture of Paul in which he shows a realistic acknowledgement of sexual needs. To those who have them, marriage is a way of meeting them. He is not enthusiastic about matrimony but he appreciates human reality. He favours the single state as a way of serving the Lord. Remaining single for the sake of the Lord is his own option. Paul appears not to have received any clear instruction on virginity. ‘About people remaining virgin, I have no directions from the Lord, but I give my own opinion as a person who has been granted God’s mercy to be faithful’ (1 Cor. 7:25).

At the end of the gospels and the epistles, we have a picture in which sexual intercourse embedded in marriage is a norm that is accepted. Jesus carried out his first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana (John 2:1-11). He would not have participated at a wedding if he did not wish to continue the state of marriage and, within it, sexual intercourse.

Sexual intercourse was understood by Paul as a natural and God- given expression to meet sexual needs. But, independent of Jesus, he initiated a tradition of the single state dedicated to God that was to span the whole of the next 2,000 years to our very day.

In Genesis we find God seeing all that he had created as very good. That included sexual intercourse, but there was no special analysis of coitus. The nearest we get to a link between sex and love is the indirect symbolism of marriage as a covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. The book of the prophet Hosea describes the adultery of his wife, and Yahweh’s instruction to take her back and be reconciled in a spirit of tenderness and love. Here, as in the case of the Song of Songs, which we shall be examining later, marriage and sex are seen in emotional terms of love. But, apart from these two Old Testament descriptions, sexual intercourse is not seen primarily in personal terms. The two Testaments form the background for the pessimism and ambivalence with which sexuality was to be held for most of the Christian period. In the next chapter, we turn to the first five centuries of the Christian era in which sexual intercourse was immersed in a particular gloom.

References

Chapter 1

1. John Paul II (1994), The Theology of the Body, London, Daughters of St Paul.
2. Countryman, L. W. (1988), Dirt, Greed and Sex, Philadelphia, Fortress Press.
3. Douglas, M. (1966), Purity and Danger: Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
4. Dominian, J. (1998), One Like Us: A psychological interpretation of Jesus, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.

 

 

Chapter 2

The Early Centuries

The Christian era was inaugurated against a backdrop of the expectation of the imminent second coming or parousia. The Pauline letters were full of exhortations which took their reference from the belief that time was short. With this view in mind, Paul encouraged the early Christians to stay in the state he found them in and, as far as the married were concerned, to continue to remain in marriage with sexual intercourse as one of its expressions. But as he expected the second coming, he recommended those who were not married to remain single.

With the passage of time, the expectation of the second coming faded. Men and women were not exempt from sexual urges and needs. How did their leaders attempt to shape their sexual behaviour? These men (because the leaders were all men) had to work with the ‘givens’ of the Christian faith: the virgin birth of Jesus; his single state; his ideas on the single state dedicated to God, and the teaching of Genesis that recommended marriage as a source of companionship and procreation. The classic study of Peter Brown in the book The Body and Society(1) offers, at the present time of writing, the clearest and most extensive presentation of how the first five centuries up to St Augustine developed the theme of sexu­ality. Those who are interested in this fascinating study are recommended to read the book itself. Here a brief summary is given of the views and influence of the main actors on the stage.

The work of Brown can be divided into the views of eminent fathers and the consequences of monastic life in the desert. This took place in a Roman context, which saw marriage as the begin­ning, root and fountainhead of human nature. It is from marriage that fathers, mothers, children and families spring. Children were a necessity in an age when life expectancy was on average less than 25 years, and when only 4 out of every 100 men and fewer women lived beyond the age of 50. Sexual intercourse and reproduction were regarded as essential for the maintenance of the population. Although sexual intercourse in the service of reproduction was con­sidered the norm, there were two classic attitudes operating as well. The first was a powerful belief that the body was made up of vital spirit and its loss devitalised it. Hence all loss of vital spirit, including emission of seed, weakened the body. The second was the Stoic philosophy that what was best for human beings was a strict control of the emotions that led to apatheia. The mature person had all his or her emotions under strict control and was indifferent to them. Soranus is quoted as saying, ‘Men who remain chaste are stronger and better than others and pass their lives in better health.’(2) This view is not supported by modern research. For the Stoics, sexual intercourse was supposed to occur only for reproduction, an idea that heavily influenced early Christianity. There was no concept of coitus for pleasure and the positions adopted for intercourse were to be selected on the basis of the best deposition of the seed for fecundity. The marital bed was no place for pleasure but for orderly activity designed for procreation.

The Greek and Latin fathers, particularly the latter, took their cue from their Christian background of virginity, the apotheosis of the single state and the classical views outlined above, so that, writing at the end of the second century, Clement of Alexandria could say, ‘The human ideal of continence, I mean that which is set forth by the Greek philosophers, teaches one to resist passion, so as not to be made subservient to it, and to train the instincts to pursue rational goals.’ But for Christians he went on to say, ‘Our ideal is not to experience desire at all’ (quoted in Brown). The last sentence gives a flavour of what the fathers thought about human sexuality. One of the marks of identification with the Holy Spirit was sexual abstinence.

We begin with the figure of Tertullian in the late second century. His commands give us a glimpse of the admixture on sexual writings that were circulating in a major Latin Church, Carthage. Tertullian was a Stoic and he concentrated on the body. His deceptively simple formula was ‘Look to the body’, and for him continence brought down the gift of the Holy Spirit. If sanctity was not to be obtained through martyrdom, then continence was the next best thing. Tertullian was the first to make this important statement, which had a long influence in the Latin world, that abstinence from sex was the most effective way to achieve clarity of the soul. The teaching of Tertullian and other fathers we shall consider below enunciated the theology, but the practice was seen in members of the Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean in the second and third centuries, who expressed with vehemence their belief in continence by their renunciation of married life. In the less orthodox circles, the Gnostic and Manichean theologies propagated similar views of abandoning marriage.

Also towards the end of the second century Clement of Alexandria, one of the most prolific writers of the pre-Constantine Church, arrived on the scene. He stressed the importance of every moment of daily life, especially the life of the household. Clement acknowl­edged human sexual urges, but put forward the view that they were to be strictly disciplined. He was a wholehearted supporter of the Stoic view of apatheia, the idea of a life free from passions. And so he advocated a serenity in sexual behaviour as in all other aspects of life – order in everything as well as in sexual activity. His concept of disciplined order was to avoid frequent intercourse, not to use a variety of positions to maximise pleasure and to avoid intercourse when one’s wife was pregnant. No such liberties were allowed for Christians. Sexual intercourse should take place for pro­creation and not for aesthetic pleasure.

For Origen in the early third century sexuality was a mere passing phase. Human beings could do without it. In order to give expression to his view of sexuality as a transient entity of no importance to the spirit, he had himself castrated. As a natural consequence of these ideas he advocated continence from an early stage of life. Virginity stood for the original state and reflected the purity of the soul. Ultimately, he believed that all physical relations would vanish. Sexual intercourse, Origen believed, as many subsequently have, coarsened the spirit. Virgin bodies were temples of God. As with Tertullian, this theology had practical applications and perpetual continence was upheld by groups of Christians throughout the Mediterranean. Origen died in ad 253 and by then the combined efforts of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and himself had set the tone for the preference for virginity and continence.

In AD 306 the Synod of Elvira declared that ‘Bishops, priests, deacons and all members of the clergy connected with the Liturgy must abstain from their wives and must not beget sons.’(3) By the beginning of the fourth century, two things had been established. The clergy were encouraged not to marry or, if married, not to have sexual intercourse, and a close link was made between liturgy and the avoidance of sexuality.

Brown comments that by the end of the second century it might have been possible for Christianity to develop based on the family and protected, albeit with demanding limitations, by a view of sexu­ality as outlined by Clement of Alexandria. It would have been linked with rigorous discipline and fear of women, but would have not progressed in favour of the total renunciation of sexual activity. Instead total sexual renunciation had become widely acclaimed as a feature of the Christian life. Brown, however, adds that it was a renunciation limited to the few, even though they saw themselves as the elite.

Still in the fourth century we find another theological giant, Gregory of Nyssa. Sexuality for Gregory was an afterthought of the creator. It had been added to the original serene indifferentiation of nature, along with death, after Adam’s fall. Sexual differentiation was a necessary adjustment after the Fall. Gregory was preoccupied with the clock of life, which measured the passage of tainted time and he situated this clock in marriage. He saw human time made up of attempts to block out the sight of the grave. Marriage and sexual intercourse and the raising of children were such a pastime. So the removal of sexuality was the denial of time, placed there by the fear of death – remove marriage and you remove the one in­stitution that had been brought about by death. Adam and Eve recognised their fear of extinction and joined together in marriage to have children. And so for Gregory the tick of time lay silent in the heart of the continent person.

Gregory’s view was reinforced in the same century by that of John Chrysostom, the most gifted preacher of his age. For Chrysostom marriage was a superfluity rendered necessary only by the fall of Adam. In his book on virginity he declared that the earth was already overpopulated and needed no further reproductive effort.

Moving from East to West, we meet in the fourth century Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who was particularly sensitive to the weaknesses of the flesh. For him, the body was a peril that might engulf the soul. Every human being bore an ugly scar and that scar was sexuality. For Ambrose, Christ was the perfect model, unscarred by a sexual origin and the presence of sexual impulses. Ambrose, among others, was a champion of the continence of bishops and clergy, providing a separate, hierarchical class of the ascent of life. On his scale, virgins came first, widows second and the married third. The integrity of the virgin state was the highest pinnacle of Christian virtue.

Finally, we have in Jerome in the late fourth century an ardent apostle for virginity. He was the heir of Origen and he communi­cated vividly the awareness of the sexual dangers of the body. For Jerome the human body was a darkened forest filled with the roaring of wild beasts that could only be controlled by rigid diet and the strict avoidance of sexual attraction. For him, even first marriages were regrettable but second ones were only one step away from the brothel.

During the centuries covered by the lives of these fathers, others left the city and settled in the desert, forming monastic communi­ties. These were the desert fathers of whom the best known was Anthony. For the monks of Egypt, sexual temptation was a drive towards women and matrimony, and hence a return to settled land and away from the desert. For the desert ascetic, whilst sexuality was a temptation, the urge for food was an even greater challenge. It was widely believed by the desert fathers that the first sin of Adam and Eve was not sexual, but ravenous greed. So fasting was at the forefront of their life. Food pushed sexuality aside. Thus self-­mortification in terms of food and sex was the first line of attack on the senses. When the body was quelled, it was the heart and the will that had to be subdued. From the heart and the will emerged pride and ambition, and the combination of these could destroy monastic communities. From the heart and the will emanated sexual fantasies and it was finally the abatement of fantasy that was the proof of the conquering of sexuality. The overcoming of sexuality was associated with the cessation of nocturnal emissions. Control over the body was the monk’s preoccupation. The desert ascetic did not flourish with just control over his mind. His body also had to be tutored and in bringing the body under control the soul was influenced. The material life of the monk was considered capable of altering consciousness. Between them the fathers and the desert monks influenced the climate of sexuality of the first five centuries and left an enduring legacy in the West.

The last father to be considered is Augustine, the giant of them all.(4) He wrote the definitive book on marriage, whose ends of children, faithfulness and permanency had a profound impact on Christianity and was quoted as recently as Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930.(5)

Augustine knew that sexual intercourse was deeply associated with pleasure. He had experienced this pleasure over a period of 13 years with a woman. During these years, he associated with the Manicheans and tried to control his sexual urges, but all to no avail. His sexual drive was strong and, in the immortal words that have often been quoted, he wrote in his confessions, ‘Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not now.’(6) His mother, Monica, prayed relentlessly for his conversion and he parted from the woman in order to get married. Even during the period of waiting for the marriage, he could not control his sexual urges and took a con­cubine. Finally, he converted to Christianity, gave up the idea of marriage and close association with women, and went on to serve his God with distinction.

Augustine, holding a contemporary minority view, believed that there would have been sexual relations between Adam and Eve before the Fall. His original and devastating view was formulated round his concept of original sin. Whilst agreeing that this would involve the loss of sanctifying grace, he was convinced that an even greater result would be the loss of an effective ordering of man’s passions leading to concupiscence or sexual desire. He associated concupiscence with intercourse and thought that coitus transmitted original sin. Thus sexual intercourse was always accompanied by sin. But, if sex was performed for procreation, this sinfulness was reduced; for any other reason it remained at least venially or pardon­ably sinful.

We have to see in this theology not only spiritual speculation but psychological overreaction to coitus that shows itself in the following passage; ‘As to copulation in marriage which, according to the law of matrimony must be used for procreation’s sake; does it not seek a corner for its performance, though it be honest and lawful? Does not the bridegroom turn all the servants, and even the bridesmaids and all others, out of his chamber, before he begins to embrace his bride? As the great author of Roman eloquence has said, whereas all honest deeds desire the light, that is love to be known, this only desires so to be known that it blushes to be seen… For this act desires indeed to be seen by the mind, yet it seeks to escape from the sight of the eye. Now what can be the reason for this, unless it be that this lawful act of nature is accompanied with a penalty of shame from our first parents?’(7) It is significant that Christianity has not followed Augustine in either of these propositions: that sexual intercourse in marriage is in any way sinful or that it transmits original sin. The vehemence with which he expressed these views does suggest, however, that Augustine was working out in his theology his own psychological problems. With Augustine, we reach the peak of pessimism and negativity about sexual intercourse.

The first five centuries produced a series of theological treatises that devalued coitus, saw virginity and continence as higher states, influenced the avoidance of sexual intercourse by the clergy and the downgrading of coitus.

The Stoic view of emotional tranquillity coupled with Jesus’ single state, the virginity of his mother, the apparent immanent second coming and the idiosyncratic views of individual theologians, com­bined to cast sexuality and coitus in a negative light, from which Christianity is perhaps only emerging in our own day and time.

The devaluation of one of God’s most precious gifts started in these early centuries and produced a massive distortion of the goodness of sex. We shall see that in the subsequent centuries, although modifications took place, the basic negativity never gave up its relentless grip.

The patristic period thus concluded in a spirit of asceticism and sexual pessimism in which the developing attitudes to sexuality have lost, temporarily in the writings of the fathers and others, the links with the positive approach of the Old Testament. Sexual intercourse came under the influence of Hellenistic dualism, Stoicism, which had infiltrated Christian thought, the growing importance of the single state dedicated to God and the personal experience of such men as Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine. Thus the Christian era began under a cloud of sexual pessimism that cast a long shadow to this very day.

References

1. Brown, R (1988), The Body and Society, London, Faber and Faber.
2. Soranus, Gynaecia 17.39.2, Ilberg.
3. Council of Elvira, Canon 33, Jonkers ed.
4. Power, K. (1995), Veiled Desire, London, Darton, Longman and Todd; Noonan Jnr, J. T. (1986), Contraception, Harvard, Harvard University Press. See also Brown, The Body and Society, op. cit.
5. Casti Connubii 1930, London, CTS.
6. Augustine, Confessions, 8.7.17: 757.

 

 

Chapter 3

The Medieval Period

The medieval period saw a mixture of a reiteration of the rigorism of the early Church with the return to Augustinian theology and a softening of attitudes. Augustine set a very exacting standard for the interpretation of the meaning of sexual intercourse, which was bound to influence later theologians. One of these was Gregory I, Pope from 590 to 604, a man of outstanding talent, whose 850 surviving letters and other writings had a considerable influence in the Middle Ages. He followed the Augustinian approach in general but changed the details. He stated that whilst the sexual act in itself was not sinful – nor its involvement with concupiscence – the pleasure attached to it was. So that, even when spouses desired children, they could not avoid the inevitable pleasure attached to the act, which was sinful.(1) With this view, which once again would find no permanent place in the teaching of the Church, the theology of the sexual act reached its lowest ebb. This Gregorian view – that all sexual pleasure was an evil – reached its maximum strength at the end of the twelfth century. In this teaching, a value for sexual intercourse such as love was unthinkable.

Against this solid opposition to the link between coitus and love, there emerged in the second quarter of the twelfth century a new ideology, which was opposed to the link between sexual intercourse and procreation. It was the code of courtly love, sung by many of the troubadours. The troubadours praised the love of man for woman. They separated love from marriage, celebrating sexual pleasure and rejecting the generative purpose. By 1139, the level of danger of such a view drew the attention of the Ecumenical Council, the Second Lateran Council, who reiterated the orthodox position.

The development of the procreative purpose of marriage and sex in the twelfth century was a reaction to the Cathars and courtly love. The emerging doctrine vigorously excluded pleasure as a purpose of sexual intercourse. There were two basic reasons for the return of such strictness. The first was a response to the Cathars and the second a return to Augustinian sexual ethics. In this doctrine coitus was found to be reprehensible and evil, unless excused by the Augustinian goods of marriage. According to this more rigid view, some small sin was inevitable in coitus.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) contributed a mixture of traditional and more optimistic views on sexual intercourse. The basic assump­tions held by Aquinas were that natural coitus was instituted by God and that the natural order should not be altered by man. For him, the natural order of sexual intercourse demanded no other position for coitus than the woman beneath the man. He used the word ‘bestiality’ to characterise modes of sexual intercourse that depart from this position.

The Thomistic analysis takes the biological function of pro­creation of the sexual act as given by God and unalterable by man. ‘The end, however, which nature intends in copulation is offspring to be procreated and educated and that this good might be sought it has put delight in copulation, as Augustine says, in marriage and concupiscence. Whoever, therefore uses copulation for the delight which is in it, not referring the intention to the end intended by nature acts against nature.’(2) The position taken in intercourse, its purpose and its delight were strictly for procreation. This attitude, which Aquinas formulated, reinforcing Augustine’s view, was to remain supreme in official church teaching until our own day. Thus for Aquinas, a norm is postulated consisting in heterosexual, marital coitus, the man above the woman, with insemination resulting. This norm is ordained, its naturalness is established by God. Deliberate departure from the norm is unnatural, a direct offence against God. Aquinas distinguished between the delight experienced as an inducement for procreation, and the rightfulness and intensity of that delight. He argued that before the Fall there would have been more delight in coitus because of the greater purity of nature and the greater sensibility of the body. After the Fall, concupiscence detracts coitus from the command of reason. Aquinas accepted the normality of sexual pleasure. For him there was no assent to Gre­gorian rigorism. Dealing with the question that excess of passion corrupts virtue, he says, ‘The excessive passion which corrupts virtue is one that not only hinders or prevents the exercise of reason, but also destroys the rational order, but this is not the effect of the intensity of the delight in the marriage act, for although man is not then under control, yet he has been controlled and directed beforehand by reason.’(3)

Writing 50 years ago, Father Messenger in his book The Mystery of Sex and Marriage went further and stated: ‘Joining together all the strands of St Thomas’ teaching, we can assert without hesitation that there is a very important place to be allotted to passion and pleasure in the sex act. Both passion and pleasure are natural con­comitants of the sex act, and, so far from diminishing its novel goodness if the sex act is willed beforehand according to right reason, the effect of pleasure and passion is simply to heighten and increase the moral goodness of the act, not in any way to diminish it. St Thomas does not seem to say this any where expressly, but it nevertheless follows plainly and definitely from his principles, and accordingly, we ourselves have no hesitation in drawing the infer­ence and in making the statement.’(4)

Whilst Aquinas, clarified by Messenger, portrayed a benevolent moral stance of coitus if carried out for procreation, there remained in him an ambivalence about the act. He writes: ‘We are joined to God, both by the habit of grace and by the act of contemplation and love. That which prevents the first kind of union is always sinful, but that which prevents the second kind is not always sinful, for there are certain lawful occupations concerning inferior matters which distract the soul and make it unworthy of being joined actu­ally to God and this is especially the case with the sex act, in which the mind is held because of intense pleasure. For this reason those to whom it belongs to contemplate divine things, or to perform sacred functions, are instructed to abstain from their wives at that time.’(5) Aquinas in his strictly analytical and rational approach con­sidered coitus to be morally good. In his social and subjective view he considered intercourse an inferior matter.

The suspicion with which the medieval theologians approached sexual intercourse is shown further in the fact that they advocated abstinence in the seasons of fasting and on certain festivals, also on Thursday in memory of Christ’s arrest, on Friday in memory of his death, on Saturday in honour of Our Lady, on Sunday in honour of the resurrection and on Monday in commemoration of the departed! Although such spiritual counsels are part of the docu­mented history, there is very little evidence to assess how closely such advice was followed by the people.

Indeed, others suggested less demanding requirements. We find William of Auvergne, Archbishop of Paris in the early thirteenth century, observing: ‘Intercourse, although it is carnal, can involve a spiritual pleasure. Every act of virtue involves pleasure, or at least is able to … So if the marriage act results from a concern to grant the other what is due, or from a charitable anxiety to keep oneself or one’s wife from the stain of sin… No one should doubt that from that act there can sometimes arise a spiritual delight in the heart of the one who performs it.’(6)

This spiritual interpretation of the sexual act had another advo­cate in the Dutch mystic Dionysius the Carthusian (Denys van Leeuwen, 1402-71), who wrote in the Praiseworthy Life of the Married that marriage is a sacrament and it is good. The marital act is good and is the work of charity or spiritual love when it is performed for the paying of the marital debt, for procreation or to prevent fornication by one’s spouse. Although, he added, the married can mutually love each other because of the mutual pleasure they have in the marital act, he also cautioned that the too fervent lover is an adulterer. So the ambivalence of Aquinas continued. Nevertheless, Denys attempted to bring together the spiritual and carnal love in marriage, but this had little impact.

Noonan comments ‘that a new theory began its life with a man who was thoroughly and typically the product of Parisian intellectualism when the University of Paris was still the centre of European theological thought. This man was Martin Le Maistre (1432-81). His book Moral Questions, published posthumously in 1490, is, I believe, the most independent critique of the Christian sexual ethics under­taken by an orthodox critic.’ Le Maistre sweeps away the Augustinian purposes of sexual intercourse and asserts that coitus is legitimate for repaying the marital debt and avoidance of fornication. He also introduces a new concept of seeking bodily health and an even newer one ‘for calming the mind’. He denied the existing views that coitus for avoiding fornication is venial sin and sex for the sake of lust or obtaining pleasure is mortal sin. He then advanced the totally new view that sexual pleasure can be taken first for its own sake, and secondly to avoid tedium and the ache of melancholy caused by the lack of pleasure. Such views were totally radical for the period and are only consonant with contemporary thought.

Another person who had similar radical views was John Major (1470-1550), who maintained that it was no sin to have sexual intercourse to avoid fornication, for one’s own or one’s spouse’s health, and also for the sheer pleasure of it. Le Maistre and Major challenged Augustinian views and had no patristic or other medieval support. They claimed their views emanated from reason alone, but they met with general hostility for at least a century.

In 1563 the Council of Trent became the first ecumenical council to say that husbands were to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, echoing Paul, but no connection was made between love and sexual intercourse. A little later, Sanchez (1550-1610) was to declare that couples who had sexual intercourse simply as husband and wife were not sinning. This view took further the position that there was no need to have the intention of procreation or the avoidance of fornication to have intercourse. Sanchez defended sexual contacts of spouses apart from coitus, and in doing so pro­claimed love as a value. But this view was opposed and Innocent XI attacked the whole idea of sexual intercourse for pleasure alone.

Moving beyond the strict historical boundaries of the Middle Ages, Francis of Sales, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, promoted further the goodness and the holiness of sexual inter­course. In his Introduction to The Devout Life he says, ‘Marital intercourse is certainly holy, lawful and praiseworthy in itself and profitable to society.’(7) Further, in a passage remarkable for its frank­ness and understanding, he writes, ‘Love wedded to fidelity gives birth to a confident intimacy, so that we find saintly husbands and wives making abundant use of mutual caresses as chaste as they are loving, as tender as they are sincere, as in the case of Isaac and Rebecca, the most pure couple in ages past.’ Despite this positive attitude, Francis of Sales chose an elephant as an ideal to illustrate pleasure in the sexual act. The elephant is faithful and loving to the female, but it is supposed to mate only every third year for no more than five days, secretly so as not to be seen until the sixth day. Then it goes to the river to wash itself, unwilling to return to the herd until it is purified. This, he suggested, is a good and modest habit and an example to husbands and wives!

This description of sexuality is a reflection of the ambivalence of the Middle Ages towards sexual intercourse. Undoubtedly there were advances in thought, but no close link between coitus and love was made. Although Augustine’s views receded, they remained a background force. His subjective and emotive views on sexuality gave way to the rational and natural law position of Aquinas. But by this time, theology was firmly in the hands of male theologians who were celibate, in a society that was concerned with survival and not love, despite the presence of the troubadours. And so, although there was progress in the understanding of sexuality, a core view remained that linked sexual intercourse primarily with procreation and not with love.

References

1. Gregory I, Epist XI, LXTV, in a letter to Augustine of Canterbury, Resp. ad. die. interrog.
2. Noonan Jnr, J. T. (1986), Contraception, Harvard, Harvard University Press.
3. Summa Theologica III Suppl., 9.41, art. 3, ad 6.
4. Messenger, E. C. (1948), The Mystery of Sex and Marriage, part 2, London, Sands.
5. Summa Theologica III, 9.41, art. 3, ad 2.
6. Dominian, J. (1967), Christian Marriage, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.
7. De Sales, F. (1962), Introduction to the Devout Life, London, Burns and Oates.

 

 

Chapter 4

The Reformation

The Reformation saw many changes, not least in beliefs about mar­riage and sexuality, with Luther radically attacking the sacramental nature of marriage. ‘It is nowhere written that he who takes a wife receives the grace of God.’(1) Thus the painstaking work of the theologians of the Middle Ages was nullified at a stroke.

Calvin similarly declared that although marriage was a divine ordinance, there was no evidence for a special grace-bearing character attached to marriage. These denials brought forth an unequivocal denunciation by the Council of Trent, which declared anathema anyone denying the grace-giving or sacramental nature of marriage.

Luther saw the ends of marriage very much as Augustine and Aquinas did, and much like the Catholic tradition he was repudia­ting. Luther however took a pessimistic view of marriage. Although he was later to marry, he saw marriage as a difficult and unpleasant way of life. He believed that, ‘according to the spirit’, the Christian had no need of marriage.(2) It was the Christian flesh that was cor­rupted and filled with evil desires that needed it. It was this disease of the flesh that required the result. The results of original sin were for him ‘shame at nakedness and all things sexual, the burning of lust, the subjection of woman to man, the pangs of childbirth and the heartache of parenthood’. And so marriage was for him a medi­cine, ‘a hospital for the sick’.(3) As far as Luther was concerned, his views on marriage and sexuality were steeped in Augustinian and patristic pessimism. The sexual act was accompanied by a sense of shame because of the loss of trust in God. It was always unclean, but nevertheless a necessity.(4) Luther had no illusions about the conception of sexual drive. Taking entirely the man’s view, he saw coitus in marriage as the only remedy to the debauchery of mankind.

Calvin, on the other hand, stressed the relational aspects of mar­riage and saw woman as a companion for her husband and not merely as a relief for his concupiscence. He considered marriage’s primary purpose as social rather than generative, and sexual inter­course as a holy and undefiled act.(5) Even this view could not escape the current belief that sexual pleasure was associated with some evil, through man’s fall, even if it was not treated as sinful by God within marriage because of its positive characteristics in giving forth new life.

Among the later reformers Jeremy Taylor (1613-67) wrote Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Ductor Dubitantium which are among the very few works that examine in detail the more intimate aspects of married life. In discussing the pleasure of sexual inter­course, Taylor says that the spouses, in seeking this pleasure, must follow the ends which hallow it, and among these are the desire for children, the avoidance of fornication, to lighten and ease the cares and sadness of household affairs and to endear each other. D. S. Bailey, an Anglican theologian writing some 40 years ago, considers that the mutual endearment of sexual intercourse offered by Taylor is probably the first overt theological recognition of the relational aspects of coitus, a theme which, as we shall see, was only developed in the last 40 years.(6)

Fuelled by the combination of weakness of the human flesh and, in Luther’s eyes, the widespread failure of the clergy of his time to remain chaste, Luther proposed that clergy should marry. From the local Synod of Elvira in 306, the single state of the clergy had gathered momentum and, at the Second Lateran Council in 1139, clerical marriages were declared invalid. Historians record how difficult it had been to enforce this rule. Luther felt, in the light of what he believed about sexual desire and what he saw in practice around him, that this was an impossible rule to keep except by the very few. Between the Synod of Elvira and the Second Lateran Council, the church struggled with an unpopular restriction. Before the reforming Gregorian popes began to centralise power in Rome, most priests were married. The modern phenomenon of the celibate Roman Catholic priest was facilitated by the seminaries set up after the Reformation. In recent times the much publicised sexual scan­dals of some Roman Catholic clergy remind us what a perennial problem the celibacy of priests is.

For Luther, priests were no exception to the frailties of the flesh and were as much subject to sexual desires as all other men. He condemned those who, in promoting celibacy, argued that the endurance of intense sexual frustration pleased God because of the bitterness and hardship of the suffering involved. For him, there was a minute number of true celibates. We have seen that sexual pleasure, companionship and mutual support were not acceptable reasons for any marriage, let alone a clerical one. Though he recog­nised procreation as a vital reason, it is not a sufficient explanation. Luther was pragmatic. Fallen and, for him, diseased man needs the sexual outlet of marriage and by 1525 Luther himself had married.

The ideas of the Reformation crossed the English Channel and clerical marriage was legalised in 1549 in England. There followed the religious turbulence of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. Eliza­beth was not a great advocate of priestly marriage and she had to be persuaded in favour of it. The story of the struggle for married clergy in England is portrayed fully in Porter’s book. Porter quotes the preamble to the 1549 legislation:

Although it were not only better for the estimation of priests and other ministers of the church of God to live chaste, sole and separate from the company of women and the bond of marriage, but also thereby they might be better intent to the administration of the gospel, and be less intricated and troubled with the charge of a household, being free and unburdened by the care and cost of funding wife and child, and that it were most to be wished that they would willingly and of their selves endeavour themselves to a perpetual chastity abstinence from the use of women. Yet for as much as the contrary hath rather been seen, and such uncleanliness of living and other great inconveniences, not meet to be rehearsed, have followed of compelled chastity and in such laws as have prohibited those (such persons) the godly use of marriage, it were better and rather to be suffered in the commonwealth, that those which could not contain should, after the counsels of scripture live in holy marriage, than feigned abuse with worse enormity outward chastity for single life…..

In this passage, the denigration of women – ‘use of women’ meaning sexual intercourse – the absence of any affirmation of the goodness of marriage and of human sexuality are evident. Marriage of the clergy is advocated, in modern terms, for the urges of libido. The principal reason is the scandal of the lives of the clergy. So by the end of the sixteenth century, marriage for the clergy was generally achieved in England. Porter says that nevertheless Anglicanism, unlike other Protestant religions, would always retain a respect for clerical celibacy.

Did the marriage of the clergy bring about a more creative, posi­tive understanding of sexual intercourse? Definitely not. When I started writing on marriage and sexuality in the early sixties, I was surprised by the lack of any insight into the nature of sexuality and its link with love that I found in the writings of the reformed tra­dition. In my clinical practice I was aware of the problematic nature that sexuality was for many Protestants. I am grateful to Porter for some understanding of the reasons for this. She sums up the mar­riage of the clergy at the Reformation by writing, ‘To permit the clergy to marry, they (the reformers) had to establish a level of acceptance of sexual activity; they did not decide that clergy could marry because they had decided that sex was good. Far from it.’

For the reformers marriage was a cure, a preventative for the intense sexual burning ‘that would otherwise drive a man to sin’. They understood the sex drive almost to a man to be diseased. To Philip Melanchthon, marriage was necessary for ‘the bridling of passions’. For John Vernon, marriage is the ‘lawful water to quench the fire of concupiscence’. For Matthew Parker, marriage is a ‘port’ for those molested with ‘storms of temptation’.

The reformers, going back to Augustine, believed that the sex instinct as inserted in human nature by God had only one good purpose: procreation. Any other purpose of sex, even within mar­riage, was diseased due to the Fall. After the Fall, sexual intercourse, which before was faultless, simply ‘ran riot’. For them sex for pleasure remained as sinful as ever and the counsel of moderation remained a yardstick. Heinrick Bullinger expressed it thus: ‘Like as shamefastness, comeliness and temperance is good in everything, so it is good here also and exceeding necessary. Wedlock is honor­able and holy, therefore must not we as shameless persons cast away good manners, and become like unreasonable beasts. God hath given and ordained marriage to be a remedy and medicine unto our feeble and weak flesh to suage the disquietness therefore and to the intent that we should be clean and undefiled in spirit and in body. And if we rage therewith, and be shameless in words and deeds, then our mistemperance and excess may make it evil which is good and defile it that is clean.’

Here we see the comparison of the sexual drive with animal instinct, the dangers of excess and all the ambivalence that has been noted in the previous chapters. Peter Martyr, a Reformation theologian, suggested that sex seen as a remedy for sin was an additional good of marriage. Augustine would not have thought in these terms and so in this sense the reformers advanced the theology of sex marginally.

In the light of these overall negative views, the reformers pre­served the position that celibacy was superior to marriage. They were clear, however, to differentiate between the enforced celibacy of the Roman Catholic Church and the distinct state of the few who had the grace or, as we would now see it, the maturity of personality to express with full integrity the single state dedicated to God.

We can sum up the position of the Reformation on sexual inter­course by saying that it took a wholly pragmatic step forward. It established the legitimacy of clerical marriage. The main under­standing for this was that man had to control his fallen sexual drive. Sexual intercourse within marriage was therefore legitimate, even though regrettable, but marital intercourse was neither unclean nor defiling. It was a necessity. Certainly no spiritual grace was seen in it. In this sense the reformers remained by and large true to Augustine.

Nowhere do we find in the reformers any understanding of sex that linked it primarily to love, interpersonal relationships, the good­ness of sexual pleasure and reflecting what Genesis states, namely that everything God created was very good. There was no celebration of sexual love. Within this approach the superiority of sexual abstinence was left firmly intact.

Whilst the reformers left the inner world of sexual intercourse by and large untouched, they introduced, according to Porter, a para­digm shift. Thus some of the voices of Anglicanism, reinforced later by the Puritans and the Quakers, saw in the man-woman relationship in marriage a presence of love and loving companion­ship which transcended the traditional association with sin and the rectification by procreation. These Protestant beginnings were to flourish in the twentieth century. Nevertheless it took another 300 years for the inner world of sexuality to begin to be analysed and the next and final chapter in this historical section is dedicated to it.

References

1. D T C, 9.2225, cf De Captivit Babylon, Cap de Matrimonio.
2. Porter, M. (1986), Sex, Marriage and the Church, Victoria, Australia, Dove.
3. Luther, Hochzeitpredigt on Heb XIII, C. Werke (e) III.
4. Luther cf Grosse Katechismus, C. Werke (e) XXI.
5. Calvin, In Epist I ad Cor, n VIII, 6, opera VII.
6. Baily, D. S. (1959), The Man-Woman Relationship in Christian Thought, London, Longmans.

 

Chapter 5

The Twentieth Century

Although the major movements in understanding human sexuality took place in the twentieth century, the antecedents started in the nineteenth. Biologically, the principal finding of the nineteenth century was the discovery of the Graafian follicle in the female that under hormonal stimulation induces ovulation, essential for fertilisation. This discovery brought to an end the very influential view that it was the male sperm alone that produced a whole life, the woman only nurturing it. The understanding of the female’s contribution to new life brought about by this discovery was a positive start in the current context of the battle for egalitarian relationships between the sexes.

At the psychological level, the giant who overlapped the nine­teenth and twentieth centuries was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He was the single most important contributor to the sexual revolution of the twentieth century. In his book The Sex Researchers, Brecher(1) points out, however, that there were others besides Freud who chal­lenged Victorian suppression of sexuality. Havelock Ellis’s (1859-1939) Studies in the Psychology of Sex, which first appeared in German in 1896 and in English the following year, was standard reading for those interested in the subject for several decades. Kraft – Ebing (1840-1902) wrote Psychopathis Sexualis in 1886 which to this very day remains the essential text for abnormal sexuality. The Dutch gynaecologist, Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde (1873-1937), informed thousands, if not millions, of couples about sexuality in marriage in his book Ideal Marriage.

In modern times, Alfred Charles Kinsey (1895-1956), an American, astonished the United States and the rest of the world with his statistical studies on male and female sexuality. There is no doubt that these two studies, which are still quoted, brought into the open the incidence of sexual practices, including homosexuality, which were unknown until his publications. There followed the work of Masters and Johnson in the sixties that clarified the inner world of the orgasm, in a book entitled Human Sexual Response in 1966. Since the sixties, there have been several other studies but the above were the seminal ones.

There is no doubt that the most influential person was Freud, who propagated the view that sexuality was an intrinsic part of the human personality and an inescapable expression of what it is to be human. He brought to an end 2,000 years of Christian suspicion of sexuality. Today we take for granted that sexuality permeates all aspects of human relationship and is not an inferior concept, delineated as lust, or merely an essential requirement of the repro­duction of the species.

With the work of Masters and Johnson in the sixties, we come to our modern era, characterised by the introduction and rapid spread of the contraceptive pill which has created a permanent transform­ation in sexual behaviour. Concurrently with the advent of the contraceptive pill, the period of the sixties and seventies has been portrayed as the sexual revolution. It ushered in an era, still with us, which liberated sex from many taboos. Dress is much more sexually revealing. Communication is infinitely more frank and open. The world of the cinema and television is much more daring with sexual topics. Gains were made in sexual justice and equality, as for example for sexual minorities, and women’s emancipation came of age. Hardly a week passes without newspapers having an article on sex. We now live in a world saturated with the subject.

At the same time as this revolution has taken place, sex has been trivialised. The philosophy of Playboy magazine, multiplied in numerous pornographic images, emphasises the body as a pleasure machine. Education at school has focused on the biology of sex without an associated emotional or loving component. The pre­vailing view is that transient sex is valid and there is an emphasis on the use of contraceptives simply to avoid procreation and disease. Sexual intercourse is understood entirely in terms of pro­curing an orgasm and its relational character, although acknowledged, is placed as a secondary phenomenon. In common language, ‘to have a shag’ is the ideal often floated across the media. Men and women, particularly the latter, are treated as sexual objects. This objectification of bodies, especially female ones, divested from relationship is portrayed widely in prostitution and pornography, both of which have become big business. Thus there is no doubt that this last century has seen a big movement in sexual awareness, accelerated in the last forty years. How have the Christian Churches responded to this historical avalanche?

For those who want to examine the Church’s response in detail, reference should be made to Father Kevin T. Kelly, an eminent Roman Catholic theologian, whose book New Directions in Sexual Ethics(2) illustrates the history of the last 40 years very well and I am grateful to him for the information I include below. A summary of the Roman Catholic position is made by Gareth Moore, in Chapter 16 of the book Christian Ethics.(3) An up-to-date commentary on what the Churches say about sex is to be found in the work of Stuart and Thatcher in the book People of Passion.(4)

The events of the last 40 years in the area of sexuality are so extensive that only those focused on coitus are considered and only in a summary form. Contraception remains a crucial issue for Christians in that the primary purpose of sexual intercourse was seen to be procreation, and the unity between coitus and new life was seen as inviolate. As we shall see in Chapter 20, this is the position of the Roman Catholic Church to this very day. The Church of England held Lambeth Conferences in 1867 and 1897, but there was no mention of contraception on these occasions. In 1908 it was considered and an unconditional condemnation given. In 1920 there was still opposition, but in 1930 there was a vote in favour by a majority of 193 to 67. Here is the critical resolution: ‘Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be possible) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference reports its strongest condemnation of the use of any methods of contraception control for motives of selfishness, luxury or mere convenience.”(5)

This advance in practice, just as with the changes at the Reforma­tion that allowed priests to marry, was not associated with any detailed examination of the inner world of sexual intercourse. The bishops at the Conference, however, declared that coitus had a value of its own in marriage, strengthening and enhancing married love, but no radical changes in sexual theology or philosophy were made at this stage. In response to this initiative Pius XI for the Catholic Church replied with the encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930, in which he condemned any use of contraception. He wrote: ‘The conjugal act is of its very nature designed for the procreation of offspring, and therefore those, who in performing it, deliberately deprive it of its natural power and efficacy, act against nature and do something which is shameful and intrinsically immoral.’ The encyclical was not just condemnatory; Pius XI went on to extend the understanding of marriage in terms of the mutual perfection of the spouses.

Encouraged by this, the Catholic theologian Doms wrote: ‘We may now go on to say that there is a meaning imminent not only in the biological act (coitus) but also in marriage itself. But the meaning is not, as has often been thought, merely “love”. It is rather that fulfilment of love in the community of life of two persons who make one person. This community involves the whole human being in spirit, sense and body… This inner meaning of marriage includes the performance of the sexual act, although it has no conscious interest in procreation… ,’(6) Doms’ book was very persuasive and his thoughts on marriage as a community of the life of two persons, reinforced by intercourse, were well in advance of his time and subsequently influenced the formulations of the Second Vatican Council. Thus we see in the thirties the progress of the relationship of husband and wife as love in action in which sexual intercourse contributes in a basic way. The thirties, forties and fifties were important in the Catholic Church for the debate on the under­standing of the ends of marriage and on the use of the infertile period for regulating births. I have discussed this historic period in my first book on marriage.(7)

We can now move to the sixties and two important statements. The first is the Lambeth Conference of 1958, at which one com­mittee produced The Family in Contemporary Society;(8) a document full of wisdom. In it sexual intercourse is seen as the full giving and receiving of a whole person without any false sense of fears of what is evil. Husband and wife become two in one flesh in a reaffirmed lifelong union of indissolubility.

Shortly afterwards, in the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the terms primary and secondary ends for marriage and embraced an understanding of marriage as a community of love. This love the Lord has judged worthy of special gifts: healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity (Pastoral Constitution Part 2, chapter 1). Moving from marriage to sexual intercourse, the Council has this to say: ‘This love is uniquely expressed and perfected through the marital act. The actions in marriage by which the couple are united intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones. Expressed in a manner which is truly human, these actions signify and promote the mutual self giving by which spouses enrich each other with a joyful and thankful will’ (Pastoral Constitution Part 2, chapter 1).

In an Anglican statement, Marriage and the Church’s Task,(9) we find ‘this polyphony of love finds expression in the lovers’ bodily union. This is not to be comprehended simply in terms of two individuals’ experience of ecstatic pleasure. Such it certainly may be, but it is always more. It is an act of personal commitment that spans past, present and future. It is celebration, healing, renewed pledge and promise. Sexual intercourse can “mean” many different things to husband and wife, according to mood and circumstance. Above all, it communicates the affirmation of mutual belonging.’ These Anglican and Roman Catholic views were reinforced by the 1980 Methodist report, A Christian Understanding of Human Sexu­ality,(10) which focuses on the joy of sexual love. ‘Sexual love, including genital acts when they express that love, shares in the divine act of loving with every human activity which is creative, dedicated and generous. Yet until recently Western Christian attitudes have shown little enthusiasm for the idea of sexual love as an element of Christian living….’ (Article 28). ‘Despite the biblical references to the joy which God gives to his children, most Western traditional Christian attitudes have not accepted enjoyment as an essential part of God’s design for mankind. Physical pleasures have been frequently equated with sin. Since sexuality provides some of the greatest pleasures, it has therefore been most suspect. This rejection of joy warps the Christian understanding of the love of God, the goodness of his creation and the wholeness of human nature… Sexuality is not merely useful. It is enjoyable, purposeful and fulfil­ling. It is a means whereby man and woman may glorify God and grow in the fulfilment of one another’ (Article 29).

The Church of Scotland in its second report to the General Assembly, entitled Human Sexuality,(11) comes to the significant con­clusion that sexuality serves primarily to initiate, cement and enrich relationships. Procreation is a ‘second order’ function of sexuality, ordained of God but not its main role, which is to do with relationship.

Father Kelly concludes that the Churches are veering towards the view that human sexuality is primarily to be seen in its relational significance. This is not necessarily or essentially bound up with procreative function, and the quality of relationship ‘is the prime criterion of sexual ethics’. This ‘quality of relationship’ is intimately linked with love. Several of the main reports from the Churches in the last 40 years have referred to this love and its creative potential.

This inner world of sexual intercourse has not been analysed in any detail and so Christianity, having moved from seeing sex pri­marily in terms of procreation to seeing it in terms of relationship, has no real basis for an alternative to casual sex. References to love have no persuasive authority because love is such a difficult word to understand and yet, ultimately, all human behaviour in Christ­ianity is based on the fundamental teaching of Jesus that all commandments are subordinate to the ones of loving God and loving one’s neighbour as oneself. There is no question that the meaning of sexuality is to be found in love, and this book is dedicated to analysing what we mean by love in sexual human relationships.

References

1. Brecher, E. M. (1970), The Sex Researchers, London, Andre Deutsch.
2. Kelly, K. T. (1998), New Directions in Sexual Ethics, London, Chapman.
3. Hoose, B. (1998), Christian Ethics, London, Cassell.
4. Stuart, E. and Thatcher, A. (1997), People of Passion, London, Mowbray.
5. The Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 15.
6. Dorns, H. (1939), The Meaning of Marriage, London, Sheed and Ward.
7. Dominian, J. (1967), Christian Marriage, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.
8. The Lambeth Conference 1958, London, SPCK and Seabury Press.
9. (1978), Marriage and the Church’s Task, London, CIO Publishing.
10. Report of Commission on Human Sexuality (1990), Methodist Pub­lishing House.
11. Human Sexuality 1994 in the Church of Scotland Reports to the General Assembly, Peterborough.

 

 

 

 

Let’s Make Love. The Meaning of Sexual Intercourse.   By Jack Dominian    

Part I   A Brief History of Christianity and Sex        

Chapter 1

The Judeo-Christian Background

This book is dedicated to the history and meaning of sexual inter­course. It traces the origin from the Hebrew tradition in Genesis and brings it up to date in our contemporary period. It is a study which reflects the vicissitudes or changes of circumstances of sexu­ality and summarises how one religious tradition has treated this most intimate of personal subjects. The story begins with the two accounts in Genesis. The second is the older of the two, traditionally known as the Yahwistic, and dates from about the tenth century BC.

Yahweh God said, ‘It is not right that man should be alone. I shall make him a helper.’ So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild animals. But no helper suitable for man was found for him. So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. The man exclaimed:

This at last is bone from my bones,

And flesh from my flesh!

This is to be called woman,

For this was taken from man.

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body.

Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame before each other. (Gen. 2:18-25)

In the most comprehensive, theological commentary on the body,(1) John Paul II uses the two passages in Genesis – particularly the one above – to proclaim the physical, social and spiritual equa­lity of the sexes. The woman is intrinsically related to the man in that it was one of his ribs that formed the basis of her creation.

He goes on to describe in detail the created readiness of the male and female bodies for sexual intercourse. He labels this as ‘nuptial’.

John Paul II sets his exegesis against a background of Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees, when they asked him whether it was lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause. Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?” So they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder’ (Matt. 19:3ff). The Pope pays particular attention to Jesus’ reference to the ‘beginning’. For him, this implies a basic constitutive state of nuptuality and, as we shall see below, of innocence.

Sexual intercourse and nakedness are completely free from shame or embarrassment in the setting of coitus within the context of marriage. The Pope, of course, acknowledges the fall and original sin, but he sees in Christ a resumption with that link of innocence.

Genesis 2:18-25 doesn’t refer to procreation, rather it focuses on the significance of intercourse for the sake of the union of the couple. It is interesting that the oldest account of sexual intercourse should concentrate on the relational meaning of the act. It is the body that transacts this union through which the couple donate the whole of themselves to each other. Through the body there is an encounter of persons and in this meeting the genitals transmit the whole richness of each to the other.

It could be argued that the text as it stands does not concentrate on the relational aspect of the act, but on the need for the provision of a helper suitable for man. In this sense the woman could be defined as a helper, a subordinate to the man to meet his sexual and other needs. But the passage starts with Yahweh God’s comment that it is not right for man to be alone. John Paul II comments that this reference is a response to the initial state of mankind moving from original solitude to unity. From what has been said, it is not unreasonable to assume that the creation of woman is an act of mutual communion between equals. In this communion of persons, sexual intercourse is a focus of communication. John Paul II argues extensively in favour of this interpretation: ‘In sexual self-donation the couple indeed speak a “language of the body”, expressing in a manner far more profound than words, the totality of the gift of each other.’ However, one would need to read The Theology of the Body to follow his closely argued case.

Beyond Genesis, I believe that the whole Bible suggests a psycho-somatic-spiritual unity of man and woman, of which sexual intercourse can be said to be a focal point. It would require a scriptural scholar to analyse in detail the evidence in favour of this view in the Scriptures, but an outline of the case can be made from Genesis 2:18-25.

In the course of history this insight into the mutual donation of self became overshadowed by the emphasis on transmission of life and childbearing through sexual intercourse. It is only in our own day that coitus has become detached from the intimate link with childbearing so as to free it to return to its original meaning, the communication of life in its widest personal sense.

Genesis 1:26-31, the so-called priestly narrative, written some five centuries later, supplements the first account with distinctive additions.

God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth.’

God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

God blessed them, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on the earth.’

God also said, ‘See I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this shall be your food. To all the wild beasts, all birds of heaven and all living reptiles on the earth I give all the foliage of plants for food.’ And so it was. God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. (Gen. 1:26-31)

In this second and later passage, God confirms the creation of man and woman and the author here adds that the couple reflected the image of God in them. We can inescapably conclude that sexuality is to be found in the Godhead. Critics would say that if this con­clusion was inescapable, it should have been drawn a long time ago and it was not. My reply would be that if the couple reflect the image of God in them then this would also include sexuality, but that the traditional hostility to sexuality made this interpretation difficult.

In this passage, sexuality is focused on procreation, on children, and this interpretation of its meaning was held steadfastly for 3,000 years. Procreation within the context of marriage was the primary meaning given to sexuality. Yet this is not what the passage pro­claims. It states that God saw all he had made and found it very good, and that includes sexuality. The interpretation that Christ­ianity found in the course of time was that only marriage makes intercourse good. Whilst the two texts suggest that marriage is the context for sexual intercourse, as procreation needs parents to nurture children, traditional Christian interpretation has tended to dismiss the value that sexual intercourse has in itself as part of what God saw and found very good. In other words the value of sexual intercourse in its own right was not recognised and appreciated until our own time. This book is devoted to an exposition of the intrinsic value of coitus.

In the Old Testament the increase of the chosen people was of great importance and childbearing received much praise. As Rebekah leaves her family to marry Isaac, she is bidden ‘Sister of ours, from you may there spring many thousands and tens of thousands’ (Gen. 24:60). Both Abraham and Isaac are promised that their posterity would be as countless as the stars in the sky (Gen. 15:5; 22:17). ‘The crown of the aged is their children’s children’ (Prov. 17:6). ‘Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them’ (Ps. 127:3-5). Infertility, on the other hand, was seen as a disgrace, a punishment from God. Just as Yahweh rewards sexuality by giving children, so he punishes aspects of sexual conduct. If we confine ourselves to heterosexual behaviour, then the prime condemnation was focused on incest, adultery and prostitution. Why were these patterns of behaviour condemned and on what basis?

In his fascinating book, Dirt, Greed and Sex,(2) L. W. Countryman suggests that the grounds for sexual condemnation in ancient Israel were based on purity and property. Based on the work of Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger,(3) Countryman postulates that sexual impurity is found in the difference between cleanliness and uncleanliness. One of the easiest of the purity principles to under­stand is the concern about menstruating women. In Israel, during her menstruation, a woman was unclean for seven days and her uncleanness was contagious, so that others became infected if they touched any furniture on which the menstruating women had lain. The uncleanness extends to a woman who has a haemorrhage. In this respect we see the extent to which Jesus overcame the purity laws about cleanliness, not only in his teaching of the apostles, but also in the fact that he allowed his garment to be touched by a woman who had an issue of blood (Mark 5:34). Summing up the idea of dirt emanating from purity principles, Countryman has this to say: ‘What is consistent from one culture to another is that purity rules relate to the boundaries of the human body, especially to its orifices. This means that whatever passes these boundaries has particular importance for purity laws: foods, waste products, shed blood, menstrual blood, sexual emissions, sexual acts, birth, death.’ Countryman makes it very clear that purity laws were one source for dictating sexual conduct in Israel. Thus incest, adultery and prostitution were all considered defiling.

As mentioned above, Jesus went beyond the purity laws. In an important passage in Matthew, Jesus called the people to him and said, ‘Listen, and understand. What goes into the mouth does not make a man unclean; it is what comes out of the mouth that makes him unclean’ (Matt. 15:10-11). The apostles, steeped in Jewish purity mentality, did not appreciate what Jesus was saying and asked him to explain. At their request, he gave his famous reply, ‘Can’t you see that whatever goes into the mouth passes through the stomach and is discharged into the sewer? But what comes out from the mouth comes from the heart, and it is this that makes someone unclean. For from the heart come evil intentions: murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, slander. These are the things that make a person unclean. But eating with unwashed hands does not make anyone unclean’ (Matt. 15:17-20). In a profound psychological shift, Jesus put the emphasis of sexual sin not on physical purity, but on feelings, motivation and the will, all emanating from the inner world of human beings. This move from physical dirt to purity of heart did not stop Christianity from casting women in general – and menstruating ones in particular – as objects of uncleanliness to be avoided. The long history of looking at women in terms of danger, and experiencing their bodies as a threat, stems from the purity laws. In its history, Christianity was to deviate far from the directness and clarity of the original description of the body and the two sexes in the passages in Genesis.

Countryman puts forward a second principle responsible for sexual conduct, namely that of property. Israel was based on the principle of patriarchy. The husband was the head of the household and his wife, children, slaves and animals were his property. Children, like wives, were foremost possessions. Once again Countryman shows that incest, adultery and prostitution contra­vened property principles. Thus adultery was a violation of the property of another and was punishable by stoning. Indeed, in John’s gospel the scribes and Pharisees brought such a woman to Jesus (John 8:3-11). It is no exaggeration to assert that in Jesus’ handling of the woman he not only reasserted the principles of compassion, forgiveness and love, but he also attacked the context of sexual sin in terms of property.

Indeed we know that Jesus set a much higher standard. ‘You have heard how it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say this to you, if a man looks at a woman lustfully he has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matt. 5:27-28). In The Theology of the Body, John Paul II devotes a whole section to this passage of Jesus. A superficial reading of the passage might imply that it is wrong to disrupt another marriage and thus commit adultery, but the Pope comments extensively on this. He stresses that the adultery of a lustful look is in the heart. By lust is meant an experience of sexual desire devoid of a loving relationship. According to the Pope, lust is a break of the nuptial unity, of the communion between man and woman. The nuptial unity of the body stressed by Jesus in the ‘beginning’ is a unity of the physical, social, psychological and cognitive aspects of man and woman offered mutually in an exclu­sive relationship of love. The lustful look that Jesus refers to in the heart as adultery, is a solely physical sexual attraction which enjoys the other person as an object, but which has no mutuality of per­sonal gift. Jesus assumed that a woman is not primarily a piece of property who is violated by being taken from the rightful possession of another. She is a person who deserves love, and anyone who treats her with sexual desire devoid of love has offended against her. Thus as we move from the Old to the New Testament, we see that the two pillars on which sexual transgression were based, namely purity (dirt) and possession, were modified by Jesus. In one form or another they were to remain in force until our day, although Jesus put love, intention and will in their place.

Moving to the New Testament, there is not much written specifi­cally about sexual intercourse. There are three features related to it. The first is the virgin birth of Jesus. In my book, One Like Us(4) I deal with the nurturing aspects of the parenting of Jesus rather than emphasising virginity per se. The important thing from Jesus’ point of view was that he had a set of parents who made it possible for him to develop his loving side to the point where he was love and God’s nature of love could coexist easily with his human nature.

The second point made in the New Testament is Jesus’ introduc­tion of the single state dedicated to God. After Jesus forbade divorce (Matt. 19:1-9), the apostles said to him, ‘If that is how things are between husband and wife, it is advisable not to marry.’ But he replied, ‘It is not everyone who can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is granted. There are eunuchs born so from their mother’s womb. There are eunuchs made so by human agency and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can’ (Matt. 19:10-12). This concept of continence, or exercising self-control, for the sake of the kingdom of God is a new one introduced by Jesus. Those who have made it a basis for affirming the single state have often failed to notice how clear Jesus was to show that it is a gift, a rare gift, granted to the few chosen by God. Compulsion has no place in its ranks. Nevertheless, combined with the virgin birth, it brought a new vision away from sexual intercourse to continence.

The third point that needs to be made is that we have no evidence that Jesus married or had sexual intercourse. In my book I point out that, although he neither married nor, as far as we know, had sexual intercourse, there is no reason to suggest that he did not have ordinary sexual feelings. But marriage, sexual intercourse, children and family would have been too restrictive for the man who came to serve the whole world, to be open to all mankind throughout the ages.

Thus from Jesus himself we associate virginity in his parents, the pursuit of continence for the kingdom and the absence of marriage in himself. What about marriage and sexual intercourse in the New Testament? For the fullest treatment of this we must turn to Paul and in particular to his first letter to the Corinthians. It would appear that the Corinthians, as all the early Christians, were waiting for an early return of Jesus. Paul makes it clear that they should live as if they were living in the last days. But does this mean they should abandon marriage and sexual intercourse? Not at all. ‘Now for the questions about which you wrote, yes it is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman; yet to avoid immorality every man should have his own wife and every woman her own husband’ (1 Cor. 7:1-3).

Paul approves of the single state. He adds, ‘To the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay as they are, like me. But if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry, since it is better to be married than to be burnt up’ (1 Cor. 7:8-9). Paul is pragmatic. He appreciates that men and women have sexual drives which most of them need to express. He would prefer that they remain unmarried, but he does not make impossible demands and prefers marriage to fornication and adultery.

Regarding frequency of intercourse, he says: ‘The husband must give to his wife what she has a right to expect and so the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and in the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. You must not deprive each other, except by mutual consent for a limited time, to leave yourself free for prayer and to come together again afterwards; otherwise Satan may take advantage of any lack of self- control to put you to the test’ (1 Cor. 7:3-6).

In these few lines Paul shows himself a master of sexual under­standing. Spouses are to have access to one another, a model of equality. He says that they should not deprive each other, except for prayer. Paul is not counselling continence for the married. He accepts sexual desire and encourages its free expression. Later on in the same letter he repeats the same points: although time is short, everyone should remain in the state they were called to. ‘If you are joined to a wife, do not seek to be released; if you are freed of a wife, do not look for a wife. However, if you do get married, that is not a sin, and it is not sinful for a virgin to enter upon marriage’ (1 Cor. 7:27-28).

From this letter to the Corinthians, we get a picture of Paul in which he shows a realistic acknowledgement of sexual needs. To those who have them, marriage is a way of meeting them. He is not enthusiastic about matrimony but he appreciates human reality. He favours the single state as a way of serving the Lord. Remaining single for the sake of the Lord is his own option. Paul appears not to have received any clear instruction on virginity. ‘About people remaining virgin, I have no directions from the Lord, but I give my own opinion as a person who has been granted God’s mercy to be faithful’ (1 Cor. 7:25).

At the end of the gospels and the epistles, we have a picture in which sexual intercourse embedded in marriage is a norm that is accepted. Jesus carried out his first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana (John 2:1-11). He would not have participated at a wedding if he did not wish to continue the state of marriage and, within it, sexual intercourse.

Sexual intercourse was understood by Paul as a natural and God- given expression to meet sexual needs. But, independent of Jesus, he initiated a tradition of the single state dedicated to God that was to span the whole of the next 2,000 years to our very day.

In Genesis we find God seeing all that he had created as very good. That included sexual intercourse, but there was no special analysis of coitus. The nearest we get to a link between sex and love is the indirect symbolism of marriage as a covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. The book of the prophet Hosea describes the adultery of his wife, and Yahweh’s instruction to take her back and be reconciled in a spirit of tenderness and love. Here, as in the case of the Song of Songs, which we shall be examining later, marriage and sex are seen in emotional terms of love. But, apart from these two Old Testament descriptions, sexual intercourse is not seen primarily in personal terms. The two Testaments form the background for the pessimism and ambivalence with which sexuality was to be held for most of the Christian period. In the next chapter, we turn to the first five centuries of the Christian era in which sexual intercourse was immersed in a particular gloom.

References

Chapter 1

1. John Paul II (1994), The Theology of the Body, London, Daughters of St Paul.
2. Countryman, L. W. (1988), Dirt, Greed and Sex, Philadelphia, Fortress Press.
3. Douglas, M. (1966), Purity and Danger: Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
4. Dominian, J. (1998), One Like Us: A psychological interpretation of Jesus, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.

 

 

Chapter 2

The Early Centuries

The Christian era was inaugurated against a backdrop of the expectation of the imminent second coming or parousia. The Pauline letters were full of exhortations which took their reference from the belief that time was short. With this view in mind, Paul encouraged the early Christians to stay in the state he found them in and, as far as the married were concerned, to continue to remain in marriage with sexual intercourse as one of its expressions. But as he expected the second coming, he recommended those who were not married to remain single.

With the passage of time, the expectation of the second coming faded. Men and women were not exempt from sexual urges and needs. How did their leaders attempt to shape their sexual behaviour? These men (because the leaders were all men) had to work with the ‘givens’ of the Christian faith: the virgin birth of Jesus; his single state; his ideas on the single state dedicated to God, and the teaching of Genesis that recommended marriage as a source of companionship and procreation. The classic study of Peter Brown in the book The Body and Society(1) offers, at the present time of writing, the clearest and most extensive presentation of how the first five centuries up to St Augustine developed the theme of sexu­ality. Those who are interested in this fascinating study are recommended to read the book itself. Here a brief summary is given of the views and influence of the main actors on the stage.

The work of Brown can be divided into the views of eminent fathers and the consequences of monastic life in the desert. This took place in a Roman context, which saw marriage as the begin­ning, root and fountainhead of human nature. It is from marriage that fathers, mothers, children and families spring. Children were a necessity in an age when life expectancy was on average less than 25 years, and when only 4 out of every 100 men and fewer women lived beyond the age of 50. Sexual intercourse and reproduction were regarded as essential for the maintenance of the population. Although sexual intercourse in the service of reproduction was con­sidered the norm, there were two classic attitudes operating as well. The first was a powerful belief that the body was made up of vital spirit and its loss devitalised it. Hence all loss of vital spirit, including emission of seed, weakened the body. The second was the Stoic philosophy that what was best for human beings was a strict control of the emotions that led to apatheia. The mature person had all his or her emotions under strict control and was indifferent to them. Soranus is quoted as saying, ‘Men who remain chaste are stronger and better than others and pass their lives in better health.’(2) This view is not supported by modern research. For the Stoics, sexual intercourse was supposed to occur only for reproduction, an idea that heavily influenced early Christianity. There was no concept of coitus for pleasure and the positions adopted for intercourse were to be selected on the basis of the best deposition of the seed for fecundity. The marital bed was no place for pleasure but for orderly activity designed for procreation.

The Greek and Latin fathers, particularly the latter, took their cue from their Christian background of virginity, the apotheosis of the single state and the classical views outlined above, so that, writing at the end of the second century, Clement of Alexandria could say, ‘The human ideal of continence, I mean that which is set forth by the Greek philosophers, teaches one to resist passion, so as not to be made subservient to it, and to train the instincts to pursue rational goals.’ But for Christians he went on to say, ‘Our ideal is not to experience desire at all’ (quoted in Brown). The last sentence gives a flavour of what the fathers thought about human sexuality. One of the marks of identification with the Holy Spirit was sexual abstinence.

We begin with the figure of Tertullian in the late second century. His commands give us a glimpse of the admixture on sexual writings that were circulating in a major Latin Church, Carthage. Tertullian was a Stoic and he concentrated on the body. His deceptively simple formula was ‘Look to the body’, and for him continence brought down the gift of the Holy Spirit. If sanctity was not to be obtained through martyrdom, then continence was the next best thing. Tertullian was the first to make this important statement, which had a long influence in the Latin world, that abstinence from sex was the most effective way to achieve clarity of the soul. The teaching of Tertullian and other fathers we shall consider below enunciated the theology, but the practice was seen in members of the Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean in the second and third centuries, who expressed with vehemence their belief in continence by their renunciation of married life. In the less orthodox circles, the Gnostic and Manichean theologies propagated similar views of abandoning marriage.

Also towards the end of the second century Clement of Alexandria, one of the most prolific writers of the pre-Constantine Church, arrived on the scene. He stressed the importance of every moment of daily life, especially the life of the household. Clement acknowl­edged human sexual urges, but put forward the view that they were to be strictly disciplined. He was a wholehearted supporter of the Stoic view of apatheia, the idea of a life free from passions. And so he advocated a serenity in sexual behaviour as in all other aspects of life – order in everything as well as in sexual activity. His concept of disciplined order was to avoid frequent intercourse, not to use a variety of positions to maximise pleasure and to avoid intercourse when one’s wife was pregnant. No such liberties were allowed for Christians. Sexual intercourse should take place for pro­creation and not for aesthetic pleasure.

For Origen in the early third century sexuality was a mere passing phase. Human beings could do without it. In order to give expression to his view of sexuality as a transient entity of no importance to the spirit, he had himself castrated. As a natural consequence of these ideas he advocated continence from an early stage of life. Virginity stood for the original state and reflected the purity of the soul. Ultimately, he believed that all physical relations would vanish. Sexual intercourse, Origen believed, as many subsequently have, coarsened the spirit. Virgin bodies were temples of God. As with Tertullian, this theology had practical applications and perpetual continence was upheld by groups of Christians throughout the Mediterranean. Origen died in ad 253 and by then the combined efforts of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and himself had set the tone for the preference for virginity and continence.

In AD 306 the Synod of Elvira declared that ‘Bishops, priests, deacons and all members of the clergy connected with the Liturgy must abstain from their wives and must not beget sons.’(3) By the beginning of the fourth century, two things had been established. The clergy were encouraged not to marry or, if married, not to have sexual intercourse, and a close link was made between liturgy and the avoidance of sexuality.

Brown comments that by the end of the second century it might have been possible for Christianity to develop based on the family and protected, albeit with demanding limitations, by a view of sexu­ality as outlined by Clement of Alexandria. It would have been linked with rigorous discipline and fear of women, but would have not progressed in favour of the total renunciation of sexual activity. Instead total sexual renunciation had become widely acclaimed as a feature of the Christian life. Brown, however, adds that it was a renunciation limited to the few, even though they saw themselves as the elite.

Still in the fourth century we find another theological giant, Gregory of Nyssa. Sexuality for Gregory was an afterthought of the creator. It had been added to the original serene indifferentiation of nature, along with death, after Adam’s fall. Sexual differentiation was a necessary adjustment after the Fall. Gregory was preoccupied with the clock of life, which measured the passage of tainted time and he situated this clock in marriage. He saw human time made up of attempts to block out the sight of the grave. Marriage and sexual intercourse and the raising of children were such a pastime. So the removal of sexuality was the denial of time, placed there by the fear of death – remove marriage and you remove the one in­stitution that had been brought about by death. Adam and Eve recognised their fear of extinction and joined together in marriage to have children. And so for Gregory the tick of time lay silent in the heart of the continent person.

Gregory’s view was reinforced in the same century by that of John Chrysostom, the most gifted preacher of his age. For Chrysostom marriage was a superfluity rendered necessary only by the fall of Adam. In his book on virginity he declared that the earth was already overpopulated and needed no further reproductive effort.

Moving from East to West, we meet in the fourth century Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who was particularly sensitive to the weaknesses of the flesh. For him, the body was a peril that might engulf the soul. Every human being bore an ugly scar and that scar was sexuality. For Ambrose, Christ was the perfect model, unscarred by a sexual origin and the presence of sexual impulses. Ambrose, among others, was a champion of the continence of bishops and clergy, providing a separate, hierarchical class of the ascent of life. On his scale, virgins came first, widows second and the married third. The integrity of the virgin state was the highest pinnacle of Christian virtue.

Finally, we have in Jerome in the late fourth century an ardent apostle for virginity. He was the heir of Origen and he communi­cated vividly the awareness of the sexual dangers of the body. For Jerome the human body was a darkened forest filled with the roaring of wild beasts that could only be controlled by rigid diet and the strict avoidance of sexual attraction. For him, even first marriages were regrettable but second ones were only one step away from the brothel.

During the centuries covered by the lives of these fathers, others left the city and settled in the desert, forming monastic communi­ties. These were the desert fathers of whom the best known was Anthony. For the monks of Egypt, sexual temptation was a drive towards women and matrimony, and hence a return to settled land and away from the desert. For the desert ascetic, whilst sexuality was a temptation, the urge for food was an even greater challenge. It was widely believed by the desert fathers that the first sin of Adam and Eve was not sexual, but ravenous greed. So fasting was at the forefront of their life. Food pushed sexuality aside. Thus self-­mortification in terms of food and sex was the first line of attack on the senses. When the body was quelled, it was the heart and the will that had to be subdued. From the heart and the will emerged pride and ambition, and the combination of these could destroy monastic communities. From the heart and the will emanated sexual fantasies and it was finally the abatement of fantasy that was the proof of the conquering of sexuality. The overcoming of sexuality was associated with the cessation of nocturnal emissions. Control over the body was the monk’s preoccupation. The desert ascetic did not flourish with just control over his mind. His body also had to be tutored and in bringing the body under control the soul was influenced. The material life of the monk was considered capable of altering consciousness. Between them the fathers and the desert monks influenced the climate of sexuality of the first five centuries and left an enduring legacy in the West.

The last father to be considered is Augustine, the giant of them all.(4) He wrote the definitive book on marriage, whose ends of children, faithfulness and permanency had a profound impact on Christianity and was quoted as recently as Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930.(5)

Augustine knew that sexual intercourse was deeply associated with pleasure. He had experienced this pleasure over a period of 13 years with a woman. During these years, he associated with the Manicheans and tried to control his sexual urges, but all to no avail. His sexual drive was strong and, in the immortal words that have often been quoted, he wrote in his confessions, ‘Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not now.’(6) His mother, Monica, prayed relentlessly for his conversion and he parted from the woman in order to get married. Even during the period of waiting for the marriage, he could not control his sexual urges and took a con­cubine. Finally, he converted to Christianity, gave up the idea of marriage and close association with women, and went on to serve his God with distinction.

Augustine, holding a contemporary minority view, believed that there would have been sexual relations between Adam and Eve before the Fall. His original and devastating view was formulated round his concept of original sin. Whilst agreeing that this would involve the loss of sanctifying grace, he was convinced that an even greater result would be the loss of an effective ordering of man’s passions leading to concupiscence or sexual desire. He associated concupiscence with intercourse and thought that coitus transmitted original sin. Thus sexual intercourse was always accompanied by sin. But, if sex was performed for procreation, this sinfulness was reduced; for any other reason it remained at least venially or pardon­ably sinful.

We have to see in this theology not only spiritual speculation but psychological overreaction to coitus that shows itself in the following passage; ‘As to copulation in marriage which, according to the law of matrimony must be used for procreation’s sake; does it not seek a corner for its performance, though it be honest and lawful? Does not the bridegroom turn all the servants, and even the bridesmaids and all others, out of his chamber, before he begins to embrace his bride? As the great author of Roman eloquence has said, whereas all honest deeds desire the light, that is love to be known, this only desires so to be known that it blushes to be seen… For this act desires indeed to be seen by the mind, yet it seeks to escape from the sight of the eye. Now what can be the reason for this, unless it be that this lawful act of nature is accompanied with a penalty of shame from our first parents?’(7) It is significant that Christianity has not followed Augustine in either of these propositions: that sexual intercourse in marriage is in any way sinful or that it transmits original sin. The vehemence with which he expressed these views does suggest, however, that Augustine was working out in his theology his own psychological problems. With Augustine, we reach the peak of pessimism and negativity about sexual intercourse.

The first five centuries produced a series of theological treatises that devalued coitus, saw virginity and continence as higher states, influenced the avoidance of sexual intercourse by the clergy and the downgrading of coitus.

The Stoic view of emotional tranquillity coupled with Jesus’ single state, the virginity of his mother, the apparent immanent second coming and the idiosyncratic views of individual theologians, com­bined to cast sexuality and coitus in a negative light, from which Christianity is perhaps only emerging in our own day and time.

The devaluation of one of God’s most precious gifts started in these early centuries and produced a massive distortion of the goodness of sex. We shall see that in the subsequent centuries, although modifications took place, the basic negativity never gave up its relentless grip.

The patristic period thus concluded in a spirit of asceticism and sexual pessimism in which the developing attitudes to sexuality have lost, temporarily in the writings of the fathers and others, the links with the positive approach of the Old Testament. Sexual intercourse came under the influence of Hellenistic dualism, Stoicism, which had infiltrated Christian thought, the growing importance of the single state dedicated to God and the personal experience of such men as Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine. Thus the Christian era began under a cloud of sexual pessimism that cast a long shadow to this very day.

References

1. Brown, R (1988), The Body and Society, London, Faber and Faber.
2. Soranus, Gynaecia 17.39.2, Ilberg.
3. Council of Elvira, Canon 33, Jonkers ed.
4. Power, K. (1995), Veiled Desire, London, Darton, Longman and Todd; Noonan Jnr, J. T. (1986), Contraception, Harvard, Harvard University Press. See also Brown, The Body and Society, op. cit.
5. Casti Connubii 1930, London, CTS.
6. Augustine, Confessions, 8.7.17: 757.

 

 

Chapter 3

The Medieval Period

The medieval period saw a mixture of a reiteration of the rigorism of the early Church with the return to Augustinian theology and a softening of attitudes. Augustine set a very exacting standard for the interpretation of the meaning of sexual intercourse, which was bound to influence later theologians. One of these was Gregory I, Pope from 590 to 604, a man of outstanding talent, whose 850 surviving letters and other writings had a considerable influence in the Middle Ages. He followed the Augustinian approach in general but changed the details. He stated that whilst the sexual act in itself was not sinful – nor its involvement with concupiscence – the pleasure attached to it was. So that, even when spouses desired children, they could not avoid the inevitable pleasure attached to the act, which was sinful.(1) With this view, which once again would find no permanent place in the teaching of the Church, the theology of the sexual act reached its lowest ebb. This Gregorian view – that all sexual pleasure was an evil – reached its maximum strength at the end of the twelfth century. In this teaching, a value for sexual intercourse such as love was unthinkable.

Against this solid opposition to the link between coitus and love, there emerged in the second quarter of the twelfth century a new ideology, which was opposed to the link between sexual intercourse and procreation. It was the code of courtly love, sung by many of the troubadours. The troubadours praised the love of man for woman. They separated love from marriage, celebrating sexual pleasure and rejecting the generative purpose. By 1139, the level of danger of such a view drew the attention of the Ecumenical Council, the Second Lateran Council, who reiterated the orthodox position.

The development of the procreative purpose of marriage and sex in the twelfth century was a reaction to the Cathars and courtly love. The emerging doctrine vigorously excluded pleasure as a purpose of sexual intercourse. There were two basic reasons for the return of such strictness. The first was a response to the Cathars and the second a return to Augustinian sexual ethics. In this doctrine coitus was found to be reprehensible and evil, unless excused by the Augustinian goods of marriage. According to this more rigid view, some small sin was inevitable in coitus.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) contributed a mixture of traditional and more optimistic views on sexual intercourse. The basic assump­tions held by Aquinas were that natural coitus was instituted by God and that the natural order should not be altered by man. For him, the natural order of sexual intercourse demanded no other position for coitus than the woman beneath the man. He used the word ‘bestiality’ to characterise modes of sexual intercourse that depart from this position.

The Thomistic analysis takes the biological function of pro­creation of the sexual act as given by God and unalterable by man. ‘The end, however, which nature intends in copulation is offspring to be procreated and educated and that this good might be sought it has put delight in copulation, as Augustine says, in marriage and concupiscence. Whoever, therefore uses copulation for the delight which is in it, not referring the intention to the end intended by nature acts against nature.’(2) The position taken in intercourse, its purpose and its delight were strictly for procreation. This attitude, which Aquinas formulated, reinforcing Augustine’s view, was to remain supreme in official church teaching until our own day. Thus for Aquinas, a norm is postulated consisting in heterosexual, marital coitus, the man above the woman, with insemination resulting. This norm is ordained, its naturalness is established by God. Deliberate departure from the norm is unnatural, a direct offence against God. Aquinas distinguished between the delight experienced as an inducement for procreation, and the rightfulness and intensity of that delight. He argued that before the Fall there would have been more delight in coitus because of the greater purity of nature and the greater sensibility of the body. After the Fall, concupiscence detracts coitus from the command of reason. Aquinas accepted the normality of sexual pleasure. For him there was no assent to Gre­gorian rigorism. Dealing with the question that excess of passion corrupts virtue, he says, ‘The excessive passion which corrupts virtue is one that not only hinders or prevents the exercise of reason, but also destroys the rational order, but this is not the effect of the intensity of the delight in the marriage act, for although man is not then under control, yet he has been controlled and directed beforehand by reason.’(3)

Writing 50 years ago, Father Messenger in his book The Mystery of Sex and Marriage went further and stated: ‘Joining together all the strands of St Thomas’ teaching, we can assert without hesitation that there is a very important place to be allotted to passion and pleasure in the sex act. Both passion and pleasure are natural con­comitants of the sex act, and, so far from diminishing its novel goodness if the sex act is willed beforehand according to right reason, the effect of pleasure and passion is simply to heighten and increase the moral goodness of the act, not in any way to diminish it. St Thomas does not seem to say this any where expressly, but it nevertheless follows plainly and definitely from his principles, and accordingly, we ourselves have no hesitation in drawing the infer­ence and in making the statement.’(4)

Whilst Aquinas, clarified by Messenger, portrayed a benevolent moral stance of coitus if carried out for procreation, there remained in him an ambivalence about the act. He writes: ‘We are joined to God, both by the habit of grace and by the act of contemplation and love. That which prevents the first kind of union is always sinful, but that which prevents the second kind is not always sinful, for there are certain lawful occupations concerning inferior matters which distract the soul and make it unworthy of being joined actu­ally to God and this is especially the case with the sex act, in which the mind is held because of intense pleasure. For this reason those to whom it belongs to contemplate divine things, or to perform sacred functions, are instructed to abstain from their wives at that time.’(5) Aquinas in his strictly analytical and rational approach con­sidered coitus to be morally good. In his social and subjective view he considered intercourse an inferior matter.

The suspicion with which the medieval theologians approached sexual intercourse is shown further in the fact that they advocated abstinence in the seasons of fasting and on certain festivals, also on Thursday in memory of Christ’s arrest, on Friday in memory of his death, on Saturday in honour of Our Lady, on Sunday in honour of the resurrection and on Monday in commemoration of the departed! Although such spiritual counsels are part of the docu­mented history, there is very little evidence to assess how closely such advice was followed by the people.

Indeed, others suggested less demanding requirements. We find William of Auvergne, Archbishop of Paris in the early thirteenth century, observing: ‘Intercourse, although it is carnal, can involve a spiritual pleasure. Every act of virtue involves pleasure, or at least is able to … So if the marriage act results from a concern to grant the other what is due, or from a charitable anxiety to keep oneself or one’s wife from the stain of sin… No one should doubt that from that act there can sometimes arise a spiritual delight in the heart of the one who performs it.’(6)

This spiritual interpretation of the sexual act had another advo­cate in the Dutch mystic Dionysius the Carthusian (Denys van Leeuwen, 1402-71), who wrote in the Praiseworthy Life of the Married that marriage is a sacrament and it is good. The marital act is good and is the work of charity or spiritual love when it is performed for the paying of the marital debt, for procreation or to prevent fornication by one’s spouse. Although, he added, the married can mutually love each other because of the mutual pleasure they have in the marital act, he also cautioned that the too fervent lover is an adulterer. So the ambivalence of Aquinas continued. Nevertheless, Denys attempted to bring together the spiritual and carnal love in marriage, but this had little impact.

Noonan comments ‘that a new theory began its life with a man who was thoroughly and typically the product of Parisian intellectualism when the University of Paris was still the centre of European theological thought. This man was Martin Le Maistre (1432-81). His book Moral Questions, published posthumously in 1490, is, I believe, the most independent critique of the Christian sexual ethics under­taken by an orthodox critic.’ Le Maistre sweeps away the Augustinian purposes of sexual intercourse and asserts that coitus is legitimate for repaying the marital debt and avoidance of fornication. He also introduces a new concept of seeking bodily health and an even newer one ‘for calming the mind’. He denied the existing views that coitus for avoiding fornication is venial sin and sex for the sake of lust or obtaining pleasure is mortal sin. He then advanced the totally new view that sexual pleasure can be taken first for its own sake, and secondly to avoid tedium and the ache of melancholy caused by the lack of pleasure. Such views were totally radical for the period and are only consonant with contemporary thought.

Another person who had similar radical views was John Major (1470-1550), who maintained that it was no sin to have sexual intercourse to avoid fornication, for one’s own or one’s spouse’s health, and also for the sheer pleasure of it. Le Maistre and Major challenged Augustinian views and had no patristic or other medieval support. They claimed their views emanated from reason alone, but they met with general hostility for at least a century.

In 1563 the Council of Trent became the first ecumenical council to say that husbands were to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, echoing Paul, but no connection was made between love and sexual intercourse. A little later, Sanchez (1550-1610) was to declare that couples who had sexual intercourse simply as husband and wife were not sinning. This view took further the position that there was no need to have the intention of procreation or the avoidance of fornication to have intercourse. Sanchez defended sexual contacts of spouses apart from coitus, and in doing so pro­claimed love as a value. But this view was opposed and Innocent XI attacked the whole idea of sexual intercourse for pleasure alone.

Moving beyond the strict historical boundaries of the Middle Ages, Francis of Sales, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, promoted further the goodness and the holiness of sexual inter­course. In his Introduction to The Devout Life he says, ‘Marital intercourse is certainly holy, lawful and praiseworthy in itself and profitable to society.’(7) Further, in a passage remarkable for its frank­ness and understanding, he writes, ‘Love wedded to fidelity gives birth to a confident intimacy, so that we find saintly husbands and wives making abundant use of mutual caresses as chaste as they are loving, as tender as they are sincere, as in the case of Isaac and Rebecca, the most pure couple in ages past.’ Despite this positive attitude, Francis of Sales chose an elephant as an ideal to illustrate pleasure in the sexual act. The elephant is faithful and loving to the female, but it is supposed to mate only every third year for no more than five days, secretly so as not to be seen until the sixth day. Then it goes to the river to wash itself, unwilling to return to the herd until it is purified. This, he suggested, is a good and modest habit and an example to husbands and wives!

This description of sexuality is a reflection of the ambivalence of the Middle Ages towards sexual intercourse. Undoubtedly there were advances in thought, but no close link between coitus and love was made. Although Augustine’s views receded, they remained a background force. His subjective and emotive views on sexuality gave way to the rational and natural law position of Aquinas. But by this time, theology was firmly in the hands of male theologians who were celibate, in a society that was concerned with survival and not love, despite the presence of the troubadours. And so, although there was progress in the understanding of sexuality, a core view remained that linked sexual intercourse primarily with procreation and not with love.

References

1. Gregory I, Epist XI, LXTV, in a letter to Augustine of Canterbury, Resp. ad. die. interrog.
2. Noonan Jnr, J. T. (1986), Contraception, Harvard, Harvard University Press.
3. Summa Theologica III Suppl., 9.41, art. 3, ad 6.
4. Messenger, E. C. (1948), The Mystery of Sex and Marriage, part 2, London, Sands.
5. Summa Theologica III, 9.41, art. 3, ad 2.
6. Dominian, J. (1967), Christian Marriage, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.
7. De Sales, F. (1962), Introduction to the Devout Life, London, Burns and Oates.

 

 

Chapter 4

The Reformation

The Reformation saw many changes, not least in beliefs about mar­riage and sexuality, with Luther radically attacking the sacramental nature of marriage. ‘It is nowhere written that he who takes a wife receives the grace of God.’(1) Thus the painstaking work of the theologians of the Middle Ages was nullified at a stroke.

Calvin similarly declared that although marriage was a divine ordinance, there was no evidence for a special grace-bearing character attached to marriage. These denials brought forth an unequivocal denunciation by the Council of Trent, which declared anathema anyone denying the grace-giving or sacramental nature of marriage.

Luther saw the ends of marriage very much as Augustine and Aquinas did, and much like the Catholic tradition he was repudia­ting. Luther however took a pessimistic view of marriage. Although he was later to marry, he saw marriage as a difficult and unpleasant way of life. He believed that, ‘according to the spirit’, the Christian had no need of marriage.(2) It was the Christian flesh that was cor­rupted and filled with evil desires that needed it. It was this disease of the flesh that required the result. The results of original sin were for him ‘shame at nakedness and all things sexual, the burning of lust, the subjection of woman to man, the pangs of childbirth and the heartache of parenthood’. And so marriage was for him a medi­cine, ‘a hospital for the sick’.(3) As far as Luther was concerned, his views on marriage and sexuality were steeped in Augustinian and patristic pessimism. The sexual act was accompanied by a sense of shame because of the loss of trust in God. It was always unclean, but nevertheless a necessity.(4) Luther had no illusions about the conception of sexual drive. Taking entirely the man’s view, he saw coitus in marriage as the only remedy to the debauchery of mankind.

Calvin, on the other hand, stressed the relational aspects of mar­riage and saw woman as a companion for her husband and not merely as a relief for his concupiscence. He considered marriage’s primary purpose as social rather than generative, and sexual inter­course as a holy and undefiled act.(5) Even this view could not escape the current belief that sexual pleasure was associated with some evil, through man’s fall, even if it was not treated as sinful by God within marriage because of its positive characteristics in giving forth new life.

Among the later reformers Jeremy Taylor (1613-67) wrote Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Ductor Dubitantium which are among the very few works that examine in detail the more intimate aspects of married life. In discussing the pleasure of sexual inter­course, Taylor says that the spouses, in seeking this pleasure, must follow the ends which hallow it, and among these are the desire for children, the avoidance of fornication, to lighten and ease the cares and sadness of household affairs and to endear each other. D. S. Bailey, an Anglican theologian writing some 40 years ago, considers that the mutual endearment of sexual intercourse offered by Taylor is probably the first overt theological recognition of the relational aspects of coitus, a theme which, as we shall see, was only developed in the last 40 years.(6)

Fuelled by the combination of weakness of the human flesh and, in Luther’s eyes, the widespread failure of the clergy of his time to remain chaste, Luther proposed that clergy should marry. From the local Synod of Elvira in 306, the single state of the clergy had gathered momentum and, at the Second Lateran Council in 1139, clerical marriages were declared invalid. Historians record how difficult it had been to enforce this rule. Luther felt, in the light of what he believed about sexual desire and what he saw in practice around him, that this was an impossible rule to keep except by the very few. Between the Synod of Elvira and the Second Lateran Council, the church struggled with an unpopular restriction. Before the reforming Gregorian popes began to centralise power in Rome, most priests were married. The modern phenomenon of the celibate Roman Catholic priest was facilitated by the seminaries set up after the Reformation. In recent times the much publicised sexual scan­dals of some Roman Catholic clergy remind us what a perennial problem the celibacy of priests is.

For Luther, priests were no exception to the frailties of the flesh and were as much subject to sexual desires as all other men. He condemned those who, in promoting celibacy, argued that the endurance of intense sexual frustration pleased God because of the bitterness and hardship of the suffering involved. For him, there was a minute number of true celibates. We have seen that sexual pleasure, companionship and mutual support were not acceptable reasons for any marriage, let alone a clerical one. Though he recog­nised procreation as a vital reason, it is not a sufficient explanation. Luther was pragmatic. Fallen and, for him, diseased man needs the sexual outlet of marriage and by 1525 Luther himself had married.

The ideas of the Reformation crossed the English Channel and clerical marriage was legalised in 1549 in England. There followed the religious turbulence of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. Eliza­beth was not a great advocate of priestly marriage and she had to be persuaded in favour of it. The story of the struggle for married clergy in England is portrayed fully in Porter’s book. Porter quotes the preamble to the 1549 legislation:

Although it were not only better for the estimation of priests and other ministers of the church of God to live chaste, sole and separate from the company of women and the bond of marriage, but also thereby they might be better intent to the administration of the gospel, and be less intricated and troubled with the charge of a household, being free and unburdened by the care and cost of funding wife and child, and that it were most to be wished that they would willingly and of their selves endeavour themselves to a perpetual chastity abstinence from the use of women. Yet for as much as the contrary hath rather been seen, and such uncleanliness of living and other great inconveniences, not meet to be rehearsed, have followed of compelled chastity and in such laws as have prohibited those (such persons) the godly use of marriage, it were better and rather to be suffered in the commonwealth, that those which could not contain should, after the counsels of scripture live in holy marriage, than feigned abuse with worse enormity outward chastity for single life…..

In this passage, the denigration of women – ‘use of women’ meaning sexual intercourse – the absence of any affirmation of the goodness of marriage and of human sexuality are evident. Marriage of the clergy is advocated, in modern terms, for the urges of libido. The principal reason is the scandal of the lives of the clergy. So by the end of the sixteenth century, marriage for the clergy was generally achieved in England. Porter says that nevertheless Anglicanism, unlike other Protestant religions, would always retain a respect for clerical celibacy.

Did the marriage of the clergy bring about a more creative, posi­tive understanding of sexual intercourse? Definitely not. When I started writing on marriage and sexuality in the early sixties, I was surprised by the lack of any insight into the nature of sexuality and its link with love that I found in the writings of the reformed tra­dition. In my clinical practice I was aware of the problematic nature that sexuality was for many Protestants. I am grateful to Porter for some understanding of the reasons for this. She sums up the mar­riage of the clergy at the Reformation by writing, ‘To permit the clergy to marry, they (the reformers) had to establish a level of acceptance of sexual activity; they did not decide that clergy could marry because they had decided that sex was good. Far from it.’

For the reformers marriage was a cure, a preventative for the intense sexual burning ‘that would otherwise drive a man to sin’. They understood the sex drive almost to a man to be diseased. To Philip Melanchthon, marriage was necessary for ‘the bridling of passions’. For John Vernon, marriage is the ‘lawful water to quench the fire of concupiscence’. For Matthew Parker, marriage is a ‘port’ for those molested with ‘storms of temptation’.

The reformers, going back to Augustine, believed that the sex instinct as inserted in human nature by God had only one good purpose: procreation. Any other purpose of sex, even within mar­riage, was diseased due to the Fall. After the Fall, sexual intercourse, which before was faultless, simply ‘ran riot’. For them sex for pleasure remained as sinful as ever and the counsel of moderation remained a yardstick. Heinrick Bullinger expressed it thus: ‘Like as shamefastness, comeliness and temperance is good in everything, so it is good here also and exceeding necessary. Wedlock is honor­able and holy, therefore must not we as shameless persons cast away good manners, and become like unreasonable beasts. God hath given and ordained marriage to be a remedy and medicine unto our feeble and weak flesh to suage the disquietness therefore and to the intent that we should be clean and undefiled in spirit and in body. And if we rage therewith, and be shameless in words and deeds, then our mistemperance and excess may make it evil which is good and defile it that is clean.’

Here we see the comparison of the sexual drive with animal instinct, the dangers of excess and all the ambivalence that has been noted in the previous chapters. Peter Martyr, a Reformation theologian, suggested that sex seen as a remedy for sin was an additional good of marriage. Augustine would not have thought in these terms and so in this sense the reformers advanced the theology of sex marginally.

In the light of these overall negative views, the reformers pre­served the position that celibacy was superior to marriage. They were clear, however, to differentiate between the enforced celibacy of the Roman Catholic Church and the distinct state of the few who had the grace or, as we would now see it, the maturity of personality to express with full integrity the single state dedicated to God.

We can sum up the position of the Reformation on sexual inter­course by saying that it took a wholly pragmatic step forward. It established the legitimacy of clerical marriage. The main under­standing for this was that man had to control his fallen sexual drive. Sexual intercourse within marriage was therefore legitimate, even though regrettable, but marital intercourse was neither unclean nor defiling. It was a necessity. Certainly no spiritual grace was seen in it. In this sense the reformers remained by and large true to Augustine.

Nowhere do we find in the reformers any understanding of sex that linked it primarily to love, interpersonal relationships, the good­ness of sexual pleasure and reflecting what Genesis states, namely that everything God created was very good. There was no celebration of sexual love. Within this approach the superiority of sexual abstinence was left firmly intact.

Whilst the reformers left the inner world of sexual intercourse by and large untouched, they introduced, according to Porter, a para­digm shift. Thus some of the voices of Anglicanism, reinforced later by the Puritans and the Quakers, saw in the man-woman relationship in marriage a presence of love and loving companion­ship which transcended the traditional association with sin and the rectification by procreation. These Protestant beginnings were to flourish in the twentieth century. Nevertheless it took another 300 years for the inner world of sexuality to begin to be analysed and the next and final chapter in this historical section is dedicated to it.

References

1. D T C, 9.2225, cf De Captivit Babylon, Cap de Matrimonio.
2. Porter, M. (1986), Sex, Marriage and the Church, Victoria, Australia, Dove.
3. Luther, Hochzeitpredigt on Heb XIII, C. Werke (e) III.
4. Luther cf Grosse Katechismus, C. Werke (e) XXI.
5. Calvin, In Epist I ad Cor, n VIII, 6, opera VII.
6. Baily, D. S. (1959), The Man-Woman Relationship in Christian Thought, London, Longmans.

 

Chapter 5

The Twentieth Century

Although the major movements in understanding human sexuality took place in the twentieth century, the antecedents started in the nineteenth. Biologically, the principal finding of the nineteenth century was the discovery of the Graafian follicle in the female that under hormonal stimulation induces ovulation, essential for fertilisation. This discovery brought to an end the very influential view that it was the male sperm alone that produced a whole life, the woman only nurturing it. The understanding of the female’s contribution to new life brought about by this discovery was a positive start in the current context of the battle for egalitarian relationships between the sexes.

At the psychological level, the giant who overlapped the nine­teenth and twentieth centuries was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He was the single most important contributor to the sexual revolution of the twentieth century. In his book The Sex Researchers, Brecher(1) points out, however, that there were others besides Freud who chal­lenged Victorian suppression of sexuality. Havelock Ellis’s (1859-1939) Studies in the Psychology of Sex, which first appeared in German in 1896 and in English the following year, was standard reading for those interested in the subject for several decades. Kraft – Ebing (1840-1902) wrote Psychopathis Sexualis in 1886 which to this very day remains the essential text for abnormal sexuality. The Dutch gynaecologist, Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde (1873-1937), informed thousands, if not millions, of couples about sexuality in marriage in his book Ideal Marriage.

In modern times, Alfred Charles Kinsey (1895-1956), an American, astonished the United States and the rest of the world with his statistical studies on male and female sexuality. There is no doubt that these two studies, which are still quoted, brought into the open the incidence of sexual practices, including homosexuality, which were unknown until his publications. There followed the work of Masters and Johnson in the sixties that clarified the inner world of the orgasm, in a book entitled Human Sexual Response in 1966. Since the sixties, there have been several other studies but the above were the seminal ones.

There is no doubt that the most influential person was Freud, who propagated the view that sexuality was an intrinsic part of the human personality and an inescapable expression of what it is to be human. He brought to an end 2,000 years of Christian suspicion of sexuality. Today we take for granted that sexuality permeates all aspects of human relationship and is not an inferior concept, delineated as lust, or merely an essential requirement of the repro­duction of the species.

With the work of Masters and Johnson in the sixties, we come to our modern era, characterised by the introduction and rapid spread of the contraceptive pill which has created a permanent transform­ation in sexual behaviour. Concurrently with the advent of the contraceptive pill, the period of the sixties and seventies has been portrayed as the sexual revolution. It ushered in an era, still with us, which liberated sex from many taboos. Dress is much more sexually revealing. Communication is infinitely more frank and open. The world of the cinema and television is much more daring with sexual topics. Gains were made in sexual justice and equality, as for example for sexual minorities, and women’s emancipation came of age. Hardly a week passes without newspapers having an article on sex. We now live in a world saturated with the subject.

At the same time as this revolution has taken place, sex has been trivialised. The philosophy of Playboy magazine, multiplied in numerous pornographic images, emphasises the body as a pleasure machine. Education at school has focused on the biology of sex without an associated emotional or loving component. The pre­vailing view is that transient sex is valid and there is an emphasis on the use of contraceptives simply to avoid procreation and disease. Sexual intercourse is understood entirely in terms of pro­curing an orgasm and its relational character, although acknowledged, is placed as a secondary phenomenon. In common language, ‘to have a shag’ is the ideal often floated across the media. Men and women, particularly the latter, are treated as sexual objects. This objectification of bodies, especially female ones, divested from relationship is portrayed widely in prostitution and pornography, both of which have become big business. Thus there is no doubt that this last century has seen a big movement in sexual awareness, accelerated in the last forty years. How have the Christian Churches responded to this historical avalanche?

For those who want to examine the Church’s response in detail, reference should be made to Father Kevin T. Kelly, an eminent Roman Catholic theologian, whose book New Directions in Sexual Ethics(2) illustrates the history of the last 40 years very well and I am grateful to him for the information I include below. A summary of the Roman Catholic position is made by Gareth Moore, in Chapter 16 of the book Christian Ethics.(3) An up-to-date commentary on what the Churches say about sex is to be found in the work of Stuart and Thatcher in the book People of Passion.(4)

The events of the last 40 years in the area of sexuality are so extensive that only those focused on coitus are considered and only in a summary form. Contraception remains a crucial issue for Christians in that the primary purpose of sexual intercourse was seen to be procreation, and the unity between coitus and new life was seen as inviolate. As we shall see in Chapter 20, this is the position of the Roman Catholic Church to this very day. The Church of England held Lambeth Conferences in 1867 and 1897, but there was no mention of contraception on these occasions. In 1908 it was considered and an unconditional condemnation given. In 1920 there was still opposition, but in 1930 there was a vote in favour by a majority of 193 to 67. Here is the critical resolution: ‘Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be possible) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference reports its strongest condemnation of the use of any methods of contraception control for motives of selfishness, luxury or mere convenience.”(5)

This advance in practice, just as with the changes at the Reforma­tion that allowed priests to marry, was not associated with any detailed examination of the inner world of sexual intercourse. The bishops at the Conference, however, declared that coitus had a value of its own in marriage, strengthening and enhancing married love, but no radical changes in sexual theology or philosophy were made at this stage. In response to this initiative Pius XI for the Catholic Church replied with the encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930, in which he condemned any use of contraception. He wrote: ‘The conjugal act is of its very nature designed for the procreation of offspring, and therefore those, who in performing it, deliberately deprive it of its natural power and efficacy, act against nature and do something which is shameful and intrinsically immoral.’ The encyclical was not just condemnatory; Pius XI went on to extend the understanding of marriage in terms of the mutual perfection of the spouses.

Encouraged by this, the Catholic theologian Doms wrote: ‘We may now go on to say that there is a meaning imminent not only in the biological act (coitus) but also in marriage itself. But the meaning is not, as has often been thought, merely “love”. It is rather that fulfilment of love in the community of life of two persons who make one person. This community involves the whole human being in spirit, sense and body… This inner meaning of marriage includes the performance of the sexual act, although it has no conscious interest in procreation… ,’(6) Doms’ book was very persuasive and his thoughts on marriage as a community of the life of two persons, reinforced by intercourse, were well in advance of his time and subsequently influenced the formulations of the Second Vatican Council. Thus we see in the thirties the progress of the relationship of husband and wife as love in action in which sexual intercourse contributes in a basic way. The thirties, forties and fifties were important in the Catholic Church for the debate on the under­standing of the ends of marriage and on the use of the infertile period for regulating births. I have discussed this historic period in my first book on marriage.(7)

We can now move to the sixties and two important statements. The first is the Lambeth Conference of 1958, at which one com­mittee produced The Family in Contemporary Society;(8) a document full of wisdom. In it sexual intercourse is seen as the full giving and receiving of a whole person without any false sense of fears of what is evil. Husband and wife become two in one flesh in a reaffirmed lifelong union of indissolubility.

Shortly afterwards, in the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the terms primary and secondary ends for marriage and embraced an understanding of marriage as a community of love. This love the Lord has judged worthy of special gifts: healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity (Pastoral Constitution Part 2, chapter 1). Moving from marriage to sexual intercourse, the Council has this to say: ‘This love is uniquely expressed and perfected through the marital act. The actions in marriage by which the couple are united intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones. Expressed in a manner which is truly human, these actions signify and promote the mutual self giving by which spouses enrich each other with a joyful and thankful will’ (Pastoral Constitution Part 2, chapter 1).

In an Anglican statement, Marriage and the Church’s Task,(9) we find ‘this polyphony of love finds expression in the lovers’ bodily union. This is not to be comprehended simply in terms of two individuals’ experience of ecstatic pleasure. Such it certainly may be, but it is always more. It is an act of personal commitment that spans past, present and future. It is celebration, healing, renewed pledge and promise. Sexual intercourse can “mean” many different things to husband and wife, according to mood and circumstance. Above all, it communicates the affirmation of mutual belonging.’ These Anglican and Roman Catholic views were reinforced by the 1980 Methodist report, A Christian Understanding of Human Sexu­ality,(10) which focuses on the joy of sexual love. ‘Sexual love, including genital acts when they express that love, shares in the divine act of loving with every human activity which is creative, dedicated and generous. Yet until recently Western Christian attitudes have shown little enthusiasm for the idea of sexual love as an element of Christian living….’ (Article 28). ‘Despite the biblical references to the joy which God gives to his children, most Western traditional Christian attitudes have not accepted enjoyment as an essential part of God’s design for mankind. Physical pleasures have been frequently equated with sin. Since sexuality provides some of the greatest pleasures, it has therefore been most suspect. This rejection of joy warps the Christian understanding of the love of God, the goodness of his creation and the wholeness of human nature… Sexuality is not merely useful. It is enjoyable, purposeful and fulfil­ling. It is a means whereby man and woman may glorify God and grow in the fulfilment of one another’ (Article 29).

The Church of Scotland in its second report to the General Assembly, entitled Human Sexuality,(11) comes to the significant con­clusion that sexuality serves primarily to initiate, cement and enrich relationships. Procreation is a ‘second order’ function of sexuality, ordained of God but not its main role, which is to do with relationship.

Father Kelly concludes that the Churches are veering towards the view that human sexuality is primarily to be seen in its relational significance. This is not necessarily or essentially bound up with procreative function, and the quality of relationship ‘is the prime criterion of sexual ethics’. This ‘quality of relationship’ is intimately linked with love. Several of the main reports from the Churches in the last 40 years have referred to this love and its creative potential.

This inner world of sexual intercourse has not been analysed in any detail and so Christianity, having moved from seeing sex pri­marily in terms of procreation to seeing it in terms of relationship, has no real basis for an alternative to casual sex. References to love have no persuasive authority because love is such a difficult word to understand and yet, ultimately, all human behaviour in Christ­ianity is based on the fundamental teaching of Jesus that all commandments are subordinate to the ones of loving God and loving one’s neighbour as oneself. There is no question that the meaning of sexuality is to be found in love, and this book is dedicated to analysing what we mean by love in sexual human relationships.

References

1. Brecher, E. M. (1970), The Sex Researchers, London, Andre Deutsch.
2. Kelly, K. T. (1998), New Directions in Sexual Ethics, London, Chapman.
3. Hoose, B. (1998), Christian Ethics, London, Cassell.
4. Stuart, E. and Thatcher, A. (1997), People of Passion, London, Mowbray.
5. The Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 15.
6. Dorns, H. (1939), The Meaning of Marriage, London, Sheed and Ward.
7. Dominian, J. (1967), Christian Marriage, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.
8. The Lambeth Conference 1958, London, SPCK and Seabury Press.
9. (1978), Marriage and the Church’s Task, London, CIO Publishing.
10. Report of Commission on Human Sexuality (1990), Methodist Pub­lishing House.
11. Human Sexuality 1994 in the Church of Scotland Reports to the General Assembly, Peterborough.

 

 

 

 

Let’s Make Love. The Meaning of Sexual Intercourse.   By Jack Dominian    

Part I   A Brief History of Christianity and Sex        

Chapter 1

The Judeo-Christian Background

This book is dedicated to the history and meaning of sexual inter­course. It traces the origin from the Hebrew tradition in Genesis and brings it up to date in our contemporary period. It is a study which reflects the vicissitudes or changes of circumstances of sexu­ality and summarises how one religious tradition has treated this most intimate of personal subjects. The story begins with the two accounts in Genesis. The second is the older of the two, traditionally known as the Yahwistic, and dates from about the tenth century BC.

Yahweh God said, ‘It is not right that man should be alone. I shall make him a helper.’ So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild animals. But no helper suitable for man was found for him. So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. The man exclaimed:

This at last is bone from my bones,

And flesh from my flesh!

This is to be called woman,

For this was taken from man.

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body.

Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame before each other. (Gen. 2:18-25)

In the most comprehensive, theological commentary on the body,(1) John Paul II uses the two passages in Genesis – particularly the one above – to proclaim the physical, social and spiritual equa­lity of the sexes. The woman is intrinsically related to the man in that it was one of his ribs that formed the basis of her creation.

He goes on to describe in detail the created readiness of the male and female bodies for sexual intercourse. He labels this as ‘nuptial’.

John Paul II sets his exegesis against a background of Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees, when they asked him whether it was lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause. Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?” So they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder’ (Matt. 19:3ff). The Pope pays particular attention to Jesus’ reference to the ‘beginning’. For him, this implies a basic constitutive state of nuptuality and, as we shall see below, of innocence.

Sexual intercourse and nakedness are completely free from shame or embarrassment in the setting of coitus within the context of marriage. The Pope, of course, acknowledges the fall and original sin, but he sees in Christ a resumption with that link of innocence.

Genesis 2:18-25 doesn’t refer to procreation, rather it focuses on the significance of intercourse for the sake of the union of the couple. It is interesting that the oldest account of sexual intercourse should concentrate on the relational meaning of the act. It is the body that transacts this union through which the couple donate the whole of themselves to each other. Through the body there is an encounter of persons and in this meeting the genitals transmit the whole richness of each to the other.

It could be argued that the text as it stands does not concentrate on the relational aspect of the act, but on the need for the provision of a helper suitable for man. In this sense the woman could be defined as a helper, a subordinate to the man to meet his sexual and other needs. But the passage starts with Yahweh God’s comment that it is not right for man to be alone. John Paul II comments that this reference is a response to the initial state of mankind moving from original solitude to unity. From what has been said, it is not unreasonable to assume that the creation of woman is an act of mutual communion between equals. In this communion of persons, sexual intercourse is a focus of communication. John Paul II argues extensively in favour of this interpretation: ‘In sexual self-donation the couple indeed speak a “language of the body”, expressing in a manner far more profound than words, the totality of the gift of each other.’ However, one would need to read The Theology of the Body to follow his closely argued case.

Beyond Genesis, I believe that the whole Bible suggests a psycho-somatic-spiritual unity of man and woman, of which sexual intercourse can be said to be a focal point. It would require a scriptural scholar to analyse in detail the evidence in favour of this view in the Scriptures, but an outline of the case can be made from Genesis 2:18-25.

In the course of history this insight into the mutual donation of self became overshadowed by the emphasis on transmission of life and childbearing through sexual intercourse. It is only in our own day that coitus has become detached from the intimate link with childbearing so as to free it to return to its original meaning, the communication of life in its widest personal sense.

Genesis 1:26-31, the so-called priestly narrative, written some five centuries later, supplements the first account with distinctive additions.

God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth.’

God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

God blessed them, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on the earth.’

God also said, ‘See I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this shall be your food. To all the wild beasts, all birds of heaven and all living reptiles on the earth I give all the foliage of plants for food.’ And so it was. God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. (Gen. 1:26-31)

In this second and later passage, God confirms the creation of man and woman and the author here adds that the couple reflected the image of God in them. We can inescapably conclude that sexuality is to be found in the Godhead. Critics would say that if this con­clusion was inescapable, it should have been drawn a long time ago and it was not. My reply would be that if the couple reflect the image of God in them then this would also include sexuality, but that the traditional hostility to sexuality made this interpretation difficult.

In this passage, sexuality is focused on procreation, on children, and this interpretation of its meaning was held steadfastly for 3,000 years. Procreation within the context of marriage was the primary meaning given to sexuality. Yet this is not what the passage pro­claims. It states that God saw all he had made and found it very good, and that includes sexuality. The interpretation that Christ­ianity found in the course of time was that only marriage makes intercourse good. Whilst the two texts suggest that marriage is the context for sexual intercourse, as procreation needs parents to nurture children, traditional Christian interpretation has tended to dismiss the value that sexual intercourse has in itself as part of what God saw and found very good. In other words the value of sexual intercourse in its own right was not recognised and appreciated until our own time. This book is devoted to an exposition of the intrinsic value of coitus.

In the Old Testament the increase of the chosen people was of great importance and childbearing received much praise. As Rebekah leaves her family to marry Isaac, she is bidden ‘Sister of ours, from you may there spring many thousands and tens of thousands’ (Gen. 24:60). Both Abraham and Isaac are promised that their posterity would be as countless as the stars in the sky (Gen. 15:5; 22:17). ‘The crown of the aged is their children’s children’ (Prov. 17:6). ‘Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them’ (Ps. 127:3-5). Infertility, on the other hand, was seen as a disgrace, a punishment from God. Just as Yahweh rewards sexuality by giving children, so he punishes aspects of sexual conduct. If we confine ourselves to heterosexual behaviour, then the prime condemnation was focused on incest, adultery and prostitution. Why were these patterns of behaviour condemned and on what basis?

In his fascinating book, Dirt, Greed and Sex,(2) L. W. Countryman suggests that the grounds for sexual condemnation in ancient Israel were based on purity and property. Based on the work of Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger,(3) Countryman postulates that sexual impurity is found in the difference between cleanliness and uncleanliness. One of the easiest of the purity principles to under­stand is the concern about menstruating women. In Israel, during her menstruation, a woman was unclean for seven days and her uncleanness was contagious, so that others became infected if they touched any furniture on which the menstruating women had lain. The uncleanness extends to a woman who has a haemorrhage. In this respect we see the extent to which Jesus overcame the purity laws about cleanliness, not only in his teaching of the apostles, but also in the fact that he allowed his garment to be touched by a woman who had an issue of blood (Mark 5:34). Summing up the idea of dirt emanating from purity principles, Countryman has this to say: ‘What is consistent from one culture to another is that purity rules relate to the boundaries of the human body, especially to its orifices. This means that whatever passes these boundaries has particular importance for purity laws: foods, waste products, shed blood, menstrual blood, sexual emissions, sexual acts, birth, death.’ Countryman makes it very clear that purity laws were one source for dictating sexual conduct in Israel. Thus incest, adultery and prostitution were all considered defiling.

As mentioned above, Jesus went beyond the purity laws. In an important passage in Matthew, Jesus called the people to him and said, ‘Listen, and understand. What goes into the mouth does not make a man unclean; it is what comes out of the mouth that makes him unclean’ (Matt. 15:10-11). The apostles, steeped in Jewish purity mentality, did not appreciate what Jesus was saying and asked him to explain. At their request, he gave his famous reply, ‘Can’t you see that whatever goes into the mouth passes through the stomach and is discharged into the sewer? But what comes out from the mouth comes from the heart, and it is this that makes someone unclean. For from the heart come evil intentions: murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, slander. These are the things that make a person unclean. But eating with unwashed hands does not make anyone unclean’ (Matt. 15:17-20). In a profound psychological shift, Jesus put the emphasis of sexual sin not on physical purity, but on feelings, motivation and the will, all emanating from the inner world of human beings. This move from physical dirt to purity of heart did not stop Christianity from casting women in general – and menstruating ones in particular – as objects of uncleanliness to be avoided. The long history of looking at women in terms of danger, and experiencing their bodies as a threat, stems from the purity laws. In its history, Christianity was to deviate far from the directness and clarity of the original description of the body and the two sexes in the passages in Genesis.

Countryman puts forward a second principle responsible for sexual conduct, namely that of property. Israel was based on the principle of patriarchy. The husband was the head of the household and his wife, children, slaves and animals were his property. Children, like wives, were foremost possessions. Once again Countryman shows that incest, adultery and prostitution contra­vened property principles. Thus adultery was a violation of the property of another and was punishable by stoning. Indeed, in John’s gospel the scribes and Pharisees brought such a woman to Jesus (John 8:3-11). It is no exaggeration to assert that in Jesus’ handling of the woman he not only reasserted the principles of compassion, forgiveness and love, but he also attacked the context of sexual sin in terms of property.

Indeed we know that Jesus set a much higher standard. ‘You have heard how it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say this to you, if a man looks at a woman lustfully he has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matt. 5:27-28). In The Theology of the Body, John Paul II devotes a whole section to this passage of Jesus. A superficial reading of the passage might imply that it is wrong to disrupt another marriage and thus commit adultery, but the Pope comments extensively on this. He stresses that the adultery of a lustful look is in the heart. By lust is meant an experience of sexual desire devoid of a loving relationship. According to the Pope, lust is a break of the nuptial unity, of the communion between man and woman. The nuptial unity of the body stressed by Jesus in the ‘beginning’ is a unity of the physical, social, psychological and cognitive aspects of man and woman offered mutually in an exclu­sive relationship of love. The lustful look that Jesus refers to in the heart as adultery, is a solely physical sexual attraction which enjoys the other person as an object, but which has no mutuality of per­sonal gift. Jesus assumed that a woman is not primarily a piece of property who is violated by being taken from the rightful possession of another. She is a person who deserves love, and anyone who treats her with sexual desire devoid of love has offended against her. Thus as we move from the Old to the New Testament, we see that the two pillars on which sexual transgression were based, namely purity (dirt) and possession, were modified by Jesus. In one form or another they were to remain in force until our day, although Jesus put love, intention and will in their place.

Moving to the New Testament, there is not much written specifi­cally about sexual intercourse. There are three features related to it. The first is the virgin birth of Jesus. In my book, One Like Us(4) I deal with the nurturing aspects of the parenting of Jesus rather than emphasising virginity per se. The important thing from Jesus’ point of view was that he had a set of parents who made it possible for him to develop his loving side to the point where he was love and God’s nature of love could coexist easily with his human nature.

The second point made in the New Testament is Jesus’ introduc­tion of the single state dedicated to God. After Jesus forbade divorce (Matt. 19:1-9), the apostles said to him, ‘If that is how things are between husband and wife, it is advisable not to marry.’ But he replied, ‘It is not everyone who can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is granted. There are eunuchs born so from their mother’s womb. There are eunuchs made so by human agency and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can’ (Matt. 19:10-12). This concept of continence, or exercising self-control, for the sake of the kingdom of God is a new one introduced by Jesus. Those who have made it a basis for affirming the single state have often failed to notice how clear Jesus was to show that it is a gift, a rare gift, granted to the few chosen by God. Compulsion has no place in its ranks. Nevertheless, combined with the virgin birth, it brought a new vision away from sexual intercourse to continence.

The third point that needs to be made is that we have no evidence that Jesus married or had sexual intercourse. In my book I point out that, although he neither married nor, as far as we know, had sexual intercourse, there is no reason to suggest that he did not have ordinary sexual feelings. But marriage, sexual intercourse, children and family would have been too restrictive for the man who came to serve the whole world, to be open to all mankind throughout the ages.

Thus from Jesus himself we associate virginity in his parents, the pursuit of continence for the kingdom and the absence of marriage in himself. What about marriage and sexual intercourse in the New Testament? For the fullest treatment of this we must turn to Paul and in particular to his first letter to the Corinthians. It would appear that the Corinthians, as all the early Christians, were waiting for an early return of Jesus. Paul makes it clear that they should live as if they were living in the last days. But does this mean they should abandon marriage and sexual intercourse? Not at all. ‘Now for the questions about which you wrote, yes it is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman; yet to avoid immorality every man should have his own wife and every woman her own husband’ (1 Cor. 7:1-3).

Paul approves of the single state. He adds, ‘To the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay as they are, like me. But if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry, since it is better to be married than to be burnt up’ (1 Cor. 7:8-9). Paul is pragmatic. He appreciates that men and women have sexual drives which most of them need to express. He would prefer that they remain unmarried, but he does not make impossible demands and prefers marriage to fornication and adultery.

Regarding frequency of intercourse, he says: ‘The husband must give to his wife what she has a right to expect and so the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and in the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. You must not deprive each other, except by mutual consent for a limited time, to leave yourself free for prayer and to come together again afterwards; otherwise Satan may take advantage of any lack of self- control to put you to the test’ (1 Cor. 7:3-6).

In these few lines Paul shows himself a master of sexual under­standing. Spouses are to have access to one another, a model of equality. He says that they should not deprive each other, except for prayer. Paul is not counselling continence for the married. He accepts sexual desire and encourages its free expression. Later on in the same letter he repeats the same points: although time is short, everyone should remain in the state they were called to. ‘If you are joined to a wife, do not seek to be released; if you are freed of a wife, do not look for a wife. However, if you do get married, that is not a sin, and it is not sinful for a virgin to enter upon marriage’ (1 Cor. 7:27-28).

From this letter to the Corinthians, we get a picture of Paul in which he shows a realistic acknowledgement of sexual needs. To those who have them, marriage is a way of meeting them. He is not enthusiastic about matrimony but he appreciates human reality. He favours the single state as a way of serving the Lord. Remaining single for the sake of the Lord is his own option. Paul appears not to have received any clear instruction on virginity. ‘About people remaining virgin, I have no directions from the Lord, but I give my own opinion as a person who has been granted God’s mercy to be faithful’ (1 Cor. 7:25).

At the end of the gospels and the epistles, we have a picture in which sexual intercourse embedded in marriage is a norm that is accepted. Jesus carried out his first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana (John 2:1-11). He would not have participated at a wedding if he did not wish to continue the state of marriage and, within it, sexual intercourse.

Sexual intercourse was understood by Paul as a natural and God- given expression to meet sexual needs. But, independent of Jesus, he initiated a tradition of the single state dedicated to God that was to span the whole of the next 2,000 years to our very day.

In Genesis we find God seeing all that he had created as very good. That included sexual intercourse, but there was no special analysis of coitus. The nearest we get to a link between sex and love is the indirect symbolism of marriage as a covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. The book of the prophet Hosea describes the adultery of his wife, and Yahweh’s instruction to take her back and be reconciled in a spirit of tenderness and love. Here, as in the case of the Song of Songs, which we shall be examining later, marriage and sex are seen in emotional terms of love. But, apart from these two Old Testament descriptions, sexual intercourse is not seen primarily in personal terms. The two Testaments form the background for the pessimism and ambivalence with which sexuality was to be held for most of the Christian period. In the next chapter, we turn to the first five centuries of the Christian era in which sexual intercourse was immersed in a particular gloom.

References

Chapter 1

1. John Paul II (1994), The Theology of the Body, London, Daughters of St Paul.
2. Countryman, L. W. (1988), Dirt, Greed and Sex, Philadelphia, Fortress Press.
3. Douglas, M. (1966), Purity and Danger: Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
4. Dominian, J. (1998), One Like Us: A psychological interpretation of Jesus, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.

 

 

Chapter 2

The Early Centuries

The Christian era was inaugurated against a backdrop of the expectation of the imminent second coming or parousia. The Pauline letters were full of exhortations which took their reference from the belief that time was short. With this view in mind, Paul encouraged the early Christians to stay in the state he found them in and, as far as the married were concerned, to continue to remain in marriage with sexual intercourse as one of its expressions. But as he expected the second coming, he recommended those who were not married to remain single.

With the passage of time, the expectation of the second coming faded. Men and women were not exempt from sexual urges and needs. How did their leaders attempt to shape their sexual behaviour? These men (because the leaders were all men) had to work with the ‘givens’ of the Christian faith: the virgin birth of Jesus; his single state; his ideas on the single state dedicated to God, and the teaching of Genesis that recommended marriage as a source of companionship and procreation. The classic study of Peter Brown in the book The Body and Society(1) offers, at the present time of writing, the clearest and most extensive presentation of how the first five centuries up to St Augustine developed the theme of sexu­ality. Those who are interested in this fascinating study are recommended to read the book itself. Here a brief summary is given of the views and influence of the main actors on the stage.

The work of Brown can be divided into the views of eminent fathers and the consequences of monastic life in the desert. This took place in a Roman context, which saw marriage as the begin­ning, root and fountainhead of human nature. It is from marriage that fathers, mothers, children and families spring. Children were a necessity in an age when life expectancy was on average less than 25 years, and when only 4 out of every 100 men and fewer women lived beyond the age of 50. Sexual intercourse and reproduction were regarded as essential for the maintenance of the population. Although sexual intercourse in the service of reproduction was con­sidered the norm, there were two classic attitudes operating as well. The first was a powerful belief that the body was made up of vital spirit and its loss devitalised it. Hence all loss of vital spirit, including emission of seed, weakened the body. The second was the Stoic philosophy that what was best for human beings was a strict control of the emotions that led to apatheia. The mature person had all his or her emotions under strict control and was indifferent to them. Soranus is quoted as saying, ‘Men who remain chaste are stronger and better than others and pass their lives in better health.’(2) This view is not supported by modern research. For the Stoics, sexual intercourse was supposed to occur only for reproduction, an idea that heavily influenced early Christianity. There was no concept of coitus for pleasure and the positions adopted for intercourse were to be selected on the basis of the best deposition of the seed for fecundity. The marital bed was no place for pleasure but for orderly activity designed for procreation.

The Greek and Latin fathers, particularly the latter, took their cue from their Christian background of virginity, the apotheosis of the single state and the classical views outlined above, so that, writing at the end of the second century, Clement of Alexandria could say, ‘The human ideal of continence, I mean that which is set forth by the Greek philosophers, teaches one to resist passion, so as not to be made subservient to it, and to train the instincts to pursue rational goals.’ But for Christians he went on to say, ‘Our ideal is not to experience desire at all’ (quoted in Brown). The last sentence gives a flavour of what the fathers thought about human sexuality. One of the marks of identification with the Holy Spirit was sexual abstinence.

We begin with the figure of Tertullian in the late second century. His commands give us a glimpse of the admixture on sexual writings that were circulating in a major Latin Church, Carthage. Tertullian was a Stoic and he concentrated on the body. His deceptively simple formula was ‘Look to the body’, and for him continence brought down the gift of the Holy Spirit. If sanctity was not to be obtained through martyrdom, then continence was the next best thing. Tertullian was the first to make this important statement, which had a long influence in the Latin world, that abstinence from sex was the most effective way to achieve clarity of the soul. The teaching of Tertullian and other fathers we shall consider below enunciated the theology, but the practice was seen in members of the Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean in the second and third centuries, who expressed with vehemence their belief in continence by their renunciation of married life. In the less orthodox circles, the Gnostic and Manichean theologies propagated similar views of abandoning marriage.

Also towards the end of the second century Clement of Alexandria, one of the most prolific writers of the pre-Constantine Church, arrived on the scene. He stressed the importance of every moment of daily life, especially the life of the household. Clement acknowl­edged human sexual urges, but put forward the view that they were to be strictly disciplined. He was a wholehearted supporter of the Stoic view of apatheia, the idea of a life free from passions. And so he advocated a serenity in sexual behaviour as in all other aspects of life – order in everything as well as in sexual activity. His concept of disciplined order was to avoid frequent intercourse, not to use a variety of positions to maximise pleasure and to avoid intercourse when one’s wife was pregnant. No such liberties were allowed for Christians. Sexual intercourse should take place for pro­creation and not for aesthetic pleasure.

For Origen in the early third century sexuality was a mere passing phase. Human beings could do without it. In order to give expression to his view of sexuality as a transient entity of no importance to the spirit, he had himself castrated. As a natural consequence of these ideas he advocated continence from an early stage of life. Virginity stood for the original state and reflected the purity of the soul. Ultimately, he believed that all physical relations would vanish. Sexual intercourse, Origen believed, as many subsequently have, coarsened the spirit. Virgin bodies were temples of God. As with Tertullian, this theology had practical applications and perpetual continence was upheld by groups of Christians throughout the Mediterranean. Origen died in ad 253 and by then the combined efforts of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and himself had set the tone for the preference for virginity and continence.

In AD 306 the Synod of Elvira declared that ‘Bishops, priests, deacons and all members of the clergy connected with the Liturgy must abstain from their wives and must not beget sons.’(3) By the beginning of the fourth century, two things had been established. The clergy were encouraged not to marry or, if married, not to have sexual intercourse, and a close link was made between liturgy and the avoidance of sexuality.

Brown comments that by the end of the second century it might have been possible for Christianity to develop based on the family and protected, albeit with demanding limitations, by a view of sexu­ality as outlined by Clement of Alexandria. It would have been linked with rigorous discipline and fear of women, but would have not progressed in favour of the total renunciation of sexual activity. Instead total sexual renunciation had become widely acclaimed as a feature of the Christian life. Brown, however, adds that it was a renunciation limited to the few, even though they saw themselves as the elite.

Still in the fourth century we find another theological giant, Gregory of Nyssa. Sexuality for Gregory was an afterthought of the creator. It had been added to the original serene indifferentiation of nature, along with death, after Adam’s fall. Sexual differentiation was a necessary adjustment after the Fall. Gregory was preoccupied with the clock of life, which measured the passage of tainted time and he situated this clock in marriage. He saw human time made up of attempts to block out the sight of the grave. Marriage and sexual intercourse and the raising of children were such a pastime. So the removal of sexuality was the denial of time, placed there by the fear of death – remove marriage and you remove the one in­stitution that had been brought about by death. Adam and Eve recognised their fear of extinction and joined together in marriage to have children. And so for Gregory the tick of time lay silent in the heart of the continent person.

Gregory’s view was reinforced in the same century by that of John Chrysostom, the most gifted preacher of his age. For Chrysostom marriage was a superfluity rendered necessary only by the fall of Adam. In his book on virginity he declared that the earth was already overpopulated and needed no further reproductive effort.

Moving from East to West, we meet in the fourth century Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who was particularly sensitive to the weaknesses of the flesh. For him, the body was a peril that might engulf the soul. Every human being bore an ugly scar and that scar was sexuality. For Ambrose, Christ was the perfect model, unscarred by a sexual origin and the presence of sexual impulses. Ambrose, among others, was a champion of the continence of bishops and clergy, providing a separate, hierarchical class of the ascent of life. On his scale, virgins came first, widows second and the married third. The integrity of the virgin state was the highest pinnacle of Christian virtue.

Finally, we have in Jerome in the late fourth century an ardent apostle for virginity. He was the heir of Origen and he communi­cated vividly the awareness of the sexual dangers of the body. For Jerome the human body was a darkened forest filled with the roaring of wild beasts that could only be controlled by rigid diet and the strict avoidance of sexual attraction. For him, even first marriages were regrettable but second ones were only one step away from the brothel.

During the centuries covered by the lives of these fathers, others left the city and settled in the desert, forming monastic communi­ties. These were the desert fathers of whom the best known was Anthony. For the monks of Egypt, sexual temptation was a drive towards women and matrimony, and hence a return to settled land and away from the desert. For the desert ascetic, whilst sexuality was a temptation, the urge for food was an even greater challenge. It was widely believed by the desert fathers that the first sin of Adam and Eve was not sexual, but ravenous greed. So fasting was at the forefront of their life. Food pushed sexuality aside. Thus self-­mortification in terms of food and sex was the first line of attack on the senses. When the body was quelled, it was the heart and the will that had to be subdued. From the heart and the will emerged pride and ambition, and the combination of these could destroy monastic communities. From the heart and the will emanated sexual fantasies and it was finally the abatement of fantasy that was the proof of the conquering of sexuality. The overcoming of sexuality was associated with the cessation of nocturnal emissions. Control over the body was the monk’s preoccupation. The desert ascetic did not flourish with just control over his mind. His body also had to be tutored and in bringing the body under control the soul was influenced. The material life of the monk was considered capable of altering consciousness. Between them the fathers and the desert monks influenced the climate of sexuality of the first five centuries and left an enduring legacy in the West.

The last father to be considered is Augustine, the giant of them all.(4) He wrote the definitive book on marriage, whose ends of children, faithfulness and permanency had a profound impact on Christianity and was quoted as recently as Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930.(5)

Augustine knew that sexual intercourse was deeply associated with pleasure. He had experienced this pleasure over a period of 13 years with a woman. During these years, he associated with the Manicheans and tried to control his sexual urges, but all to no avail. His sexual drive was strong and, in the immortal words that have often been quoted, he wrote in his confessions, ‘Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not now.’(6) His mother, Monica, prayed relentlessly for his conversion and he parted from the woman in order to get married. Even during the period of waiting for the marriage, he could not control his sexual urges and took a con­cubine. Finally, he converted to Christianity, gave up the idea of marriage and close association with women, and went on to serve his God with distinction.

Augustine, holding a contemporary minority view, believed that there would have been sexual relations between Adam and Eve before the Fall. His original and devastating view was formulated round his concept of original sin. Whilst agreeing that this would involve the loss of sanctifying grace, he was convinced that an even greater result would be the loss of an effective ordering of man’s passions leading to concupiscence or sexual desire. He associated concupiscence with intercourse and thought that coitus transmitted original sin. Thus sexual intercourse was always accompanied by sin. But, if sex was performed for procreation, this sinfulness was reduced; for any other reason it remained at least venially or pardon­ably sinful.

We have to see in this theology not only spiritual speculation but psychological overreaction to coitus that shows itself in the following passage; ‘As to copulation in marriage which, according to the law of matrimony must be used for procreation’s sake; does it not seek a corner for its performance, though it be honest and lawful? Does not the bridegroom turn all the servants, and even the bridesmaids and all others, out of his chamber, before he begins to embrace his bride? As the great author of Roman eloquence has said, whereas all honest deeds desire the light, that is love to be known, this only desires so to be known that it blushes to be seen… For this act desires indeed to be seen by the mind, yet it seeks to escape from the sight of the eye. Now what can be the reason for this, unless it be that this lawful act of nature is accompanied with a penalty of shame from our first parents?’(7) It is significant that Christianity has not followed Augustine in either of these propositions: that sexual intercourse in marriage is in any way sinful or that it transmits original sin. The vehemence with which he expressed these views does suggest, however, that Augustine was working out in his theology his own psychological problems. With Augustine, we reach the peak of pessimism and negativity about sexual intercourse.

The first five centuries produced a series of theological treatises that devalued coitus, saw virginity and continence as higher states, influenced the avoidance of sexual intercourse by the clergy and the downgrading of coitus.

The Stoic view of emotional tranquillity coupled with Jesus’ single state, the virginity of his mother, the apparent immanent second coming and the idiosyncratic views of individual theologians, com­bined to cast sexuality and coitus in a negative light, from which Christianity is perhaps only emerging in our own day and time.

The devaluation of one of God’s most precious gifts started in these early centuries and produced a massive distortion of the goodness of sex. We shall see that in the subsequent centuries, although modifications took place, the basic negativity never gave up its relentless grip.

The patristic period thus concluded in a spirit of asceticism and sexual pessimism in which the developing attitudes to sexuality have lost, temporarily in the writings of the fathers and others, the links with the positive approach of the Old Testament. Sexual intercourse came under the influence of Hellenistic dualism, Stoicism, which had infiltrated Christian thought, the growing importance of the single state dedicated to God and the personal experience of such men as Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine. Thus the Christian era began under a cloud of sexual pessimism that cast a long shadow to this very day.

References

1. Brown, R (1988), The Body and Society, London, Faber and Faber.
2. Soranus, Gynaecia 17.39.2, Ilberg.
3. Council of Elvira, Canon 33, Jonkers ed.
4. Power, K. (1995), Veiled Desire, London, Darton, Longman and Todd; Noonan Jnr, J. T. (1986), Contraception, Harvard, Harvard University Press. See also Brown, The Body and Society, op. cit.
5. Casti Connubii 1930, London, CTS.
6. Augustine, Confessions, 8.7.17: 757.

 

 

Chapter 3

The Medieval Period

The medieval period saw a mixture of a reiteration of the rigorism of the early Church with the return to Augustinian theology and a softening of attitudes. Augustine set a very exacting standard for the interpretation of the meaning of sexual intercourse, which was bound to influence later theologians. One of these was Gregory I, Pope from 590 to 604, a man of outstanding talent, whose 850 surviving letters and other writings had a considerable influence in the Middle Ages. He followed the Augustinian approach in general but changed the details. He stated that whilst the sexual act in itself was not sinful – nor its involvement with concupiscence – the pleasure attached to it was. So that, even when spouses desired children, they could not avoid the inevitable pleasure attached to the act, which was sinful.(1) With this view, which once again would find no permanent place in the teaching of the Church, the theology of the sexual act reached its lowest ebb. This Gregorian view – that all sexual pleasure was an evil – reached its maximum strength at the end of the twelfth century. In this teaching, a value for sexual intercourse such as love was unthinkable.

Against this solid opposition to the link between coitus and love, there emerged in the second quarter of the twelfth century a new ideology, which was opposed to the link between sexual intercourse and procreation. It was the code of courtly love, sung by many of the troubadours. The troubadours praised the love of man for woman. They separated love from marriage, celebrating sexual pleasure and rejecting the generative purpose. By 1139, the level of danger of such a view drew the attention of the Ecumenical Council, the Second Lateran Council, who reiterated the orthodox position.

The development of the procreative purpose of marriage and sex in the twelfth century was a reaction to the Cathars and courtly love. The emerging doctrine vigorously excluded pleasure as a purpose of sexual intercourse. There were two basic reasons for the return of such strictness. The first was a response to the Cathars and the second a return to Augustinian sexual ethics. In this doctrine coitus was found to be reprehensible and evil, unless excused by the Augustinian goods of marriage. According to this more rigid view, some small sin was inevitable in coitus.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) contributed a mixture of traditional and more optimistic views on sexual intercourse. The basic assump­tions held by Aquinas were that natural coitus was instituted by God and that the natural order should not be altered by man. For him, the natural order of sexual intercourse demanded no other position for coitus than the woman beneath the man. He used the word ‘bestiality’ to characterise modes of sexual intercourse that depart from this position.

The Thomistic analysis takes the biological function of pro­creation of the sexual act as given by God and unalterable by man. ‘The end, however, which nature intends in copulation is offspring to be procreated and educated and that this good might be sought it has put delight in copulation, as Augustine says, in marriage and concupiscence. Whoever, therefore uses copulation for the delight which is in it, not referring the intention to the end intended by nature acts against nature.’(2) The position taken in intercourse, its purpose and its delight were strictly for procreation. This attitude, which Aquinas formulated, reinforcing Augustine’s view, was to remain supreme in official church teaching until our own day. Thus for Aquinas, a norm is postulated consisting in heterosexual, marital coitus, the man above the woman, with insemination resulting. This norm is ordained, its naturalness is established by God. Deliberate departure from the norm is unnatural, a direct offence against God. Aquinas distinguished between the delight experienced as an inducement for procreation, and the rightfulness and intensity of that delight. He argued that before the Fall there would have been more delight in coitus because of the greater purity of nature and the greater sensibility of the body. After the Fall, concupiscence detracts coitus from the command of reason. Aquinas accepted the normality of sexual pleasure. For him there was no assent to Gre­gorian rigorism. Dealing with the question that excess of passion corrupts virtue, he says, ‘The excessive passion which corrupts virtue is one that not only hinders or prevents the exercise of reason, but also destroys the rational order, but this is not the effect of the intensity of the delight in the marriage act, for although man is not then under control, yet he has been controlled and directed beforehand by reason.’(3)

Writing 50 years ago, Father Messenger in his book The Mystery of Sex and Marriage went further and stated: ‘Joining together all the strands of St Thomas’ teaching, we can assert without hesitation that there is a very important place to be allotted to passion and pleasure in the sex act. Both passion and pleasure are natural con­comitants of the sex act, and, so far from diminishing its novel goodness if the sex act is willed beforehand according to right reason, the effect of pleasure and passion is simply to heighten and increase the moral goodness of the act, not in any way to diminish it. St Thomas does not seem to say this any where expressly, but it nevertheless follows plainly and definitely from his principles, and accordingly, we ourselves have no hesitation in drawing the infer­ence and in making the statement.’(4)

Whilst Aquinas, clarified by Messenger, portrayed a benevolent moral stance of coitus if carried out for procreation, there remained in him an ambivalence about the act. He writes: ‘We are joined to God, both by the habit of grace and by the act of contemplation and love. That which prevents the first kind of union is always sinful, but that which prevents the second kind is not always sinful, for there are certain lawful occupations concerning inferior matters which distract the soul and make it unworthy of being joined actu­ally to God and this is especially the case with the sex act, in which the mind is held because of intense pleasure. For this reason those to whom it belongs to contemplate divine things, or to perform sacred functions, are instructed to abstain from their wives at that time.’(5) Aquinas in his strictly analytical and rational approach con­sidered coitus to be morally good. In his social and subjective view he considered intercourse an inferior matter.

The suspicion with which the medieval theologians approached sexual intercourse is shown further in the fact that they advocated abstinence in the seasons of fasting and on certain festivals, also on Thursday in memory of Christ’s arrest, on Friday in memory of his death, on Saturday in honour of Our Lady, on Sunday in honour of the resurrection and on Monday in commemoration of the departed! Although such spiritual counsels are part of the docu­mented history, there is very little evidence to assess how closely such advice was followed by the people.

Indeed, others suggested less demanding requirements. We find William of Auvergne, Archbishop of Paris in the early thirteenth century, observing: ‘Intercourse, although it is carnal, can involve a spiritual pleasure. Every act of virtue involves pleasure, or at least is able to … So if the marriage act results from a concern to grant the other what is due, or from a charitable anxiety to keep oneself or one’s wife from the stain of sin… No one should doubt that from that act there can sometimes arise a spiritual delight in the heart of the one who performs it.’(6)

This spiritual interpretation of the sexual act had another advo­cate in the Dutch mystic Dionysius the Carthusian (Denys van Leeuwen, 1402-71), who wrote in the Praiseworthy Life of the Married that marriage is a sacrament and it is good. The marital act is good and is the work of charity or spiritual love when it is performed for the paying of the marital debt, for procreation or to prevent fornication by one’s spouse. Although, he added, the married can mutually love each other because of the mutual pleasure they have in the marital act, he also cautioned that the too fervent lover is an adulterer. So the ambivalence of Aquinas continued. Nevertheless, Denys attempted to bring together the spiritual and carnal love in marriage, but this had little impact.

Noonan comments ‘that a new theory began its life with a man who was thoroughly and typically the product of Parisian intellectualism when the University of Paris was still the centre of European theological thought. This man was Martin Le Maistre (1432-81). His book Moral Questions, published posthumously in 1490, is, I believe, the most independent critique of the Christian sexual ethics under­taken by an orthodox critic.’ Le Maistre sweeps away the Augustinian purposes of sexual intercourse and asserts that coitus is legitimate for repaying the marital debt and avoidance of fornication. He also introduces a new concept of seeking bodily health and an even newer one ‘for calming the mind’. He denied the existing views that coitus for avoiding fornication is venial sin and sex for the sake of lust or obtaining pleasure is mortal sin. He then advanced the totally new view that sexual pleasure can be taken first for its own sake, and secondly to avoid tedium and the ache of melancholy caused by the lack of pleasure. Such views were totally radical for the period and are only consonant with contemporary thought.

Another person who had similar radical views was John Major (1470-1550), who maintained that it was no sin to have sexual intercourse to avoid fornication, for one’s own or one’s spouse’s health, and also for the sheer pleasure of it. Le Maistre and Major challenged Augustinian views and had no patristic or other medieval support. They claimed their views emanated from reason alone, but they met with general hostility for at least a century.

In 1563 the Council of Trent became the first ecumenical council to say that husbands were to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, echoing Paul, but no connection was made between love and sexual intercourse. A little later, Sanchez (1550-1610) was to declare that couples who had sexual intercourse simply as husband and wife were not sinning. This view took further the position that there was no need to have the intention of procreation or the avoidance of fornication to have intercourse. Sanchez defended sexual contacts of spouses apart from coitus, and in doing so pro­claimed love as a value. But this view was opposed and Innocent XI attacked the whole idea of sexual intercourse for pleasure alone.

Moving beyond the strict historical boundaries of the Middle Ages, Francis of Sales, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, promoted further the goodness and the holiness of sexual inter­course. In his Introduction to The Devout Life he says, ‘Marital intercourse is certainly holy, lawful and praiseworthy in itself and profitable to society.’(7) Further, in a passage remarkable for its frank­ness and understanding, he writes, ‘Love wedded to fidelity gives birth to a confident intimacy, so that we find saintly husbands and wives making abundant use of mutual caresses as chaste as they are loving, as tender as they are sincere, as in the case of Isaac and Rebecca, the most pure couple in ages past.’ Despite this positive attitude, Francis of Sales chose an elephant as an ideal to illustrate pleasure in the sexual act. The elephant is faithful and loving to the female, but it is supposed to mate only every third year for no more than five days, secretly so as not to be seen until the sixth day. Then it goes to the river to wash itself, unwilling to return to the herd until it is purified. This, he suggested, is a good and modest habit and an example to husbands and wives!

This description of sexuality is a reflection of the ambivalence of the Middle Ages towards sexual intercourse. Undoubtedly there were advances in thought, but no close link between coitus and love was made. Although Augustine’s views receded, they remained a background force. His subjective and emotive views on sexuality gave way to the rational and natural law position of Aquinas. But by this time, theology was firmly in the hands of male theologians who were celibate, in a society that was concerned with survival and not love, despite the presence of the troubadours. And so, although there was progress in the understanding of sexuality, a core view remained that linked sexual intercourse primarily with procreation and not with love.

References

1. Gregory I, Epist XI, LXTV, in a letter to Augustine of Canterbury, Resp. ad. die. interrog.
2. Noonan Jnr, J. T. (1986), Contraception, Harvard, Harvard University Press.
3. Summa Theologica III Suppl., 9.41, art. 3, ad 6.
4. Messenger, E. C. (1948), The Mystery of Sex and Marriage, part 2, London, Sands.
5. Summa Theologica III, 9.41, art. 3, ad 2.
6. Dominian, J. (1967), Christian Marriage, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.
7. De Sales, F. (1962), Introduction to the Devout Life, London, Burns and Oates.

 

 

Chapter 4

The Reformation

The Reformation saw many changes, not least in beliefs about mar­riage and sexuality, with Luther radically attacking the sacramental nature of marriage. ‘It is nowhere written that he who takes a wife receives the grace of God.’(1) Thus the painstaking work of the theologians of the Middle Ages was nullified at a stroke.

Calvin similarly declared that although marriage was a divine ordinance, there was no evidence for a special grace-bearing character attached to marriage. These denials brought forth an unequivocal denunciation by the Council of Trent, which declared anathema anyone denying the grace-giving or sacramental nature of marriage.

Luther saw the ends of marriage very much as Augustine and Aquinas did, and much like the Catholic tradition he was repudia­ting. Luther however took a pessimistic view of marriage. Although he was later to marry, he saw marriage as a difficult and unpleasant way of life. He believed that, ‘according to the spirit’, the Christian had no need of marriage.(2) It was the Christian flesh that was cor­rupted and filled with evil desires that needed it. It was this disease of the flesh that required the result. The results of original sin were for him ‘shame at nakedness and all things sexual, the burning of lust, the subjection of woman to man, the pangs of childbirth and the heartache of parenthood’. And so marriage was for him a medi­cine, ‘a hospital for the sick’.(3) As far as Luther was concerned, his views on marriage and sexuality were steeped in Augustinian and patristic pessimism. The sexual act was accompanied by a sense of shame because of the loss of trust in God. It was always unclean, but nevertheless a necessity.(4) Luther had no illusions about the conception of sexual drive. Taking entirely the man’s view, he saw coitus in marriage as the only remedy to the debauchery of mankind.

Calvin, on the other hand, stressed the relational aspects of mar­riage and saw woman as a companion for her husband and not merely as a relief for his concupiscence. He considered marriage’s primary purpose as social rather than generative, and sexual inter­course as a holy and undefiled act.(5) Even this view could not escape the current belief that sexual pleasure was associated with some evil, through man’s fall, even if it was not treated as sinful by God within marriage because of its positive characteristics in giving forth new life.

Among the later reformers Jeremy Taylor (1613-67) wrote Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Ductor Dubitantium which are among the very few works that examine in detail the more intimate aspects of married life. In discussing the pleasure of sexual inter­course, Taylor says that the spouses, in seeking this pleasure, must follow the ends which hallow it, and among these are the desire for children, the avoidance of fornication, to lighten and ease the cares and sadness of household affairs and to endear each other. D. S. Bailey, an Anglican theologian writing some 40 years ago, considers that the mutual endearment of sexual intercourse offered by Taylor is probably the first overt theological recognition of the relational aspects of coitus, a theme which, as we shall see, was only developed in the last 40 years.(6)

Fuelled by the combination of weakness of the human flesh and, in Luther’s eyes, the widespread failure of the clergy of his time to remain chaste, Luther proposed that clergy should marry. From the local Synod of Elvira in 306, the single state of the clergy had gathered momentum and, at the Second Lateran Council in 1139, clerical marriages were declared invalid. Historians record how difficult it had been to enforce this rule. Luther felt, in the light of what he believed about sexual desire and what he saw in practice around him, that this was an impossible rule to keep except by the very few. Between the Synod of Elvira and the Second Lateran Council, the church struggled with an unpopular restriction. Before the reforming Gregorian popes began to centralise power in Rome, most priests were married. The modern phenomenon of the celibate Roman Catholic priest was facilitated by the seminaries set up after the Reformation. In recent times the much publicised sexual scan­dals of some Roman Catholic clergy remind us what a perennial problem the celibacy of priests is.

For Luther, priests were no exception to the frailties of the flesh and were as much subject to sexual desires as all other men. He condemned those who, in promoting celibacy, argued that the endurance of intense sexual frustration pleased God because of the bitterness and hardship of the suffering involved. For him, there was a minute number of true celibates. We have seen that sexual pleasure, companionship and mutual support were not acceptable reasons for any marriage, let alone a clerical one. Though he recog­nised procreation as a vital reason, it is not a sufficient explanation. Luther was pragmatic. Fallen and, for him, diseased man needs the sexual outlet of marriage and by 1525 Luther himself had married.

The ideas of the Reformation crossed the English Channel and clerical marriage was legalised in 1549 in England. There followed the religious turbulence of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. Eliza­beth was not a great advocate of priestly marriage and she had to be persuaded in favour of it. The story of the struggle for married clergy in England is portrayed fully in Porter’s book. Porter quotes the preamble to the 1549 legislation:

Although it were not only better for the estimation of priests and other ministers of the church of God to live chaste, sole and separate from the company of women and the bond of marriage, but also thereby they might be better intent to the administration of the gospel, and be less intricated and troubled with the charge of a household, being free and unburdened by the care and cost of funding wife and child, and that it were most to be wished that they would willingly and of their selves endeavour themselves to a perpetual chastity abstinence from the use of women. Yet for as much as the contrary hath rather been seen, and such uncleanliness of living and other great inconveniences, not meet to be rehearsed, have followed of compelled chastity and in such laws as have prohibited those (such persons) the godly use of marriage, it were better and rather to be suffered in the commonwealth, that those which could not contain should, after the counsels of scripture live in holy marriage, than feigned abuse with worse enormity outward chastity for single life…..

In this passage, the denigration of women – ‘use of women’ meaning sexual intercourse – the absence of any affirmation of the goodness of marriage and of human sexuality are evident. Marriage of the clergy is advocated, in modern terms, for the urges of libido. The principal reason is the scandal of the lives of the clergy. So by the end of the sixteenth century, marriage for the clergy was generally achieved in England. Porter says that nevertheless Anglicanism, unlike other Protestant religions, would always retain a respect for clerical celibacy.

Did the marriage of the clergy bring about a more creative, posi­tive understanding of sexual intercourse? Definitely not. When I started writing on marriage and sexuality in the early sixties, I was surprised by the lack of any insight into the nature of sexuality and its link with love that I found in the writings of the reformed tra­dition. In my clinical practice I was aware of the problematic nature that sexuality was for many Protestants. I am grateful to Porter for some understanding of the reasons for this. She sums up the mar­riage of the clergy at the Reformation by writing, ‘To permit the clergy to marry, they (the reformers) had to establish a level of acceptance of sexual activity; they did not decide that clergy could marry because they had decided that sex was good. Far from it.’

For the reformers marriage was a cure, a preventative for the intense sexual burning ‘that would otherwise drive a man to sin’. They understood the sex drive almost to a man to be diseased. To Philip Melanchthon, marriage was necessary for ‘the bridling of passions’. For John Vernon, marriage is the ‘lawful water to quench the fire of concupiscence’. For Matthew Parker, marriage is a ‘port’ for those molested with ‘storms of temptation’.

The reformers, going back to Augustine, believed that the sex instinct as inserted in human nature by God had only one good purpose: procreation. Any other purpose of sex, even within mar­riage, was diseased due to the Fall. After the Fall, sexual intercourse, which before was faultless, simply ‘ran riot’. For them sex for pleasure remained as sinful as ever and the counsel of moderation remained a yardstick. Heinrick Bullinger expressed it thus: ‘Like as shamefastness, comeliness and temperance is good in everything, so it is good here also and exceeding necessary. Wedlock is honor­able and holy, therefore must not we as shameless persons cast away good manners, and become like unreasonable beasts. God hath given and ordained marriage to be a remedy and medicine unto our feeble and weak flesh to suage the disquietness therefore and to the intent that we should be clean and undefiled in spirit and in body. And if we rage therewith, and be shameless in words and deeds, then our mistemperance and excess may make it evil which is good and defile it that is clean.’

Here we see the comparison of the sexual drive with animal instinct, the dangers of excess and all the ambivalence that has been noted in the previous chapters. Peter Martyr, a Reformation theologian, suggested that sex seen as a remedy for sin was an additional good of marriage. Augustine would not have thought in these terms and so in this sense the reformers advanced the theology of sex marginally.

In the light of these overall negative views, the reformers pre­served the position that celibacy was superior to marriage. They were clear, however, to differentiate between the enforced celibacy of the Roman Catholic Church and the distinct state of the few who had the grace or, as we would now see it, the maturity of personality to express with full integrity the single state dedicated to God.

We can sum up the position of the Reformation on sexual inter­course by saying that it took a wholly pragmatic step forward. It established the legitimacy of clerical marriage. The main under­standing for this was that man had to control his fallen sexual drive. Sexual intercourse within marriage was therefore legitimate, even though regrettable, but marital intercourse was neither unclean nor defiling. It was a necessity. Certainly no spiritual grace was seen in it. In this sense the reformers remained by and large true to Augustine.

Nowhere do we find in the reformers any understanding of sex that linked it primarily to love, interpersonal relationships, the good­ness of sexual pleasure and reflecting what Genesis states, namely that everything God created was very good. There was no celebration of sexual love. Within this approach the superiority of sexual abstinence was left firmly intact.

Whilst the reformers left the inner world of sexual intercourse by and large untouched, they introduced, according to Porter, a para­digm shift. Thus some of the voices of Anglicanism, reinforced later by the Puritans and the Quakers, saw in the man-woman relationship in marriage a presence of love and loving companion­ship which transcended the traditional association with sin and the rectification by procreation. These Protestant beginnings were to flourish in the twentieth century. Nevertheless it took another 300 years for the inner world of sexuality to begin to be analysed and the next and final chapter in this historical section is dedicated to it.

References

1. D T C, 9.2225, cf De Captivit Babylon, Cap de Matrimonio.
2. Porter, M. (1986), Sex, Marriage and the Church, Victoria, Australia, Dove.
3. Luther, Hochzeitpredigt on Heb XIII, C. Werke (e) III.
4. Luther cf Grosse Katechismus, C. Werke (e) XXI.
5. Calvin, In Epist I ad Cor, n VIII, 6, opera VII.
6. Baily, D. S. (1959), The Man-Woman Relationship in Christian Thought, London, Longmans.

 

Chapter 5

The Twentieth Century

Although the major movements in understanding human sexuality took place in the twentieth century, the antecedents started in the nineteenth. Biologically, the principal finding of the nineteenth century was the discovery of the Graafian follicle in the female that under hormonal stimulation induces ovulation, essential for fertilisation. This discovery brought to an end the very influential view that it was the male sperm alone that produced a whole life, the woman only nurturing it. The understanding of the female’s contribution to new life brought about by this discovery was a positive start in the current context of the battle for egalitarian relationships between the sexes.

At the psychological level, the giant who overlapped the nine­teenth and twentieth centuries was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He was the single most important contributor to the sexual revolution of the twentieth century. In his book The Sex Researchers, Brecher(1) points out, however, that there were others besides Freud who chal­lenged Victorian suppression of sexuality. Havelock Ellis’s (1859-1939) Studies in the Psychology of Sex, which first appeared in German in 1896 and in English the following year, was standard reading for those interested in the subject for several decades. Kraft – Ebing (1840-1902) wrote Psychopathis Sexualis in 1886 which to this very day remains the essential text for abnormal sexuality. The Dutch gynaecologist, Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde (1873-1937), informed thousands, if not millions, of couples about sexuality in marriage in his book Ideal Marriage.

In modern times, Alfred Charles Kinsey (1895-1956), an American, astonished the United States and the rest of the world with his statistical studies on male and female sexuality. There is no doubt that these two studies, which are still quoted, brought into the open the incidence of sexual practices, including homosexuality, which were unknown until his publications. There followed the work of Masters and Johnson in the sixties that clarified the inner world of the orgasm, in a book entitled Human Sexual Response in 1966. Since the sixties, there have been several other studies but the above were the seminal ones.

There is no doubt that the most influential person was Freud, who propagated the view that sexuality was an intrinsic part of the human personality and an inescapable expression of what it is to be human. He brought to an end 2,000 years of Christian suspicion of sexuality. Today we take for granted that sexuality permeates all aspects of human relationship and is not an inferior concept, delineated as lust, or merely an essential requirement of the repro­duction of the species.

With the work of Masters and Johnson in the sixties, we come to our modern era, characterised by the introduction and rapid spread of the contraceptive pill which has created a permanent transform­ation in sexual behaviour. Concurrently with the advent of the contraceptive pill, the period of the sixties and seventies has been portrayed as the sexual revolution. It ushered in an era, still with us, which liberated sex from many taboos. Dress is much more sexually revealing. Communication is infinitely more frank and open. The world of the cinema and television is much more daring with sexual topics. Gains were made in sexual justice and equality, as for example for sexual minorities, and women’s emancipation came of age. Hardly a week passes without newspapers having an article on sex. We now live in a world saturated with the subject.

At the same time as this revolution has taken place, sex has been trivialised. The philosophy of Playboy magazine, multiplied in numerous pornographic images, emphasises the body as a pleasure machine. Education at school has focused on the biology of sex without an associated emotional or loving component. The pre­vailing view is that transient sex is valid and there is an emphasis on the use of contraceptives simply to avoid procreation and disease. Sexual intercourse is understood entirely in terms of pro­curing an orgasm and its relational character, although acknowledged, is placed as a secondary phenomenon. In common language, ‘to have a shag’ is the ideal often floated across the media. Men and women, particularly the latter, are treated as sexual objects. This objectification of bodies, especially female ones, divested from relationship is portrayed widely in prostitution and pornography, both of which have become big business. Thus there is no doubt that this last century has seen a big movement in sexual awareness, accelerated in the last forty years. How have the Christian Churches responded to this historical avalanche?

For those who want to examine the Church’s response in detail, reference should be made to Father Kevin T. Kelly, an eminent Roman Catholic theologian, whose book New Directions in Sexual Ethics(2) illustrates the history of the last 40 years very well and I am grateful to him for the information I include below. A summary of the Roman Catholic position is made by Gareth Moore, in Chapter 16 of the book Christian Ethics.(3) An up-to-date commentary on what the Churches say about sex is to be found in the work of Stuart and Thatcher in the book People of Passion.(4)

The events of the last 40 years in the area of sexuality are so extensive that only those focused on coitus are considered and only in a summary form. Contraception remains a crucial issue for Christians in that the primary purpose of sexual intercourse was seen to be procreation, and the unity between coitus and new life was seen as inviolate. As we shall see in Chapter 20, this is the position of the Roman Catholic Church to this very day. The Church of England held Lambeth Conferences in 1867 and 1897, but there was no mention of contraception on these occasions. In 1908 it was considered and an unconditional condemnation given. In 1920 there was still opposition, but in 1930 there was a vote in favour by a majority of 193 to 67. Here is the critical resolution: ‘Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be possible) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference reports its strongest condemnation of the use of any methods of contraception control for motives of selfishness, luxury or mere convenience.”(5)

This advance in practice, just as with the changes at the Reforma­tion that allowed priests to marry, was not associated with any detailed examination of the inner world of sexual intercourse. The bishops at the Conference, however, declared that coitus had a value of its own in marriage, strengthening and enhancing married love, but no radical changes in sexual theology or philosophy were made at this stage. In response to this initiative Pius XI for the Catholic Church replied with the encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930, in which he condemned any use of contraception. He wrote: ‘The conjugal act is of its very nature designed for the procreation of offspring, and therefore those, who in performing it, deliberately deprive it of its natural power and efficacy, act against nature and do something which is shameful and intrinsically immoral.’ The encyclical was not just condemnatory; Pius XI went on to extend the understanding of marriage in terms of the mutual perfection of the spouses.

Encouraged by this, the Catholic theologian Doms wrote: ‘We may now go on to say that there is a meaning imminent not only in the biological act (coitus) but also in marriage itself. But the meaning is not, as has often been thought, merely “love”. It is rather that fulfilment of love in the community of life of two persons who make one person. This community involves the whole human being in spirit, sense and body… This inner meaning of marriage includes the performance of the sexual act, although it has no conscious interest in procreation… ,’(6) Doms’ book was very persuasive and his thoughts on marriage as a community of the life of two persons, reinforced by intercourse, were well in advance of his time and subsequently influenced the formulations of the Second Vatican Council. Thus we see in the thirties the progress of the relationship of husband and wife as love in action in which sexual intercourse contributes in a basic way. The thirties, forties and fifties were important in the Catholic Church for the debate on the under­standing of the ends of marriage and on the use of the infertile period for regulating births. I have discussed this historic period in my first book on marriage.(7)

We can now move to the sixties and two important statements. The first is the Lambeth Conference of 1958, at which one com­mittee produced The Family in Contemporary Society;(8) a document full of wisdom. In it sexual intercourse is seen as the full giving and receiving of a whole person without any false sense of fears of what is evil. Husband and wife become two in one flesh in a reaffirmed lifelong union of indissolubility.

Shortly afterwards, in the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the terms primary and secondary ends for marriage and embraced an understanding of marriage as a community of love. This love the Lord has judged worthy of special gifts: healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity (Pastoral Constitution Part 2, chapter 1). Moving from marriage to sexual intercourse, the Council has this to say: ‘This love is uniquely expressed and perfected through the marital act. The actions in marriage by which the couple are united intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones. Expressed in a manner which is truly human, these actions signify and promote the mutual self giving by which spouses enrich each other with a joyful and thankful will’ (Pastoral Constitution Part 2, chapter 1).

In an Anglican statement, Marriage and the Church’s Task,(9) we find ‘this polyphony of love finds expression in the lovers’ bodily union. This is not to be comprehended simply in terms of two individuals’ experience of ecstatic pleasure. Such it certainly may be, but it is always more. It is an act of personal commitment that spans past, present and future. It is celebration, healing, renewed pledge and promise. Sexual intercourse can “mean” many different things to husband and wife, according to mood and circumstance. Above all, it communicates the affirmation of mutual belonging.’ These Anglican and Roman Catholic views were reinforced by the 1980 Methodist report, A Christian Understanding of Human Sexu­ality,(10) which focuses on the joy of sexual love. ‘Sexual love, including genital acts when they express that love, shares in the divine act of loving with every human activity which is creative, dedicated and generous. Yet until recently Western Christian attitudes have shown little enthusiasm for the idea of sexual love as an element of Christian living….’ (Article 28). ‘Despite the biblical references to the joy which God gives to his children, most Western traditional Christian attitudes have not accepted enjoyment as an essential part of God’s design for mankind. Physical pleasures have been frequently equated with sin. Since sexuality provides some of the greatest pleasures, it has therefore been most suspect. This rejection of joy warps the Christian understanding of the love of God, the goodness of his creation and the wholeness of human nature… Sexuality is not merely useful. It is enjoyable, purposeful and fulfil­ling. It is a means whereby man and woman may glorify God and grow in the fulfilment of one another’ (Article 29).

The Church of Scotland in its second report to the General Assembly, entitled Human Sexuality,(11) comes to the significant con­clusion that sexuality serves primarily to initiate, cement and enrich relationships. Procreation is a ‘second order’ function of sexuality, ordained of God but not its main role, which is to do with relationship.

Father Kelly concludes that the Churches are veering towards the view that human sexuality is primarily to be seen in its relational significance. This is not necessarily or essentially bound up with procreative function, and the quality of relationship ‘is the prime criterion of sexual ethics’. This ‘quality of relationship’ is intimately linked with love. Several of the main reports from the Churches in the last 40 years have referred to this love and its creative potential.

This inner world of sexual intercourse has not been analysed in any detail and so Christianity, having moved from seeing sex pri­marily in terms of procreation to seeing it in terms of relationship, has no real basis for an alternative to casual sex. References to love have no persuasive authority because love is such a difficult word to understand and yet, ultimately, all human behaviour in Christ­ianity is based on the fundamental teaching of Jesus that all commandments are subordinate to the ones of loving God and loving one’s neighbour as oneself. There is no question that the meaning of sexuality is to be found in love, and this book is dedicated to analysing what we mean by love in sexual human relationships.

References

1. Brecher, E. M. (1970), The Sex Researchers, London, Andre Deutsch.
2. Kelly, K. T. (1998), New Directions in Sexual Ethics, London, Chapman.
3. Hoose, B. (1998), Christian Ethics, London, Cassell.
4. Stuart, E. and Thatcher, A. (1997), People of Passion, London, Mowbray.
5. The Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 15.
6. Dorns, H. (1939), The Meaning of Marriage, London, Sheed and Ward.
7. Dominian, J. (1967), Christian Marriage, London, Darton, Longman and Todd.
8. The Lambeth Conference 1958, London, SPCK and Seabury Press.
9. (1978), Marriage and the Church’s Task, London, CIO Publishing.
10. Report of Commission on Human Sexuality (1990), Methodist Pub­lishing House.
11. Human Sexuality 1994 in the Church of Scotland Reports to the General Assembly, Peterborough.