Real Marriage_ The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark Driscoll [63]
In Stoicism, emotions were downplayed and self-control was exalted. This even became true in marriage, where passion was considered suspect. Marriage must have another purpose, namely, the continuance of the human race. In the words of the Stoic philosopher Ocellus Lucanus, “We have intercourse not for pleasure but for the purpose of procreation. . . . The sexual organs are given man not for pleasure, but for the maintenance of the species.”16
Tertullian (AD 155–220) and Ambrose (AD 340–397) were said to prefer extinction of the human race to continued sexual intercourse. Origen (AD 185– 254) was so convinced of the evils of sexual pleasure that he not only allegorized the Song of Songs but also took a knife and castrated himself. Gregory of Nyssa (AD 335–394) taught that Adam and Eve were created without sexual desire, and if the fall had not occurred, the race would have reproduced itself by some harmless mode of vegetation. Chrysostom (AD 347–407) said that Adam and Eve could not have had sexual relations before the fall. Jerome (AD 347–420) threw himself into thorny brambles to overwhelm himself with pain when he began to desire a woman sexually. He also beat his chest with a stone to punish himself for feeling sexually tempted. And he believed that a husband was guilty of adultery if he engaged in unrestrained sexual passion with his wife.17
Augustine (AD 354–430) was sexually active before his conversion and later decided that sex within marriage was not sinful, though the lust and passion associated with it was sinful. Because of this, he often commended married couples for not engaging in sex and referred to it as a form of animalistic lust.18 Saint Francis made women out of snow and then caressed them in order to quiet the lust that burned in him. Thomas Aquinas (AD 1225–1274) taught that sex was only permissible for purposes of procreation. Aquinas saw sexual intercourse as duty alone. Anything beyond this was immoral. He wrote, “For if the motive for the marriage act be a virtue, whether of justice that they may render the debt, or of religion, that they may beget children for the worship of God, it is meritorious. But if the motive be lust . . . it is a venial sin.”19
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Catholic moral instruction, following the tradition of Thomas Aquinas, cautioned that marital relations of husbands and wives could only be justified as a matter of “duty,” certainly not as a matter of “desire.”20 The Catholic Church’s view through the Middle Ages was that sexual love, both in and out of marriage, was evil. By the fifth century priests were forbidden to marry, which has, at least in part, resulted in a global scandal as sexually unhealthy and unholy men entered pastoral ministry.
Early in the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great wrote that although marriage was not sinful, “conjugal union cannot take place without carnal pleasure, and such pleasure cannot under any circumstance be without blame.”21 The Church eventually began to limit the days on which sex was permissible and continued adding days until half the year or more was prohibited, with some priests going so far as to recommend abstinence from five to seven days a week. Medieval Catholicism even provided priests with detailed manuals to aid them in taking sexual confession. Some priests would inquire of intimate sexual details and attempt to regulate the frequency, positions, and sensations of marital intercourse.
Not solely an ancient issue, sex as gross continues in Catholicism to some degree even today. A 2011 pastoral letter on chastity from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops for married