Sexual Ethics and the Premodern Church
Sara Ritchey
ritchey@louisiana.edu
Wednesday, September 15 2010
Genesis 1:26-30
26 And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him
have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and
the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that
moveth upon the earth. 27 And God created man to his own image: to the
image of God he created him: male and female he created them. 28 And
God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth,
and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of
the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth. 29 And God
said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth,
and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be
your meat: 30 And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the
air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life,
that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done.
Luke 14:26
whosoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and
children, yes and even life itself cannot be my disciple
1 Corinthians 7
I think that, in view of the impending crisis, it is well for you to
remain as you are. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are
you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not
sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin. Yet those who marry
will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that. I
mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from
now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none… For
the present form of this world is passing away. . . .
Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 4, Distinction 26
The institution of marriage is twofold. The first was created in
paradise, before sin,… where the bed was unstained and marriages were
honorable, from which Adam and Eve conceived without passion… The
second was created outside of paradise, after sin, in order to avoid
illicit passions…. If the first human beings had not sinned, they and
their progeny would have joined without the urging og the flesh ad the
heat of lust. Just as some good deed is worthy of reward, so
their coitus would have been good and worthy of reward. But,
because of sin, the deadly law of concupiscence is inherent in our
members, without which there is no carnal union. Their coitus is
reprehensible and evil unless it is excused by the goods of marriage.”
Bernard of Clairvaux: On Loving God:
to lose yourself, as you no longer existed, to cease completely to
experience yourself, to reduce yourself to nothing is not a human
sentiment but a divine experience. Oh sweet and pleasant
affection! It is deifying to go through such an experience.
Heloise, Letter 2 to Abelard
I never sought anything in you except yourself; I wanted simply you,
nothing of yours. I looked for no marriage-bond, no
marriage-portion.
God is my witness that if Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, thought
fit to honor me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to
possess for ever it would be dearer to me to be called not his Empress
but your whore.
Letter 4
Wholly guilty though I am, I am also, as you know, wholly
innocent. It is not the deed but the intention of the doer which
makes the crime… what my intention towards you has always been, you
alone who have known it can judge.
John 1:14
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his
glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and
truth. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace….
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen
God. It is God the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart,
who has made him known.
Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge, 1979); italics mine:
Sexual desire involves a kind of perception by not merely a single
perception of its object, for in the paradigm case of mutual desire
there is a complex system of superimposed mutual perceptions—not only
perceptions of the sexual object, but perceptions of oneself.
Moreover, sexual awareness of another involves considerable
self-awareness to begin with—more than is involved in ordinary sensory
perception… initially I may be aroused by someone unaware of being
perceived by me, and that arousal is significant in “identifying me
with my body” in a new way, but is not yet sufficient for speaking
about the full range of sexuality. I am aroused as a cultural,
not just a biological being—i.e. I need to bring my body into the
shared world of language and (in the widest sense!)
“intercourse.” My arousal is not only my business: I need its
cause to know about it, to recognize it, for it to be anything more
than a passing chance. So my desire, if it is going to be
sustained and developed, must itself be perceived; and if it is to
develop as it naturally tends to, it must be perceived as desirable by
the other—that is my arousal and desire must become the cause of
someone else’s desire… [sex] involves a desire that one’s partner be
aroused by the recognition of one’s desire that he or she be aroused.
Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio
Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one
another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is
by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost
being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way
only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and a woman
commit themselves totally to one another until death. The total
physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit
of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including
the temporal dimension, is present: if the person were to withhold
something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the
future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally.