Some so-called "Church Fathers" on virginity versus marriage

Virginity versus marriage  according to some so-called" "Church Fathers."  

 

Note that these were not founders or founders of the NT church in Scripture, but while pious, the uninspired writings of such men overall stand in   contrast to the quality and power of  wholly inspired-of-God Scripture, (2Tim. 3:16) and they too often evidence additions and a erroneous contrast to the teachings of Scripture, and which accretion of errors and traditions of men increased as years went on, that of distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed, which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels.

While Catholicism does not consider itself bound to believe all that those she deems to be church fathers taught,  here I will briefly document the views of a primary church "father, Jerome on virginity versus marriage, and statements of Augustine and Tertullian that relate to this which influenced the unscriptural Catholic position on required clerical celibacy (see last section on this page, by the grace of God.).  

Jerome saw marriage as so inferior (at the least) to virginity, celibacy and continence, that he engaged in specious reasoning and abused Scripture to support his  imbalanced views, teaching,

If ‘it is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ then it is bad for him to touch one, for bad, and bad only, is the opposite of good.   (''Letter'' 22).  

 

In "Against Jovinianus," book 1, on First Corinthians 7 he again  perversely reasons,  

 

“It is good,” he says, “for a man not to touch a woman.” If it is good not to touch a woman, it is bad to touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and the evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil. But surely a thing which is only allowed because there may be something worse has only a slight degree of goodness...

If we abstain from intercourse, we give honour to our wives: if we do not abstain, it is clear that insult is the opposite of honour. 
  

However, this is what is called a “false dilemma,” a fallacious “either/or dichotomy,” in which a statement as (to turn his reasoning around)

“Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate,” (Psalms 127:3-5)

must mean that having no children is necessarily bad and sad, since Jerome reasons that “there is no opposite to goodness but badness” yet Jerome makes marriage bad.

Instead, unless something is actually good or bad, as you either or you worship God or idols, and go to Heaven or Hell, then a choice is not necessarily right or wrong, while aside from clear moral choices then the right choice is relative to its purpose and effects.

“You can either have milk or orange juice” does not mean one is good or bad, but in the case of lactose intolerance then milk might be the wrong choice.

And as regards celibacy of marriage, the Bible commends both, but in the context of spiritual focus then celibacy is advocated, yet so is marriage as the norm in order to void fornication, as 1 Corinthians 7 teaches.

Next, we have another false dilemma from pious Jerome:

"If we are to pray always, it follows that we must never be in the bondage of wedlock, for as often as I render my wife her due, I cannot pray. 

 Yet by that logic he could not eat or sleep or minister to others in preaching, nor otherwise serve his fellow man, and thus presume to be more consecrated than the apostles themselves, most of whom were married, as well OT priests (though they were apart from their wives during their shift in the temple).

Thus while marriage is good and the bed undefiled, (Hebrews 13:4) and celibacy is spiritually advantageous in personal holiness and purely spiritual work, the status of both is not either good or bad, but what is best according to the call of God, and which is what the apostle proceeds to teach in 1 Corinthians 7 (which is much in response to a question about fathers and their marriageable daughters.

For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. (1 Corinthians 7:7) Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God. (1 Corinthians 7:24)

Meanwhile, holy focus is esp. enjoined as “the time is short,” this meaning before an event occurs that will change things, and in which I suspect that the “time is short” context may have been prophetically warning of the 70 AD catastrophic events and change ):

Going back to Jerome, he adds to his erroneous, biased reasoning by misapprehending Scripture and wrongly employing it to serve his purpose:

This too we must observe, at least if we would faithfully follow the Hebrew, that while Scripture on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days relates that, having finished the works of each, “God saw that it was good,” on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that two is not a good number because it destroys unity, and prefigures the marriage compact. Hence it was that all the animals which Noah took into the ark by pairs were unclean. Odd numbers denote cleanness. And yet by the double number is represented another mystery: that not even in beasts and unclean birds is second marriage approved.

So much for Jesus sending out disciples 2 x 2 to minister and peach, (Mark 6:7) while "if we would faithfully follow the Hebrew" as Jerome says then we can see that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." (Genesis 1:31) 

Jerome further vainly attempts to make Genesis support him  in asserting:

 

The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion.    (St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus Book 1 https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vi.vi.I.html)

 

Yet besides the fact that nowhere are the fig-leaves shown to  speak of sexual passion, the command to  increase and multiply came before the Fall and its later fulfillment:

 

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:27-28)

 

Below  will be some more in this subject by so-called “church fathers” - pious men but who progressively added extrascriptural traditions, not that Catholicism agrees with all such taught, yet they look to their accretions for support of distinctive Catholic teachings that are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed, (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels)

 

Next we have Augustine who taught that one cannot engage in marital relations without sinful lust:

the very embrace which is lawful and honourable cannot be effected without the ardour of lust, so as to be able to accomplish that which appertains to the use of reason and not of lust....This is the carnal concupiscence, which, while it is no longer accounted sin in the regenerate, yet in no case happens to nature except from sin. — On Marriage and Concupiscence (Book I, cp. 27); http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15071.htm 

For the belief was, as Harding (below) holds, "before they sinned, Adam and Eve had perfect command of their passions (reproductive actions]." But having lost that due to the Fall, then men as Augustine held that martial relations must involve carnal sinful lust, and even interprets Heb. 13:4 which states that the marriage bed is undefiled (unlike under the Law) to simply mean if it is free from adultery!

However, the idea that  martial relations must be that of lust (though it often can be) due to it providing pleasure is not correct, else all that provides pleasure must be consider iniquitous. And as per the logic that a function which at the last is uncontrollable is sinful, perhaps another daily bodily function of relief which can uncontrollable (if you cannot find a bathroom) is also sin. 

Then we have Tertullian who argued that second marriage, having been freed from the first by death, "will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication," partly based on the reasoning that such involves desiring to marry a women out of sexual ardor. An Exhortation to Chastity,'' Chapter IX.—Second Marriage a Species of Adultery, Marriage Itself Impugned, as Akin to Adultery, ANF, v. 4, p. 84.]

Also regarding some strange views on the issue of Adam and Eve and sexual relations, RC priest John A. Hardon, S.J stated, 

 

"some of the Fathers [as Athanasius and John Damascene] were so firmly persuaded of the natural integrity of our first parents that they derived marriage from original sin." (Harding: http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/God/God_013.htm) 

For as "John of Damascus" wrote,

 

In Paradise virginity held sway. Indeed, Divine Scripture tells that both Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed416 . But after their transgression they knew that they were naked, and in their shame they sewed aprons for themselves417 . And when, after the transgression, Adam heard, dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return418 , when death entered into the world by reason of the transgression, then Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare seed419 . So that to prevent the wearing out and destruction of the race by death, marriage was devised that the race of men may be preserved through the procreation of children420. 

...God, Who knoweth all things before they have existence, knowing in His foreknowledge that they would fall into transgression in the future and be condemned to death, anticipated this and made “male and female,” and bade them “be fruitful and multiply.” — John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, Chapter XXIV; http://www.trueorthodoxy.info/cat_stjohndamascus_exact_exposition_Orthodox_Faith_bk04.s

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However, as shown before, the command to be"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28) was given in paradise before the Fall. And nowhere is it even inferred that the sin of Adam and Eve was  that of having sexual relations. 

 

And while abstaining from any pleasure out of faith and love for God and service to Him will be rewarded, including continent celibacy, and which indeed has its advantages in focused spiritual endeavor as 1 Co. 7 teaches, yet the ancients cited above go beyond what Scripture teaches in promoting celibacy. 

1 Co. 7 teaches that in general the solution to fornication is to marry, and in which the bodies of the man and wife belong to each other, and commands marital relations in the context of avoiding sin. (1 Corinthians 7:1-5) 

 

However, the apostle counsels a man not to seek a wife and to choose celibacy if he has that gift (v. 7, which I think has much to do with self-control) and a father to choose that for his  daughter in his home, unless burning with desire for a man feeling likewise.  (vs. 8,9) 

 

And the apostle moreover  urges  Christians   to be temperate in business with this world  and (using hyperbole) that "they that have wives be as though they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not." (1 Corinthians 7:29-31)  

And while this focus is to apply thru all time, yet as Paul prefaces this exhortation with"the time is short"  (1 Corinthians 7:29) then I think he was prophetically, even if unknowingly, preparing the people for the dramatic stresses and changes resulting from the destruction of the temple that would occur in 70AD.  

However, Scripture simply does not support the manner of denigration of martial relations and the married as second-class citizens they way men as Jerome did beginning with Genesis.  

And besides the reality that  nowhere in the New Testament are there any Catholic priests,  required clerical celibacy is not what Scripture teaches. The norm for both apostles and pastors was to be married. All but Paul and Barabas were married, and they had freedom to take a wife, versus being under a vow of celibacy. 1 Corinthians 9:1-5) 

 

And the requirements for pastors shows that the norm was such were married,  with being a father providing positive credentials for being a pastor, being "the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)" (1 Timothy 3:2-5) Likewise it was expected that deacons be married. (v. 11)

 

And as referenced before, celibacy is a gift that not all have, and to require almost all  (Rome makes exceptions for some married ordained converts) clergy to have that gift is a unscriptural and foolish presumption.

 

Note also that RCs argue for  required celibacy for their priests based upon  the Hebrew Scriptures requiring that their Jewish priests refrain from intercourse before serving at the altar. (Leviticus 22:3 - 6) 

 

Yet  while Old Testament priests abstained from their wives while actually serving at the altar, they served in rotating shifts and could have sexual relations when not serving, as seen by Luke 1:5-13 (here is one explanation on the details of priestly service). Moreover, the text quoted (Leviticus 22:3-6) forbids any priest ministering in the holy things "having his uncleanness upon him," but being married did not render one to be in a state of continual uncleanness; only that one was unclean regarding such until the evening, after marital relations or any discharge of semen, and then washing. (Lv. 15:16-18) 

But contrary to Catholicism, the New Testament states that "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13:4). Moreover, NT presbyteros are never even distinctively called priests (as "hiereus," the word distinctively used for a separate sacerdotal  class of persons) nor shown uniquely exercising any sacerdotal function, which all believers are to do, (Rm. 12:1; 15:16; Phil. 2:17; 4:18; Heb. 13:15,16; cf. 9:9) and all constitute the only priesthood (hieráteuma) in the NT church.

   

And whose unique sacrificial function was not that of confecting the Eucharist, turning bread and wine into the "true" (but akin to docetism, one whose appearance does not confirm to what He manifestly materially was)  body and blood of Christ and offering it as a sacrifice for sin, and dispensing it to the people as spiritual food (according to the Catholic contrivance of the Lord's supper), but that preaching the word being their primary active function, (2Tim. 4:2) eeding the flock thereby (Acts 20:28)

 

 Which alone is said to spiritually nourish souls, (1Tim. 4:6) and which builds them up. (Acts 20:32) with believing the gospel being the means of obtaining life in oneself, by which one is regenerated, (Acts 10:43-47; 15:7-9; Eph. 1:13) and thus desiring the milk (1Pt. 2:2) and then the “strong meat” (Heb. 5:12-14) of the word of God, thereby being “nourished” (1Tim. 4:6) by hearing the word of God and letting it dwell in them, (Col. 3:16) by which word (Scriptures) man is to live by, (Mt. 4:4) as Christ lived by the Father, (Jn. 6:57) doing His will being His “meat.” (Jn. 4:34) 

 

Hope this helps. http://peacebyjesus.net