In the December issue of "The Family in America," and the article "Marriage and Procreation: On Children as the First Purpose of Marriage," family historian, Allan Carlson, is making the case that the dissolution and attacks on marriage did not begin with LGBT activism on gay marriage, but rather that the assault on marriage began much earlier in the 20th century with the easing of divorce laws, legalization of contraception, and the revisionist Constitutional interpretation of a "right to privacy," and that gay activists have only now decided that the deformed thing we currently call marriage (easy to get out of, only about sexual pleasure, and bounded only by one's own "right" to absolute privacy) is something that appeals to them.
But there was another historical era in which marriage suffered from extreme societal deformation: the first centuries B.C. and A. D., and from that context, Christians built a renewal of marriage that was to last some nineteen hundred years. Carlson notes:
Nearly two thousand years ago, what would become Western Christian Civilization began to take form in a time of great sexual disorder. The moral and family disciplines of the old Roman Republic were gone, replaced by the intoxications of empire. Slave concubinage flourished in these years. Divorce by mutual consent was easy, and common. Adultery was chic, and widespread. Homosexuality was a frequent practice, particularly in man-boy sexual relations. There was a callous disregard for infant life, with infanticide a regular practice. Caesar Augustus, worried about the plummeting Roman birthrate, even implemented the so-called "Augustan Laws" in 18 B.C., measures that punished adultery, penalized childlessness, and showered benefits on families with three or more children. These laws may have slowed, but did not reverse, the moral and social deterioration.Between 50 and 300 AD, and out of this same chaos, the Fathers of the Christian Church crafted a new sexual order. Procreative marriage served as its foundation. Importantly, they also built this new order in reaction to the Gnostic heresies which threatened the young church; indeed, which threatened all human life.
The Gnostic idea rose independent of Christianity, but I am concerned here with so-called Christian Gnosticism. The Gnostics drew together myths from Iran, Jewish magic and mysticism, Greek philosophy, and Chaldean mystical speculation. More troubling, they also appealed to the freedom from the law as proclaimed by Christ and Paul. In this sense, they were antinomians; that is, they believed that the Gospel freed Christians from obedience to any law, be it scriptural, civil, or moral. The Gnostics claimed to have a special "gnosis," a unique wisdom, a "secret knowledge" denied to ordinary Christians. They appealed to unseen spirits. They denied nature. They developed a mélange of moral and doctrinal ideas. But virtually all Gnostics did share two views: they rejected marriage as a child-related institution; and they scorned procreation. . . .
Carlson then walks through several Jewish, biblical and early patristic sources, and then concludes:
All of these sources led the early Church Fathers to one conclusion: the purpose of marriage is procreation. While also celebrating lifelong chastity, they refused to abandon the need for children. As Justin explained in the mid-2nd Century: “We Christians either marry only to produce children, or, if we refuse to marry, are completely continent.” Two centuries later, John Chrysotom taught that “there are two reasons why marriage was instituted, that we may live chastely and that we may become parents.” In the year 400, Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, wrote the book, The Good of Marriage. He argued that God desired man’s perpetuation through marriage. Offspring, he insisted, were the obvious and first “good” of marriage (the other two being fidelity and symbolic stability or sacrament). As Augustine explained:What food is to the health of man, intercourse is to the health of the human race, and each is not without its carnal delight which cannot be lust if, modified and restrained by temperance, it is brought to a natural use [i.e., procreation].
Augustine also insisted that the act of procreation included “the receiving of [children] lovingly, the nourishing of them humanely, the educating of them religiously.”
This is a far cry even from conservative, "traditional" accounts given of marriage in much of present-day U. S. Christianity and marriage counselling in general. No, even modern Christianity accepts, for the most part, the rationale of sexual pleasure as binding source of intimacy in a marriage, and therefore as the primary function of marriage, and thus also accepts contraception and, implicitly, all the anthropology that goes with it, and though most conservative and evangelical Christians would verbally reject easy divorce, statistically speaking, they do not live any differently than non-Christians.
Carlson opines that it is probably too late to do anything legislatively to dramatically turn back the clock on the destruction of marriage--though he does think there are important incremental things that can be done. But just as Christians changed the culture's understanding of marriage apart from legislation in the first few centuries of the Church, so may they do so today.
They just have to take on the Christian understanding of marriage--rejecting the secularized version they now accept--and live what God intends for man and woman.
Posted by Clifton at February 7, 2005 06:00 AM | TrackBackSo, um, why make it pleasurable? A happy perk? I am not saying that sex is only about having a good time. I simply do not understand the seeming divorce of pleasure from sex. Why is it not both?
I know what Paul said. What I would like to know is how the church works with that. The level of misery that can occue when partners do not share sexual intimacy, the breakdown of relationship that can occur when our physical nature is ignored (pleasure, touch, physical love) has incredible ramiifcations for relationship. One does not have to be sexually obsessed to miss physical pleasure, to find its lack a detriment to intimacy...etc.
Unless, of course, intimacy is not the purpose of marriage either. I know that particular polarity is not the aim of the church, but that is the slippery logic for me. I read Ephesians (re: headship) and I can find a sexual ethic in there as well.
Tell me more, Cliff.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at February 7, 2005 05:45 AMIt's not an either/or--either we embrace pleasure as the foundation or we reject it altogether. Nor, for goodness' sake, is it that early Christians had no use for pleasure whatsoever. Rather, and this is what I take Dr. Carlson to be saying, it's that all these things were subordinated to the greater good of procreation.
The deceptive lie that's given in our culture is not that pleasure is a good--few would deny that--but that pleasure is the highest good. If marital intimacy needs pleasure to exist, then what does one do if one's spouse is injured such that intercourse is no longer possible? Or what if one of the partners is so constituted as to just not need sex as much as the other? Is intimacy then impossible? And if pleasure brings intimacy, and is thus the greatest of marital goods, then why do our marriages today last about as long as it takes to wear out a pair of jeans (or outgrow them), yet the marriages of our forebears are still going? (And let's get something straight: We really don't know as much as we think we do about Grandma and Grandpa's sex life. They just didn't/don't talk about it or are as obsessed about it as we are.)
I mean the one truly revolting thing about these ED drugs is not that they treat a truly vexing problem for some men and their wives, but that the application and implication is that men ought to be having sex right on up to their 100th birthday. What's revolting is not that men and women have sex when they're old--trust me, we youngun's could learn a lot from them, I'm sure--but rather that this is the sum total of what it means to be human and to be in a relationship: sex on demand. Which is just another way of saying: Hi there! You're a vagina! You're a penis! Embrace your destiny.
Being a new father, Carlson's article struck chords with me. Especially his critique of modern understandings of marriage and the linkage of contraception, divorce, privacy rights and the devolution of marriage.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at February 7, 2005 07:14 AMGood to know we are on the same page. There is much more to marriage than sex.
Now, where dating is concerned...that is ALL about sex. ;-)
Posted by: AngloBaptist at February 7, 2005 09:31 AMI can accept the historical premise that procreation was predominantly understood to be a primary reason for marriage. Even today in the Episcopal church, it is considered important. Granted, not as important as in earlier millenia, but it is listed as one of the four virtues of marriage (the other three being, in order, signifying the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church; mutual joy in union of mind, body, and soul; help and comfort in times of both prosperity and adversity). But what about those persons for whom God has ordained that they not have children as may be manifest in infertile persons for example? Should they not get married? If they get married, should they not have sex?
-R
Posted by: Ryan W. at February 7, 2005 10:04 AMRyan:
Two things. First, your question still participates in the either/or reductionism that Tripp posits in his response, and which Carlson does reject. The primacy of procreation in no way eliminates these other aspects of marital union.
In light of that, Scripture gives us abundant witness as to how pastorally to care for the infertile couples, as well as what to do about those vowed to apocalyptic virginity.
There are no difficulties here, it seems to me, only the focus of right order. That our secular society (and a secularized church) could in anyway object to or find problematic the primacy of the procreative function in marriage, seems to me revalatory of the sort of hospitality with which we welcome and receive children.
As I recall, Ryan, procreation is last in that list, no? Is this indicative as to the imporance ECUSA gives to procreation? Are children considered the least of these four goods?
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at February 7, 2005 10:17 AMThis is good stuff, Cliff.
I have never ranked the aspects to marriage...only known that there were several...physical intimacy and having kids being two of them. What has happened for some of us evangelicals (yes, I am an evangelical) is that sexual pleasure is removed from marriage. We are not talking of primacy but of "sole reason."
The only reason to get married is to have kids.
One may not engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage. It is sinful and lustful.
Marriage does not suddenly make sexual intercourse and the potential pleasure experienced "less a sin." It is always a sin. Intercourse is utilitarian. Thus, Monty Python's Meaning of Life and the Protestants who have sex twice in their entire marriage...thus they have two kids.
I honestly do understand the essay. The dichotomy I bring up is merely one I encounter in most Christian circles engaged in this conversation. The only so-called middle ground I have encountered is where either pleasure or children are rendered "happy accidents." I find either attiude silly.
You have been reading the work on denial of passions. I will beinterested to hear how you articulate this.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at February 7, 2005 04:17 PMWhich is why, Tripp, I'm setting out the article above--so that we may not spend the rest of our lives reacting to an aberration, but responding in faithfulness and love to the will of God.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at February 7, 2005 04:44 PMYeah, yeah, yeah. Take all my fun away why don't you.
Where I do want to push the essay is that I do believe that sex for the sake of pleasure, and pleasure alone, has its place in marriage.
It is fun. Why can't sex be fun sometimes? Why does it have to be about having kids? If it is also (not only) about having kids...all the things at once...then all the orthodox should have a dozen kids each or something crazy like that. The logic in the article can quickly degenerate into women having to be baby machines, engaging Eve's curse and nothing else.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at February 7, 2005 06:39 PM"As I recall, Ryan, procreation is last in that list, no? Is this indicative as to the imporance ECUSA gives to procreation? Are children considered the least of these four goods?"
Cliff I would argue that is not indicative as to the importance. That list of virtues is not meant to rank in order from most important to least important...they depend upon and cannot exist without each other in a Godly Marriage- if it is to be a covenant and not a civil contract.
And it should also be noted that the 'last' virtue: "and, when it is God's will, for the procreation of children and thier nurture..." does not imply a choice (concerning the procreation of children) in the matter. In fact the Anglican Communion still teaches against contraception, but does however make pastoral provision for medical necessity in cases where the mother would die if whe were to become pregnant.
Now it is true that some say they discern God's will for them as to their own desires and visions of the future (right or wrong, you be the judge-but you can guess where I stand on that)...but the BCP does not divorce procreation as being the first fruit of sexual intercourse.
I have been remembering Sophie in the mass every day and I hope she is getting better and her wonderful parents are well.
Under His mercy...
Father Jeff:
Thank you so much for your prayers. Please know that I pray for you, Catherine and the baby each time I make intercessions.
It's been awhile since I consulted my Anglican BCP for the service of holy matrimony, so I was relying on what Ryan had said, and relying, too, on his point about the enumeration of the goods of marriage. If I extrapolated incorrectly from that to procreation and its importance, I meant no slight.
Thanks, too, for your correction regarding the Anglican communion and contraception. I had assumed that when England, followed later by the U. S., legitimized contraception it held for the whole communion.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at February 7, 2005 09:19 PMTripp:
Sex, indeed, can be fun. But the simple reason that sex and procreation cannot be separated is that they were not created to be separated. The natural end of sex is procreation; there must be intentional human intervention to interrupt this natural order, or unnatural defects (e. g., infertility).
That's not to say that every act of sexual intercourse will result in pregnancy--a woman is only fertile at certain times of the month. And on the basis of this natural fact, natural family planning methods are founded. Yet even with this natural fact, it is still the case that pregnancy is possible, whether through human miscalculation or because of the natural "irregularity" of many women's cycles.
So, even with sex planned around fertility cycles, there is always the possibility of procreation. Which means that sex, as much fun and pleasure as is involved, must always be engaged, for the Christian, with the possibility of creating and welcoming new life.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at February 7, 2005 09:29 PMI still don't understand how a result that may or may not occur (a kid) in a given set of circumstances (sexual intercourse between a fertile man and a fertile woman) can be a primary reason/virtue for the existence of an institution/sacrament (marriage). I can certainly see it as a key virtue (some see the BCP's listing of marital virtues as being ordered acording to importance, others do not - as far as I know there is not a definite ruling on that one - maybe someone knows of one?). But I have trouble naming it the main virtue. I am more comfortable talking about it as a virtue among other virtues, without an ordering according to importance. Why does there need to be an ordering?
We talked in our Ethics class about "openness to generativity" as being the virtue; which is to say, not necessarily actually having children, but being open to the occurrence. That may speak to what Jeff was talking about regarding the Anglican Communion's teaching on contraception. Speaking of Jeff - Hey man! Good to hear from you!
The remark about Scripture giving us examples of how to pastorally care for infertile couples assumes, I think, two things. One: They want children in the first place. Two: Adoption is not an attractive option to them.
I also do not think it is reductionist to ask in what virtues an infertile married couple can participate, and does their lack of ability to participate in one of the virtues have a negative effect on the sacrament of their marriage? I would say no, it does not.
Another thing on which I would be interested to hear the opinions of the assembled is a question that was raised in our Ethics class the other day. Where else are the virtues listed for marriage expressed, outside of marriage? Obviously, the procreation one doesn't get a lot of expression as a virtue outside of marriage, but what of the others?
-R
Ryan:
The primacy of procreation among the various "marital virtues" is taken quite directly from the creation mandate: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." Genesis doesn't tell us: "Find the g spot and go to town, boys!" Again, I want to say that it's not that pleasure is an evil, but that it is a second order good. I would think the witness of apocalyptic virginity (a la 1 Corinthians 7) would be a quite obvious strengthening of the procreative vis a vis the pleasure case for hierarchical ordering of goods.
While I know ethicists are prone to the invention of absolutely meaningless (yet scientific sounding!) phrases (since ethics is my specialization in my PhD program), I'm not sure the "openness to generativity" really conveys any meaning rather than hides it. Why not simply state the obvious: if one is going to have sex, then one must be open and ready and indeed will the possibility of creating a new human life. That it will not happen--even if one wills it, and is trying to make it happen--may well indeed be the case in most instances of sexual intercourse. But this does not eliminate the plain fact that everytime one engages in sex, one must also accept the procreative reality of the creation of new life.
I should clarify something that may well have been misconstrued in my comments on natural family planning. NFP methods are never to be used with the primary end in mind of avoiding conception. The goal of NFP is not the avoidance of conception, but the ordering of conception toward wholistic familial (which is necessarily procreative) ends; whether those ends be the spacing of children, the health of the mother (especially in the months after a recent birth), and so forth. NFP is a far cry from the secularized understanding that seeks to avoid procreation for ends that are not related to procreation (careers, pleasure, education, etc.).
I'm not sure exactly what you read into my comments regarding the pastoral care of infertile couples. It seems to me that only the most disordered of human thinking could not only will childlessness on oneself but also to glory in it. Childbirth is such a natural part of being human, that even if the natural grief of infertility is sublimated toward other ends (monasticism, mission, etc.), one still is dealing with disappointment. So perhaps you are correct in assuming that my comments wrongly attribute the desire for children to infertile couples. But then again, I see this as a disordered state.
Having said that, however, I do see the possibility of what I have been calling apocalyptic virginity (or married chastity). The Church knows of many married saints who gave up the natural inclination toward sex and lived as "brother and sister" for the greater good of and service toward the Church. But this is not, I do not think, the same thing you are suggesting, for these married saints gave up sex in giving up procreation--which still serves only to link sex and procreation.
And though I do think infertile couples ought seek to fulfill their natural propensities and desires for procreation via adoption, I also very much recognize that infertility may legitimately find its end in other ways: foster parenting, non-parental mentoring, catechesis, and so forth.
As to my comments on reductionism, I was only referring to the false dichotomy you implied in severing procreation from sex. Yes, of course it is possible for a married couple, who is infertile, to seek and be satisfied by and in the other virtues of marriage. But then again, fertile couples ought do so as well. It's not as though I'm advocating either procreation or these other virtues. That would be a false reductionism.
Finally, as to your more general question: of course procreation cannot be a virtue outside of the marital bond. This does not make procreation an evil outside of marriage, but only that such procreative activities, though good in form, cannot serve as virtues since the essential good which procreation is has been put to disordered ends in these scenarios.
Certainly "help and comfort in times of both prosperity and adversity" is something that ought be true of all members of the Church toward one another. We bear one another's burdens, and insofar as we are members of the Church, this is a covenanted relationship, similar, at least in covenantal form, to marriage.
With regard to "mutual joy in union of mind, body, and soul" it is hard to see how this could play out strictly platonically, which, if it is to be a virtue outside the marriage bond it must be so constituted (i.e., nonsexual). But if this could be accomplished apart from sexual activity, then I suppose I could see this being a virtue. For example, it is not hard to find instances of union of mind and soul among biblical nonsexual friendships and among the saints. But given the original context for this virtue, it is hard to see how union of body could be accomplished nonsexually; and it is the consistent witness of Scripture and Church liturgy, dogma and canon that sexual expression is reserved for marriage only.
Finally, as to "signifying the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church"--the only relationship this mystery is said to inhere in is the marriage of a man and a woman. We are given no other Scriptural (or Traditional) warrant to suppose that any other human relationship can "icon" the relationship of Christ and his Church, so this is a virtue that cannot play out outside of marriage.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at February 8, 2005 12:06 AMSo, even with sex planned around fertility cycles, there is always the possibility of procreation. Which means that sex, as much fun and pleasure as is involved, must always be engaged, for the Christian, with the possibility of creating and welcoming new life.Possible? Absolutely. Purposeful? No. You seem, up to this point, to say that the purpose of sex is for procreation and not also pleasure. This is perhaps my misunderstanding.
And the family planning method..I dunno, borther, this has always sounded like a neat turn of phrase to me. There are, as you list, several virtuous reasons not to get pregnant. Why then have sex at all? This may be my problem. Somehow I read in what you originally posted the whole "have sex to have babies not simply to have sex." If one is having sex at certain times of the month in order to avoid getting pregnant but because ya still want to get it on, then that is birth control...it may be ineffective but it is still an attempt to control whether or not your spouse will become pregnant. Should we know it is possible? You bet! Always and if a couple becomes pregnant, then it is a gift, a great gift. But the intention behind the sexual act in these times is clearly not procreation but something else.
This is why I am confused. What then is the something else? Posibility and purpose are not the same to me. Are they to be the same in this conversation?
Posted by: AngloBaptist at February 8, 2005 05:53 AMTripp:
You write: "You seem, up to this point, to say that the purpose of sex is for procreation and not also pleasure."
Take out the "not" and you have what I'm saying. In other words: The purpose of sex is for procreation and also pleasure, but where pleasure is a secondary good to procreation.
Also, yes, NFP can be misused to avoid getting pregnant. But that is not the motivation for NFP. NFP is always bounded by the reality that sex is about, primarily about, procreation, and all its ends, even to the "spacing" of children and so forth are procreative not contraceptive ends. But there are no "NFP police" going around and making sure that everyone is always having sex for procreative (as opposed to contraceptive) ends; that is a matter for the couple, their priest, and God.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at February 8, 2005 06:13 AMI get it. Take out the "not."
But "purpose" matters. To highlight one purpose over the other...I dunno. No gift of the Spirit is greater. Though there are greater virtues, I guess. At least Paul says so.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at February 8, 2005 06:40 AMThe Pope's addresses on the Theology of the Body address these questions beautifully and deeply. A book with all of them collected is available. There is also a set of lectures by Christopher West, called "Naked without Shame" available on CD from The Gift foundation for a very few dollars. These attempt to summarize and simplify the teaching of the Theology of the Body.
Karol Wojtyla is a brilliant and insightful man (or was before he became very old, we don't know)
and it would be a shame to miss out on this when one is interested in the subjects he discusses, just because one isn't a Roman Catholic.
SFP
Susan:
Thanks for the references.
And no worries, though I'm not RC, I have, on this blog, expressed my admiration and respect for the Holy Fahter.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at February 9, 2005 03:17 PM