7. Gnostic Arguments About Marriage

16. THE GNOSTIC ARGUMENTS

     In the first four centuries the Gnostics were a formidable opposition to the church fathers. They preached their own wisdom, and wished to dominate theological and ethical discourse. They were amply matched and subdued by the church but had a resurgence in the third century, when their arguments centred on the femaleness of nature which, of course, as the monasteries taught, had to be subdued, or risen above. But as they were for virginity as well, and indeed preached it first, that may have had more influence than the church believed at the time. The idea of the body being only a habitation for the more important spirit, that enlightened man was above common law and could not sin, no matter what he did, that the world was created by dual creators, a higher, good and spiritual being and a lower fleshier being, brought men and women into conflict again. Men being, of course, good and spiritual, with their fleshly needs served by women and slaves and even by nature itself. Gentiles were no better than woman (wives) and slaves, and it was for their protection that the laws of the land were made. The early church did prevail over this opposing force, but vestiges of the Gnostic arguments remained within the monasteries and suspicion towards marriage was one of them. The Gnostics did not need procreation as they thought they were in the end time. So did the priests of the church, but they were more realistic and therefore they acknowledged the necessity of marriage and procreation, but not for them. Because women grew the seed, that was the source of physical being, this identified women with the nature that was so sinful.

17. MARRIAGE/NATURE, CELIBACY/SPIRITUAL

    Plato, B.C.400 had conceived a ladder whereby men could ascend from human love to divine love, that is, lower to higher, and it was the church that took this up again.

     Here now is a collection of damaging statements that have been reflected in the development of the history of women since the first century -

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Jerome in the late fourth century could only praise marriage and wedlock, if it begat celibates. "I gather roses from thorns, and gold from the earth, and pearls from shells", he said. They took the opening verses of 1st Corinthians 7, quite out of context, and followed the late second century teacher, Tertullian, who had first introduced Eve as the first fallen.

     They denounced marriage, and any form of intercourse between the sexes. "It is better for a man not to touch a woman". Paul would have been horrified. That provided the plank and they used that to pin the doctrine of sexual abstinence or at least austerity, for, it was a woman who first fell, and caused the man to fall, and continued to cause the men to fall.

     In the third century Augustine said "pleasure is the enemy and too much love for one's spouse is adultery". Add to this his advice to hate her in the corruptible and mortal conjugal connection, and to love your wife, as you would your enemies, the de sexing of holy women was almost complete. Much has been made of Augustine's own troubling and shame over his relationship of fifteen years, with his unnamed mistress. He inherited this troubling theological and cultural bind and created more pronouncements and promoted them firmly. It is little wonder that he, and men of his time, had great difficulty relating to women. These icy tones, for women anyway, were the driving force until the thaw of the twelfth century, when it was at last pronounced that married people with merit could at last arrive at eternal life. Paul would have been scandalised over Augustine's rejection of the Christian teaching of inclusiveness for women, for he upheld the old patriarchal system, ignoring Paul's advice on moral liberty for all. His obsession with passion free procreation led him to pronounce that patriarchal polygamy was only obeying the commandment to "increase and multiply", and was devoid of lust of any kind.

      Monogamy, now emptied of any Christian spiritual meaning, was not only viewed as damage limitation, but an inadequate compromise with the flesh. The enemy was now "within", and there was no mistake about that. Virginity was the only road to heaven.

     It was in Augustine's North African parish that most of the theological schisms and storms raged at the time of the fifth century. Extant writings from this time contain mostly advice to priests on how to implement Augustine's teachings and how to forgive those who sinned, through the confessional.

     Ambrose in the fourth century said "She who does not believe is a woman ... while she who believes progresses to perfect manhood, to the measure of the adulthood of Christ". So that women in any form of competition or progress, especially the martyrs, subdued themselves from the "devil" and de sexed themselves as best they could, to become as male as they could. Women knew that chastity was not enough for their salvation, and the road to perfect ness by maleness, is littered with the bodies of virgin women martyrs who saw themselves as needing great discipline to reach the ideal.

     Jerome instigated in the fifth century such rigorous mortifications on those who aspired to the life of the ascetic, that amenorrhoea (no monthly periods) and anorexia would have been induced amongst the females, completely obliterating beauty or allure in women. His Biblical translations and monumental achievements in spreading religious thought and wisdom is tinged with a fanaticism that may have been the product of his desert experiences of hallucinatory visions of being attacked by lustful women. Anyway, holy women were expected to become like anorexics, with no female characteristics for maleness was the ideal.

     Jerome’s views on the evils of marriage shocked the Romans. Yet those who took on Christianity were glad to choose consecration as a virgin, for it offered a measure of protection, from the pagan practises all around them. Five children per woman was the required number of children for each woman, to keep the population at an acceptable level. High born Roman ladies, valuable breeding stock, who followed the Christian course of virginity, would have put extra thorns in the flesh of the Roman establishment. The Roman Empire for various reasons began it's crumble into decay and along with other highly valued and respected (even today) institutions, divorce laws began to be trivialised and increasingly abused. It is recorded that a lady who had had 22 husbands, was to marry a man who had had 21 wives!

     Jerome offered these ladies a way out of corruption, and once they adhered to the doctrine of virginity, he valued them highly. The widows or young girls under his tutelage might have been glad to be relieved of their household tasks, but the rigid asceticism, with continual denials of their bodily needs that they took on, showed them that there was no middle path. Virgins or harlots, that's all. The only compensation for the harlot was virginal offspring, for procreation for any other cause was sinful. He declared that virginity filled heaven, but marriage was earthy.