This chapter asks why Christianity values virginity (Section 11.1). It examines a particular form of virginity, “virginity for the sake of the Kingdom.” While the conventional arguments for this state may no longer convince, better and more contemporary theological reasons are suggested. Surprising help from a secular source commending virginity, is gratefully utilized (Section 11.2). A similar approach is taken to celibacy, in which unconvincing and more convincing reasons are laid out and compared (Section 11.3). Then chastity is defined, enlarged and further commended in Section 11.4.
11.1 Valuing Virginity?In this chapter we will be thinking about virginity, celibacy, and chastity. There are subtle differences and shadings of meanings between these terms, so here are some definitions:
One could say there appear to be two ways virginity comes to matter in contemporary Christian sexual thought. First, since there is officially no having sex before marriage, virginity remains the ideal from which Christians enter marriage. Second, virginity is a state of devotion to God and to the service of God free from the distractions of devotion to a spouse. This is “virginity for the sake of the Kingdom.”
It seems that celibacy and virginity for the sake of the Kingdom are the same thing. According to this definition celibacy is a lifelong state of the person. It is recognized as a divine gift rather than a mere human life-choice, and it is undertaken for the deepest of religious reasons, a vocation from God.
Losing one’s virginity Deeply rooted in vernacular discussion about having sex for the first time, is the phrase “losing one’s virginity.” It does not take much thought to realize that that phrase belongs to an age when a woman’s virginity was more highly prized, so that its loss was potentially ruinous for a woman’s reputation. Terms like “slag” and “slut” still become attached to sexually experienced young women, however unfairly, and these terms indicate the survival of a double standard. No such opprobrium attends the first sexual experience of a man, whose “conquest” would be likely to form the subject of banter and boasting. But losing one’s virginity may no longer carry the same sense of loss that it did until recently, and this loss of meaning of the loss of virginity may itself be a grave social, as well as personal, loss. If indeed that is so, it is important to say why, and that involves weighing up various beliefs and assumptions about virginity.
Like angels? There is little doubt that the ancient world expected the great majority of women to reproduce, and to start the dangerous business of bringing children into the world as soon as they were physically able. Some Christians however were more concerned with anticipating the world to come, when they would be as angels. Virginity was better, not least because it guaranteed release from the endless cycle of birth, sex, child-rearing, and death, and, when it was preserved it earned respect from a surprised populace. But that was not its only reward. As Peter Brown explains,
"It was left to Christian treatises on virginity to speak in public on the physical state of the married woman – on their danger in childbirth, on the pain in their breasts during suckling, on their exposure to children’s infections, on the terrible shame of infertility, and on the humiliation of being replaced by servants in their husbands’ affections" (Brown, 1988, p. 25).
Over centuries the contrast between virginity and marriage was explained by means of the physical, spiritual, and theological superiority of the former. Darker justifications for remaining virginal became central within Christian doctrine (Ranke-Heinemann, 1992, pp. 119–135; Wiesner-Hanks, 2000, pp. 28–34). A late letter of the New Testament blames Eve for bringing sin into the world adding that women may be saved through childbearing (1 Tim. 2:14–15). That indeed was the lot of the many, while for a few the path to salvation lay not in childbearing, but in the renunciation of all sexual activity. The identification of Eve as a temptress, and the association of all sexual activities with sin, led too easily to a male suspicion of women that in turn sometimes led to outright misogyny.
“Clogged up” virgins Here then are two theological reasons for valuing virginity that are not generally to be heard on the lips of contemporary advocates of that state: that by refraining from having sex one is anticipating the next life; or that one is avoiding the inevitable religious contamination that is caught in sexual contact.
While Christians, for different reasons, valued virginity, the classical medical profession, through to the eighteenth century, took a more negative view of it. Anke Bernau (2007, p. 12) explains, “As a female virgin did not experience intercourse and orgasm, her unspilled ‘seed’ built up in her body, with harmful consequences.” Doctors at least from the early modern period to the 1930s believed that the lack of sexual experience in young women caused the disease of chlorosis, or “greensickness” (King, 2004). Early marriage was advised, not simply to avoid extra-marital pregnancy, but to avoid the state of “the clogged up virgin” (Bernau, 2007, p. 18).
Vigorous rubbing The Christian saint and Doctor of the Church Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), was aware of this problem, and that a vigorous rubbing was a practical way of dealing with it:
"Certain girls around fourteen years old cannot be satisfied by intercourse. And then, if they do not have a man, they feel in their minds intercourse with a man and often imagine men’s private parts, and often rub themselves strongly with their fingers or with other instruments until, the vessels having been relaxed through the heat of rubbing and coitus, the spermatic humour exits, with which the heat exits, and then their groins are rendered temperate and then become more chaste." (Cadden, 1996; in Bernau, 2007, p. 18)
It is easy to imagine a clash between religious reasons for remaining a virgin as long as possible and medical reasons for not remaining a virgin for long.
Young women in many cultures have long been accustomed to huge social pressures to prove their virginity by having an intact hymen prior to their wedding night. Scandalously, in some religious groups and societies, this pressure shows little sign of receding. An Internet search under, say “hymen restoration,” “hymenoplasty,” or “hymen repair” reveals scores of agencies prepared to carry out the required work at a price. Apparently the provision of fake or “reconstructed hymens” or cosmetic vaginal surgery is meeting a growing social need (Bernau, 2007, pp. 25–29).
Protestant mainline Churches generally teach that sex before marriage is wrong, but the language they use is generally equivocal, and there is often an absence of theological reasons in support of their teaching. For example, the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church of the USA teaches that “Although all persons are sexual beings whether or not they are married, sexual relations are only clearly affirmed in the marriage bond” (United Methodist Church, 2004).
There then follows a condemnation of “exploitative, abusive, or promiscuous” behavior, inside and outside marriage, but it is not said whether consensual sexual relations outside the marriage bond can also be affirmed, albeit less “clearly” than sexual relations within it. There is almost deliberate and open ambiguity about the matter which doubtless reflects the diverse practices of its younger members.
There are two issues to consider here aside from the understandable ambiguity of these statements. Is virginity valued only as an important prelude to the normative state of marriage? If so what are the theological reasons for this, especially since desire for the angelic life or the idea that the taint of sin attaches to sexual contact, are not obviously Methodist themes? Or can virginity be valued and “clearly affirmed” as an alternative style of Christian life and service? In order to find theological reasons for valuing virginity it is necessary to examine virginity “for the sake of the Kingdom.”
11.2 Virginity “for the Sake of the Kingdom”Perhaps only in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches is there much of any remaining sense of the overt religious value of virginity. Here it is still able to symbolize mastery over the body and its passions in the service of God, or anticipation of that heavenly state where there is no longer any marriage. The Orthodox Church in America calls themonastic life “the angelic way,” and says it is “to be defended, protected and promoted in witness to life in God’s coming kingdom where all holy men and women will be ‘like angels in heaven’ (Matthew 22:30)” (OCA, n.d.). In these cases, virginity belongs to a special vocation, which the great majority of Christians do not receive. For such people, the Catholic Catechism explains
"From the very beginning of the Church there have been men and women who have renounced the great good of marriage to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, to be intent on the things of the Lord, to seek to please him, and to go out to meet the Bridegroom who is coming". (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, para. 1618)
"Virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven is an unfolding of baptismal grace, a powerful sign of the supremacy of the bond with Christ and of the ardent expectation of his return, a sign which also recalls that marriage is a reality of this present age which is passing away." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, para. 1619)
Defiling themselves with women? First, the vision of heaven in Revelation 22 (to which this passage refers) describes 144,000 men (not men and women) and identifies them as “those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among men and offered as first fruits to God and the Lamb” (Rev. 22:4). The Catholic Church clearly associates virginity for the sake of the Kingdom with the vanguard of elite male Christians in heaven.
Second, Matthew’s Gospel records a parable of Jesus known as “The Parable of the Ten Virgins.” They were waiting for a bridegroom who “was a long time in coming” (Matt. 25:5). “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’” (Matt. 25:6). The Vatican links Christians who renounce sex and devote themselves to God with those who are regarded as betrothed instead to Christ, the spiritual Bridegroom who will come again and whom consecrated virgins eagerly await. Again in Revelation, “the new Jerusalem” is “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband,” Jesus Christ (Rev. 21:2).
Third, the comparison of virginity with marriage makes clear that while marriage is an earthly institution, which is passing away, the virginal state is eternal.
There seem to be several difficulties with the rationale for celibacy given above.
11.2.1 Four bad reasons for being a virginFirst, the detail that the privileged males in heaven are rewarded because they “did not defile themselves with women,” and “kept themselves pure,” expresses the ancient and derogatory, gendered, male view of women. Surely it has no place in contemporary Christianity, does it? The view that contact with women contaminates the male person in soul and body is sexist, if not misogynist. And of course it is about male virginity only.
Second, the Parable of the Ten Virgins awaiting a Bridegroom does not appear to be about either virginity or marriage. It is about waiting, about the Disciples of Christ being prepared and alert, for the return of the Messiah, personified as One who is already spiritually betrothed to His followers who are collectively His bride. The ideas of virginity and marriage are used to signify something else. The virgins are in any case bridesmaids, not brides.
Third, there are a growing number of married Christian couples who, together, consecrate themselves “for the sake of the Kingdom” (Stanton, 2002). That total dedication of the whole person to the work of God does not preclude married couples together dedicating themselves to that work.
Fourth, the thought that being a virgin is a reminder that the state of marriage is “passing away” sounds pessimistic. Attention is not drawn to the contrasting differences between the two states, but to the eternal value of one, and to the temporal value of the other. One wonders whether these judgments about virginity for the sake of the Kingdom, and about marriage, actually correspond with the real judgments of virginal and married people?
This pessimism with regard to marriage also lies uneasily at variance with the doctrine that marriage is “a very great good” and a sacrament. Every thought we entertain about the next life has to be by means of pictures drawn from this life. While our lives might anticipate the next life in some way, we do not know what that life will be like. Paul clearly acknowledges this (1 Cor. 2:9). Does Catholic teaching mean that husbands and wives will no longer be, or recognize, themselves as husbands and wives in the life to come?
That is the Catholic teaching, which sits oddly with the teaching of Jesus about the “one flesh” of marriage. That teaching is based on a reply of Jesus to a trick question about the resurrection of the dead. He says “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25). But the teaching does not follow from Christ’s saying, and the Orthodox Churches do not understand it in this way. The saying may indicate only that the practice of marrying will not take place in the hereafter; not that the married in this life will be unmarried in the next.
While there are difficulties associated with the value placed on virginity for the sake of the Kingdom, credit must surely be given for offering theological reasons, at all. Perhaps better theological reasons can be found than those in the Catechism for being and remaining a virgin, whether or not for the sake of the Kingdom? Perhaps virginity can be positively celebrated, and commended to people who have not received the vocation to fulltime Christian work? In order to explore this possibility, we will first examine a purely secular account of virginity; then a theological account from a religious Sister; then draw some conclusions for ourselves.
11.2.2 The cult of the born-again virginPeople of faith may be encouraged to see that within the secular world there is a backlash against the normative expectation of teens and twenties having lots of sex, whatever the consequences. An example of the genre is Wendy Keller’s The Cult of the Born-Again Virgin (1999). This author, neither born-again nor a virgin, loads the title of her book with religious overtones because she advocates a transforming personal conversion from having frequent sexual relationships to an alternative state in which women refrain from sexual contact that turns out to be unfulfilling and harmful. Women testify to getting off “the hamster wheel of dating and sex and relationships,” and rejoicing in their “readmission to virginity” (1999, p. xxiii). There are lists, running to five pages, of benefits accruing to women who become Born Again Virgins, “BAVs.” Here are just a few. Under the heading, “Personal Growth”, the reasons for becoming a BAV (even for a short time!) include:
To nurture yourself
To restore a sense of dignity and elegance
To breathe deeply and learn new ways of interacting
To cultivate more power over your thoughts
To stand up for yourself...
To cultivate a sense of personal dignity
To enhance self-control
To enhance self-esteem ...
To re-establish your identity in the world ...(pp. 11–12)
Under the heading “Relationships”, the reasons for and benefits from becoming a BAV include:
To be peacefully single
To attract and marry the “right” man
To grieve lost loves
To heal from divorce
To repair a broken heart
To break the bonds of dependency on men
To develop relationships with women friends
To develop closer bonds with your child(ren)
To care for an aging parent
To get off the dating fast track
To prepare for your next relationship
To stop playing games. (pp. 12–13)
Finally, why do all this?One of the primary benefits women experience when reclaiming their sexual natures appears to be the accompanying sense of self-love and self-esteem. Self-love is critical before we can love others, and reclaiming our sexuality is for some women a way of increasing their own sense of self-control and self-respect.
One of the remarkable benefits and transcendent qualities for women so inclined is the development of purer attitudes of service and dedication to loftier goals. Some women find themselves coming into alignment with higher spiritual values as a result of their decision not to have sex (Keller, 1999, p. 116).
Christians have better reasons for affirming virginity. Not only are their reasons for temperate sexual behavior rooted in faith and doctrine, their understanding of self-love is always balanced by love of neighbor, and this requirement does not admit of either use or abuse of another person as an object.
The Born-Again Virgin has little to teach sexual minorities, for it addresses only standard heterosexual arrangements for meeting up (now that the practice of courtship has virtually ceased).While it appears as a feminist book, feminists are likely to find it wanting in analysis of the historical and social conditions that have given rise to a veritable sexual anarchy.
The value of the book for Christian ethics is to indicate to Christians, that, outside Christian morality, a strong case can be made for sexual restraint, from which Christians can learn. The serviceable reasons solemnly listed for being a BAV can be grounded in deeper, time-honored ways of honoring God by honoring the body. In this way, the practice of virginity really is a sign, an embodied way of living that points to alternative performances of sexuality.
11.3 In Praise of RestraintWe have already noted how sexual desire, a gift of God, is easily intensified into lust and endlessly stimulated by social and cultural pressures on us. Desire is artificially stimulated. Our culture includes, for example, the popular musical styles of the day; fashionable clothes; discos; night clubs; lap-dancing clubs; erotic entertainment; TV soaps; the cult of celebrity; the ubiquitous presence of porn on the internet; the use of stereotypical (¼ “sexy”) female bodies and muscular male hunks in advertising, and so on.
A terrifying consequence of immersion in this cultural atmosphere is the temptation of many young women and men to internalize, to slide uncritically into, and to adopt the roles of sex marauder and sex object respectively. It becomes too easy to opt into the socially approved roles of predator and predated, where (at least in straight dating arrangements) men are interested more in screwing women than loving them, and women present themselves as they think men want them. The latest fashion is just another way of concealing, while at the same time enabling, their public presence as sex objects worthy of male attention.
The love commandments Once these pressures are recognized and unmasked, the possibility of being a non-conformist in relation to them becomes positively attractive, and celibacy is a positive way of non-conformity. Having a faith becomes an essential aid in the forging of a lifestyle that, like that of the first Christians, is consciously counter-cultural. Looking back over earlier themes in this book, perhaps the first ingredient of an alternative sexual culture is to be found embedded in the foundation of all Christian morality, the commandments of Jesus to all His disciples, to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” and to “Love your neighbor as yourself ” (Mark 12:29–31).
This second of the Great Commandments makes clear that the foundation of all morality, including sexual morality, is love. Any sexual partner we ever have is also, in Christian faith, a neighbor whom we are to love as we love ourselves.
This second commandment is the more intelligible when we have a very high estimation of ourselves and of our great worth as persons. Christians have not always been good at saying this. The emphasis on sin has too readily led to a loss of self-esteem and self-regard which makes self-love difficult, if not impossible. But self-love can express itself in strong positive self-regard, which differs much from an attitude of selfishness, or of disregard of the needs and interests of others, or of narcissism, which becomes a preoccupation of oneself with one’s life, one’s body, one’s career, one’s success, almost at any price. These considerations about basic attitudes to ourselves and to our partners should by themselves be sufficient, not to justify never having sex, but to justify never having sex without many conditions first being satisfied.
One of these is self-respect. While this is a secular value in its own right, in Christian thought it is rooted in appropriate self-love. Another belief that constrains casual sex is the identification of the body of a Christian with the Body of Christ. While we will not be convinced by the ancient physiology of what happens when we have sex, the self-understanding of believers as parts of the mystical Body of Christ is surely illuminating.
A Christian understanding of children ranks high in the determination of Christians to confine the possibility of conceiving children to a permanent relationship between parents, which embraces any children they have. When we looked at Aquinas’ teaching on the evil of fornication, I strongly suggested he was right to emphasize the wrongness of fornication as a sin against any children conceived by it (though I also thought his condemnation of all sexual pleasure was daft). Children deserve to be permanently loved by both their parents. All churches teach that children are “gifts of God.” Their conception should be an occasion of joy, not regret, and especially not regret leading to the termination of a pregnancy.
The past few paragraphs counsel sexual restraint, but not celibacy. But they are preparing the way. Celibacy may also be wisely counseled, and Sr. Janette Gray’s advocacy of it (1997) will be examined next.
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1.3.1 The four phases of celibacyGray convincingly describes four historical phases in the theology of celibacy. The first of these is a kind of martyrdom, where the celibate replicates “the bodily sacrifice of the saviour” (1997, p. 145).
Pelvic anxiety Celibacy is influenced by movements such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism that rejected sex. Avoiding sex led to its devaluation, to a “virulent strain of pelvic anxiety,” which produced “common misery” for scores of saintly Christians. “At the core of this negativity is disbelief in the humanness of sex and the sexuality of being human, despite the central Christian doctrine of creation – that what God creates is good”. This kind of theology “rejects the body and sexuality [and] sees the material as inferior to the spiritual, and negatively associates woman, matter, earth, nature and sexuality” (Gray, 1997, p. 146; see also Ruether, 1983, p. 80).
A second historical phase in her construction of celibacy is its social form, monasticism. In monasteries and convents “a corporate identity was envisaged transcending the individual limitations of human nature and abandoning the corporeality and sinfulness of the personal body for the spiritually enhanced communal body.” A third phase is the rational/intellectual phase – “the privileging of the reasoning self and imagination over and against the body, the seat of sensory illusion” (Gray, 1997, p. 147). Mind and body are at war. The battlefield is the interior soul. This phase of celibacy reshaped “the suspicion of the body . . . through the ascendancy of the spiritual over the body and the employment of the reflective intellect in the turn to God away from the flesh and worldly distractions.”
Being sexual, being celibate Gray is well aware of the destructive legacy of all these historical phases of celibacy. So why defend celibacy at all? Well, there is a fourth, “embodied” and still experimental phase, “still taking form, being consciously embodied within the ranks of the body-denying theologies and the carnage and hatred they have engendered” (Gray, 1997, p. 149). This is “the search for union with God, mediated in human relationships other than sexual partnership. It happens through being sexual, not by imagining that sexuality can be abandoned as a zone of sin beyond God’s saving action” (Gray, 1997, pp. 149–150; emphasis in original).
This form of celibacy is “a way of being sexual. It recognizes the body as constitutive of our being, not merely as a vessel for the spirit.” Celibate living that positively values sexuality “finds that sexual attraction, warmth, and energy permeate all human relationships.” The erotic is allowed to diffuse itself throughout the body instead of remaining focused in the genitals.
Embodied celibacy provides emancipation from the “negative concept of woman as sensual, temptress, and ‘other’,” which still inhabits too many male celibate minds (Gray, 1997, p. 151). No, God does not have “a particular concern to keep women’s bodies under sexual control” (Gray, 1997, p. 152). Speaking for women who refuse to be male defined in negative ways she says “Women need to redress the powerlessness of definition by others and to find new ways of integrating their embodiment with an identity of their own” (1997, p. 153). This kind of celibacy can be subversive. Not only is it “a deviation from the usual role of being a sexual partner.” It also “challenges the male-mirroring of itself in woman as ‘other’” (p. 154). It subverts “the male definition of woman as sexual object.”
The insight that the expression of our sexuality need not catapult us into a sexual relationship or into even looking for one may be welcomed by many lay people for whom celibacy is not a lifelong project but just a state they happen to be in. A recent report from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America helpfully develops this theme, counseling that:
"One does not need to be in a relationship to experience one’s sexuality. Bodies do not suddenly become sexual at puberty and do not cease to be sexual when, for example, there are physical or developmental limitations, menopause, erectile dysfunction, or the absence of a sexual partner. This means that throughout our lives we need to find life-enhancing and appropriate ways of giving expression to this complicated dimension of ourselves." (ELCA, 2009, p. 25)
In the last two sections we have thought about the traditional state of virginity “for the sake of the Kingdom;” about an entirely secular recommendation of virginity; and about good and bad contemporary theological arguments of celibacy. These thoughts will help us to enlarge and commend chastity. Chastity will be defined, criticized, refined and commended.
11.4 Commending ChastityThe examination of virginity and celibacy has enabled us to think theologically about good reasons for not having sex when we might otherwise want to. Virginity is a bodily state we keep until it is surrendered. Sometimes it is referred to as a temporary state to opt into before opting out again. Virginity “for the sake of the Kingdom” clearly starts out as a lifelong endeavor, the vocation of a few people. For most of us, most of the time, the virtue of chastity is what we may find we need.
Chastity was compared earlier with celibacy and virginity (see Section 11.1). We will proceed as we did with virginity “for the sake of the Kingdom” in the last section: first, the account will be described, then analyzed, and then its relevance assessed.
11.4.1 Defining chastityThere are four features of this account that need to be emphasized.
First, chastity on this account is not a characteristic of relationships, however holy they may be, but a particular attention paid to the individual’s self-preservation before God. “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This ensures the unity of the person.”
Whatever unity the person may have is with himself or herself. Chastity is about refusing to allow the disturbance to the equilibrium of body and spirit that sexual desire constantly threatens. The powers of life and love, the very God-given forces that drive us into relation with others are to be held within the fragile unity of the chaste self.
Second, hierarchical language is deliberately deployed in the description of how chastity is to be obtained. People must rid themselves “of all slavery to the passions” (para. 2339).
“Master” and “slave,” with the corresponding states of domination and subjugation, feature prominently. Drawn originally from concrete historical relationships between real masters and real slaves, those relationships are relocated reflexively in the inner struggle where the person experiences himself or herself as both master and slave in the heart of their divided being.
Third, the old dualism between reason and passion survives unamended in the Catechism. References to slavery suggest that Chastity belongs to “the cardinal virtue of temperance, which seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason.” Priority is clearly given to reason over passion in the anthropology that informs the analysis, since passions are only to be controlled, and reason provides the means.
Fourth, a final observation concerns the requirement of chastity binding on people before marriage. It is unsparing in the injunction that having sex is unavailable to them, whatever their circumstances or degree of commitment to each other. Particular efforts at self-mastery are required at certain times, especially during childhood and adolescence (para. 2342). “Those who are engaged to marry are called to live chastity in continence” (para. 2350). If this should prove difficult, it is to be received as a “time of testing.” Engaged couples “should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love.”
11.4.2 Five principles for enlarging chastity
Chastity and church Christians need an account of chastity that is not overly shaped by the experience of male celibate theologians whose own struggles present difficulties of their own, difficulties that should not be projected onto everyone else. I once suggested that the meaning that people give to sexual activity can be helpfully, but not exclusively, described by reference to one or more of these four concepts: exploration, recreation, expression, procreation (Thatcher, 1997, p. 131).
Children and young people will want to explore their bodies, and as desire grows, the bodies of others. Exploration is a name appropriately given to these activities, which contribute to self-knowledge and are a consequence of the way God made us. The desire to explore desirable bodies is as natural as any alleged requirement of the Natural Law, isn’t it? This is a legitimate meaning of sexual activity. The idea of sex as recreation conveys a sense of playfulness, of pleasure, of continual re-creating of a relationship.
Since we belong to a species that makes symbolic gestures and actions, it is almost obvious to remark that sexual behavior is expressive, and can express a range of meanings from a loving, mutual self-surrender to misogyny and humiliation. Any Christian theology of sex assumes this. Finally, the principal meaning given to having sex by the church for most of its history, is procreation. Christian women and men are not immune from any of these processes.
Chastity and the growth of sexual experienceThere is a detail from the definition of chastity just considered that will come to our aid shortly. It is the injunction that “People should cultivate [chastity] in the way that is suited to their state of life.” The idea of a “state of life” in accordance with which appropriate sexual behavior is a virtuous response, will soon be shown to be a fruitful one.
It is obvious that chastity is more likely to be acquired when it is encouraged and practiced by parents, in families, among peers, and certainly within church communities. Local churches do not always provide this encouragement positively. The churches need to understand adolescence better.
Older Christians and Church leaders should understand better the exploration that adolescents need to undertake in order to experience, enjoy, express and control their sexuality, and the intense pleasure that can accompany sexual activity. The adolescent period can also be emotionally painful and disturbing, and experimentation prior to the onset of domestic and career responsibilities is to be expected. There has never been such a lengthy period between puberty and marriage. Christian sexual ethics has to deal with this unique situation at a time when secularity is advanced, and openness to revision of traditional teachings is generally discouraged.
Whatever our age there is always room for further maturity, emotionally, intellectually, personally, sexually, and spiritually. Exploration and experimentation are going to happen and will not be deterred by parental or ecclesiastical embarrassment. Rather a loving, sympathetic, and honest environment both at home, and at church or chaplaincy, is more likely to enable young people to negotiate their explorations on their way to growing sexual maturity. A positive theology of sexuality within which the body, desire, and intimate relationships can be located, and the practice of learning to love can be encouraged, will have vastly more influence than any display of clerical anxiety, and uncomfortable exhortations to be abstinent.
I suggest the following five principles that might help in the reclamation of chastity in a permissive age. They are:
1. The principle of positive waiting.
2. The principle of proportion.
3. The principle of loving commitment.
4. The principle of exclusion.
5. The principle of honoring states of life.
The principle of positive waiting For people of faith the principle of positive waiting for something can be enriching, and it can be applied to the onset of sexual partnerships. A convincing, and counter-cultural reason for delaying having sex lies in the unashamed benefits of waiting for something. People who live in affluent societies are accustomed to getting what they want without having to wait for it, whether it is fast food, express delivery, instant gratification, or instant response to an e-mail. How can waiting be a virtue? Waiting for a late flight, or for snow to melt, or for full recovery from illness is hardly virtuous, but there are several advantages in waiting for sex.
First, there are prudential advantages. We save ourselves lots of bother by not getting emotionally involved with potential sexual partners until we can handle it. If we try to get sexually involved without getting emotionally involved, a consequence of this may the separation of the body of the person from his or her totality as a physical/emotional/spiritual being.
Waiting is a means of acquiring patience, and patience is itself a trait of character essential to the success of a long-term relationship.
Waiting may also be a means of avoiding regret. Several studies show that over half of young women who were asked about their first experience of having sex, said they were disappointed (or worse) with it, and wished that they had waited until they were older.
But there is a spiritual dimension to waiting, and that is because waiting is central to the practice of Christian faith and life. Waiting is more than a prudential policy, an unattractive but necessary means for acquiring virtue. Waiting is one of the things all Christians do!
Yes, one may speak, following the argument of Paul in Romans 8:14–30, of a “theology of waiting.” Christians currently in a state of suffering are said to be waiting for future glory (8:17–18) and, indeed, even “the whole creation” is “groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (8:22), awaiting its liberation. In a deep sense all Christian people are expectant, waiting, longing, not for sex but for Christ’s second coming, and for the restoration of all things that will happen in that time beyond time called “the end of time,” or “the end of the age.”
Precisely in these circumstances of waiting, the virtue of hope is acquired, eager anticipation is enjoyed, and in the experience of impatience “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (8:26). Here is a way of expressing strong sexual desire. It is not disowned or denied. It is recognized and affirmed. But it is linked to the deepest desires Christians have, and which they believe God has – for the triumph of good over evil, love over hate, reconciliation over enmity. That link can turn waiting into a profound prayer for all God wants for the world, and a determination to play one’s part in reaching it. Waiting for what one most desires can have profound spiritual implications.
The principle of proportion In 1991 some Anglican bishops wrote
"one basic principle is very definitely implicit in Christian thinking about sexual relations. It may be put this way: the greater the degree of personal intimacy, the greater should be the degree of personal commitment... Often it is only because a relationship has advanced to a point of deep trust, valuing and commitment that inhibitions and privateness are surrendered, and intercourse becomes a possibility. For Christian tradition this has been, as it were, codified in the principle that full sexual intercourse requires total commitment". (House of Bishops of the Church of England, 1991, para. 3.2; emphasis added)
The bishops did not use the term “proportion” but it is directly implied in their treatment of the relation between the degrees of intimacy and of commitment. The more intimacy negotiated, the greater must be the commitment to match it. Their advice, far from being moralistic, is intended to show that the bottom line in any theology of sexuality is God’s love for all God’s people. In this case the sheer vulnerability of people in sexual relationships is assumed, recognized, and honored. The potentiality for hurt, regret, and emotional trauma is so great that time, above all, is needed to develop a mutual trust within which our personal privacies are respected, and our physical and emotional space revered.
The principle of loving commitment The bishops commend what I have called the principle of proportion, and in doing this another principle is suggested – the principle of loving commitment.
The meaning of sex as an expression of love is far fromobvious, either in the church or in secular societies. We noted earlier that marrying for love is an alarmingly modern idea. As two secular commentators observe: “In the absence of notions like commitment and responsibility, horniness can look an awful lot like ‘love’” (Coles and Stokes, 1985, p. 85). Christians have worried more about whether having sex was lawful than whether it was loving. The view that sex and love are related is found in the Song of Songs. For long periods sex had nothing to do with love, only with procreation and the avoidance of sin. Chapter 6 showed how human love is able to mingle with the divine love, and how sexual love may also be a means of giving and receiving God’s love for us. But the position taken there is far from obvious, and needs argument to establish it.
To be fair to the bishops, they say full sex requires full commitment, and they understand this requirement to be one of the positive meanings of Christian marriage. But the idea that loving someone is a sufficient reason for having sex with them is a common one.
The principle of exclusionThe principle of exclusion is a principle related to intimacy. It excludes a penis from a vagina unless certain conditions are satisfied. For conservative Christians that condition is nothing less than marriage. It is possible to derive this principle from some insights of Paul, and especially the distinction he makes in the course of a long argument, between sins which are “outside” the body and sins which are “against” the body:
"Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body." (1 Cor. 6:18)
At Corinth, some Christians were celebrating their freedom in Christ by regarding themselves as free from all sexual constraints whatever. Against them Paul introduced a very positive appraisal of the human body that precluded its casual sexual use. Central to his argument is the claim: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor. 6:13).
We have already encountered a reading of Paul’s argument to the effect that Christ is present wherever the members of His body are, and whatever the members of His body do. It was suggested that once the ancient physiology associated with Paul’s thought is laid aside, a valuation of the body comes into view that has powerful ethical implications.
The suggestion made now may take a touch too literally the distinction Paul makes between sins committed “outside” the body, and “against” the body, but it may still be helpful. (It is not clear that all sins other than sexual sins are committed outside the body: gluttony would be a good counter-example.) The principle of exclusion draws attention to two details of Paul’s characterization of sexual sins as being inside and against the body.
It could hardly be more obvious that penetrative sex is an act committed “inside the body.” The question is whether the act is also “against” the body. In many cases the answer must be “yes,” and sexual partners themselves acknowledge this by taking steps to protect themselves against consequences that directly affect their health. The principle might also be regarded as an expression of the Pauline teaching that the honoring of God with the body and its mutual recognition as incarnate Spirit be regulative for at least some sexual relations involving Christians.
The principle of honoring states of life But individuals and couples are not going to wait forever. The four principles listed above may serve them well – but only for a while. When waiting gives out, the principle of honoring states of life comes a valuable one. What exactly is it?
At the beginning of the chapter, the Catechism was cited: “People should cultivate [chastity] in the way that is suited to their state of life ... Married people are called to live conjugal chastity; others practise chastity in continence” (para. 2349). Mention of “states of life” also occurs in the preceding paragraph of the Catechism:
"All the baptized are called to chastity. The Christian has “put on Christ”, the model for all chastity. All Christ’s faithful are called to lead a chaste life in keeping with their states of life. At the moment of his Baptism, the Christian is pledged to lead his affective life in chastity." (para. 2348; emphasis added)
There are three interesting features of this account of chastity, and they invite a further proposal.
First, the recognition of states of life itself introduces a welcome sense of relativity, of change, of growth, in the circumstances of people. There are states of life which people reach, and pass.
Second, chastity is not the same as celibacy, or virginity, and is very different from abstinence from sex. If chastity was the same thing as virginity, then married people would not be exhorted to live “conjugal chastity.” They are not expected to abstain from sex. They are expected to abstain from sex with anyone else.
Third, the number of states of life is limited to two, “married people” and “others” (though the state of widowhood is also mentioned). People who are engaged are ranked among the “others,” “called to live chastity in continence” (para. 2350). (“Continence” is an appalling choice of word. An incontinent person is one who cannot control his or her urinary or faecal discharges. There is no doubt what continence means here: no orgasms.)
A new “state of life” My proposal is simple: there is a third, intermediate state of life between singleness and marriage. In this state of life straight people on their way to marriage may be free to have contracepted sex. There are two broad reasons for proposing this:
First, the interval between puberty and marriage has never been greater. It is unprecedented. Healthy individuals cannot be expected to wait until around 30 years of age for their first experience of full sex. It is pastorally insensitive, as well as unrealistic, to expect them to do so.
Second, there is a name for this intermediate state. It has been around longer than Christianity. It is betrothal. A third state of life is not a new invention: it is the recovery of an old one. I shall propose, in line with the need to develop Tradition, not merely to repeat it, that having sex in this state of life is fully compatible with the Christian call to chastity.
This chapter has attempted to make contemporary sense of virginity, of celibacy, and of chastity. The proposal just stated requires considerable theological discussion about contraception and its uses; indeed for many Christians whether contraception may be used at all even with marriage.
By Adrian Thatcher in "God, Sex, and Gender- An Introduction", Wiley-Blackwell, UK, 2011, excerpts pp-193-209. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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