Ecce Unde

Constantine’s cooptation of Christianity marked a turning point in the church’s view of sex, a definitive rejection of a Semitic appreciation for sexuality. Raymond J. Lawrence, Jr. makes this claim in Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom. Uniformity in belief and practice was imposed. Proponents of a more liberated perspective, such as Theodore of Mopsuestia, were condemned as heretics and silenced after the Council of Nicea in 325.

Before Constantine, the sin of idolatry–in particular offering sacrifice to the imperial cult–was the primary concern of Christian morality. After Constantine, Christian morality became obsessed with sexual purity. Lawrence attributes this to the Stoicism and Neoplatonism, which viewed sexual pleasure with suspicion, that dominated Roman thought at the time.

Two figures that stand out in the post-Constantinian church were Jerome and Augustine. Lawrence writes, “Among all the great personages of early Christendom few exerted as much influence and none is more fascinatingly kinky than Jerome.” Jerome believed sex was intrinsically impure; the only good to come out of marital intercourse was the birth of virgins. (He disapproved of baths for virgins lest they kindle lust in the bather.) Virginity and sexual abstinence were the hallmarks of Christian life. He condemned Clement of Alexandria for espousing the notion that Paul was married. “His dark, sex-phobic shadow casts itself across the church right into the present generation,” Lawrence concludes.

Augustine led a sexually licentious life during his youth. After his conversion to the “Catholic” faction, he became an obsessive celibate. His formulation of the doctrine of original sin, in which the human will is ineluctably tainted by dark impulses, can be interpreted as a psychological reaction to his former life. Original sin, as Augustine understood it, was inextricably linked to sex. “Ecce unde,” he wrote. “There it is.” The libido’s inability to be mastered by the will made it demonic. Arguably this derived from his philosophical training than biblical reflection. As Peter Brown wrote, “The loving cleaving of Israel to God would never be reenacted in the marriage beds of Western Christendom, only the sad shadow of Adam’s estrangement from the will of God.”