Iconodule said:
Onesimus said:
[quote author=FatherGiryus]
Trying to say that our modern view of sexuality is normative to the Church is patently ludicrous.
Now this, depending on how one looks at it, I think is true. But I'm not sure it is helpful in teasing out the whole picture.
What were the intended goals of the canons? Were they not to give people weak in faith and subject to deep seeded cultural sins and customs a framework from which to develop a catechetical compliment to repentance, not dissimilar to the orthopraxy of liturgy or the bodily ascesis of fasting, prayer, etc.? What was the objective goal of directing the flow of people's consciousness other than to establish a set of pattern by which people would learn how to reorient their relationships and attitude away from sexual nihilism and all its associated aberrancies?
The effect of these canons were the establishment of the family unit and sexuality as we know it modernity by channeling Christian behavior towards their telos in Christ. The fact is that the modern notions of sexuality and homosexuality are a product of these very canons being ingrained into the consciousness of the Christian world...and the fact that they've always remained imperfect, does not mean they were not sanctifying for people, culture, etc.
The departure from relying on those canons and their strict implementation is, in my estimation, a result of the ubiquitous understanding of them as valued parts of identity in the church over time which had seeped into the fabric of Christian culture...and this was exactly the goal of the canons for a still pagan culture intent on sexual nihilism, objectification and violation of other human persons "against nature." (not nature as in mother nature - but nature as in logikos = i.e. conforming to the image of likeness of Christ.) The fact that Iconodule points out is essentially correct; that we don't implement these anymore cause they don't apply to our modern context. But he has this backwards. They are becoming more relevant to us as we begin to recognize how much we don't live a truly Christian life and how much we are being conformed to the likeness of the world and becoming slaves to its modern trends and passions. We are beginning to need these external catechetical practices in order to reign in our passions and help us become attentive to the Spirit. What we are seeing in modernity is essentially a popular re-embrace of the kinds of sexual nihilism of the pagan world, complete with same sex-marriages (which they had). As we slide back into paganism we probably need the canons just as the culture emerging from paganism did. Times do change for the Church and it does need to adapt, but in precisely the opposite direction Iconodule proposes. Our regression is not an indication that the canons are no longer helpful, but that they may have more value than we understand in transforming the lives of the spiritually immature.
I completely get your point, but this is essentially a statement offered that is "a mile wide and an inch deep" without giving any food for thought. It seems that in the context of this ongoing discussion it could read uncritically to continue to push a certain desired outcome; i.e. the legitimization of sodomy.
Perhaps the canons do need to be rewritten for a new age...but they ought not be rewritten to embrace sodomy. Perhaps they need to be rewritten to reign us back in and remind of us of who we are to be.
I don't think you are aware of the full picture of "who we are to be" in the mind of the Fathers, and particularly in their treatment of sexual questions.
First question: Why is there sex? Because of man's disobedience, he is no longer able to reproduce in the angelic, asexual manner, but must rather procreate in the manner proper to irrational beasts. Only in prevision of this did God divide man into male and female and implant this impulse to procreate which, in the words of Saint Gregory Palamas, "is not subject to our minds, which God has appointed to govern us, and is not entirely without sin." Saint Gregory of Nyssa infers that Adam and Eve were originally intended to be sexless, as in the resurrection there is no marriage. This might seem to some like a rather strained reading of the Genesis narrative, though it does conform pretty well with Platonic cosmology. In any case, in the view of these fathers (including also Chrysostom, Maximus, and John Damascene) sex is not essential to human nature; it was alien to Adam and Eve before their fall, will be alien to our resurrected bodies, and therefore can only be regarded as an accidental attribute in the interim. Which pretty much answers the next question:
What is sex for? It's for procreation. That's it. In his Centuries on Love, Saint Maximus says, "In relation to women, for example, sexual intercourse, rightly used, has as its purpose the begetting of children. He, therefore, who seeks in it only sensual pleasure uses it wrongly, for he reckons as good what is not good. When such a man has intercourse with a woman, he misuses her." Married couples should come together to make babies, and spend the rest of their time like monks/ angels. Saint John Chrysostom notably also stresses the importance of reinforcing/ strengthening the bond between man and wife, but this is not something separate from the procreative function.
What is fornication? Any sexual act or thought without the purpose of begetting children misses the mark- this is a consistent position of the ancient Church. The sin of fornication is understood to extend so far as to include having "impure thoughts" about one's own wife. And it wasn't enough for a couple to restrict themselves to procreative acts on non-fasting, non-feast days- the wrong position, the wrong attitude, the wrong place, could render one guilty of the sin of Sodom. And- sorry Mor- but that Rachel Weisz thread? Everyone participating in it, and possibly even looking at it, is guilty of fornication. By such deeds, we succumb to our animalistic urges, implanted as a result of the Fall, and unworthy of our true calling. The fact that any of us talk about these matters on a public forum says a lot about how far away we are from this aspect of the patristic worldview.
Needless to say, in such a worldview, contraception is out of question, which is why I am continually bringing up the Russian Orthodox Church's official allowance for it (and other jurisdictions, such as the OCA, have followed suit). This represents a big shift in the Christian view of sexuality, something the Roman Catholics recognize, though even with their strident anti-contraceptive stance, they too have hammered a significant gap in the edifice by advocating "natural family planning." Pleasure and procreation are now quite separated as purposes for intercourse, even if the latter is still upheld as the prominent end of marriage.
We can bring up any number of convincing reasons why this change was made- pastoral, biological, historical- but nevertheless the fact remains that acts considered damnable fornication throughout the history of the Church are now considered acceptable (with, of course, appropriate consultation with your spiritual father). We could also point to the absence of strict separation of the sexes in many churches, loosening standards of dress, significantly changed attitudes toward dating, premarital (and marital) sex, menstruation etc. Something big happened here, and it's not just about contraception, and not even just about sex. This is a churchwide revision of a traditional teaching and a traditional anthropology. Those who maintain a fiery intransigence on homosexuality while ignoring or condoning these other changes are fooling themselves if they think they are protecting the traditional Christian sexual ideals. The special, overriding horror of one particular brand of fornication over all the others is something not shared by the Fathers. It is an expression of modernity, something none of us can escape, and we are all alike strangers to the cosmology of Byzantium and medieval Rus'.
My point is not to say, "We're all sinners, so sin is okay" or "There's no such thing as sin anymore." But if we're going to relax some parts and not others, there needs to be some coherent, articulated reason for it, with careful consideration both of tradition and contemporary situations. Acting like nothing has really changed won't accomplish that. A Church that strains out the gnat of homosexuality and swallows the camel of porneia isn't accomplishing that.
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Note that arsenokoetia is a form of porneia, and both are proscribed by name in the New Testament; what is more, Fr. Trenham has expressly condemned birth control, as I mentioned previously. The fact that the Russian church and other jurisdictions may allow it is obviously an immediate problem which must be addressed.
However, it must be stressed in the ancient canons the penalties for arsenokoetia, whether performed between married men and women or between two men, were much more severe than those for fornication. Indeed, if a boy was the passive victim of arsenokoetia, he was deemed to have been "ruined" and was thus canonically disqualified from the priesthood, under the canons of St. John the Faster.
I don"t advocate these canons for enforcement today, by the way, as much more oikonomia is needed, but these canons do provide a roadmap for understanding how the ancient church judged the relative seriousness of each particular sin, and modern confessors I believe should continue to rely on them for assesing the spiritual damage individual Christians have inflicted on themselves through specific sins, even if they should no longer neccessarily apply the same medicines (because someone instructed to engage in xerophagia and refrain from communion for seven years, the ancient penance for arsenokoetia, might fall into despair and just leave the Church for a mainline Protestant church or another religion altogether, or kill themselves, owing to the stresses of contemporary society).
I also believe the Russian and Serbian churches need to get tougher about abortion. And again, Fr. Trenham has attacked abortion and birth control with at least as much, if not more vigour, then he has spent on this particular issue, calling it "the culture of death" and "the death industry," which is at least as incendiary as "homofascist."