by Professor Morwenna Ludlow, a historian, theologian and priest, specialising in historical theology. She is Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Exeter and Canon Theologian at Exeter Cathedral
On 19 July, Anglicans remember Macrina and Gregory of Nyssa. Their family story reminds us of the richness and complexity of early Christian practices of marriage and celibacy. Gregory’s biography of his sister Macrina tells that she was engaged in her early teens. When her fiancé died before they could be married, Macrina promptly declared herself a ‘widow’ and dedicated her life to celibacy—first on her own, but eventually turning her whole household into a community for celibate women. This community included her mother Emmelia who, we are told, would have preferred to be a nun herself but agreed to the marriage arranged for her. She had ten children. Macrina was the eldest; the second child, Basil of Caesarea, lived for a while as a celibate in a small community of men in the grounds of the family estate. Basil later founded an important monastery at Caesarea (where he was Bishop) and his monastic “Rule” was an important influence on both eastern and western monasticism (via Cassian and Benedict). Macrina and Basil’s younger brother Gregory married, but was a widower by the time he was elected Bishop of Nyssa. He was supportive of his siblings’ monastic projects and several of his writings address the spiritual graces and challenges of a life of voluntary celibacy.
Why do I think that we need to reflect on celibacy now? First, because it was celibacy, not marriage, that was counter-cultural in the early church. An arranged marriage was the way those with property ensured its orderly transfer to the next generation. Aristocratic, wealthy or middling families (whether Christian or not) married their daughters off at the age of around 12 to 14. The marriages of Christians were frequently blessed by a priest, but a Christian marriage service was very slow to emerge, especially in the west. To judge from grumpy sermons on the subject, Christians’ weddings would have been difficult to distinguish from others’. We have many stories of Christian women and men rejecting their families’ expectations to marry, instead taking up a life of celibacy dedicated to prayer and service of God. Those who chose to reject marriage in this way could easily paint themselves as taking up a Christian stance against their society—even if it was a society in which most people were Christian. Their decision to choose celibacy was frequently met with incomprehension and suspicion, not least because it often diverted wealth away from influential families to the church.
Secondly, this decision in favour of a life of celibacy was not understood narrowly as ‘giving up sex’. Voluntarily celibate men and women saw themselves as following a calling to dedicate their whole lives to God. Whether they pursued this alone, in small groups or a larger community, they were dedicated to a life ordered by regular prayer and the singing of the psalms. Their lives were marked by simplicity in food and dress. For Macrina, this certainly meant giving up the comforts of her aristocratic upbringing. For the orphans she took into her community, or the homeless men who were trained in Basil ’s monastery, it meant a more stable life and a better diet. Many monks and nuns took up a life of regular work as well as prayer, working either for their community (growing vegetables, making clothes and so on) or serving the poor and sick who came to them.
To be clear, there was a very strong strain of early church theology which was suspicious of the body, fearful of sexual desire and keen on the strict preservation of sexual purity (especially for women). But this was never the whole story and many monks and nuns were sexually experienced. Some were widows/widowers. Some married couples individually joined celibate communities after producing ‘an heir and a spare’. Very many people were sexually active outside marriage and some of these later turned to voluntary celibacy. Augustine of Hippo wrote about his concubine and son with great affection. This was not a period of his life which he repudiated in any straightforward sense; his relationship was even condoned by his pious Christian mother until such a time as she had found him a suitably aristocratic wife.
Thirdly, and most importantly, this kind of celibate life was voluntary. Holy men and women were praised for their choice—a choice often made against the wishes of their families and friends. Macrina is a good example of this. It is true that these men and women often felt their calling as a kind of compulsion. Many, like Augustine, undertook it after deep and long struggles. Those called to ministry today might recognise that grappling in response to a calling. In time, celibacy was expected of priests and bishops (in the west) and bishops (in the east). But even if celibacy was experienced as a challenging call imposed by God and connected with a call to ministry, it was never required by the church of certain sets of people simply because of the way they were born. Indeed, there is clear evidence of rules designed to prevent certain people being pressurised into celibacy. Families were not to send a young girl off to a nunnery against her will. Husbands or wives could leave a marriage to pursue a life of celibacy, but only with the agreement of their spouse; if they did leave their marriage, they could not force their husband or wife to join a community of celibates too. This is not of course to say that these rules weren’t broken. The hierarchical society meant that women and slaves were vulnerable to cooption (and there were rules forbidding slaves to join communities without their masters’ permission). But the point is that the Christian doctrine of celibacy clearly taught that it was a voluntary dedication of one’s whole self and one’s whole life to God and a rejection of society’s pressure to accumulate wealth, improve one’s status and pass both down to the next generation.
So was this just a fourth-century development in response to the coming together of Christianity and the Roman Empire? Ordered patterns of voluntary celibacy clearly predate Constantine. The earliest texts of Christianity witness to two kinds of leaders: the settled hosts of ‘house churches’ and others, like Paul and the disciples who travelled with Jesus, who were itinerant preachers and teachers. These wandering apostles were probably the first Christian voluntary celibates. Out of their practice grew more formalised traditions, like the wandering pairs of celibate men and women in the Syriac tradition (some scholars argue that very early narratives like the Acts of Paul and Thecla preserve a folk memory of this). In other words, the earliest evidence of consistent forms of Christian voluntary celibacy come from outside, or on the fringes of, the Roman Empire, well before the Empire was Christianised.
A common Protestant narrative sees the Constantinian period as beginning all kinds of decline in the church and the Protestant Reformation did indeed criticise the corruption of monastic institutions and reverse the expectation of priestly celibacy. But those following Protestant tradition today have to grapple with the fact that Paul declared that it was ‘well’ for the unmarried and widows to remain unmarried as he was and that voluntary celibacy was one ‘particular gift’ among others (1 Cor. 7:7-8, 25). Early Christians reflected deeply on Scripture when teaching about voluntary celibacy. Works like Gregory of Nyssa’s On Virginity are heavily indebted to 1 Cor. 7, advocating integrity in whatever life is chosen. Arguably, the early church’s favouring of celibacy is more Pauline and more biblical than the Reformation’s declaration that celibacy and marriage were of equal value. In any case, early Christian celibates constantly expressed their calling in biblical terms, most vividly the idea that celibacy was a marriage with the heavenly bridegroom: just as each Christian was held to be the uniquely-loved adoptive son and heir of God through baptism, so each voluntary celibate—whether a man or woman—became the uniquely loved bride of Christ. They expressed this relationship using imagery from the Song of Songs, the parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13) and other New Testament texts (e.g. Matt. 9:15/Mk 2:19/Luke 5:34; John 3:29; 2 Cor. 11:2-4; Eph. 5). In other words, the biblical use of marriage as a symbol for salvation was not just used to validate earthly marriage; it was also—and I would argue was more emphatically and regularly used—as a model for the relationship of each celibate to their heavenly spouse.
Early forms of Christian celibacy were varied. They were adapted to suit individual settings and cultural contexts. But they were united by a strong sense of a voluntary, permanent setting aside of one’s Iife for God, a commitment which was symbolised for women and men as a wife’s devotion to her heavenly husband. Just as marriage was based in both Jewish and Roman law on consent, celibacy was grounded on a voluntary commitment.
Those modern Christians who demand celibacy for same sex couples may think they are defending the Christian doctrine of marriage. In fact, they are ignoring the doctrine of celibacy. Their position is unchristian, it is unbiblical, and it is unkind.
Sources/further reading
Brock, Sebastian P and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, eds., Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, paperback (Berkeley (CA); Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 1998).
Brock, Sebastian, The Luminous Eye. The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Cistercian Studies Series 124 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1992).
Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
Clark, Gillian. Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Life-Styles. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008).
Elm, Susanna. Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Ludlow, Morwenna. The Early Church. (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009).