Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity

Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity PDF Author: David G. Hunter
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506446000
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. The books in the series make the wealth of early Christian thought available to new generations of students of theology and provide a valuable resource for the church. Developed in light of recent patristic scholarship, the volumes provide a representative sampling of theological contributions from both East and West. The series provides volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses: from introduction to theology to classes on doctrine and the development of Christian thought. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive but rather to be representative enough to denote for a nonspecialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.

Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity

Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity PDF Author: David G. Hunter
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506446000
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. The books in the series make the wealth of early Christian thought available to new generations of students of theology and provide a valuable resource for the church. Developed in light of recent patristic scholarship, the volumes provide a representative sampling of theological contributions from both East and West. The series provides volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses: from introduction to theology to classes on doctrine and the development of Christian thought. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive but rather to be representative enough to denote for a nonspecialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.

The Body and Society

The Body and Society PDF Author: Peter Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asceticism
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
First published in 1988, Peter Brown's The Body and Society was a groundbreaking study of the marriage and sexual practices of early Christians in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Brown focuses on the practice of permanent sexual renunciation-continence, celibacy, and lifelong virginity-in Christian circles from the first to the fifth centuries A.D. and traces early Christians' preoccupations with sexuality and the body in the work of the period's great writers. The Body and Society questions how theological views on sexuality and the human body both mirrored and shaped relationships between men and women, Roman aristocracy and slaves, and the married and the celibate. Brown discusses Tertullian, Valentinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Constantine, the Desert Fathers, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, among others, and considers asceticism and society in the Eastern Empire, martyrdom and prophecy, gnostic spiritual guidance, promiscuity among the men and women of the church, monks and marriage in Egypt, the ascetic life of women in fourth-century Jerusalem, and the body and society in the early Middle Ages. In his new introduction, Brown reflects on his work's reception in the scholarly community.

Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire

Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire PDF Author: David Wheeler-Reed
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300231318
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A New Testament scholar challenges the belief that American family values are based on “Judeo-Christian” norms by drawing unexpected comparisons between ancient Christian theories and modern discourses Challenging the long-held assumption that American values—be they Christian or secular—are based on “Judeo-Christian” norms, this provocative study compares ancient Christian discourses on marriage and sexuality with contemporary ones, maintaining that modern family values owe more to Roman Imperial beliefs than to the bible. Engaging with Foucault’s ideas, Wheeler-Reed examines how conservative organizations and the Supreme Court have misunderstood Christian beliefs on marriage and the family. Taking on modern cultural debates on marriage and sexuality, with implications for historians, political thinkers, and jurists, this book undermines the conservative ideology of the family, starting from the position that early Christianity, in its emphasis on celibacy and denunciation of marriage, was in opposition to procreation, the ideological norm in the Greco-Roman world.

Marriage in the Early Church

Marriage in the Early Church PDF Author: David G. Hunter
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 157910827X
Category : Marriage
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
Hunter's wide variety of Christian texts on marriage and sexuality span the New Testament era through the sixth century and include both Greek and Latin writers: Hermas - Shepherd, Mandate 4 Tertullian - To His Wife; An Exhortation to Chastity Clement of Alexandria - The Instructor, Book 2; Miscellanies, Books 2 & 3, Acts of Thomas Methodius - Symposium, Discourse 2 Lactantius - Divine Institutes, Book 6 John Chrysostom - Homily 20 on Ephesians Pelagius - Letter to the Matron Celantia Augustine - The Good of Marriage; Letter 6 to Atticus Paulinus of Nola - Carmen 25 Ecclesiastical legislation - Canons of the Synod of Elvira Basil of Caesarea - Canonical Letters Two Nuptial Blessings - Verona Sacramentary; Hadrianum

Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World

Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World PDF Author: Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113476121X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World is the first global survey of such for the early modern period. Merry Wiesner-Hanks assesses the role of personal faith and the church itself in the control and expression of all aspects of sexuality. The book ranges over developments within Europe and beyond to the European colonies including Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Goa, which were establishing themselves around the world. Christian missionaries and rituals and structures accompanied all of the imperial powers and the control of the sexuality of both indigenous peoples and colonists was an essential part of policy. The book is introduced with a clear, original and engaging account of the central concepts in the study of sexuality in Christianity, such as shame, sin, the body, marriage and gender. Drawing on diverse evidence including literary, medical and historical the following sections chart changes in Western Christianity in the Late Middle Ages, Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe, Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe and Russia, and finally the Spanish, Portuguese, English and Dutch Colonies. Merry Wiesner-Hanks exciting book covers both the ideas and effects in each period. Christianity and Sexuality in the early Modern World includes discursive bibliographies which discuss major books and articles at the end of each chapter.

The Body and Society

The Body and Society PDF Author: Peter Brown
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231061018
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Looks at the development of celibacy in the Christian Church from the first to fifth centuries A.D., and compares marriage and sexuality in the Roman, Judaic, and early Christian worlds

St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality

St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality PDF Author: Saint Augustine (of Hippo)
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 9780813208671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Augustine of Hippo (b. A.D. 354) is considered the single most influential theologian in the history of the Church in the West. Among his many contributions, Augustine developed a sexual ethic that became decisive for all later teachings in the Christian West on issues of marriage, reproduction, and sexuality. Some of the most significant and representative passages on marriage and sexuality from his works are presented here. They recount Augustine's own struggle with sexuality, and stress the important role it played in his conversion to Christianity as well as its influence on his theological principles later in life. The passages in this collection are divided into four chapters which document the chronological development of Augustine's sexual ethic. The first chapter includes passages that pertain to Augustine's own life and illustrate some of his positive and negative models of marital relation. The second chapter recounts Augustine's responses to the Manichean teachings on the body, reproduction, and marriage, mostly from his early years as a Christian. The third chapter contains passages marking Augustine's reaction to the ascetic debates within late fourth-century Latin Christianity. And, finally, the fourth chapter illustrates Augustine's mature sexual and marital ethic, which he elaborated in the midst of--and in reaction to--arguments with Pelagian writers. In a separate introduction, Elizabeth Clark sets the development of Augustine's thought within the context of his own intellectual biography and views it against the background of related issues and movements in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, such as Manichaeism, Jovinianism, and Pelagianism. The selections she presents here offer a comprehensive and uncommonly well-balanced picture of Augustine and his work. St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality is the first in a projected series of volumes on various themes found in the writings of the church fathers. ABOUT THE EDITOR: Elizabeth Clark is John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University. She is a past president of the American Academy of Religion and the North American Patristic Society, and a member of the editoral board of the Fathers of the Church series.

Sacred Marriages

Sacred Marriages PDF Author: Martti Nissinen
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 157506572X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
The title of this volume, Sacred Marriages, consciously plays with the traditional concept of sacred marriage, but the plural form, “sacred marriages,” gives the reader an idea that something more is at stake here than a monomaniacal idea of manifestations deriving from a single prototype. Following the guidelines of one of the contributors, Ruben Zimmermann, the editors tentatively define “sacred marriage” as a “real or symbolic union of two complementary entities, imagined as gendered, in a religious context.” “Sacred marriages” (plural), then, refers to various expressions of this kind of union in different cultures that seek to overcome, to cite Zimmermann again, “the great dualism of human and cosmic existence.” The subtitle indicates that the contributors are primarily interested in different aspects of the divine-human sexual metaphor—that is, the imagining and reenactment of a gendered relationship between the human and divine worlds. This metaphor, which is essentially about relationship rather than sexual acts, can find textual, ritual, mythical, and social expressions in different times and places. Indeed, the sacred marriage ritual itself should be considered not a manifestation of the “sacralized power of sexuality experienced in sexual intercourse” but one way of objectifying the divine-human sexual metaphor.

Sexual Desire and Love

Sexual Desire and Love PDF Author: Eric Fuchs
Publisher: Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] : J. Clarke ; New York : Seabury Press
ISBN: 9780227678763
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
In a comprehensive, ground-breaking study of the Christian teaching about sexuality, Eric Fuchs surveys the 'taboos of Judaeo-Christian morality.' He looks at the ethics of sexuality as they are presented in the Bible, and by early theologians, medieval scholastics, reformers and counter-reformers, and present-day thinkers. Through it all he is concerned to answer the question: "By what mysterious alchemy did the liberating Gospel of Christ who unconditionally accepted wounded humanity become transformed into moral requirements that were so guilt forming'" Fuch's exhaustive study leads him to develop his own theological interpretation of sexuality: its liberating aspects in the fulfilment of human life, the completion of personality, end the expression of humanity's highest ideals.

Love Between Women

Love Between Women PDF Author: Bernadette J. Brooten
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226075931
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
Love Between Women examines female homoeroticism and the role of women in the ancient Roman world. Employing an unparalleled range of cultural sources, Brooten finds evidence of marriages between women and establishes that condemnations of female homoerotic practices were based on widespread awareness of love between women. "An extraordinary accomplishment. . . . A definitive source for all future discussion of homoeroticism and the Bible."—Mary Rose D'Angelo, Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review "[Brooten's] convincing analysis . . . not only profoundly reshapes our understanding of the past, but it should also shape the way in which that past, particularly the early Christian texts with their immense normative weight, will be used for the future."—Anne L. Clark, Journal of Lesbian Studies "Love Between Women gives contemporary debates on sexuality a carefully delineated past. It boldly insists upon a different future, one informed by history but not tyrannized by it."—Susan Ackerman, Lambda Book Report "Fascinating, provocative and lucid. . . . Brooten has made a fundamental contribution to women's and gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, and classics."—Elizabeth A. Castelli, Women's Review of Books Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Studies Book, 1997