Sex In History by Gordon Rattray Taylor 
13. From Shame To Guilt

The adherents of the new religion soon developed an obsessional horror of sex and a system of self-torture quite different from the asceticism of the mystery religions. Wild-eyed monks retired to the burning deserts of North Africa to mortify their flesh: fasting, flagellating themselves, going without sleep and refusing to wash. Ammonius tortured his body with hot irons until he was entirely covered with burns; Macarius went naked in a mosquito ridden swamp and let himself be stung until unrecognizable; St. Simeon ulcerated his flesh with an iron belt; Evagrius Ponticus spent a winter's night in a fountain so that his flesh froze. (81) How closely connected with sexual desire these extravagant practices were is shown by the confessions of the fathers themselves. Thus Jerome says:

How often when I was living in the desert which affords to hermits a savage dwelling place, parched by a burning sun, did I fancy myself amid the pleasures of Rome. I sought solitude because I was filled with bitterness. Sackcloth disfigured my misshapen limbs, and my skin had become by neglect as black as an Ethiopian's. Tears and groans were every day my portion.  I, who from the fear of hell had consigned myself to that prison where scorpions and wild beasts were my companions, fancied myself among bevies of young girls. My face was pale and my frame chilled from fasting, yet my mind was burning with the cravings of desire, and the fires of lust flared up from my flesh that was as that of a corpse. I do not blush to avow my abject misery.  So long as we are borne down by this frail body; so long as we have treason within this earthly vessel, so long as the flesh  lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, there can be no sure victory.
Saint Jerome Praying in the Wilderness (detail). Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, 1452–Cloux, 1519). Unfinished painting in a mixed technique of oil and tempera on walnut wood; 102.8 x 73.5 cm (40 1/2 x 28 15/16 in.). Monumenti, Musei e Gallerie Pontificie, Vatican City 40337. (Cat. no. 46). 
Do you wish for proof of my assertions? Take examples. Sampson was braver than a lion and tougher than a rock; alone and unprotected he pursued a thousand armed men; and yet, in Delilah's embrace, his resolution melted away. David was a man after God's own heart, and his lips had often sung of the Holy One, the future Christ; and yet as he walked upon his housetop he was fascinated by Bathsheba's nudity, and added murder to adultery. Notice here how, even in his own house, a man cannot use his eyes without danger. Then repenting, he says to the Lord: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight." Being a king he feared no one else. So, too, with Solomon. Wisdom used him to sing her praise, and he treated of all plants "from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall;" and yet he went back from God because he was a lover of women. And, as if to show that near relationship is no safeguard, Amnon burned with illicit passion for his sister Tamar.
The attraction of Christianity was that it confirmed the sense of guilt and authorized self punishment to relieve it. It was the inevitable culmination of forces which had been at work for many hundreds of years. A steadily increasing sense of guilt and isolation demanded some new myth. The early fathers skilfully provided the rationalisation which was needed to justify men's desire to turn Thanatos against themselves and to deny Eros.

How closely the whole psychological process depended upon the suppression of sexual desire is shown by the preoccupation of these early Christians with the subject of castration. The tonsure of the priest is a recognized symbol of castration, and his adoption of a skirted cassock perpetuates the adoption of female clothes, in just the same way as the priests of Astarte, after castration, assumed female attire. The Jews had adopted circumcision - another symbolic castration - as part of a religious convention which made every man a priest, and thus entitled him to read the sacred books. The Christians perpetuated this. But symbolic castrations were not enough for many of them. Thousands hastened to castrate themselves in truth - Origen is only the best known instance - and a sect sprang up so enthusiastically addicted to the practice that its members castrated not only themselves but also any guest rash enough to stay under their roofs.

This development was obviously inimical to the survival of Christianity, since every religion depends for most of its following on the fact that children usually follow the religion of their parents, and a sect which did not reproduce itself would be in danger of dying out. The Church therefore strictly forbade it. Moreover, as we saw in the case of the Cathars, the Church was more concerned to struggle with sex than to eliminate it, and always avoided a resolution of the battle, since this removed its raison d'être.

 Just as later in the mediaeval period, this fear of sex was generalized into a fear of all pleasure. "The acquisition of knowledge, the exercise of our reason or fancy, and the cheerful flow of unguarded conversation, may employ the leisure of a liberal mind", says Gibbon in one of his most exquisite passages. "Such amusements, however, were rejected with abhorrence, or admitted with the utmost caution, by the severity of the fathers, who despised all knowledge which was not useful to salvation, and who considered all levity of discourse as a criminal abuse of the gift of speech." Let the Age of Reason speak further:

The unfeeling candidate for heaven was instructed, not only to resist the grosser allurements of the taste or smell, but even to shut his ears against the profane harmony of sounds, and to view with indifference the most finished productions of human art. Gay apparel, magnificent houses, and elegant furniture were supposed to unite the double guilt of pride and sensuality: a simple and mortified appearance was more suitable to the Christian who was certain of his sins and doubtful of his salvation. In their censures of luxury the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial, and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold and silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator.
The fathers ordained the minutest details of dress - for instance, a signet ring must be worn on the little finger only - and prescribed the mechanics of sexual intercourse. As Gibbon says: "The enumeration of the very whimsical laws which they most circumstantially imposed on the marriage bed would force a smile from the young and a blush from the fair."

Here is Christianity in very much the form in which we saw it under Calvin's rule. Historically, it was inevitable that Christianity should have become a guilt ridden religion. It seems equally clear that this was not what Christ himself intended, for it is patently obvious that He never intended to set on foot this frenzy of masochism and sexual repression. Even in the accounts which the Church has officially approved, at no point does He advocate or practise masochism. He made one long fast in order to undergo a spiritual experience, but in general we find Him recognizing the importance of satisfying human needs - feeding crowds, defying Jewish law to relieve His own hunger on a sabbath, and even turning water to wine for a wedding feast. Nor did He anathematize sexual pleasure. It is, as a matter of fact, somewhat surprising that He never gave any indication of His views on these matters, and avoided a direct answer to the only direct question put to Him on a marital matter. His consideration for the woman taken in adultery hardly suggests a puritanical attitude to sex. Furthermore, He declared himself against violence, and indeed against Thanatos in its widest sense, for He said: "I came that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly."

On the face of it, then, the teaching of Christ has the air of an attempt to relieve guilt. Christ said that He came to "take away the sins of the world" - that is, to reduce the sense of guilt. He claimed the power on earth to forgive sins, provided only that the listener believed in His power. It was a wholly reasonable claim, for the sense of guilt vanishes as soon as we cease to think it exists. In primitive peoples, guilt is often disposed of by selecting a goat, asserting that the sins of all present are henceforth borne by the goat, and killing it. Christ's death provided, once and for all, such a scapegoat and even a rationalist may suppose that He may have seen that His own death was a necessary feature of His scheme.


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