CHRISTIANITY ELEVATES SEXUAL MORALITY

St. John Baptist

“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality.”

(St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:3)

In the previous chapter we saw that when the early Christians came to Rome, they encountered an extremely low regard for human life. But that was not the only moral depravity that confronted them. Depraved sexual relations were everywhere; they were an integral part of the pagan culture. Christians stepped into a culture that had indeed “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator,” and because of this, “God gave them over to shameful lusts” (Romans 1:25–26). That is how St. Paul described the Greco-Roman rejection of the natural/moral law to the Christians a few years before Nero had him decapitated in A.D. 64.

THE REJECTION OF PROMISCUOUS HETEROSEXUAL SEX

Roman literature, written by its own authors such as Juvenal, Ovid, Martial, and Catullus, indicates that sexual activity between men and women had become highly promiscuous and essentially depraved before and during the time that the Christians appeared in Roman society. The British historian Edward Gibbon says in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that the breakdown in sexual morality began after the Punic Wars ended in 146 B.C. By the first and second centuries after Christ, undefiled sexual intercourse, along with marital faithfulness, had essentially disappeared. Not only were adultery and fornication common, but people engaged in all sorts of sexual methods, many of them obscene. These sexual practices were shamelessly illustrated on household items such as oil lamps, bowls, cups, and vases. The aftermath of the Punic Wars broke down the onetime Roman modesty, in part because that is when the Romans first combined the Greek gymnasiums with their public baths. Before this time, the Romans, unlike the Greeks, did not believe it proper to exercise or bathe publicly in the nude.1 One must assume that there once was a similar modesty regarding the open portrayal of various human sexual acts.

The widespread, licentious sex practices threatened the institution of marriage, so Caesar Augustus in 18 B.C. enacted lex Julia de adulteriis, a law that tried to curb the people’s addiction to widespread illicit sex. This law had little effect, however, perhaps because it only punished the married woman in an adulterous act. Roman marriages had greatly deteriorated; they had become a “loose and voluntary compact [and] religious and civil rites were no longer essential.”2 Marriage was “detested as a disagreeable necessity.”3 Since people had become obsessed with sex, marital unions were very short-lived.

The second-century Latin orator and satirist Juvenal said his society had lost Chastity (the goddess) by its widespread addiction to promiscuous and prurient sex. In Satire 6, he portrayed the sexually loose morals of women who lecherously gave themselves to gladiators, actors, comedians, and others who were in the public spotlight. This sensuous behavior is also mentioned and condemned by the early Latin church father Tertullian in his De Spectaculis (Concerning Shows). Ovid, another Roman writer, in his Ars Amatoria (The Art of Making Love), notes that male/female sex relations had become sadistic and masochistic. In his Amores he reveals how for many, heterosexual love had turned into a type of sport. Catullus, a Roman poet, refers to his fellow Romans practicing group sex (Palatine Anthology 5.49). And Martial’s Epigrams of the late first century also reflect the defilement of sexual life common in his day.

The depraved sexual practices that accompanied heterosexual sex in Roman life were not common only among the populace but were also very prevalent in the lives of the Roman emperors. Hence, the Roman saying: “Qualis rex, talis grex” (like king, like people). For example, the Roman biographer of emperors, Suetonius, reports that Emperor Tiberius (A.D. 14–37) often had nude women wait on the tables at which he dined (Tiberius 42). He also had male and female prostitutes openly engage in group sex as entertainment for his pleasure (Tiberius 43). Emperor Caligula (A.D. 37–41), Tiberius’s successor, lived a licentious sex life and was given to habitual incest with all of his sisters (Gaius Caligula 24). He loved to engage in sex while he ate, and he often had people tortured during his many sexual escapades (Gaius Caligula 32). Titus (A.D. 79–81) liked to surround himself with catamites and eunuchs, apparently for sexual enjoyment. Titus’s successor, Emperor Domitian, like Caligula, also engaged in incestuous relations.4 Emperor Commodus (A.D.180–92) had a harem of three hundred concubines with whom he lived a life of sexual debauchery.5

The debasement of heterosexual sex in Roman society is empirically corroborated by archeological findings. A recent book by John Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: The Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art, 100 B.C.— A.D. 250,6 depicts numerous relief portraits of heterosexual sex acts embossed on ceramic items, mosaics, drawings, and other artifacts. They depict oral and group sex as well as two men and one woman, and two men and two women copulating. These sexual graphics were not camouflaged, nor did Roman parents shield their children from seeing sexual portrayals on household items.7 As one historian has noted, “There was nothing in which they [the Romans] did not indulge or which they thought a disgrace.”8

Sexual immorality was so pronounced that a chaste wife was seen as a rarity, says the early second-century historian Tacitus (Annals 3.34). Many married women of high-ranking families asked to have “their names entered amongst the public prostitutes in order that they might not be punished for adultery.”9 Among the Greco-Romans, adultery was exclusively defined in terms of a woman’s marital status, not the man’s. A man, married or single, could only commit adultery with another man’s wife, because she was his property and adultery was a property offense. The man, however, was never a woman’s property. Thus, if he sexually consorted with an unmarried woman or a prostitute, he could not commit adultery. But if a married woman had sex with a single or married man, she was always guilty of adultery. So when a married woman registered as a prostitute, she was no longer seen as exclusively belonging to her husband, meaning that legally she could not be accused of adultery and thus could incur no punishment—which under patria potestas made her subject to the death penalty.

Some stage plays focused on incestuous behavior and some on physical mutilation. In Procne and Tereus the tongue of Philomela is cut out to keep her from telling others that she had been raped by her brother-in-law Tereus. And “the bestial asiphae, in the play of that name, offered herself to a bull in the Cretan labyrinth.”10 “These shocking dumb shows,” says Jerome Carcopino, “threw women into ecstasy. Lascivious gestures moved them.”11 Decadent plays such as this one were common during the reigns of Nero (54–68) and Trajan (early second century).

Into this immoral sexual environment came the Christians with a radically different sexual ethic and lifestyle, one which held that sex between an unmarried man and woman was sinful and contrary to one of God’s Ten Commandments (“You shall not commit adultery”—Exodus 20:14). Only sex between a married man and woman was God-pleasing. The Christians took seriously the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament that said, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (Hebrews 13:4).

To Christians, sex between husband and wife was an expression of mutual love and respect, not of self-serving, lustful gratification. St. Paul told the Corinthian Christians: “The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:3). A Christian man and wife were obligated to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). Similarly, St. Peter told husbands, “Be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect” (1 Peter 3:7).

Not only did the Christians contend that sexual relations had to be confined to marriage, but they also believed that the sex act made the couple “one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31), a very radical tenet. This was a belief they had acquired from their Jewish ancestors, which was also affirmed by Jesus (Matthew 19:5–6). For when God instituted marriage at the time of creation, he told Adam and Eve that the sex act made a husband and wife one flesh (Genesis 2:24). The one-flesh concept required the married couple to be totally faithful to each other. Contrary to the pagan Roman view, Christians saw sex outside of marriage as sinful and wrong. Extramarital sex was not just unfaithfulness to one’s spouse and to God’s command not to commit adultery, but it also violated the one-flesh concept.

A second-century document describes how the early Christians differed from the pagan Romans by confining their sexual behavior to married life: “They [Christians] marry as do all; they beget children. . . . They have a common table, but not a common bed” (Epistle to Diognetus). By rejecting adultery and fornication they instituted a new sexual morality, one that received positive comments even from some of the pagan observers. Galen, a Greek physician of the second century, was impressed with the upright sexual behavior of Christians. He said they were “so far advanced in self-discipline and. . .intense desire to attain moral excellence that they are in no way inferior to true philosophers.”12 In this context it is noteworthy to observe that the early Christians also believed that the sex act was not to be performed openly or graphically portrayed on various household items for others to see, as the Romans did. Sex was a gift of God. So powerful was the Christian doctrine and practice of marriage that Edward Gibbon says, “The dignity of marriage was restored by the Christians.”13

Christianity brought this dignity and honor to marriage in the pagan world of the Romans by confining heterosexual sex to a married man and woman and by spurning the deviant sex of the pagans. But given that Christians were also in the world, they sometimes faltered by mimicking the world’s sinful standards. Thus, early in the fourth century the church in some regions went along with the Roman lex Julia de adulteriis (noted above), which defined adultery on the basis of the marital status of the woman. A married man was not guilty of adultery if he had sex with a single woman, whereas a married woman was guilty if she had sex with either a single or a married man. The church’s Council of Arles (A.D. 314) in France essentially upheld this old definition. One of its canons “did not regard the connection of a married man with an unmarried woman as adultery.”14 This church council apparently forgot Christ’s words: “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28), and that Christ did not set one standard for men and another for women.

There were, however, some Christian theologians who had not forgotten Christ’s words. St. Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 389), for example, argued that adultery could also be committed by the man (Oration 37.6). Unfortunately, it took another half-century after Gregory’s argument for the voice of Jesus to get through when the church declared in 449 that the sin of adultery applied to the husband as well as to the wife.15 The wife was now able to divorce her adulterous husband, something that had never occurred before in the ancient world. Edward Westermarck, the renowned scholar of the history of marriage, says that a woman being able to divorce her husband on grounds of adultery or sodomy is “an innovation [that reveals] the influence of Christian ideas.”16 In other words, even though the church did not always get it right, the teachings of Jesus did eventually get through, despite his error-prone followers, thus changing and improving the way much of the world viewed sex and marriage.

Westermarck credits Christianity not only with equalizing the sin of adultery but also with having brought dignity and beauty to the formal wedding ceremony.17 We do not know what dignity, if any, a Roman wedding once had, but whatever it had was largely lost by the first century. The Roman poet Catullus reveals that the wedding ritual in his day was a facetious mockery, apparently because of the low regard the Roman culture had developed for marriage as a whole. Depicting a wedding scene, he cites the singing of an obscene song: “Raise aloft the torches, boys. I see the wedding veil coming. Go on, sing in measure, Io Hymen Hymenaeus, Io Hymen Hymenaeus!. . . . Today and yesterday you disdained the country wives. . .Wretched, ah! wretched lover, throw the nuts!” (Catullus 61). Regarding this disrespectful view of the wedding ceremony and its accompanying low view of marriage, Susan Treggiari, in her analysis of the Roman wedding, says: “Constantine [fourth-century emperor] revolutionized the state’s view of marriage in order to bring it more into line with Christian ideas.”18 Thus, every time we see the dignity, beauty, and solemnity that accompanies the average wedding ceremony today, even in an era of high divorce rates, we would do well to remember that this is the result of Christianity’s influence. Moreover, the belief that marriage is a divine institution, still widely held by many in Western societies, also stems from Christianity.19

The dignity and sanctity of marriage that Christianity brought to Roman culture were mostly due to the early Christian women. As already noted, they appreciated the dignity and worth that Christ’s teachings accorded them, and seeing themselves as God’s redeemed children, they, more so than men, understood the seriousness of their biological role as bearers of children in God’s created order. Thus, the wedding rite, the precursor to the fulfillment of that role, needed to be conducted with solemnity and reverence. This conclusion is not mere speculation. We need only recall what the pagan Libanius said when he lauded the Christian women’s high level of commitment and dedication to their role as wives and mothers: “What women these Christians have!”20

THE REJECTION OF HOMOSEXUALITY

In addition to the depraved heterosexual sex acts of the Romans, and the uninhibited portrayal of those acts, there was the widespread depravity of homosexual sex. The latter went well beyond two adult males or females sexually cohabiting with one another.

PEDERASTY (PEDOPHILIA)

Many people today know that the Greeks were notorious for their homosexual behavior. But often they do not know that Greek homosexual sex was primarily pederasty or pedophilia, that is, an adult man having sex with a young boy who commonly was between twelve and sixteen years old. The Romans practiced the same perversity. Roman literature both before and after the birth of Christ has numerous references, similar to Greek writings, showing that this kind of homosexual behavior was widespread and common.

That Roman homosexuality was largely pederastic is underscored by its own poet Martial. He is rather explicit and unembarrassed in referring to it. To Phaedrus, he writes, “You sleep with well-endowed boys” (Epigrams 3.72). To another he says, “You do it with long-haired boys whom you have procured for yourself with your wife’s dowry” (Epigrams 7.97). So explicit are Martial’s writings that he even notes one man was unable to sodomize his boy lover who had diarrhea (Epigrams 11.88). Florence Dupont, a modern historian, writes that the Romans were so obsessed with pederasty that “beardless youths had to be prohibited from taking part in Saturnalia [a festival in honor of Saturn, the harvest god] in order to protect their virtue.”21 And according to Martial, young boys were not only sodomized by adult men but also by women (Philaenis 7.67).

The acceptance of pedophilia among the Roman populace is not just evident in the literature of its poets and philosophers; it is also illustrated on archaeological artifacts. Clarke’s book (cited above) shows many plates of Roman relief portraits of man-boy couples engaged in sex. These pictures depict behavior that today, even in an increasingly secular and anti-Christian society, is regarded as morally abhorrent and thus legally classified as child molestation.

As with the heterosexual customs, the sexual depravities were not confined to the Roman public, but were also practiced by society’s upper echelon. Thus, we find pederastic sex as common behavior among many Roman emperors. Legends say that Tiberius, the emperor under whose rule Christ was crucified, often surrounded himself with young boys whom he used sexually.22 Nero had at least two boys, Sporus and Pythagoras, with whom he engaged in sexual acts. Sporus was castrated so he could assume the role of “wife” for Nero, and with Pythagoras, Nero himself assumed the role of “wife.”23 Emperor Galba, who succeeded Nero, had at least one male lover, and Titus loved to party with his catamites and eunuchs.24 Hadrian (117– 38), the emperor who built Hadrian’s Wall across northern England, not only had numerous affairs with women, but he also had a young lad, Antinous, as his sexual companion.25 Emperor Commodus, along with three hundred concubines, also had three hundred young boys to satisfy his sexual appetite. Emperor Elagabalus (218–22) had many homosexual liaisons. He often went about town at night playing the part of a male prostitute. Still another emperor, Carus (282–83), used boys sexually.26 These emperors, given to the perversity of pederasty or pedophilia, were commonly bisexual. As one Roman historian has noted, Rome’s sexual sensuality in its most degrading forms pervaded all classes and was “the opprobrium of history.”27

Whether it was the craving to have sex with boys or to have sex with all sorts of women, the conscience of the Roman populace and its emperors was dead as stone. The pagan gods whom the Romans worshiped did not set high moral standards, nor did they ask for contrition or repentance—that was foreign to Greco-Roman paganism. Instead, as one historian says, the pagan gods “were often seen as the First Cause [sic] of the spiral of desire.”28

Today’s outlawing of pedophilia, that is, an adult having sex with someone who is a juvenile, is the result of Christianity’s influence. Had Christianity not entered the pagan culture of the Greeks and Romans, where pederasty was common, widespread, and accepted, it is doubtful that there would now be laws against child molestation.

It can also be argued that if Christian values and influence continue to deteriorate, the resistance to pederasty will weaken and decline. It is no secret that Christian values have recently declined rather precipitously in many Western countries and that along with this decline there has been a weakening of the condemnation of pederasty. For instance, in England in 1994, the age at which homosexual sex was legal was reduced from age twenty-one to eighteen, and in July, 1998, the British Parliament again reduced such acts to age sixteen.29 In Denmark, where Christianity also has lost much of its presence, the age for homosexual sex has in recent years been lowered to age fourteen.

Lowering the legal age for homosexual sex has strong advocates. For example, in the United States the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) with one million members seeks to remove all present legal restrictions in regard to sex between adult males and boys. In 1991 the Journal of Homosexuality devoted an entire issue to man/boy homosexuality, and not one article condemned such behavior. One article even questioned the American assumption that sexual contact with an adult is harmful and traumatic to a boy. It also tried to distinguish between child sexual abuse and pedophilia, implying that the two should not be equated.30 And in 1998 the Psychological Bulletin, a publication of the American Psychological Association, published a lengthy article that questioned the unqualified cultural belief that adult/adolescent sex is necessarily harmful. The article further stated that “adult-adolescent sex has been commonplace cross-culturally and historically, often in socially sanctioned forms, and may fall within the ‘normal’ range of sexual behaviors.”31 This statement clearly implies that if the American culture took a similar stance, pedophilia would not be abnormal or wrong.

The Christian rejection of pederasty (pedophilia) among the Greco-Romans, fortunately, is still with us. Whether it is in the United States or in other civilized countries, there is a pronounced public abhorrence of the sexual molestation of a child. Few are not outraged when an adult—male or female—is found having sexual relations with a minor. All fifty states of the United States classify sex with a minor as a felonious offense, subject to prison if convicted. This abhorrence is a direct result of Christianity having brought a moral perspective to human sexual behavior.

If the current trend of rejecting Christianity#8217;s two-thousand-year influence on sexual morality continues, as is now occurring with regard to the acceptance of adult homosexuality, the abhorrence of man/boy sex may someday also change to toleration and even to acceptance as it had among the Greco-Romans. The following could be a signal of what is to come. On June 21, 2000, South Park, an animated show produced by Comedy Central, portrayed a character named Eric who unknowingly came in contact with a real pedophile group, the North American Man/Boy Love Association (mentioned above). One scene has a NAMBLA member blasphemously saying, “Thank you, Jesus,” for sending a boy who is presumed to want sex with adult men. In a similar manner, another scene refers to another boy as a “gift from God,” also assuming he is present to have sex with grown men.32 In addition, there are influential groups such as the National Education Association (NEA) that are advocating programs that present homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle to children in grade schools.33 In 1996 the Women’s Educational Media of San Francisco, California, produced a video titled It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in Schools. This video promotes the acceptance of homosexuality, and during the last several years it has been shown to many grade-school teachers in various parts of the United States with the goal of communicating the acceptance of homosexual behavior to young pupils.

ADULT MALE HOMOSEXUALITY

Christian abhorrence of homosexuality was not confined to pederasty, however. Sex between two adult males was also considered abhorrent. For instance, St. Paul condemned men’s “indecent acts with other men” (Romans 1:27). He did not differentiate between pedophilia and adult homosexual acts; both were sinful sexual perversions in God’s eyes.

It seems that wherever pagan values reign, as in the Greco-Roman culture, there one finds widespread homosexuality. For instance, homosexuality was common among numerous American Indian tribes. Walter L. Williams, in a book that focuses on homosexuality among American Indians, sympathetically notes that the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia, the Crows, the Klamaths, the Hopi, the Sioux, the Navajo, the Zuni, the Yokuts, and other tribes in the United States all practiced homosexuality before contact with Westerners. Sometimes homosexual acts were intertwined with the religious ceremonies performed by shamans. Williams not only conveys a great deal of empathy for the homosexual customs of the American Indians but also throws frequent punches at Christianity for having influenced most American Indians to believe that homosexual behavior is morally bad.34

The biblical condemnation and rejection of homosexuality was not a novel idea introduced by St. Paul. Jude, the writer of the New Testament book that bears his name, told his readers that sexual immorality led God to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 7). And it may be that Jesus also had this sin in mind when he referred to God annihilating these two ancient cities (Matthew 11:23).

Had Christ never been born, and had his followers not been transformed by his spirit, the homosexual behavior of the ancient Romans would likely never have been outlawed in the Western world. In addition to laws prohibiting homosexual acts for individuals underage, there also are still laws against adult homosexual sex. For instance, in 1999 more than twenty of the fifty American states still had statutes on their law books outlawing homosexual behavior. This fact is not widely known because the mass media give the impression that homosexuality is a free and legal option (an “alternative lifestyle”) and that there are no longer any laws against homosexual practices. It is also worth noting that these state laws were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986). In other words, when many in the mass media, as well as others, advocate that homosexual behavior should be tolerated, and even accepted, they often are really abetting criminal behavior.

LESBIANISM

In addition to some women sodomizing young boys, Roman women also engaged in homosexual activities with other women. The Roman poet Juvenal talks about women taking turns in riding each other (Satire 6). As with male homosexual sex, there was no guilt, shame, or inhibition. Homosexual graphics, similar to the heterosexual depictions, were openly portrayed on household items such as frescos, lamps, bowls, and cups.35 Commenting on this Roman way of life, Clarke says, “Imagine drinking from an elegant sliver cup with scenes of male-to-male intercourse on it. . . or visiting someone’s house and seeing fresco paintings depicting sexual activity on the walls of the best room.”36

Extrapolating from twentieth-century research studies of homosexuality, which commonly indicate that female homosexuality is significantly less prevalent than among men, we can assume that this difference was also true of the Romans. That, however, did not make this behavior any less depraved in the eyes of the early Christians. To the Christians in Rome, both male and female homosexual acts were a clear violation of the natural/moral law as well as an affront to God’s divine law set forth by Moses some fourteen hundred years before the birth of Christ. Leviticus 20:13 warned: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death.” And in the New Testament, as noted earlier, St. Paul unequivocally condemned both male and female homosexuality.

THE REJECTION OF BESTIALITY

Many Romans even engaged in sex with animals. Apuleius, the second-century Latin author, tells of wealthy Romans having sex with donkeys and of a woman named Pasiphae sexually consorting with a bull (Metamorphoses 10.19). How widespread bestiality was among the Romans is difficult to ascertain, but that it was a part of their degenerate, depraved sexual life is beyond debate. Barton states that “Roman ‘bestiality’ formed part of the extended repertoire of pleasures.”37 Pierre Wuilleumier and Amable Audin in their book on Roman medallions depict a scene on a medallion from the Rhone River Valley in France of a woman arched forward with her buttocks extended toward a rearing stallion that is ready to penetrate her sexually.38 As with homosexuality, such behavior was an unmitigated abomination to the Christians, who honored the natural/moral law and God’s divine law as stated in Leviticus 20:15–16. Thus, St. Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, condemned the sexual behavior of women who “exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones” (Romans 1:26).

CHRISTIANITY’S IMPACT ON SEX AND MARRIAGE

Christian opposition to the opprobrious sex of the Romans has left its salutary mark to this very day. The Christian ethic not only condemned adultery, fornication, and the public portrayal of sexual activity, but in time brought noteworthy, wholesome changes to how people in a civilized society viewed human sexual behavior.

MARRIAGE IS DIGNIFIED

Christians believed that the sex act was not to be enjoyed lustfully at will, that is, by engaging in it whenever it was available or by deriving vicarious satisfaction from its visual portrayals on various artifacts in people’s homes. As already noted, to Christians sexual intercourse belonged exclusively to a married man and woman within the bonds of marriage: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (Hebrews 13:4). Sexual intercourse was a private act between a husband and wife, performed in mutual love, rather than a self-serving act of passion. It was to be governed by the standard that St. Paul delineated: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Marriage, instituted by God when Adam and Eve were brought together, was a sacred institution. It was this view of marriage and sex among Christians that brought honor and dignity to it.

MARITAL PRIVACY

Another major impact that Christianity had on sex and marriage was its advocacy of privacy in marital sexual relations. As noted above, the shameless, promiscuous practice of sexual acts by Rome’s emperors and by much of its populace, often performed in public, was a reflection not only of the Roman culture having had an extremely low level of sexual morality, but also of its having no institutionalized concept of sexual privacy, not even for married men and women. In contrast to this Roman depravity, the Christians made much of the biblical doctrine that sexual intimacy between a husband and a wife was a hallowed gift of God. It was only to be engaged in in the context of their marital privacy and never outside the domain of a married couple’s private bedchamber. Neither was this gift of God to be visually portrayed on household artifacts (such as bowls, lamps, vases, or pictures, as was common in Roman culture); nor was it to be engaged in in public, similar to the behavior of animals.

The Christian concern for the privacy of the marital sex act essentially led to the institutionalization of privacy. Richard Hixson reminds Westerners that privacy has strong Christian roots.39 Another scholar has argued that “our [Western] approach to privacy is a function of the ways of thinking that are initially identified with Christianity.”40 Similarly, still another observer says that there is a marked relationship between the rise of Christianity and the rise of privacy.41

To be sure, the concept of privacy has been and continues to be abused by many, especially by those who ignore or reject Christianity’s biblical morality with regard to promiscuous sexual relations and related shameful behavior. The early Christians did not use privacy to hide illicit or extramarital sex such as fornication, adultery, or homosexuality. They knew that a sin committed in a private setting was still a sin. They had no interest in using the concept of privacy to evade personal accountability before God or man, as is often done today.

CONCLUSION

Edward Gibbon, the famous historian of the Roman Empire, said that the Romans were the masters of the world. Ironically, however, as this chapter has shown, they were incapable of mastering their sexual lusts and passions. Their pagan religious beliefs imposed no constraints on sensual pleasures. In fact, sometimes religious practices were intertwined with sex, as in the pagan institution of temple prostitutes.

When the early Christians spurned the immoral sexual activities of the Romans, they were motivated by the love of Christ their Lord, whose words told them: “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). One of God’s commandments told them, “You shall not commit adultery.” In addition, they knew from St. Paul’s words that “neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers. . .nor homosexual offenders. . . [would] inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). And they also believed the words that followed this admonition: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13). They also knew from St. Paul that their body was “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). It was inconceivable for them to pollute their bodies with sexual depravities. So they rejected all sexual immoralities. In time, the Christian moral posture prompted the Western world to condemn and outlaw adultery, pedophilia, adult homosexual behavior, and bestiality. Again, the moral teachings of Jesus Christ made a significant and salutary difference, this time by elevating sexual behavior to a level far above paganism.

Obviously, the Christians were not admired for rejecting the sexual immoralities of the Romans. St. Augustine in the early part of the fifth century said that the Romans despised Christians because they opposed their unrestrained sexual lifestyles (The City of God 1.30). Tertullian said that the Romans so despised the Christians that they hated the name “Christian” (Apology 3). One finds a similar hatred directed toward Christians today. Given that biblically minded Christians oppose the currently growing sexual immoralities, such as sex outside of marriage and homosexuality, they are negatively referred to as “the religious right” or as “bigots.” Similar to the Romans, these critics do not like it when sensually lustful behavior is morally questioned and called sinful. The hateful attitudes that once were directed against the early Christians seem to be returning, and for similar reasons, despite the current attention given to toleration. Increasingly, Christians are hated by many who advocate “hate crime” laws. In large measure, they are hated because they seek to honor God and his laws rather than “redefine God as our future selves,” as Richard Rorty, a self-proclaimed leftist, believes ought to be modern man’s concept of God.42

When individuals redefine God as their future selves, they no longer fear God, and so they practice whatever behavior pleases them. One is reminded of St. Paul’s words that described the sexual perversions of the ancient Romans:

"Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. . . .God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations with unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion (Romans 1:24, 26–27)".

Such behavior was contrary to God’s natural/moral law and repugnant to all God-fearing Christians.

By opposing the Greco-Roman sexual decadence, whether it was adultery, fornication, homosexuality, child molestation, or bestiality, and by introducing God-pleasing sexual standards, Christianity greatly elevated the world’s sexual morality. It was one of its many major contributions to civilization, a contribution that too many Christians today (who nominally comprise about 83 percent of the American population) no longer seem to appreciate, much less defend, as feverish efforts are underway to bring back the sexual debauchery of ancient paganism. If the Apostle John were here today, he would undoubtedly say what he said to the Christians in Laodicea: “Because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16).

NOTES

1. Fikret Yegül, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 34.
2. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (reprint, London: Penguin Books, 1994), 2:813.
3. Frederic W. Farrar, The Early Days of Christianity (New York: A. L. Burt Publishers, 1882), 71.
4. Chris Scarre, Chronicle of the Roman Emperors (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 83.
5. Ibid., 125.
6. John R. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: Construction of Sexuality in Roman Art 100 B.C–A.D. 250 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), passim.
7. Ibid., 276.
8. C. Schmidt, The Social Results of Early Christianity, trans. R. W. Dale (London: Wm. Isbister, 1889), 47.
9. Ibid.
10. Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 228.
11. Ibid.
12. Cited in Will Durant, Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325 (New York: MJF Books, 1971), 599.
13. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 813.
14. Carl J. von Hefele, A History of the Christian Councils (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1894), 1:170.
15. Ibid.
16. Edward Westermarck, The History of Marriage (New York: Allerton Book Company, 1922), 326.
17. Ibid., 2:576.
18. Susan Treggiari, “Roman Marriage,” in Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome, ed. Michael Grant and Rachel Kitzinger (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), 1343.
19. Westermarck, History of Marriage, 2:577.
20. Cited in L. Millar, Christian Education in the First Four Centuries (London: Faith Press, 1946), 54.
21. Florence Dupont, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, trans. Christopher Woodall (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing, 1989), 206.
22. Scarre, Chronicle of the Roman Emperors, 35.
23. Ibid., 54.
24. Ibid., 73.
25. Ibid., 101.
26. Ibid., 151.
27. Charles Merivale, History of the Romans (New York: D. Appleton, 1866), 227.
28. Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 69.
29. Andrew Grice and Christopher Morgan, “Blair’s Gay Vote Dismays Bishops,” Sunday Times (London), 21 June 1998, 14.
30. Gerald P. Jones, “The Study of Intergenerational Intimacy in North America: Beyond Politics and Pedophilia,” Journal of Homosexuality 20 (1991): 275–95.
31. Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, and Robert Bauserman, “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples,” Psychological Bulletin (July 1998): 46.
32. “South Park Hits New Low With Pedophilia, Abortion Themes,” American Family Association Journal (August 2000): 8.
33. “Gay and Lesbian Caucus Targets Youth: First Graders Must Be Taught Tolerance,” Education Reporter (August 1994): 1.
34. Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).
35. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, plates 1–16.
36. Ibid., 1.
37. Barton, Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, 68.
38. Pierre Wuilleumier and Amable Audin, Les medaillons d’ applique gallo-romains de la vallee du Rhone (Paris: Societe D’Edition Les Belles Letteres, 1952), 136.
39. Richard Hixson, Privacy in a Public Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 5–6.
40. Larry Peterman, “Privacy’s Background,” Review of Politics (Spring 1993): 244.
41. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 35, 60.
42. Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 22.

Written by Alvin J. Schmidt in "How Christianity Changed The World", Zondervan Publishing House, USA,2004, chapter 3. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.