RocePriestMark wrote:Myrrh, thanks for the great discussion and the ability to put forth your case in a calm rational manner.
Myrrh wrote:
Priest Mark, I am aware that fasting is also from sexual relations and so on, and i am not questioning the integrity of anyone that chooses celibacy, but we're discussing here a canon which goes directly against Holy Tradition and whatever apostles or fathers or anyone else has said we ought as Orthodox Christians always check back to Christ. It's the Gospels we keep on altar table and just as Paul felt free to argue with the other apostles we too are free to argue with him.
The canon does reflect holy tradition, it is the tradition handed down to us. Check back to Christ?, well He was virgin, celibate and remained unmarried. The Church has found this to be the best example to follow for bishops who are 'married' to their diocese as Christ is to the whole Church.
Explain to me how this canon continues in Holy Tradition -
Canons of the Fifth-Sixth Council
Canon XII:Moreover, this also has come to our knowledge, that in Africa and Libya, and in other places the most God-beloved bishops in those parts do not refuse to live with their wives, even after consecration, thereby giving scandal and offence to the people. Since, therefore, it is our particular care that all things tend to the good of the flock placed in our hands and committed to us - it has seemed good that henceforth nothing of the kind shall in any way occur. And we say this, not to abolish and overthrow what things were established of old by Apostolic authority, but as caring for the health of the people and their advance to better things, and lest the ecclesiastical state should suffer any reproach...But if any shall have been observed to do such a thing, let him be deposed.
Myrrh wrote:
Anyway, to say that the marriage wasn't consummated goes completely against the reason for marriage for the Jews, to have children.
This is not an 'idea' that there was no consummation, it is a fact witnessed to by the Church's writings. It does not even mean that all must follow St. Simon's zealous example of giving all up to follow Christ, but it is blessed and glorified and put before us by the Church to either emulate or wonder at and also to humble us that we do not have such zeal to forsake all earthly things, as he did, including those which are pleasant and joyous, but none the less transitory.
Which writings? When? Written by whom?
St Clement doesn't consider it a sham marriage. Did Christ? Did all those wedding guests? Did the Mother of God? If they wanted to remain celibate why bother getting married? What other reasons are there for getting married unless it's to enjoy sexual companionship and to bring children into the world? It is so illogical to think otherwise that you'll have to work hard to convince me. Why would Christ bless this marriage with his presence if it was a sham? Does this happen in your church?
Christ gave, especially the women, a freedom unknown in the land, to remain single in society without it being considered a dishonourable state. St Philip's daughters were virgins, the early Church was full of virgins and many went teaching, baptising and so on, like Paul, and many didn't.
Myrrh wrote:Do you think He's saying that a man castrated by another is automatically spiritually superior to the man who has sex with this wife?
No, you missed my point.
You've missed mine. Maybe we'll yet meet...
Myrrh wrote:For a start the subject is divorce. At that time, and still now among Orthodox Jews, only the men have a right to divorce because wives are still considered property of the husband, women do not have free will.
Actually, we are not talking about divorce but about monastic bishops and about a couple who voluntarily choose to live monastic life in separate monasteries, and the man is later chosen to be bishop or a man is chosen to be bishop and therefore he and his wife voluntarily separate in order to focus on the work he is called to. This is the tradition.
Read the lives of the saints, the full versions from the Great Synaxarion or the Collection of St. Dimitry of Rostov, it will help give you a more balanced perspective of the place of marriage, celibacy and monasticism.
I'm talking about divorce and monasticism. The passage you and others quote from Mathew 19 to support this idea of "everything I have read or seen in the Orthodox Church points to celibacy being the angelic and therefore more spiritual state of man" is not about this at all, it's about divorce. Christ is not saying that it's better to be celibate to achieve a superior spiritual state. That's wishful thinking reading into the passage what isn't there. That idea is completely, completely, absent from that passage.
What is happening here is the conflation of two separate ideas, a) the idea that celibacy is the way to achieve an angelic state superior to man's and b) that celibates are better able to devote their time and energies to Church work. Certainly the second is in these verses, they are one of the reasons for celibacy, but the other is missing entirely. If you want to make a case from the Gospels for a) you cannot use these verses which don't support it.
In these verses Christ is giving three separate situations of the eunuch state in response to the shock horror of the men who've just learned that if they fancy a change of wife, and only they have a right to instigate divorce, then marry again without the only excuse Christ gives which is adultery on the wife's part, they will be committing adultery themselves. I'm sorry, I'm obviously lacking in skills to convey the intensity of this dilemma for the men in a society where they had quite liberal access to sexual freedom and the women had none and where adultery carried a death penalty.
That's what they're referring to when they say it's better not to marry. The subject is divorce.
Nothing to do with monasticism, nothing to do with gaining angelic spirituality.
And they're shocked, their convenient patriarchal world has just been shaken to the core. I can't help but read that with a little sense of wry amusement - He was putting restrictions on them that they'd never had to consider before, weighty restrictions, remember adulterers were stoned to death. Christ's triadic example of celibate states is nothing more than that, examples of celibate states.
Which He introduces with "not all can make room for this saying". Now perhaps a Greek speaker would disagree, but in English I would first read that as referring back to the "saying" just spoken, "If the case of the man is so with the wife, it is not expedient to marry" - i.e. better not to marry than not be able to divorce the wife at will.
And then He lists the three cases of "enuchhood", why that word I don't know, wasn't there a Greek word for celibacy? Anyway, the last of which is that some choose to be eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of the heavens.
Now, when we do something for someone's or something's sake, we're not immediately doing it for our own, so the most obvious reading there is that He is describing work for the Church, and as Paul describes, to dedicate oneself to this work. So the immediate meaning isn't of a personal gain at all, but a sacrifice for a greater good. For, as He taught us to pray, Thy will be done in earth as in the heavens, to commit oneself completely to creating the kingdom of the heavens on earth. (Matthew 25) It's from this that Christianity spread.
There could be a subtle meaning in this last example perhaps, that the kingdom of the heavens is waiting on those who'd remain celibate to people it, but even if this were so it is nonsense in the context of this particular list. Because the reasons I gave before and that it makes "celibacy" the criterion for this exalted state which in turn means that those born celibate are in it already and those who are castrated by another are too. This is where Origen got confused.
And again, His concluding words on the subject don't only relate back to the last idea, but to all the examples as a package. It's a completely new sentence using the same sense He began with, "not all can make room for this saying", i.e. not all can make room for 'rather than not be able to divorce at will it's better to remain unmarried'.
And here I also see a very serious appreciation on Christ's part of the predicament He has put these men in with His teaching on divorce (which is still the subject of this). That He is asking for a profound commitment to marriage, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, and it's for this idea he says "The one who is able to find room for it, let him find room" for what? for "this saying", that it is better not to marry than not to make a serious commitment to marriage.
Myrrh wrote:And if celibacy means an exalted personal spiritual state then it should apply equally to both the other two examples. Being born that way could fit in with this view that celibacy is the way to achieve this, lucky for some that they don't have to struggle we might think, but how can it be true for the second where a eunuch is made that way by man? Remember Origen?
There are people who are physically virgin but none the less unchaste.
Perhaps you are only thinking about the carnal part of being married; having sex, and the carnal part of being virgin; not having sex, they are both much more deep than that. Yes, Origin is rightly condemned, even for more reasons than physically making himself a eunuch.
This whole argument is about having sex - that the canon forbidding marriage to bishops is to stop them having sex. And this particular argument we're having is that some read into Matthew 19 an encouragement from Christ not to have sex for the idea of obtaining spiritual superiority to those that have sex and they use this misreading as proof that this canon is in Holy Tradition. it's about having sex. Or not having it.
As for "chaste" and "carnal". Orthodox teaching is that God saw having sex as good. Genesis I.
Myrrh wrote:. . . I simply don't understand that.
Then read more Orthodox theology.
And where does it say in writings of Orthodox theology that man achieving an angelic state superior to man's is greater than man becoming God?
Perhaps you have your sights set too low
See above... :shock:
and also didn't understand the quote from St. Paul.
What's there not to understand? Paul is talking about commitment to the work of the Church, "to attend upon the Lord without distraction". He's not talking about achieving enlightenment so much as hard slog for the work of spreading Christ's teaching - but in terms of being without a care to distract from the work. He's looking for more workers like himself, able to move at a moments notice, but sadly he too confuses holiness with not having sex, "that she may be holy in both body and spirit". Sigh.
The bottom line for me is that the tradition we have received is that our bishops are to be chosen from the monastic ranks. As with much of what we are taught, we don't understand it until we practice it.
The bottom line is that it's a monasticman made tradition and against Holy Tradition. No one has the right to impose this onto the Church and a monastic tradition that has usurped control over the Church is in no position to call itself Orthodox or its rules right thinking..
Myrrh
