 Now I'm not recommending that you do this But if you run a Google search on the terms St. John Chrysostom and sex You'll soon find a mess of conflicting statements and Part of the problem is with the Saints interpreters and part of it is with his own voluminous writings the guy left us some 700 sermons 246 letters plus biblical commentaries moral discourses and theological treatises that have survived the many centuries since his death When a man publishes so many thousands of words as I have an industrious enemy Can pull together enough strands to make a strong rope for his hanging and On the subject of marriage John made it easy for his enemies John as we say today had no filter And he also had great rhetorical gifts. This can be a bad combination Eventually it got him killed But in the meantime, he left a paper trail that's so ambiguous as to seem bipolar on the one hand When the free love people want to caricature Christian teaching They inevitably quote Chrysostom One anti-Christian website condemns him as the arch-villain among the fathers of the dark age and They pronounce him guilty of an this is a quote anti-sex prudish killjoy morality as Evidence they produce a number of his more shocking quotes like this one There ought to be a wall inside this church to keep you apart The women have learned the manners of the brothel and the men are no better than maddened stallions The young men were chasing the young women through the congregation as the liturgy proceeded in Constantinople in John's day one of the jobs of the ushers was to keep them apart and Again, this is something he said in the middle of the liturgy The Sexologist havelock Ellis judge John to be more than a little repressed and Even so great and historian as Peter Brown found Chrysostom's vision of sexuality to be anxious and bleak Yet on the other hand John is also the father most invoked by those who wish to exalt the Christian vision of marriage The Orthodox theologian vegan Garoian speaks of Chrysostom's virtually unique Contribution to a positive Christian understanding of family life According to Garoian the theological meaning Chrysostom attributes to marriage procreation and child rearing is profound Richly Trinitarian and Christological He goes on to quote st. John's famous description of love making How do they become one flesh? He asks and then he answers his own question as if she were receiving gold receiving purest gold The woman receives the man's seed with rich pleasure and within her it is nourished cherished and refined It is mingled with her own substance and she then returns it as a child The woman is gold receiving gold That doesn't strike me as anti-sex prudish killjoy morality So how do we reconcile these two sides of John Chrysostom? Do we dismiss him as a hypocrite? Do we write him off as a hyper clericalist who held married people to a lower moral standard than monks? No, I believe both sets of quotations the harangue and the poetry Makes sense in the context of John's life So let's take a closer look at that life St. John was born in Syrian Antioch around 349 AD His father was a high-ranking civil servant named Secundus His mother's name was on Thusa Shortly after the boy's birth Secundus died leaving on Thusa a widow at age 20 St. John like any good son informs us of the objective fact That his mother was quite beautiful and Could have remarried if she wanted to She chose however to follow St. Paul's counsel To the unmarried and the widows to remain single first Corinthians 7-8 It was relatively common those days for Christian women to enroll themselves in the church's order of widows Though women as young as on Thusa were sometimes discouraged because of the hardships involved Widows committed themselves to a life of prayer continents and service to the church On Thusa's piety and sacrifice made a deep impression on her son She said an example he would recall in his later preaching St. John also had an aunt named Sabiniana Who followed the ascetical disciplines and served the church of Antioch as what was called a deaconess Her contemporaries tell us that Sabiniana conversed intimately with God Needless to say John grew up in an unusual almost monastic household During his school years it seemed he was destined to be a civil servant like his dad But with graduation his desires took a turn for the contemplative It was around this time that John was baptized There was a tendency among serious Christians in the fourth century to defer baptism until adulthood or later middle age Then he and a friend from school decided to form what was called a brotherhood A household where they could share a common life of voluntary poverty Voluntary prayer and contemplation the young man had gone far with their plans when John broke the news to his mom And she freaked out She hit the roof Antheusa begged John not to make her a widow all over again She pleaded And he couldn't resist her pleading So he agreed to pursue his life of renunciation at home He wore the uniform of monks this coarse sleeveless garment He took up scripture study under a renowned master And he applied himself in service to the bishop of antioch who quickly recognized his gifts At this time Among his fellows in the ascetical life was a young man named theodore Who would eventually go on to become the celebrated theologian bishop of mopswestia Somehow after three years of living the disciplines at home John managed to break free and to join the solitaries who lived in the wilderness nearby on mount sylpius Maybe he convinced her that it wasn't that far away and maybe she could visit now and then And there he apprenticed himself to an old hermit who taught him the ways of the mountain solitaries John lived in a cave by himself He slept hardly at all And he went without protection from the extremes of heat and cold For hours each day he read the scriptures until he had memorized entire books His diet was wretched Yet so zealous was he that he continued these austerities Even after his health had obviously begun to decline When the daylight went away john would light a torch And he would stand there with his arms outstretched reading the scriptures and committing them to memory He didn't want to sleep. He wanted the word of god But after two years of doing this Physically he couldn't go on no longer The other hermits recognized that he needed medical care So he returned disappointed to the city And it was either while john was on the mountain or sometime soon afterward that his companion theodore began having second thoughts about living the ascetical life Well, his folks needed him to run the family business And there was this young woman and she kind of liked him Her name was Hermione Just like in harry potter In time theodore erased his name from the roles of the brotherhood and he went home His response john's response has come down to us With the title letter to theodore after his fall We have it in two parts two letters totaling 24,000 words From end to end it reads like the words of a furious man shaking his friend by the lapels Here's what he says I'm not going to read all 24,000 words I don't have john's energy Would you have me speak of the domestic cares of wife and children and slaves? It is an evil thing to wed a very poor wife Or a very rich one For the former is injurious to the husband's means And the latter to his authority and independence It is a grievous thing to have children still more grievous not to have any For in the latter case marriage has been to no purpose In the former a bitter bondage has to be undergone Is this then life theodore when one's soul is distracted in so many directions When a man has to serve so many to live for so many and never for himself You see what he's doing there He's playing on theodore selfishness The rhetoric heats up and boils over as john tries to show the transitory nature of bodily beauty And the grossness of its constituent parts I know that you are now admiring the grace of Hermione And you judge that there is nothing in the world to be compared to her comeliness But the groundwork of this corporeal beauty is nothing else but Flem blood room vile and the fluid of digested food For by these things both eyes and cheeks and all the other features are supplied with moisture So that if you consider what is stored up inside those beautiful eyes And that straight nose and the mouth and the cheeks You will affirm the well-shaped body to be nothing else Than a whiteed sepulchre The parts within are full of so much uncleanness John goes on to compare such illusory and passing beauty with the true and lasting beauty of the soul of a monk In prayer Needless to say the earthly beauty comes up the loser He is careful to acknowledge that marriage is an honorable state Citing hebrews 13 four But it cannot be honorable for theodore Marriage is right you say and I agree Nevertheless it is no longer possible for you to observe the right conditions of marriage For if he who has been attached to a heavenly bridegroom deserts him And joins himself to a wife The act is worse than adultery in proportion as god is greater than man Now for these passages john has been vilified by secularists radical feminists and hedonists But I'd like to plead his case Or at least plead that his over-the-top statements need to be considered in context in the context of the immediate situation And in the context of his life's work John was after all operating in crisis mode His friend had already gone back on a lifelong commitment checked himself out of the holy brotherhood Theodore was breaking a promise he had made to god John recognized this as an emergency demanding forceful intervention It was a time for tough love Now some men use brute force in such circumstances John however was a little guy like me. All right. He was slight in body. We're told and frail in health But he had no equal in rhetoric So john used what he had at his disposal He used his rhetoric the way some men might use their muscles He marshaled his strength and he used it to its utmost limits And you know what? He succeeded He succeeded in talking theodore back from the family business and hermione's charms And back to the brotherhood to resume his life of prayer Theodore would go on to become one of the most influential theologians in antiquity We should also recall that john probably had at this point only The remotest experience of normal family life You know mom dad and the kids Remember his dad died when john was a baby He had no memory of him and his mother's household was practically monastic in character But from this extraordinary upbringing john proceeded to an even greater remove As he joined the mountain solitaries out on mount sylpius Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that john's upbringing was warped or harmful Nor am I sneering at his formation by the hermits I think both periods gave him the discipline he would need to withstand the hardships of his later life Which were significant But they were unusual circumstances to say the least and they hardly equipped him for a positive Or even I would say realistic view of domestic life But that too would come with time And that's why we must consider john's doctrine of marriage and family in the context of his life's work John wrote his negative statements about marriage when he was young and inexperienced As he entered the bustling life of the church of anteok, however, and he emerged from relative isolation He encountered families Beautiful families real families ordinary families Christian families He shared their life He heard their confessions He counseled them And he grew to appreciate marriage not as a mere concession to weakness Or a second-class citizenship in the church But as a distinct vocation from god And a true path to holiness Even more than that he came to see it as a powerful image of god in the world A type of god A sign of god A sacrament of god But again that came only with time and experience John's gifts were evident to his bishop. He advanced steadily in the ranks of the clergy In 381, he was ordained a deacon and licensed to preach And it was then that he earned his nickname, which we look at as his last name chrysostom golden mouse Because he drew enormous crowds to the church They went just to hear him preach After five years as a deacon, he was ordained to the priesthood Another several years passed before John preached the first of the sermons In which we find his mature teaching on marriage His homilies on first Corinthians A few years later He would return to the same themes in his homilies on Ephesians and Colossians and his sermons on vain glory The first decade of his priesthood was a time of intense pastoral work in the second city of the empire In a moving expression of love he told his congregation Listen to this. This is a pastor I know No other life But you And the care of your souls And what did John learn from all that work? With all those souls through all those years Well, just listen and you'll notice a difference One day he preached there is nothing that so welds our life together As the love of a man and his wife Nothing again There is nothing in the world sweeter for a man Than having children and a wife Nothing And he's not just blow and smoke In that first decade of priesthood John had somehow come to the conclusion That christian marriage was as much a divine vocation as syrian monasticism And that christian perfection was by god's grace attainable in marriage One day our preacher lamented to his people Why it is just this that makes me sigh That you think that monks are the only persons properly concerned with decency and chastity This notion has been the ruin of us all In the strongest terms He assures his congregation that their calling is nothing less than perfection He says if the beatitudes were spoken only to solidaries and the secular person cannot fulfill them Yet jesus permitted marriage anyway Then all things have perished And christian virtue is boxed in But that cannot be the case And so he continues If persons have been hindered by their marriage state Let them know that marriage is not the hindrance, but rather their intentions Which made an ill use of marriage What is it that caused John's apparent change of heart? Had he grown worldly as pastors sometimes do Concerned as they are with budgets and leaky roofs Was he bought off by lamb dinners served up by the pious ladies of the parish? No, we're told that he continued to live by all the monastic disciplines Including fairly rigorous fasting that he always took his meager meals alone And that they consisted of meager portions No baklava. Thank you He was a tough guy I believe that john grew deeper in his appreciation for marriage as he grew in the work of christian initiation As he taught group after group of new christians to appreciate the radical transformation that god was working in their lives through the divinizing sacraments In a city like antioch in the late fourth century a pastor could prepare hundreds of adult converts every year hundreds He would lead them to the mysteries And he would tell them of the mysteries In baptism god would give them new eyes of faith And john would teach them to open those eyes John taught them to attend the liturgy and see themselves surrounded by angels He taught them to look at their priests and see men whom god had raised to a heavenly ministry This is what the church calls mysti goji The doctrine of the mysteries guidance in the things hidden since the foundation of the world The mysti god guides the new christian through the external material appearances the signs To grasp the unseen reality that is interior spiritual hidden and divine When it's used as a technical term in theology Mysti goji describes the period of christian initiation that takes place immediately After the first reception of the sacraments In the ancient church this often consisted of daily homilies through the octave of easter Eight days of sermons that revealed doctrines that had till then been kept secret and hidden Like the doctrine of the real presence of jesus in the eucharist You weren't allowed to know that until after you had received holy communion The doctrine of the deifying grace of baptism Again, you were not allowed to know that until after you were baptized The preacher would go step by step through the rites You know describing the ritual words and gestures and more importantly explaining their divine meaning and action John told his class of new christians. This is a quote. What is performed here requires faith and the eyes of the soul We are not merely to notice what is seen but to go from this To imagine what cannot be seen Such as the power of the eyes of faith the eyes of the body can only see what falls under the sense of sight But with the eyes of faith it is just the reverse They see nothing that is visible But they see what is invisible Just as if it lay before their eyes For faith is the capacity to attend to the invisible as if it were visible John spoke these words in his baptismal misdegogy But he hardly confined this approach to his liturgical theology A mystical misdegogical quality pervades john's works We see it in his homilies on the letter to the hebrus. It's everywhere in his treatise on the priesthood And i content It is the principle that gives life to his mature doctrine on marriage We could honestly and accurately describe it as a misdegogy of marriage He wants us to move from the icon to the reality Still he insists that we must also learn to venerate the icon Venerate the icon of marriage Here's what he says Learn the power of the type So that you may learn the strength of the truth It's important for us to realize that john's mature doctrine of marriage is almost unique in ancient christianity Many of his contemporaries looked upon marriage as an institution that was passing away as more and more christians turn to celibacy You know what in john's hometown in antioch in john's day There were three thousand consecrated virgins and widows In a city whose population was 250,000 Three thousand celibate women and that number doesn't include any of the celibate men Who lived in brotherhoods or the hermits who filled the nearby mountains? The catholic theologian john cavidini Riley observed that this was hardly the golden age of the theology of marriage Many of the fathers ignore marriage or treated as a somewhat distasteful subject The best thing john's contemporary gerome could say about marriage is well It's through marriage that we get future celibates Yet john in his later years glorified marriage glorified it It pained him that christian couples continued to practice the old pagan wedding customs Which tended toward the obscene? So shameful were the practices that few couples dared to invite their parish priests to attend and give a blessing The celebration consisted of several days of drinking And really filthy singing Body songs the situation roused our hero to another passionate exhortation Is the wedding a theater? No It is a sacrament a mystery And a model of the church of christ They dance at pagan ceremonies that at ours Silence and decorum should prevail respect and modesty Here a great mystery is accomplished He's using sacramental language For john marriage is a sacrament a mystery a model of the church Again, this is the language of mystigogy He's beginning to guide us through the mysteries of marriage His mystigogy of marriage was unusual in his day, but it had deep biblical roots John grounded his doctrine firmly in st paul's letter to the Ephesians For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one one flesh This mystery says st paul is a profound one and i am saying that it refers to christ in the church St paul then had it has included marriage among the great mysteries of christianity But he is himself digging deep to do so drawing from the first chapters of genesis Indeed any preacher who memorized most of the scriptures as john did Would notice that marriage is a dominant theme in both the old and new testaments As scott hon points out the bible begins with the wedding the wedding of adam and eve And it ends with the wedding the marriage supper of the lamb And in between god speaking through the prophets Repeatedly invokes marriage as the preeminent symbol of his covenant For john marriage is an image of baptism where the believer is wed to christ And it is an image of the eucharist which makes one flesh of the believer and christ He tells his new christians Keep the marriage robe in its integrity that with it you may and enter forever into this spiritual marriage Just as in marriage between man and woman the bridal feast is prolonged for seven days See how we too extend for the same number of days Your bridal feast setting before you the table of the mysteries filled with good things beyond number Marriage moreover according to john is an icon of the trinity As john teaches us and this is a quote The child is a bridge connecting mother to father So the three become one flesh And here the bridge is formed from the substance of each Just as the head and the rest of the body are one So it is with the child That is why scripture does not say they shall be one flesh, but they shall be joined together into one flesh Namely the child But he goes on Suppose there is no child Do they then remain two and not one? No Their intercourse affects the joining of their bodies and they are made one just as when perfume is mixed with ointment Well at that point john must have looked out at his congregation full of people and they were all fanning themselves and averting their eyes Right because listen to the next line. He's moved to cry out Why are you blushing? Leave that to the heretics and pagans with their impure and immodest customs For this reason I want marriage to be thoroughly purified to bring it back again to its proper nobility You should not be ashamed of these things If you are ashamed then you condemn god who made marriage So I shall tell you how marriage is a mystery of the church John did not want us to blush at the mention of married love But most of all He wanted us to have no reason to blush at the mention Among all the ancient mystagogues John stands out for his unique emphasis on morals He insists that the sacraments should leave their mark on everything we do in life everything We don't check the mysteries at the door when we leave the church on sunday The sacraments have consequences for every moment of every day Through baptism and Eucharist we become partakers of the divine nature John would have us then live our marriages purely as christ lives his And john doesn't hesitate to speak plainly. He's blunt He doesn't care if he makes parishioners squirm and blush I think it's fair to say that none of the fathers preached as frankly on sexual matters as john did What did this mean practically? He repeatedly condemned Contraception birth control as unworthy of christian marriage and he even calls it preemptive murder He says why do you so where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility Where there is murder before birth? Indeed it is something worse than murder and I don't know what to call it For she does not kill what is formed But prevents its formation What then do you despise the gift of god and fight with his law? John saw birth control as a violation of the type A desecration of the icon A defiling of the sacrament If marriage is a sacrament of god, then it should be a true communion and truly fruitful as god is John also condemned adultery domestic violence Sodomy abortion divorce and other acts that are unworthy of the sacrament of jesus christ and his church The sacrament of the trinity on earth I don't think marriage can get any better than john christ system in his mature years made it out to be For a married man or woman to read his anomalies on collisions and Ephesians Is to simultaneously be humbled and exalted Exalted because god has lifted us up so high Humble because we must confront our own sin our own clinging to the mud of the earth John learned to love marriage and we should too As a celibate he lost nothing in the bargain for if a celibate renounces something second rate That's not such a big deal But if he renounces something so great as holy matrimony A sign of the trinity in order to live with the trinity even now as an angel in heaven If he renounces the sign in order to possess the signified Then suddenly the value of celibacy increases by orders of magnitude As john himself said whoever denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of virginity Whoever praises it makes virginity more admirable and resplendent What appears good only in comparison with evil would not be particularly good It is something better than what is admitted to be good. That is the most excellent good Learn the power of the type so that you may learn the strength of the truth It seems right to close this talk by invoking the words with which john closed his earthly life and almost every statement That his lack of a filter let through He said glory to god for all things amen So let's give glory in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit Glory be to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be World without end. Amen. Name of the father and the son of the holy spirit Thank you for your attention and your hospitality