Theology

I Would Change Nothing: A New Year’s Reflection

I slept through the transition from 2013 to 2014. Because I am old and I have three kids. Also, I kind of just don’t care.

I have never been able to get excited about New Years Eve/Day. I have decided not to feel bad about that anymore. I mean, I sometimes enjoy parties and being with friends. (Actually, I sometimes enjoyed parties and being with friends; did I mention that I have three little energy-vampires flitting around my house?) But as far as the whole out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new thing went, I was always like, “Meh.”

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Prayerful Napping on Christmas Eve

It’s Christmas Eve. My kids are watching The Magic Schoolbus. Meanwhile I am uttering silent prayers for a peaceful evening. We are about to go to church. I expect we will be home a bit after midnight. Our kids will probably get us up at 6:30. If we’re lucky.

This is holy. All of this. The fatigue, the chaos of the holidays, the screaming of children, and the cookies we baked from a package because I didn’t have time to make shortbread – these are sanctified because they are ordered toward the Eucharist.

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Sex, Sin, and Pleasure

The following has been adapted from a much longer essay in a forthcoming book by Theotokos Press. See Part 1 and Part 2 of this essay.

Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo both agree that sex poses a spiritual risk, but each thinks about the nature of that risk, and thus the best response to it, in terms not easily reconciled, so that what is of secondary importance for Augustine is primary for Nyssen. For Augustine, the problem with sex is not pleasure. It is pride. Pleasure is only a problem because we are fallen. It contributes to the self-delusion of pride and thus weakens the will by dividing its loves between the true love of God and the false love of self. The spiritual danger of sex is thus, in a word, spiritual. But pride does not feature in Gregory of Nyssa’s anthropology, at least not when he thinks about the Fall. He agrees that we are disordered, but this disorder has to do with an imbalance between the internal and external life rather than the internal life with itself. Pleasure caused the Fall by distracting us, and pleasure keeps us fallen by continuing to distract us, siphoning off spiritual energy that could otherwise go toward our beatification. Disciplining the body and bringing it under the rule of the rational mind begins to return us to Eden. This is not anthropological dualism; Gregory does not deny the goodness of the body. This is to misunderstand asceticism. Ascetic discipline does not reject the body because it needs the body to train the soul. Chastity is the foundation of the ascetic life because it refocuses our energies onto the Good, putting us back on the path toward prelapsarian integrity. By withdrawing from the distractions of the flesh, we begin to master it, transforming sarx back into soma.[1]

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Gregory of Nyssa on Sin and Sex

The following has been adapted from a much longer essay in a forthcoming book by Theotokos Press. Part 1 of this essay can be found here.

Gregory of Nyssa thought of sex in eschatological terms. He was born an aristocrat. Citizens of his rank were taught that, apart from the expectation to produce male offspring who would grow up to oversee the family’s estates, sex was innocuous. As Peter Brown has noted, for a Christian of Gregory’s rank, celibacy was an act of protest against this passing order for the sake of the kingdom to come.^[1] It was a martyr-like decision. St. Athansius cited Christian fearlessness in the face of death as proof that Christ was raised from the dead.^[2] The same was true of the abstinent. Aristocrats had babies because they feared death, and with it, the loss of property and reputation. But Gregory believed that birth only feeds the grave. Whether adult children find the cold body of their grandmother in her bed, or terrified parents try to cool their gasping, feverish infant, both witness the order Christ came to vanquish by the power of the cross. Death is the last enemy to be overcome (see 1 Cor. 15:26), it gnaws away at the living, and it is a foe against which both martyr and virgin have declared war. Continue reading “Gregory of Nyssa on Sin and Sex”

Augustine on Sin and Sex

The following has been adapted from a much longer essay in a forthcoming book by Theotokos press.

Augustine of Hippo infamously declared that sex was sinful even within loving marriages. It can be tempting for we anachronistic Illuminati to wag our fingers and scold his memory for being such a “prude,” but, as John Cavadini pointed out, “To fault Augustine in this context for not realizing that ‘sexual pleasure’ can enrich a couple’s relationship, or to assess Augustine’s views against our own more ‘positive’ view, may be, with all due respect, to beg the question.” In other words, before we dismiss Augustine, we should ask ourselves in what way he might have been right. Who is to say that sex – even within the confines of marriage – is always, or even mostly, a good thing? Perhaps Augustine was wrong. Or perhaps we like sex and prefer not to think too much about its spiritual consequences. Cavadini continues, “For Augustine, the question would not be whether sexual pleasure can enrich a couple’s relationship, but whether there is any sexual pleasure possible without a taint of violence or complacency (’self-pleasing’) in it.”[1] The fact that Augustine thought there was sin in sex means that he thought of sex fundamentally in spiritual terms. He charted a middle way between the naïve Pelagianism of Julian of Eclanum, who saw conjugal sex as something innocent and harmless, and rigorist ascetics who would have every Christian don the black. These perspectives (the Pelagian and ascetic) only seem disparate, but they both share an anthropology which sees sex as something belonging merely to the flesh. For Augustine, sexual intercourse was a spiritual event with spiritual implications. In sex, Christian charity, sinful lust, the weakened will, and our divided loves meet in a moment of intense bodily pleasure. This makes sex, in a word, complicated.

Augustine did not think sex was inherently sinful. For Augustine, God create Adam and Eve male and female, and thus God intended our different sexual organs to serve a divine purpose.[2] It is only lust that makes sex sinful. In our fallen state, our sexual desires, and thus our bodies, are never fully under our control. Eden was different: Continue reading “Augustine on Sin and Sex”

Orthodox Disclaimers: Why There are No General Christians

A few weeks ago, I was prepping for a radio interview about gun control by reading some old blog articles I had written for the Huffington Post. As I was scrolling down the page, I noticed the following comment:

Dunn does not speak for any Orthodox church, nor any lay Orthodox group. The disclaimer at the end of the article does not dispel the impression, given by the title,that he does so.

As a Greek Orthodox, I find this discrepancy offensive. The Orthodox religion is little known and understood by majority of Americans. I’m not sure what (false) legitimacy Dunn hopes to claim.

Dunn might rather write his column, make his point and, then, mention his religion while emphasizing that he is writing as individual and that his views may conflict with Orthodox church teaching. It would be far more intellectually honest.

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