A recent screed directed against Fr Seraphim Rose (which I will not link here, as I do not wish to feed the trolls — I’m sure you can find it if you really want to) calls for an honest response, so I’ll attempt to give one here that does justice to the complexity of the specific history involved, and responds, in addition, to the underlying problems — of course, from my own perspective.
Christianity is supposed to be unnatural in many regards. Christ's death is natural; His resurrection and Ascension are unnatural. Sacraments all have unnatural components; it's what separates Baptism from merely washing one's brow. The whole of Christianity rests on the realness of the unnatural parts of human existence. If humans were meant to be only natural in all things, then what purpose would the Divine serve?
Even atheists, like Richard Dawkins in 'The Selfish Gene,' can recognize forces that motivate humans away from purely natural, genetic coding. Whatever that something is, it isn't clear that it's natural, nor is it clear being unnatural would make it maladaptive.
Regardless of one's view of celibacy and/or asceticism, calling something "unnatural" isn't a sound argument against the thing, especially when it comes to Christianity.
On the contrary, I would argue (with Fr Alexander Schmemann) that for example, baptism is not a "supernatural" washing; it is the revelation of the reality of water. The Eucharist is not ontologically supernatural, a breach in the world; it is the revelation of the reality of food. Thus with all the sacraments. They are precisely revelations of the heart of nature, not an irruption of some heteronomous reality. There are things that move towards the revelation of reality, and things that move away from it. I would say a culture of renunciation applied as a rule for all, which is pretty much what the tradition is in this area, since laypeople are treated essentially as second-class monks who can only do some of what monks do, is unnatural in the sense that it further obfuscates reality, rather than revealing it.
Fr Alexander Schmemann seems to be taking a humanist & materialist interpretation of sacraments, rather than a Christian one. The physical components of the rituals are supposed to reveal something more to us, yes, but that something more isn't limited to materialism. In the New Testament, the Early Church were quite clear about the presence of the Holy Spirit, not merely the material reality, in their most important practices.
> They are precisely revelations of the heart of nature
They are precisely revelations of grace: the beyond-natural God sharing God's life in our lives, therefore inviting our humanness to something more than "natural" in the materialist sense.
> There are things that move towards the revelation of reality
Agreed, but reality is more than "natural" in the materialist sense.
This is really two essays from my perspective. Good job on the first regarding Fr. Rose, but the second which seems to imply there is no Divine Eros is problematic. There are deeply embodied and fully intimate modes of experiencing divinity and sacredness which are based on renunciation. There is no reason a christian ascetic should't also be able experience a kinda of preview of the unity with God. The ramifications of glorification involving the full body are not as developed in christian asceticism as they should be. Yet, the eros that allowed St. Symeon to say that "Christ is my penis" (I'm not kidding), is not to be brushed off as mere repression but rather a completion of the meaning of eros:
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For while we become many members He remains one and indivisible, and each part is the whole Christ himself. 160 And so thus you well know that both my finger and my penis are Christ. Do you tremble or feel ashamed? But God was not ashamed to become like you, yet you are ashamed to become like Him? “I am not ashamed to become like Him. 165 But in saying He is like a shameful member I suspect that you speak blasphemy.” So then, you suspected badly, for there are no shameful members! They are hidden members of Christ, for they are covered, and on account of this they are more revered than the rest, (1 Cor 12.23) 170 as hidden members of Him Who is hidden, they are unseen by all, from Whom seed is given in divine communion, (1 Jn 3.9) awesomely deified in the divine form, from the whole divinity itself, for He is God entire, He Who is united with us, oh spine-chilling mystery! 175 And thus it truly becomes a marriage, unutterable and divine: He unites with each one, and again I shall say these things for pleasure, and each is made one with the Master. And so if you will put the whole Christ on your entire flesh, (Rom 13.14) then you shall understand everything that I say and have no cause for shame.
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If only monasticism was understood as aimed at this kind of deep eros with Christ! More than that, this kind of 'body positivity' certainly would be good to apply when thinking of sexuality in general. Also I want to point out the renunciation can indeed also be done in a body-positive way. You seem to paint it as inherently negative towards the body.
So while I agree that orthodoxy needs to emphasize spiritual eros more and understand that physical eros (eros expressed sexually) is a REAL mode of participation in divine eros, I also think you are flat out wrong to state that it is a form of non-christian repression to be ascetical. This is very harmful to spread. When a person is filled with this kind of joy, there is no sense of lack, the body is indeed involved in an embodied pervasion of the Spirit which mimics perichoresis. This is TOTAL eros of mind, spirit, and body, not a mere suppression or repression of the body. It is a fulfillment of what sex participates in (and note as I write below that sex also has a 'high ceiling' of potential). This exists, I know of it, I know of other people who know of it, and it is not 'sexual' in the normal sense of the word. It is supra-sexual.
To reiterate, this is not a denigration of marriage either. Sexuality can also participate fully in this kind of experience as well, but this means it must be elevated beyond the merely physical again to include the full perichoresis participating in the union of Christ and his Church (i.e. ALL reality).
So the way forwards as I see it is NOT to decide renunciation is for self-loathing and world-loathing gnostics, but to bring renunciation fully into its true meaning which is embarrassing for the many, but true nonetheless: marriage with Christ in all its implications. Marriage of ALL of one's being including the body (nonsexual, non-lustful eros). Then renunciates are simply those who focus on this only, whereas those who get married focus on union with each and union with Christ. Those in marriage are participating in 'theosis with world and Christ' which is critical as well since the World Song includes all of creation united in a beautiful whole. Those renunciates are focusing on 'theosis with Christ' and letting their 'theosis with the world' develop as the result of it rather than so to speak 'developing concurrently'. So, I agree we don't denigrate marriage either. Can you agree to stop denigrating renunciates?
If it were totally free, unrelated to any social pressures, for example, I could see a place for renunciation. But the fact is that the tradition upholds renunciates as almost the only spiritual exemplars. This says something. Basically there is a subtext in the tradition. I don't deny that it's possible to construct a version of the tradition that does what you say -- valorizes renunciation without devalorizing marriage and more specifically, sexuality, and even more specifically, sexual pleasure, and more broadly, sensual pleasure tout court. I can construct that -- I think Olivier Clement has done a good job of constructing it in several of his works.
But this is at a high level of abstraction. Whatever is *said,* the entire structure of the Church -- from monastic bishops, to the vast preponderance of ascetics among the saints given to us as models and for veneration, to the intensity of the ascetic teachings we imbibe e.g. through Lenten hymnography and through traditional Lenten reading, such as the "Ladder" -- forces renunciation forward as the "real" form of spirituality, and embodied life as a pale second-best, a grudging concession. And it gives no wisdom or guidance about how to engage with embodied life and sensual experience in a constructive way that's oriented to the Kingdom -- just "do your best to imitate the monks." Enough!
I don't deny that renunciation can produce ecstasies. But so can BDSM. I am not being tongue-in-cheek. Many, many different experiences can be fodder for wisdom, for ecstatic realization. Maybe this is the lens to see it through -- renunciation as an upaya, as a lifelong shamanic exercise, like a kind of perpetual fasting. But *most people are not suited to this,* and to have a religious culture than relentlessly teaches people -- often tacitly, but often explicitly, if they are to read the sources -- that this renunciation is the model they must approximate, produces monsters. It produces sexual abusers, because *it is itself a form of abuse.*
Now, if that reality and that history and that wound could be healed -- and perhaps it is, in the lives of individual ascetics -- well and good. But it is past time for the Church to offer non-renunciates bread instead of stones.
I believe Timothy Patisas said “orthodoxy is paradoxy.” I think we have to be willing to identify and uphold the ideal while acknowledging our inability to attain it in this fallen world. And then to offer ourselves the mercy that God offers us in the knowledge that we are weak and undeserving! No one deserves our unconditional love because of their merits. They deserve it because they embody Christ! Imperfectly.
"marriage with Christ in all its implications. Marriage of ALL of one's being including the body (nonsexual, non-lustful eros)"
"emphasize spiritual eros more and understand that physical eros (eros expressed sexually) is a REAL mode of participation in divine eros"
But Christ was incarnated. The bread and the wine are incarnated. I.E. there is no spritual eros, but eros is spiritual.
Lust is "the other" that is also you, to show you that you are not God, and it becomes "spiritual" in the incarnated personal version of the joining of heaven and earth (with your wife)
The ascetic life is like a gold medal for everyone, not just the winners. If you aren't doing it in order to have more time and focus to teach others about Christ then it's not it. You learn alot during exile, things that you can never learn otherwise, but in the end the realities are conversational and first of all it's a conversation between you and your brothers, and of your love is strong enough even between you and your enemies. But if you can't love your wife ("if one says he loves God but doesn't love his brother [...]") then what are you even going on about?? ("you"as in 3rd person) The romantic love and the lust that is it's cherry on top is the most real love, one who refuses that should not be formulating dogmas and scaring farmers and peons about hellfire.
I disagree completely that there is no 'spiritual eros'. Spiritual/Divine eros is definitely found in the writings of St. Symeon for example, and is experienced in many spiritual traditions, not just orthodoxy. As to your response generally I'm not sure which of my other points you are responding. If you would like my response then please clarify what you disagree with (it looks like you disagree with other things, but I'm not sure what).
I mean an experience of it. In the end there is only you and God, and your experiences including experiences with other people. What someone writes isn’t true if you have not experienced it.
Very well put. I think in overly focusing on actual Eros of the kind between a man and a woman, this article overlooks the vaster and macrocosmically-analog-yet-not-identical Divine Eros. It’s like the kind of Being which God has is of a type which renders the Being that we participate in a mere shadow. That’s not to say we aren’t actually participating in Him by participating in Being. However, the Being we participate in participates in His meta-being.
Speaking as an Eastern Catholic, I have found the late Pope John Paul II's discourses on the Theology of the Body along with meditation on Song of Songs helpful starting points for the broader points you raise.
I think recovery (articulation?) of an authentic, coherent Incarnational understanding of human sexuality is one of the challenges the churches face in the contemporary. Between the Scylla of extreme asceticism (with it's Gnostic temptation to reject the Incarnation) and the Charybdis of "Do as thou will (sexually) shall be the whole if the law", there is a truly orthodox answer.
Fr. Seraphim Rose offers a hopeful model for some who labor under particular form of the Cross.
Other saints offer hope to others bearing other crosses.
Increasingly, the Roman Church has been emphasizing married couples in canonizations of recent years. The Eastern Churches already point to Joachim & Anna as a model of Holy Family.
I think there's a way forward, although this bear of very little brain can't quite articulate it tonight. I do think it's going to take both lungs (East and West) breathing together, though.
Thank you for helping to set the record straight regarding Fr. Seraphim Rose.
Regarding whether and how much he knew of Fr. Herman's sins, obviously we will never know. But I would push back on the notion that Rose had any material knowledge of them. Why? Because I simply cannot imagine someone of Rose's sensitivity, holiness and integrity continue to produce essays and books of such discernment, spiritual depth and beauty, all while his conscience would have been hounding him over his knowledge of what Fr. Herman had done and was continuing to do.
Also, while Fr. Seraphim Rose did exemplify the practice of considering himself the greatest sinner and others angels; nonetheless, he had discernment and prudence as well as a good amount of common sense: It is one thing not to judge Fr. Herman for his sins. Its another entirely to allow him near children and near minors again and again over many years. I don't believe that Rose's grace and meekness would have allowed him to take such a naïve posture in the face of such knowledge. Meek, yes; naïve? not to that degree. And again, the spiritual depth of his writings make it difficult for me to believe that he would have been capable of that level of spiritual teaching all the while turning a blind eye to grievous sin being committed against innocents by his co-struggler.
So, that is my fact-free defense of Rose in that regard.
I agree with you completely. If he knew anything, I think he knew of Fr Herman's inward struggles, but not his sins, for exactly the reasons you state.
Thank you for sharing so honestly. I think this is a very important and under discussed topic. You might like The Ethics of Beauty by Dr Timothy Patitsas. It’s primarily an attempt to reclaim an approach to ethics that is centred on beauty, but it is also an extended meditation on the centrality of Eros. He defines Eros much more broadly than sexual desire, but I think you might find his work interesting:
“Eros is the beginning of human moral life, and Beauty in art and literature are oftentimes more effective than religion in awakening eros within us. Religion can just seem like God coming down at us, scolding us, telling us to stay where we are, but just do better. But real religion must awaken the movement in the other direction, must make us come out of ourselves and move towards him, fall in love with him. It’s about the beginning of an adventure, becoming a pilgrim, an exile, a lover.”
I might be way off base here but I’ve wondered if the hostility to Eros is connected somehow to the hostility to any idea of the Divine Feminine. I’ve always struggled with understanding how women are made in the image of God when our conceptual framework of God relies on male terminology. I guess the Holy Spirit is usually considered to be genderless, but that still leaves an absence of the Feminine within the Trinity as usually conceived. I can’t quite put into words how Eros and the Divine Feminine are somehow bound up together, but my intuition is that they are.
Thanks for the reminder of that book — it has been recommended to me more than once and I need to get to it.
I agree wholly about the missing divine feminine in traditional Christian theology. For what it’s worth, there are some interesting rabbit holes to go down deep in the tradition. For example, the Holy Spirit was feminine in early Syriac Christianity (since the word itself is grammatically feminine in Semitic languages), and some of those authors actually referred to the Spirit as “God the Mother.” There is also the work of Margaret Barker on first-temple Judaism, worth delving into, and then to get further out, there is the work e.g. of Raphael Patai on the ancient Hebrew goddesses. In short there is no absence of the divine feminine in the roots of the tradition, but it has certainly been occluded over time and only “breaks out” in devotion e.g. to the Mother of God, the subterranean cultus of Mary Magdalene, etc., but often in those later developments it’s all framed in a fundamentally male-centric way. Personally I feel this as a gaping wound in the tradition.
Oh yes, all of it. I translated some significant works on this Stack including a two part book length work on the Foundations of Christian Spirituality. I love him. It's not enough for me, in the end, but he is one of the voices that keep me Orthodox (also his student Olivier Clement, whom I have also translated).
Oh, this is lovely, thanks for the link! I look forward to reading them.
I relied heavily on The Sacrament of Love for the sex ed curriculum I wrote for my teens. What did you think of Woman and the Salvation of the World? At the time, I thought it to be wonderfully radical, but now I kind of see it as kind of obvious to anyone who prays or who has lived the liturgical life long enough. 😂
"Pagan antiquity was not uniformly libertine, but sexual permissiveness was VERY real.
Greek and Roman elites tolerated practices that Christianity clearly opposed: prostitution, pederasty, concubinage, and sexual slavery.
Sexual double standards were rampant: men could have mistresses and slaves, while women were expected to be chaste.
Infanticide and exposure of unwanted children (often for economic or sexual exploitation) were common enough that Christian apologists (e.g., Tertullian, Athenagoras) made a point of condemning them.
While Stoics and some philosophers valued restraint, this was an elite discipline, not the lived norm of society.
So yes, there were ascetic strands in pagan thought. But the average Greco-Roman city was full of practices that the early Church found abhorrent."
However, I was referring to ideals and elites, which is what we must do to compare apples to apples e.g. with the sexual mores of mature Christendom a few hundred years later. The elites abhorred much of this as well.
As a married man myself, I've always looked up to and admired the celibates. In the best of cases, they have a single-minded devotion to God that I wish I had the discipline to possess in my present state. I think especially of people like St. Therese of Liseuex.
I guess there is the flip side that the corruption of the best is the worst, and it recalls that the gift of continence is quite rare in human beings for obvious reasons.
Man, if I’d had the kind of experience in a confessional that you describe, I’d have left the religion, or at least the church. The only reason I’m part of the religion, despite the fundamental and arguably catastrophic shortcoming you limn here, is because I was raised without it and encountered at the highest educational level the dead-end that awaits any pure immanentism. But transcendental religion of any sort is always going to introduce an irresolvable tension between the things of this world to which Eros calls us and the ineffable and imponderable but nevertheless beckoning and haunting beyond. I don’t think Christianity or any other such religion will ever get it right. Once we have truly moved beyond Axial Age civilization, maybe this will no longer be the case. But we can’t very well imagine what that will look like; anyhow we won’t live to see it.
I don’t think it was worth your time to respond to that trash.
Anyway, you should check out Octavio Paz’s book *The Double Flame*. Really, it’s more like triple: animal-level general sexuality, human-level eroticism fused with imagination, and individual-level romantic love fused with personhood. The idea is that each level is alchemically intensified and refined from the previous one.
Catholic here. I'm unfamiliar with the Fr. Seraphim case (or your writing—happy to have stumbled on this post!), but found your reflections here interesting. I think you'd be interested in my book The Way of Heaven and Earth, specifically the chapters dealing with discipline/pleasure and rigor/relaxation. I'd be happy to send you a review copy (shoot me a message). I might need to pen a longer response, but in brief, I think the dysfunction is not in the pursuit of discipline/rigor, but in pursuing them at the expense of their earthly counterparts, with a disgust toward the human and bodily. Should we reject asceticism, celibacy, self-discipline because of their abuse? Abusus non tollit usum: Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater! Regarding the Fathers, Chrysostom's homily 12 on Colossians (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230312.htm) is often raised as a striking counter-example, though your point is well taken: the ancient world was marked by what I've termed a stark "heavenward" resistance to the earthly (Platonism, Stoicism, Gnosticism), and the early Christians weren't immune to these ways of thinking. Regarding your search for a more holistic anthropology and sexuality, I think you might be interested in Pope Saint John Paul II's theology of the body.
Sexual fasting IS sex positive and it IS body positive. There is no unclean thing that any Christian can sacrifice to our Lord. The very fact that regular fasting is required of even sex itself, indicates that it is of the highest value. And in sacrificing one’s entire sexual life within the monastic vows, it is placing an extremely high value to sex itself, but it also is placing God as the absolute highest value of all. These things do not contradict each other, but they inform one another.
I don't see any possible way of developing a healthy relationship in regards to sexuality in a Christian context if we are speaking of homosexually. You are correct that the Church has taken a very negative view on all sexuality since the beginning but 90% of the scandals involve homosexuals specifically. So the problem is more homosexuals in the church than a negative attitude to sexuality in general. That story about your confession is ridiculous and I would have reacted exactly as you did but that incident is really not comparable to what is going on the monasteries with young men and gay monastics.
Is this a fact, or do the homosexual instances stand out more in your mind? And is it not possible that homosexual people are more likely to have a fraught and immature relationship with Eros given the shame and self-hatred that they've been forced to endure?
This has left me with a lot to think about. When I was a catechumen, the advice my priest offered me was “never confess at a monastery” because you just never know what kind of penance the confessor will ask of you or how strictly they’ll enforce the canons.
Have you read Variations on the Song of songs by Christos Yannaras? An absolutely phenomenal text! I don’t recall who did the translation from Greek to French but O. Clement introduces the French translation. I would love to hear your take on it. Also, a personal thank you for bringing Corps de mort et de gloire to my attention, one of a handful of Clément’s books I had not yet read until I encountered your translation.
You're very welcome on the Clement! On this topic as well I translated all of "Eye of Fire," which has some really interesting stuff in it and seems less well known than other works of his. I loved Yannaras long ago, but I kind of got tired of his strident anti-western views, which I found a little precious since he's himself really more Heidegger than the Fathers. But I have heard great things about that book! Maybe I will return to him at some point.
I do not care overmuch about the accusations or the piece you're responding to, but I appreciated, as always, your musings about the Church and Eros. Am I right that you think that basically the entirety of the Christian tradition has got it wrong here? (I would sort of tilt yes myself.)
Is there something to be learned then from non-Christians in that regard? I wouldn't imitate neo-Pagan orgies, but there's a hunger to appreciate life and living in alternative spiritualities that Christianity and all the religions of the Book seems to lack. Can there be some new fusion, a "post-pagan Christian shamanism" for instance, or some other weird mash-up?
That's more or less the direction I feel myself being drawn. And yes, I think most of the tradition has gotten it wrong -- most of the tradition feels alien to its own wellsprings. But there are deep rabbit holes here! (In terms of the wellsprings of the tradition -- i.e., Margaret Barker, for example; Raphael Patai).
I was somewhat involved in neo shamanism before becoming orthodox. I think it needs to be like that scene in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, with the Pan-like frolicking: it would have been scary, but Aslan's presence tames it. Same with nature and the visions and direct experience of living. The opposite of the worst things I've been told in orthodoxy: not to trust your imagination, not to care too much about nature (preferably not at all; it's merely aesthetic gloss); and not to be of the world.
-I appreciate your article, for your meticulous effort to separate fact from fiction. Your ending seems to indicate to me you’ve absorbed a worldly, post-sexual revolution perspective, and now you’d like to try to somehow baptize or reconcile that perspective with an Orthodoxy that utterly rejects such a view.
-one small critique: Why would you cite a Pope who lived (if I’m not mistaken) 150 years post-schism? I’m a new convert, so I may be misguided, but from what little I understand, this is not the normative place where Orthodox seek guidance and wisdom, regardless of the virtues of said example. I know there are early fathers you could quote that would probably support your case from your perspective—so why use someone outside the church as your prime example of the excesses of this “sex negative” perspective? It just doesn’t land for me. Your complaint is with Roman Catholicism in this example. It would be helpful if you brought forward orthodox examples to support your case.
-A personal story—This area gets tricky, but I can tell you the truth, a switch flipped on my life long struggle with pornography and lust when I became Orthodox (was a lifelong committed and devout evangelical). I trace it back to the moment I started praying before an icon of Christ and the mother of God. Something about the holiness of the sacred images image snapped me out of/or lifted me up from the pornified waters of our culture. I really believe porn is something akin to the devil’s iconography. Its ubiquitous presence is also a direct result of the sexual revolution—the same revolution that has ended here in the “sex positive” worldview—though I’m not sure if you’re using that phrase the same way as the 1980s feminists or 1990s and beyond pro LGBTQSKPWXYZ+ crowd. If you see no issue with this notion of sex positivity, and wish to reconcile such degeneracy with Christianity, then I’m afraid we just have no hope of further understanding, and I’ll take my thoughts elsewhere. If you simply mean marital sex between a man and a woman should be seen as a gift from God, then I think we can have a discussion that will be beneficial.
Back to my personal story—reading “Marriage and Virginity” by Fr. Josiah Trenham was also transformative. He basically summarizes the early church fathers’ and especially St John Chrysostom’s teachings on sexuality. I learned that the Orthodox Church does appreciate the good gift of marital sex…but here’s the shocker…it isn’t the ultimate good. Consecrated virginity is a higher good. The life of the ages will not be lived in marriages of men to women. The monastics live the sexless life of the angels today. And that sexless, trained dispassion is not just incidental—it’s an important feature of the mortification of their flesh and the elevation of their spirit. (But not from what I understand in the gnostic manner, nor in the self flagellating later Roman Catholic manner, but rather in a distinctly Christian approach, that does not debigrage sex for married people as something evil, even if it is a lower path in some way.) Whereas as an evangelical I was taught that marital sex was pretty much the ultimate good, as an Orthtodox Christian we fast from sexual relations (along with rich foods and wine) some 40% of the days of the year. And we believe the fathers who taught that sexuality was a condescension from God to fallen man, not something designed in the original state for Adam and Eve.
I think one of the strongest supports (good former Protestant that I am) is found in scripture. So many prophets and others held up as examples were celibate, living lives of dep asceticism. Christ was too. St Paul. St John the Baptist. Etc.
I think there isn’t a more controversial belief of the Orthodox than what I’ve laid out here in the eyes of evangelicals. Because it strikes at one of the gods with way too much sway in evangelical world—the god that encourages them to swallow many lies of the sexual and feminist and birth control revolutions (sorry, just had to throw that last one on there too). These “revolutions” have destroyed society, the family, even the desire/ability for people to have kids. Traditional orthodox perspectives on sexuality didn’t do that.
Sorry, this comment is disjointed I know—vut big picture—I have seen incredible healing in my encounter with Christ through orthodox prayer and the sacraments. And through adopting the perspective in sex that lowered it from the pedestal of my heart as the highest good, or even as something absolutely essential for a complete human life. When I let go of that idea, a sense of entitlement fell away. I was able to say no to my desire for pleasure, because I now no longer believed self actualization was to be found in it. And ironically—I find more joy and pleasure and peace in sex with my wife now than ever before.
> Sexual renunciation is unnatural.
Christianity is supposed to be unnatural in many regards. Christ's death is natural; His resurrection and Ascension are unnatural. Sacraments all have unnatural components; it's what separates Baptism from merely washing one's brow. The whole of Christianity rests on the realness of the unnatural parts of human existence. If humans were meant to be only natural in all things, then what purpose would the Divine serve?
Even atheists, like Richard Dawkins in 'The Selfish Gene,' can recognize forces that motivate humans away from purely natural, genetic coding. Whatever that something is, it isn't clear that it's natural, nor is it clear being unnatural would make it maladaptive.
Regardless of one's view of celibacy and/or asceticism, calling something "unnatural" isn't a sound argument against the thing, especially when it comes to Christianity.
On the contrary, I would argue (with Fr Alexander Schmemann) that for example, baptism is not a "supernatural" washing; it is the revelation of the reality of water. The Eucharist is not ontologically supernatural, a breach in the world; it is the revelation of the reality of food. Thus with all the sacraments. They are precisely revelations of the heart of nature, not an irruption of some heteronomous reality. There are things that move towards the revelation of reality, and things that move away from it. I would say a culture of renunciation applied as a rule for all, which is pretty much what the tradition is in this area, since laypeople are treated essentially as second-class monks who can only do some of what monks do, is unnatural in the sense that it further obfuscates reality, rather than revealing it.
Fr Alexander Schmemann seems to be taking a humanist & materialist interpretation of sacraments, rather than a Christian one. The physical components of the rituals are supposed to reveal something more to us, yes, but that something more isn't limited to materialism. In the New Testament, the Early Church were quite clear about the presence of the Holy Spirit, not merely the material reality, in their most important practices.
> They are precisely revelations of the heart of nature
They are precisely revelations of grace: the beyond-natural God sharing God's life in our lives, therefore inviting our humanness to something more than "natural" in the materialist sense.
> There are things that move towards the revelation of reality
Agreed, but reality is more than "natural" in the materialist sense.
Willingly walking into one's own execution is also arguably not a "natural" thing to do.
This is really two essays from my perspective. Good job on the first regarding Fr. Rose, but the second which seems to imply there is no Divine Eros is problematic. There are deeply embodied and fully intimate modes of experiencing divinity and sacredness which are based on renunciation. There is no reason a christian ascetic should't also be able experience a kinda of preview of the unity with God. The ramifications of glorification involving the full body are not as developed in christian asceticism as they should be. Yet, the eros that allowed St. Symeon to say that "Christ is my penis" (I'm not kidding), is not to be brushed off as mere repression but rather a completion of the meaning of eros:
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For while we become many members He remains one and indivisible, and each part is the whole Christ himself. 160 And so thus you well know that both my finger and my penis are Christ. Do you tremble or feel ashamed? But God was not ashamed to become like you, yet you are ashamed to become like Him? “I am not ashamed to become like Him. 165 But in saying He is like a shameful member I suspect that you speak blasphemy.” So then, you suspected badly, for there are no shameful members! They are hidden members of Christ, for they are covered, and on account of this they are more revered than the rest, (1 Cor 12.23) 170 as hidden members of Him Who is hidden, they are unseen by all, from Whom seed is given in divine communion, (1 Jn 3.9) awesomely deified in the divine form, from the whole divinity itself, for He is God entire, He Who is united with us, oh spine-chilling mystery! 175 And thus it truly becomes a marriage, unutterable and divine: He unites with each one, and again I shall say these things for pleasure, and each is made one with the Master. And so if you will put the whole Christ on your entire flesh, (Rom 13.14) then you shall understand everything that I say and have no cause for shame.
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If only monasticism was understood as aimed at this kind of deep eros with Christ! More than that, this kind of 'body positivity' certainly would be good to apply when thinking of sexuality in general. Also I want to point out the renunciation can indeed also be done in a body-positive way. You seem to paint it as inherently negative towards the body.
So while I agree that orthodoxy needs to emphasize spiritual eros more and understand that physical eros (eros expressed sexually) is a REAL mode of participation in divine eros, I also think you are flat out wrong to state that it is a form of non-christian repression to be ascetical. This is very harmful to spread. When a person is filled with this kind of joy, there is no sense of lack, the body is indeed involved in an embodied pervasion of the Spirit which mimics perichoresis. This is TOTAL eros of mind, spirit, and body, not a mere suppression or repression of the body. It is a fulfillment of what sex participates in (and note as I write below that sex also has a 'high ceiling' of potential). This exists, I know of it, I know of other people who know of it, and it is not 'sexual' in the normal sense of the word. It is supra-sexual.
To reiterate, this is not a denigration of marriage either. Sexuality can also participate fully in this kind of experience as well, but this means it must be elevated beyond the merely physical again to include the full perichoresis participating in the union of Christ and his Church (i.e. ALL reality).
So the way forwards as I see it is NOT to decide renunciation is for self-loathing and world-loathing gnostics, but to bring renunciation fully into its true meaning which is embarrassing for the many, but true nonetheless: marriage with Christ in all its implications. Marriage of ALL of one's being including the body (nonsexual, non-lustful eros). Then renunciates are simply those who focus on this only, whereas those who get married focus on union with each and union with Christ. Those in marriage are participating in 'theosis with world and Christ' which is critical as well since the World Song includes all of creation united in a beautiful whole. Those renunciates are focusing on 'theosis with Christ' and letting their 'theosis with the world' develop as the result of it rather than so to speak 'developing concurrently'. So, I agree we don't denigrate marriage either. Can you agree to stop denigrating renunciates?
If it were totally free, unrelated to any social pressures, for example, I could see a place for renunciation. But the fact is that the tradition upholds renunciates as almost the only spiritual exemplars. This says something. Basically there is a subtext in the tradition. I don't deny that it's possible to construct a version of the tradition that does what you say -- valorizes renunciation without devalorizing marriage and more specifically, sexuality, and even more specifically, sexual pleasure, and more broadly, sensual pleasure tout court. I can construct that -- I think Olivier Clement has done a good job of constructing it in several of his works.
But this is at a high level of abstraction. Whatever is *said,* the entire structure of the Church -- from monastic bishops, to the vast preponderance of ascetics among the saints given to us as models and for veneration, to the intensity of the ascetic teachings we imbibe e.g. through Lenten hymnography and through traditional Lenten reading, such as the "Ladder" -- forces renunciation forward as the "real" form of spirituality, and embodied life as a pale second-best, a grudging concession. And it gives no wisdom or guidance about how to engage with embodied life and sensual experience in a constructive way that's oriented to the Kingdom -- just "do your best to imitate the monks." Enough!
I don't deny that renunciation can produce ecstasies. But so can BDSM. I am not being tongue-in-cheek. Many, many different experiences can be fodder for wisdom, for ecstatic realization. Maybe this is the lens to see it through -- renunciation as an upaya, as a lifelong shamanic exercise, like a kind of perpetual fasting. But *most people are not suited to this,* and to have a religious culture than relentlessly teaches people -- often tacitly, but often explicitly, if they are to read the sources -- that this renunciation is the model they must approximate, produces monsters. It produces sexual abusers, because *it is itself a form of abuse.*
Now, if that reality and that history and that wound could be healed -- and perhaps it is, in the lives of individual ascetics -- well and good. But it is past time for the Church to offer non-renunciates bread instead of stones.
I believe Timothy Patisas said “orthodoxy is paradoxy.” I think we have to be willing to identify and uphold the ideal while acknowledging our inability to attain it in this fallen world. And then to offer ourselves the mercy that God offers us in the knowledge that we are weak and undeserving! No one deserves our unconditional love because of their merits. They deserve it because they embody Christ! Imperfectly.
John Paul ii Theology of the body?
"marriage with Christ in all its implications. Marriage of ALL of one's being including the body (nonsexual, non-lustful eros)"
"emphasize spiritual eros more and understand that physical eros (eros expressed sexually) is a REAL mode of participation in divine eros"
But Christ was incarnated. The bread and the wine are incarnated. I.E. there is no spritual eros, but eros is spiritual.
Lust is "the other" that is also you, to show you that you are not God, and it becomes "spiritual" in the incarnated personal version of the joining of heaven and earth (with your wife)
The ascetic life is like a gold medal for everyone, not just the winners. If you aren't doing it in order to have more time and focus to teach others about Christ then it's not it. You learn alot during exile, things that you can never learn otherwise, but in the end the realities are conversational and first of all it's a conversation between you and your brothers, and of your love is strong enough even between you and your enemies. But if you can't love your wife ("if one says he loves God but doesn't love his brother [...]") then what are you even going on about?? ("you"as in 3rd person) The romantic love and the lust that is it's cherry on top is the most real love, one who refuses that should not be formulating dogmas and scaring farmers and peons about hellfire.
I disagree completely that there is no 'spiritual eros'. Spiritual/Divine eros is definitely found in the writings of St. Symeon for example, and is experienced in many spiritual traditions, not just orthodoxy. As to your response generally I'm not sure which of my other points you are responding. If you would like my response then please clarify what you disagree with (it looks like you disagree with other things, but I'm not sure what).
I mean an experience of it. In the end there is only you and God, and your experiences including experiences with other people. What someone writes isn’t true if you have not experienced it.
Yes, I've experienced what I consider spiritual eros. That's why I challenge loup so directly.
Very well put. I think in overly focusing on actual Eros of the kind between a man and a woman, this article overlooks the vaster and macrocosmically-analog-yet-not-identical Divine Eros. It’s like the kind of Being which God has is of a type which renders the Being that we participate in a mere shadow. That’s not to say we aren’t actually participating in Him by participating in Being. However, the Being we participate in participates in His meta-being.
Speaking as an Eastern Catholic, I have found the late Pope John Paul II's discourses on the Theology of the Body along with meditation on Song of Songs helpful starting points for the broader points you raise.
I think recovery (articulation?) of an authentic, coherent Incarnational understanding of human sexuality is one of the challenges the churches face in the contemporary. Between the Scylla of extreme asceticism (with it's Gnostic temptation to reject the Incarnation) and the Charybdis of "Do as thou will (sexually) shall be the whole if the law", there is a truly orthodox answer.
Fr. Seraphim Rose offers a hopeful model for some who labor under particular form of the Cross.
Other saints offer hope to others bearing other crosses.
Increasingly, the Roman Church has been emphasizing married couples in canonizations of recent years. The Eastern Churches already point to Joachim & Anna as a model of Holy Family.
I think there's a way forward, although this bear of very little brain can't quite articulate it tonight. I do think it's going to take both lungs (East and West) breathing together, though.
Thank you for helping to set the record straight regarding Fr. Seraphim Rose.
Regarding whether and how much he knew of Fr. Herman's sins, obviously we will never know. But I would push back on the notion that Rose had any material knowledge of them. Why? Because I simply cannot imagine someone of Rose's sensitivity, holiness and integrity continue to produce essays and books of such discernment, spiritual depth and beauty, all while his conscience would have been hounding him over his knowledge of what Fr. Herman had done and was continuing to do.
Also, while Fr. Seraphim Rose did exemplify the practice of considering himself the greatest sinner and others angels; nonetheless, he had discernment and prudence as well as a good amount of common sense: It is one thing not to judge Fr. Herman for his sins. Its another entirely to allow him near children and near minors again and again over many years. I don't believe that Rose's grace and meekness would have allowed him to take such a naïve posture in the face of such knowledge. Meek, yes; naïve? not to that degree. And again, the spiritual depth of his writings make it difficult for me to believe that he would have been capable of that level of spiritual teaching all the while turning a blind eye to grievous sin being committed against innocents by his co-struggler.
So, that is my fact-free defense of Rose in that regard.
I agree with you completely. If he knew anything, I think he knew of Fr Herman's inward struggles, but not his sins, for exactly the reasons you state.
Thank you for sharing so honestly. I think this is a very important and under discussed topic. You might like The Ethics of Beauty by Dr Timothy Patitsas. It’s primarily an attempt to reclaim an approach to ethics that is centred on beauty, but it is also an extended meditation on the centrality of Eros. He defines Eros much more broadly than sexual desire, but I think you might find his work interesting:
“Eros is the beginning of human moral life, and Beauty in art and literature are oftentimes more effective than religion in awakening eros within us. Religion can just seem like God coming down at us, scolding us, telling us to stay where we are, but just do better. But real religion must awaken the movement in the other direction, must make us come out of ourselves and move towards him, fall in love with him. It’s about the beginning of an adventure, becoming a pilgrim, an exile, a lover.”
I might be way off base here but I’ve wondered if the hostility to Eros is connected somehow to the hostility to any idea of the Divine Feminine. I’ve always struggled with understanding how women are made in the image of God when our conceptual framework of God relies on male terminology. I guess the Holy Spirit is usually considered to be genderless, but that still leaves an absence of the Feminine within the Trinity as usually conceived. I can’t quite put into words how Eros and the Divine Feminine are somehow bound up together, but my intuition is that they are.
Thanks for the reminder of that book — it has been recommended to me more than once and I need to get to it.
I agree wholly about the missing divine feminine in traditional Christian theology. For what it’s worth, there are some interesting rabbit holes to go down deep in the tradition. For example, the Holy Spirit was feminine in early Syriac Christianity (since the word itself is grammatically feminine in Semitic languages), and some of those authors actually referred to the Spirit as “God the Mother.” There is also the work of Margaret Barker on first-temple Judaism, worth delving into, and then to get further out, there is the work e.g. of Raphael Patai on the ancient Hebrew goddesses. In short there is no absence of the divine feminine in the roots of the tradition, but it has certainly been occluded over time and only “breaks out” in devotion e.g. to the Mother of God, the subterranean cultus of Mary Magdalene, etc., but often in those later developments it’s all framed in a fundamentally male-centric way. Personally I feel this as a gaping wound in the tradition.
Have you read Paul Evdokimov? His work was equally as important as Patitas' for me, especially in learning to "think Orthodox" about sexuality.
Oh yes, all of it. I translated some significant works on this Stack including a two part book length work on the Foundations of Christian Spirituality. I love him. It's not enough for me, in the end, but he is one of the voices that keep me Orthodox (also his student Olivier Clement, whom I have also translated).
https://www.chansonetoiles.com/p/the-eye-of-fire
https://www.chansonetoiles.com/p/foundations-of-spirituality-part
https://www.chansonetoiles.com/p/the-foundations-of-spirituality-part
Oh, this is lovely, thanks for the link! I look forward to reading them.
I relied heavily on The Sacrament of Love for the sex ed curriculum I wrote for my teens. What did you think of Woman and the Salvation of the World? At the time, I thought it to be wonderfully radical, but now I kind of see it as kind of obvious to anyone who prays or who has lived the liturgical life long enough. 😂
"Pagan antiquity was not uniformly libertine, but sexual permissiveness was VERY real.
Greek and Roman elites tolerated practices that Christianity clearly opposed: prostitution, pederasty, concubinage, and sexual slavery.
Sexual double standards were rampant: men could have mistresses and slaves, while women were expected to be chaste.
Infanticide and exposure of unwanted children (often for economic or sexual exploitation) were common enough that Christian apologists (e.g., Tertullian, Athenagoras) made a point of condemning them.
While Stoics and some philosophers valued restraint, this was an elite discipline, not the lived norm of society.
So yes, there were ascetic strands in pagan thought. But the average Greco-Roman city was full of practices that the early Church found abhorrent."
However, I was referring to ideals and elites, which is what we must do to compare apples to apples e.g. with the sexual mores of mature Christendom a few hundred years later. The elites abhorred much of this as well.
As a married man myself, I've always looked up to and admired the celibates. In the best of cases, they have a single-minded devotion to God that I wish I had the discipline to possess in my present state. I think especially of people like St. Therese of Liseuex.
I guess there is the flip side that the corruption of the best is the worst, and it recalls that the gift of continence is quite rare in human beings for obvious reasons.
Man, if I’d had the kind of experience in a confessional that you describe, I’d have left the religion, or at least the church. The only reason I’m part of the religion, despite the fundamental and arguably catastrophic shortcoming you limn here, is because I was raised without it and encountered at the highest educational level the dead-end that awaits any pure immanentism. But transcendental religion of any sort is always going to introduce an irresolvable tension between the things of this world to which Eros calls us and the ineffable and imponderable but nevertheless beckoning and haunting beyond. I don’t think Christianity or any other such religion will ever get it right. Once we have truly moved beyond Axial Age civilization, maybe this will no longer be the case. But we can’t very well imagine what that will look like; anyhow we won’t live to see it.
Aye, and so here we are in the in between...
I don’t think it was worth your time to respond to that trash.
Anyway, you should check out Octavio Paz’s book *The Double Flame*. Really, it’s more like triple: animal-level general sexuality, human-level eroticism fused with imagination, and individual-level romantic love fused with personhood. The idea is that each level is alchemically intensified and refined from the previous one.
ordering immediately
Catholic here. I'm unfamiliar with the Fr. Seraphim case (or your writing—happy to have stumbled on this post!), but found your reflections here interesting. I think you'd be interested in my book The Way of Heaven and Earth, specifically the chapters dealing with discipline/pleasure and rigor/relaxation. I'd be happy to send you a review copy (shoot me a message). I might need to pen a longer response, but in brief, I think the dysfunction is not in the pursuit of discipline/rigor, but in pursuing them at the expense of their earthly counterparts, with a disgust toward the human and bodily. Should we reject asceticism, celibacy, self-discipline because of their abuse? Abusus non tollit usum: Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater! Regarding the Fathers, Chrysostom's homily 12 on Colossians (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230312.htm) is often raised as a striking counter-example, though your point is well taken: the ancient world was marked by what I've termed a stark "heavenward" resistance to the earthly (Platonism, Stoicism, Gnosticism), and the early Christians weren't immune to these ways of thinking. Regarding your search for a more holistic anthropology and sexuality, I think you might be interested in Pope Saint John Paul II's theology of the body.
Sexual fasting IS sex positive and it IS body positive. There is no unclean thing that any Christian can sacrifice to our Lord. The very fact that regular fasting is required of even sex itself, indicates that it is of the highest value. And in sacrificing one’s entire sexual life within the monastic vows, it is placing an extremely high value to sex itself, but it also is placing God as the absolute highest value of all. These things do not contradict each other, but they inform one another.
I don't see any possible way of developing a healthy relationship in regards to sexuality in a Christian context if we are speaking of homosexually. You are correct that the Church has taken a very negative view on all sexuality since the beginning but 90% of the scandals involve homosexuals specifically. So the problem is more homosexuals in the church than a negative attitude to sexuality in general. That story about your confession is ridiculous and I would have reacted exactly as you did but that incident is really not comparable to what is going on the monasteries with young men and gay monastics.
Is this a fact, or do the homosexual instances stand out more in your mind? And is it not possible that homosexual people are more likely to have a fraught and immature relationship with Eros given the shame and self-hatred that they've been forced to endure?
This has left me with a lot to think about. When I was a catechumen, the advice my priest offered me was “never confess at a monastery” because you just never know what kind of penance the confessor will ask of you or how strictly they’ll enforce the canons.
Have you read Variations on the Song of songs by Christos Yannaras? An absolutely phenomenal text! I don’t recall who did the translation from Greek to French but O. Clement introduces the French translation. I would love to hear your take on it. Also, a personal thank you for bringing Corps de mort et de gloire to my attention, one of a handful of Clément’s books I had not yet read until I encountered your translation.
You're very welcome on the Clement! On this topic as well I translated all of "Eye of Fire," which has some really interesting stuff in it and seems less well known than other works of his. I loved Yannaras long ago, but I kind of got tired of his strident anti-western views, which I found a little precious since he's himself really more Heidegger than the Fathers. But I have heard great things about that book! Maybe I will return to him at some point.
I do not care overmuch about the accusations or the piece you're responding to, but I appreciated, as always, your musings about the Church and Eros. Am I right that you think that basically the entirety of the Christian tradition has got it wrong here? (I would sort of tilt yes myself.)
Is there something to be learned then from non-Christians in that regard? I wouldn't imitate neo-Pagan orgies, but there's a hunger to appreciate life and living in alternative spiritualities that Christianity and all the religions of the Book seems to lack. Can there be some new fusion, a "post-pagan Christian shamanism" for instance, or some other weird mash-up?
That's more or less the direction I feel myself being drawn. And yes, I think most of the tradition has gotten it wrong -- most of the tradition feels alien to its own wellsprings. But there are deep rabbit holes here! (In terms of the wellsprings of the tradition -- i.e., Margaret Barker, for example; Raphael Patai).
I was somewhat involved in neo shamanism before becoming orthodox. I think it needs to be like that scene in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, with the Pan-like frolicking: it would have been scary, but Aslan's presence tames it. Same with nature and the visions and direct experience of living. The opposite of the worst things I've been told in orthodoxy: not to trust your imagination, not to care too much about nature (preferably not at all; it's merely aesthetic gloss); and not to be of the world.
King David?
And also, turn the other cheek. Will you turn the other cheek for your daughter, or for your wife? There is "a mystery" right there
-I appreciate your article, for your meticulous effort to separate fact from fiction. Your ending seems to indicate to me you’ve absorbed a worldly, post-sexual revolution perspective, and now you’d like to try to somehow baptize or reconcile that perspective with an Orthodoxy that utterly rejects such a view.
-one small critique: Why would you cite a Pope who lived (if I’m not mistaken) 150 years post-schism? I’m a new convert, so I may be misguided, but from what little I understand, this is not the normative place where Orthodox seek guidance and wisdom, regardless of the virtues of said example. I know there are early fathers you could quote that would probably support your case from your perspective—so why use someone outside the church as your prime example of the excesses of this “sex negative” perspective? It just doesn’t land for me. Your complaint is with Roman Catholicism in this example. It would be helpful if you brought forward orthodox examples to support your case.
-A personal story—This area gets tricky, but I can tell you the truth, a switch flipped on my life long struggle with pornography and lust when I became Orthodox (was a lifelong committed and devout evangelical). I trace it back to the moment I started praying before an icon of Christ and the mother of God. Something about the holiness of the sacred images image snapped me out of/or lifted me up from the pornified waters of our culture. I really believe porn is something akin to the devil’s iconography. Its ubiquitous presence is also a direct result of the sexual revolution—the same revolution that has ended here in the “sex positive” worldview—though I’m not sure if you’re using that phrase the same way as the 1980s feminists or 1990s and beyond pro LGBTQSKPWXYZ+ crowd. If you see no issue with this notion of sex positivity, and wish to reconcile such degeneracy with Christianity, then I’m afraid we just have no hope of further understanding, and I’ll take my thoughts elsewhere. If you simply mean marital sex between a man and a woman should be seen as a gift from God, then I think we can have a discussion that will be beneficial.
Back to my personal story—reading “Marriage and Virginity” by Fr. Josiah Trenham was also transformative. He basically summarizes the early church fathers’ and especially St John Chrysostom’s teachings on sexuality. I learned that the Orthodox Church does appreciate the good gift of marital sex…but here’s the shocker…it isn’t the ultimate good. Consecrated virginity is a higher good. The life of the ages will not be lived in marriages of men to women. The monastics live the sexless life of the angels today. And that sexless, trained dispassion is not just incidental—it’s an important feature of the mortification of their flesh and the elevation of their spirit. (But not from what I understand in the gnostic manner, nor in the self flagellating later Roman Catholic manner, but rather in a distinctly Christian approach, that does not debigrage sex for married people as something evil, even if it is a lower path in some way.) Whereas as an evangelical I was taught that marital sex was pretty much the ultimate good, as an Orthtodox Christian we fast from sexual relations (along with rich foods and wine) some 40% of the days of the year. And we believe the fathers who taught that sexuality was a condescension from God to fallen man, not something designed in the original state for Adam and Eve.
I think one of the strongest supports (good former Protestant that I am) is found in scripture. So many prophets and others held up as examples were celibate, living lives of dep asceticism. Christ was too. St Paul. St John the Baptist. Etc.
I think there isn’t a more controversial belief of the Orthodox than what I’ve laid out here in the eyes of evangelicals. Because it strikes at one of the gods with way too much sway in evangelical world—the god that encourages them to swallow many lies of the sexual and feminist and birth control revolutions (sorry, just had to throw that last one on there too). These “revolutions” have destroyed society, the family, even the desire/ability for people to have kids. Traditional orthodox perspectives on sexuality didn’t do that.
Sorry, this comment is disjointed I know—vut big picture—I have seen incredible healing in my encounter with Christ through orthodox prayer and the sacraments. And through adopting the perspective in sex that lowered it from the pedestal of my heart as the highest good, or even as something absolutely essential for a complete human life. When I let go of that idea, a sense of entitlement fell away. I was able to say no to my desire for pleasure, because I now no longer believed self actualization was to be found in it. And ironically—I find more joy and pleasure and peace in sex with my wife now than ever before.