Christian Sexual Ethics

“Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,” but God will bring to nothing both it and them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.

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Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.

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Chapter 57 [XXIX.]—The Good of Marriage; Four Different Cases of the Good and the Evil Use of Matrimony. The good, then, of marriage lies not in the passion of desire, but in a certain legitimate and

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37. But why do we argue, and why are we eager to frame a clever and victorious reply to our opponent?soberly as the Latin versions badly render), but “think,” he says, “according to chastity,” for the

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Chapter IX. That I may refute more thoroughly these charges, I will show that in part openly, in ῾ἥλαυνε εἰς τὴν μητέρα. Even now reflect what opportunity there is for mistakes leading to incestuous

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41. The purport of this commandment is, that as God loves chastity and purity, we ought to guard against all uncleanness. The substance of the commandment therefore is, that we must not defile ourselv

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Chapter 19.—Of Lucretia, Who Put an End to Her Life Because of the Outrage Done Her. This, then, is our position, and it seems sufficiently lucid. We maintain that when a woman is violated while her

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Chapter 18.—Of the Violence Which May Be Done to the Body by Another’s Lust, While the Mind Remains Inviolate. But is there a fear that even another’s lust may pollute the violated? It will not pollu

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Chapter 16.—Of the Evil of Lust,—A Word Which, Though Applicable to Many Vices, is Specially Appropriated to Sexual Uncleanness. Although, therefore, lust may have many objects, yet when no object is

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Chapter 23.—Whether Generation Should Have Taken Place Even in Paradise Had Man Not Sinned, or Whether There Should Have Been Any Contention There Between Chastity and Lust. But he who says that ther

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46. To work, then, O Virgin, and if you wish your garden to be sweet after this sort, enclose it with the precepts of the prophets: “Set a watch before thy mouth, and a door to thy lips,” Ps. cxli. [

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In his treatise, Concerning Perfection according to the Saviour, he writes, “Consent indeed fits for prayer, but fellowship in corruption weakens supplication. At any rate, by the permission he certai

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Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled: but God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

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For how can it be other than worthy of the utmost condemnation that a damsel who hath spent her life entirely at home and been schooled in modesty from earliest childhood, should be compelled on a sud

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Homily XV. 1 Cor. v. 1, 2 It is actually reported that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even named among the Gentiles, that one of you hath his father’s wife. And ye ar

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Homily XVIII. 1 Cor. vi. 15 “Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ, and make them members of a harlot? God forbid. Having passed on from t

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βδελύγματα. rec. text. πορνείαν. And again, Paul rebuking the unclean among the Romans thus aggravates the accusation, saying, that their usage was not only against the law of God, but even against n

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[5.] This however no man would gainsay. But to me even he who loves, but restrains his passion, seems to live more pleasurably than he who continually enjoys his mistress. For though the proof be rath

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Therefore also the prophets spare no such words, wishing to extirpate the licentiousness of the Jews, but do even more nakedly inveigh against them than we do now in the things we have spoken. For so

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